Castlevania: Moonlight Rhapsody - New Mobile Game

We might say that, but look at the nature of what it is they're presenting - it's like the low-brow interpretation of what "people want" - 

"SotN 2", goth anime waifus/husbandos, "real enough" gameplay, an explorable map instead of bite-sized mobage stages, etc. It has all of those surface level considerations, and actually too a sort of conceived takeaway from what Bloodstained is, without the nuance of what makes it *not* simply that. Story/characters wise, and castle structure/architecture wise, it is *very* Symphony. One of our discord members pointed out that most of the castle is lifted directly from SotN. You could say this is just China being China and you'd be right, but it's also an effectively Konami thing to do. Below is a video and a few pic examples

I first saw this game last year in December as "codename C" and just assumed it was a Chinese knockoff game (which, at that time, maybe that's indeed all it was) and these screens are from this hour long video - I'll link a timestamp to an easy to follow example of the SotN design thing:



Instead of Death being in this exact spot, it's a portal to a hub place and a guy wearing glasses. You climb up that same vertical section from SotN right afterwards (painfully, since this is mobile) and then it's the same entrance area and the door to the left after that goes to, you guessed it, alchemy lab. One thing I will note though, the Slogra/Gaibon room actually looks better in this 3D I think.



Almost everything in this screenshot is from the Marble Gallery, or rather, it just IS the Marble Gallery? lol, either way yes - the candle holding statue, the lanterns, the bat-wing shaped decorations above the lanterns. There's also an alchemy lab, and this section from just before the outer wall:



You can even make out the geometry of the ceiling and how it is trapezoid-shaped like SotN's.

Anyway, yeah it's "interesting" haha. I'll definitely give it a shot, I like some of the art/characters of it, but some things too are certainly worrying. It is, though again, a certain kind of takeaway of "what people wanted" and how you could interpret what Bloodstained is/was...yet like I said above, without really understanding the context of what people want/what Bloodstained is. Or maybe they do get it, but this is just what they feel like they want to do. I think they're right that people will play it anyway. That's kind of a philosophy behind many things they make - gambling machines are not "good for the world" or what we need, but it does appeal to the most base and simple desire of what we want whether we like it or not. Here's your "SotN 2" boys, enjoy.

Ah yes, Code C the last-minute-official knock-off. The reason GoS had to die because Konami couldn't be bothered to maintaining their own game so they bought out a knock-off and slapped the brand on it to call it a day.

Yeah.. that's nice Konami, but I would really prefer to continue my adventures in Grimore of Souls. How about launching it outside of Canada and maybe see if...

Konami:

On the one hand, I like the style. It's certainly nothing like typical Castlevania, but it at least looks pretty.
On the other hand, it's a mobile game, so even if I disregard the near-certainty of microtransactions, it'll still have uncooperative—and extremely limited controls.