Red Bull article

I liked the article, gave a good summary of Bloodstained and the successful kickstarter and managed not to spit vitriol at the non Iga Castlevanias as many other childish writers tend to do.

*spits vitriol*

But yes, quite well-informed article. It surprisingly covered all the bases. I was wondering if they would cover x or y and certainly did get around to all the important bits. It unfortunately didn't credit Ben Judd and Fangamer as much, though.

That blind hatred extends to the Classicvania too, it is really sad to see. 

I was also surprised by the fact that this came from Redbull. lol (I've never actually tried one) But it was well written and I didn't find any issue with it so I am glad I read it.

XombieMike: Did you get a heads up about this from someone or are you an avid Redbull reader?

The distaste doesn't have so much to do with the Lords of Shadow games being bad; they're just not Castlevania games. The other issue with them is that they effectively put Igarashi out of work. Originally, as I'm sure you know, the first game was just "Lords of Shadow" and would have been a fine 3D action exploration game. It still is. High production value with its great graphics and acting, strong borrowed elements from other successful games, a substantial story, etc.

But as far as it being Castlevania...I could argue that Devil May Cry is more of a Castlevania game. I don't hate people for enjoying it and am glad they do, but as someone who grew up on the classic Castlevania experience and also loved the developments Igarashi brought about, that series not only rebooted everything but also left a lot of legacy and charm behind, grand epic-scale ambitious adventure as it is. It was an attempt at modernizing and Westernizing Castlevania into something like other successful franchises, and I'd say it was successful in doing that...but did it satisfy fans of previous work? Mostly not, and that wasn't really the aim to begin with.

i liked LoS (except Forgotten One, they really didnt do him justice, just turned him into a frustrating aoe spambot, but i squeed when i figured out what the music box theme was) and MoF, LoS2 though... ill play further in eventually but it went too far at trying to pull a metroid debuff and redoing the metal gear section over and over at the beginning because of a lack of showing you the path you HAVE to take or autodie, random glitches and random godmode enemies was frustrating
Judgement however fits for what it was intended for, it was an experiment with the motion controls the Wii had, and Iga didnt want you to have to simulate whipping for hours on end (skyward sword at least has sections where you are exploring and not fighting to break up the combat, think how many times you hit attack in most castlevania games in an hour >P), i dont play it often but its good for the occasional diversion or item hunt
LoI and CoD are pretty good, they suffer from CnP hallway syndrome but you can see in many places the amount of detail that went into the game, and they have some beautiful areas and music, i wanna go back through and replay them again, and they still have the metroidvania elements like backtracking and item hunts (and creature farming), just not as heavily (except the creature farming, that was in full force >P)
Been replaying SotN for the 1000th time, RoB, PoR (cleaning up the arena for 1000%atm), beat DoS again, plan to restart OoE soon, then run the GBA games again, and then probably try to beat the classics somewhere in there (played them before, but only beat CV2)

i am hoping they make good use of the camera and have the characters gesture and move to give cutscenes a bit of extra flair like the rondo cutscene in SotN, R(phlegm)eechter and Dracula making all those little gestures as they talked made an already epic scene feel like it was actualy going on and not a static image while dialogue played, happy about the 2d overlay for dialogue, im curious to see the different emotions the busts have

I am actually one of the few people who enjoyed the Forgotten One fight but only because it reminded me of the lvl.1 Hard mode boss fights in the metroidvania games where you have to recognize a pattern immediately and react appropriately...and keep it up for a boss battle that lasts an eternity. lol
I also didn't mind the "Metal Gear" section but I am obviously biased in that regard.
I plan on replaying all the games in the coming days, since I have everything ingame I am just gonna "speedrun" and watch the cutscenes as I go through. I wish CoD was on ps3 but they only put LoI (need to replace my ps2...no clock tower 3 this Halloween). Oh and of course I am going to play a ton of HoD (Despair)

Yeah, the 2d cutscene thing doesn't have me worried although it always feels a little awkward to me when they are static. If they do it the way you suggested it should look good though. I also feel dumb because when you said "busts" it took me like 2 minutes to realize you didn't mean Richter's pecs.

I'm sure there's a demographic for wanting to see Richter's pecs go through a variety of emotions

I enjoyed LoI and CoD myself. These games can definitely be 3D. Like Astaroth was saying, they still had several of the Metroidvania elements to them, there was an inventory, they were in the same continuity, were still using hearts, the same subweapons, etc. LoS was a farther departure as far as all that goes.

Regarding sales, I don't think that's a great indicator. Igarashi's games weren't selling as much as LoS did because Igarashi's games appealed to a niche audience. Those are the fans I'm talking about, so sales overall isn't really so indicative of whether we all thought it was great. As far as what you took the most issue with, the game not satisfying fans, where I got that from and why: do you remember the Operation Akumajo poll results?

All Things Castlevania
Poll #1 apps.facebook.com/my-polls/view/o2kiqli0vc
Poll #2 apps.facebook.com/my-polls/view/m8bp8feff0
Poll #3 apps.facebook.com/my-polls/view/t8ld0lzr5l

First poll can tell us LoS has 323 overall disatisfied votes and Judgment has 317 overall disatisfied votes, making them #1 and #2 of games that didn't satisfy fans.

Second poll with 80.8% over 9.3% preferring the classic world to the LoS one, 90.2 over 4.7 for Belmont vs Dracula over Gabriel vs Satan.

Third poll interestingly votes 61.8% for continuing the classic franchise, 18.9% for rebooting it again, and only 11.3% for continuing the LoS timeline haha. Also in this poll, the only questions that were universally disagreed on with any significant lean were "Konami has provided the Akumajo Dracula series a worthy and proper closure." and "Rebooting Castlevania with the Lords of Shadow series was the right thing to do."

On the plus side, it's overwhelmingly positive towards attitudes toward Konami as a company and their ability and desire to handle the brand properly. This was all taken well before Bloodstained was announced as a thing, in early 2015.

Anyway, yeah. I consider myself kind of the average Castlevania fan, so my views are pretty much in line with what you can see from these results.

Agree! I dislike getting the feeling people consider me less of a Castlevania fan because I loved LoS. Once that is brought up, that is the focus and everything else is dismissed. (I am not saying that is the case here! Just to be clear! ^.^)

I love Castlevania in general so I enjoy all styles of it.

I adore Iga's games, I still play them a ton, as they are the top games on my DS. And CV:HD, I have almost a thousand hours logged with that game and I am still not tired of it! I just find both types enjoyable in their own way, so I don't feel the need to like one over the other.

purifyweirdshard:
I am not discrediting everyone, I was explaining to you that I find the poll to be a useless gauge and not to be representative of what you term the "average" Castlevania fans feelings. I don't give the poll credit due to two things, the sample size and the population pool. By your logic people who stumbled upon the thread or liked only one game from the series seem to automatically be more qualified to judge the series as a whole do to the simple fact that they cared enough to follow a facebook page and take a poll...that just seems crazy to me but I am not going to change your mind so I won't bother (please don't take that in a vicious way, I just don't want this to go in circles)
I guess I should have specified that I am not really a facebook person. I have a friend who is big on it and loves Castlevania but he either neglected to inform me or more likely never saw it.

I think that if you believe it being a reboot makes it feel out of place then you must be against reboots. You can't judge something fairly if it automatically gets a mark against it for its very nature imo. As for familiar characters I would once again like to point out that there are several characters that are in LoS that are in Classic and metroidvanias. Not just that but the monsters and items, as I mentioned before, are also there, I feel like people who are big on the series history picked up on that immediately or at the very least should have (assuming they actually played it more than a few minutes to justify their hatred). The addition of characters does not detract from the game feeling like Castlevania in any way and it is normal for the series. By your line of thinking (specifically referring to that list) OoE only meets a few of the requirements and a lot of that has to do with the low budget making much of the games have enemies ripped directly from past games.
I don't believe LoS should have to have every subweapon from past games for you to admit there are subweapons from past games in it. lol I am starting to gather that what you consider to be Castlevania is something that is very much cut and paste (everyone is entitled to their own opinion and that is fine) but I believe it can still be Castlevania without being the same as the last game released. Complaining about hearts and meat not being there doesn't make sense to me as the game had a much more serious story and I think it would have detracted from it to see something like that all over the place. In case you were unaware there is an easter egg of the meat in LoS 2. I wonder though, would you have this complaint if instead of orbs the focus meter generated hearts? As I said before the magic meter is analogous to the mp bar and so they serve the same function. It just seems very surface to me if you have to see hearts in the game to think of it as Castlevania.
As a side note I want to mention that in LoS 2 hearts did make an appearance but for the health bar, and exp items (the currency...aka money) was found in breakable lamps and other objects, I assume you forgot or maybe didn't play it. No biggie but it does counter some of your points does it not?

The "core oriented" thing odd considering this game series (starting with metroidvanias) is really condusive to casual players. The fanbase has changed a lot over the years and I take issue with the idea that someone isn't a core Castlevania fan because they liked a change that some people didn't or didn't like a change that you did There are people that hate metroid and LoS. I am sure by their logic they are the true Castlevania fans since they liked it before it changed.
I have talked at length about the Souls games' "difficulty" and since it is irrelevant here I am just going to stop myself. lol

(I am replying as I read fyi)
So you never finished the first LoS? Even fans of LoS usually don't pick up on the importance of Patrick Stewart's dialogue T_T. I prefer people to come to an understanding through their own efforts but there is a lot going on with what he says in each chapter and the words they chose convey a lot more to the attentive gamer.

I was hoping you wouldn't misinterpret my remark about how much I play videogames but I seem to have failed. My point is exactly the same as yours but from my perspective. I simply feel that there are far more gamers that are not concerned in the slightest with videogame "culture" outside of the actual gaming experience. If you look at the sales numbers for any game compared to the number of people on any given poll or forum you will see that there are lots more gamers out there. I don't feel any more "core" because I signed up for this site than I did before. I don't feel like my opinion carries any more weight because I bothered to come here. I feel that length of time playing a game (and attention to detail) is the most important factor when it comes to someone's opinion about a game. I just find it hard to find merit in people's views when they never viewed the game in the first place. As I said early I can only imagine what would happen if book reviews were done in this way. "Bram stoker's Dracula sucks, it is about an English guy helping some old dude buy property in London. Booooring.   ....I read the first 10 pages" That is how I feel about most gamers. Even short games have this happen, using trophy/achievement stats you can get a general picture of how far most gamers get in their games (and that number is bolstered by trophy/achievement whores!) I understand that videogames are a hobby and people don't always have free time to play but I don't think I could ever be convinced that that excuse should allow them to judge things that they have not experienced.


I would just like to point out now that based off of all the things you listed as reasons why LoS isn't "Castlevania" are they not all likely to apply to Bloodstained? While we don't know for sure what the final product will be like, everyone is calling it a successor and you said Iga gives you hope. If the monsters, music, characters, and subweapons are all different (and if hearts and I and II items don't appear) do you consider it a successor? Suppose for an instance Iga wasn't fired and instead made Bloodstained as a reboot, would you still have these opinions about it?
I am not saying your opinions aren't valid but I feel like sometimes it is hard to express the true reason why we feel the way we do, perhaps because the words just aren't in our vocabulary. It reminds me of my music comp teacher telling us what he thought about our pieces. I got the best compliment he gave that semester "Some of this...actually isn't bad..." lol. He could only convey what he thought by playing the piece and pointing out changes through his own interpretation. Kind of a similar situation I feel. Either that or you are making up all of these points just to try and trash the game but I honestly am sure you aren't doing that.

Ugh Soul Calibur Lost swords...T_T. That reminds me, Zombiebuni made several Castlevania characters in the Soul Calibur V character create that I promised to post here. I should do that soon...