It has been years since the last traditional 2D Castlevania game was release (Harmony of Despair in 2010) and in general (Lords of Shadow 2 2014). Since then Konami has switch their focus on creating and developing pachi slot games and various mobile games using the franchise. This has left a void for many fans of not just the series bu as well as the genre it help create. So other took it upon themselves to create a game to fill that void. Sounds familiar right? This was the same path that former Capcom employee Keiji Inafune took while developing his spiritual successor to Mega Man, Mighty No. 9. But due to numerous delays, feature creep, miscommunications between the developers and its backers, issues between the community team the backers, and starting two other kickstarters while still MN9 was still in development, the game was not well received.

Much like Mega Man, Castlevania has seen a ton of clones and original games using the much beloved series as inspiration. And just like Inafune, a former Konami employee has stepped up to develop his own spiritual successor to Castlevania. That man is Koji Igarashi. Igarashi, or Iga as he is credited in several games, is most well known for his work on Castlevania Symphony of the Night as programmer, writer, and assistant director. He then went on to serve as lead producer of the series starting with Castlevania Chronicles in 1999, with 2010’s Harmony of Despair being the last game in the series he was involved in. He continued to work at Konami on several different project before leaving the company in 2014 to co-found Artplay. Then in 2015 he released the following video:

 

 

Now fast-forward to one delay due to changing development of the Wii U version to the Switch and three years later Iga and his team demoed the game at this year’s E3. In addition to having the public play the game for the first time, they also release the E3 demo to backers of the game and media outlets via Steam. I managed to obtain a code for the game and after playing it, here are some of my thoughts about the game so far, what I liked and think needs improvement.

Opening thoughts

As I mentioned in the beginning, there are a ton of clone games of Castlevania over the years. In fact you can even say that Bloodstained is also a clone. However I think there’s a big difference Castlevania clones and Bloodstained: Bloodstained has the soul of Castlevania game. What do I mean by that? For context, as I played the Bloodstained demo, I went back and played Symphony of the Night. I also looked up a few recent Castlevania clones and played them as well. The clone games, while they were pretty fun, didn’t feel like Castlevania games.  They didn’t have that “it” factor. Sure they had monsters, creepy environments and music similar to previous Castlevania games, but they didn’t have that “it” factor. Bloodstained on the other hand did. It felt more like SotN than any of the other games. Let’s break down the things that Bloodstained has that gives it’s “it” factor, starting with music.

What I liked

Music is on par with SotN- In my opinion, out of all the games in the Castlevania series, Symphony of the Night has some of the best music.  It was the first Castlevania game to make the jump from a game cart to a CD-Rom. It was also the first game in the series to start using real instruments instead of using midi files to replicate different notes. The drum beats, the guitar solos and of course the eerie sounds of the organ and harpsichord gave new life (or death) to Dracula’s castle.  You can feel that same life in Bloodstained thanks to the team of Michiru Yamane, Ippo Yamada and Jake Kaufman. Each of these talented and well seasoned composers brings their individual talents to make an awesome sounding score for the game. Michiru Yamane brings her experience as a former composer from Konami and has worked with Iragashi in the past on several Castlevania games. Ippo Yamada was a composer for Capcom and has is most known for his work on the Mega Man Zero series of games and has worked on the Azure Striker Gunvolt series and Inafune’s Mighty No. 9. As for Jake Kaufman his work on remixes and composing arrangements for games like Ducktales Remastered, Contra 4 and Shovel Knight made him a perfect match for the team.  What is playing in the demo is just a small sample of what is ti be a great sounding game.

Gameplay frantic and fun- The gameplay for Bloodstained, while similar to SotN and other non-Belmont Castlevania games, is frantic and fun, adding its own spin to the formula by adding in new elements. One of those elements is alchemy. Miriam’s companion is an alchemist named Johannes. He assists Miriam’s quest by using materials and ingredients that she finds and uses alchemy to create new times. These items range from simple health and mama potions to weapons and armor for her to equip. Speaking of weapons, whenever Miriam attacks, there’s a bit more weight to them depending on the weapon used, which has a different feeling compared to SotN. For example, in SotN whenever Alucard is equipped with two different one handed swords, the attack animation is the same for both weapons. The same can be said for when he equips two handed weapons or fist weapons. You can easily spam attack this way. With Miriam on the other had, any weapon that she is equipped with alters the attack animation. An example of this is when equipping a long sword and a katana (dullsword as its called in game). Even though both are slashing weapons, she holds and attack with them differently: vertical slashes with the long sword and horizontal for the katana. Even though both weapons are single handed swords, each of them handles differently and thus affect the timing of attacks. At least that’s how it feels to me, which if this the case, makes the combat more technical and tactical.

Amazing art style- From game to game, Castlevania has always been stylistic in it art direction. Even though they all use the same gothic motif, there is enough variation in each game that kept players coming back with each iteration thinking, I wonder what the castle will look like this time. While not Castlevania in name but in spirit, Bloodstained’s art direction is a sight to behold. Using the Unreal 4 Engine, the developers bring out the creepy atmosphere even more. Even the most grotesque of monsters look good.

Needs improvement:

Jumps feel floaty- As much as I like the gameplay of Bloodstained, I just have one minor complaint: Miriam jumps seem a bit floaty. Maybe because I haven’t found the double jump upgrade yet? Each time I do a jump attack, Miriam seems slow on descent. Maybe its just me or I missed the double jump upgrade somewhere, but that’s how it feels. As I said this is just a minor complaint.

Closing thoughts

Bloodstained looks, feels, sounds and plays like a Castlevania game. To be more specific it looks, feels, sounds, and plays like Symphony of the Night, which is a good thing in my opinion since  SotN is regarded as one of the best 2D Castlevania games. Yet at the same time, with just this little piece of the game showed me that even without the connection and comparisons to SotN, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night can stand on its own and forge a new legacy. Even with the floaty jumps , I had so much fun with the demo. So far Bloodstained Ritual of the Night is on it was on becoming a worthy spiritual successor to Castilevania and I wish Igarashi and his team good luck.