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Post by Ex on Jun 28, 2019 23:56:48 GMT -5
And I beat it... Normal difficulty. All assassination quests complete. Most optional bosses beat. Map 100%. True ending gotten. - Once there was a really dumb game company which lost its way, refusing to continue a successful franchise via its prime formula. But then from said foolish company arose a phoenix of vengeance. Mighty Iga called upon the multitudinous finances of the righteous, and their coffers imbued his cause with unstoppable force. Through strife, turmoil, and nearly insurmountable delays - at last his vision was made reality. On June 18, 2019 the world was endowed with Order of Ecclesia II Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Well met, my son! It's been a long time.
+SotN and OoE had a baby. +Beautiful visuals (max it out on PC, you'll see). +Considerably larger than previous Igavanias. +RPG aspects amped up from previous entries. +"8-bit Nightmare" -Occasionally very unintuitive progression. -OST not as strong as expected. -Difficulty is below average on "Normal". -Mediocre voice acting. -Bugs and crashes happen (on PC at least), but patches will fix that. If you have cultured enough taste to enjoy non-linear exploratory platformers with action-RPG elements, you must play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Folks this game is an absolute triumph. B:RotN proves high quality game experiences can be made without the need of a totalitarian publisher. It proves that not every vidja Kickstarter ends up being a farce of itself. And this glorious gem proves that Koji Igarashi is a man of his word.
Ex's time to beat: 16 hours 24 minutes 29 seconds
Ex's rating: 9/10
Edit: I fixed my foibles on the completion stuff.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 29, 2019 13:58:00 GMT -5
Nice! But dude you seriously did all the quests? The recipes? Crafted the Holy Tiara? Your stats look super low too. All "optional bosses" ... might want to visit Glacial Tomb again... I'm like 10 levels higher than you with way higher stats and still have more to do. I got stuck on the graveyard memento quests way early, because I guess I never bought or found a Circlet in a random chest, so the tree of crafting the elemental types never opened up for me. After that I sped through the rest of her requests and just have the Holy Tiara to make now, need some rare Diamonds. Filling out the monster archives has been fun since I played more again the other day, finally got some dang apples, so I'm working on more shards and item drops now. I saw some people spent 60+ hours to completely truly 100% this haha. I'm not planning on that, but I'm still having fun playing more and have that one post end game super boss to knock out. Sadly I guess the Iga bossfight was DLC or some backer bonus stuff, it's $10... so not sure if one boss battle is really worth that. Though I loved this game...
Once you have the Accelerator and High Jump, it's fun to navigate through the castle again. Almost makes me wish there were some new areas to explore with all this crazy mobility though.
It's been funny seeing some more nagging "media" types gripe about how the game is regressive or whatever, then it really hit me. Isn't "another Castlevania" literally what all the backers wanted? Haven't we 2D Metroid fans wanted more games in the vein of the GBA ones for two decades now? Nothing wrong with these classic formulas, these companies just got stupid and stopped giving us more. I think that's funny to think about, Iga and company gave everyone exactly what we wanted in the first place really. Meanwhile the user scores/reviews for this remain to be sky high.
Not a spoiler and probably expected from anyone else reading, but I love how this left off with potential for more too. I hope we get a nice sequel and a 16bit styled prelude next time. I'd love to keep playing as Miriam, but I guess there's potential for more Shardbinders out there.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 29, 2019 14:19:10 GMT -5
I'm just smirking at your low stats a bit, because 10 levels higher than you and with better gear (I assume since I went a little further in quests/crafting), the secret boss is still wrecking me. Sad you uninstalled it, well like the librarian always says, you better return those books. I also didn't look this up, I initially noticed the gates in this room and thought it look suspicious. Now I can't even explore this area again until I knock this out.
The enthusiasm that woman had for murdering those demons was funny. Apparently most of the names were for Castlevania characters or references? lol, I didn't notice since I kind of just went auto pilot on her requests after the first one or two.
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Post by Ex on Jun 29, 2019 14:19:16 GMT -5
>dude you seriously did all the quests?
No I meant all the assassination quests. The woman who says:
>Your stats look super low too.
What can I say? I play smarter not grindier.
>All "optional bosses" ... might want to visit Glacial Tomb again...
If you mean killing Bael, yes I did that. I got the "true" ending.
I killed all the optional bosses behind the keyed rooms (Carpenter, Millionaire, Warhorse, and the like) as well as the 8-bit Nightmare boss.
>I got stuck on the graveyard memento quests way early
I didn't bother with that crap. I did help the other guy grow some rice and corn crops though.
>Sadly I guess the Iga bossfight was DLC
That's lame.
>gripe about how the game is regressive or whatever, then it really hit me. >Isn't "another Castlevania" literally what all the backers wanted?
Apparently those interlopers were expecting something they made up in their own minds. This game is EXACTLY what Koji promised he'd give us. It's a pure aught Igavania to the core, like we all used to love back in the glory days when Konami still cared. That said - Bloodstained does have updated graphics, larger areas, and more subsystem complexity compared to previous Igavanias.
>I'd love to keep playing as Miriam, but I guess there's potential for more Shardbinders out there.
I would not turn down a sequel to this. TAKE MUH MONIES
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Post by Ex on Jun 29, 2019 14:23:16 GMT -5
I'm just smirking at your low stats a bit, because 10 levels higher than you and with better gear (I assume since I went a little further in quests/crafting), the secret boss is still wrecking me. When the game lets you buy 99 ginger porks, you basically don't have to worry about dying. I just sold shards and ingredients I didn't need, and always had assloads of ginger pork to munch on when fighting bosses.
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Post by Ex on Jun 29, 2019 14:56:57 GMT -5
Okay, so I missed Xeogred 's video above. I thought he was talking about the true final boss. He's actually talking about a secret boss I did -not- know about. (This game has a lot of optional bosses folks.) So technically there's two optional bosses I missed; the one Xeogred mentioned and the DLC-only Iga boss.
Unfortunately I have uninstalled this game already, but I did keep my save files. I imagine eventually an "ultimate" version of Bloodstained will release with all the DLC included. At which point I'll install it, reload my save (pray that it works), and go on from there to finish up the extraneous bosses and such. I'm looking forward to the DLC that's supposed to provide a "roguelike" mode.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 29, 2019 15:02:04 GMT -5
The folks that annoy me are the ones that are like, "In a world where Hollow Knight exists, this game is regressive and unacceptable." Those people are sorely misguided. Kind of like the folks that say "Zelda should be like Skyrim!" or "Zelda should be like Dark Souls!" Just... let a game be its own thing, ya know?
I still have yet to see how Hollow Knight truly brings anything new to the table. It's a great game, yes, but not a world-beater. (I did give it a 9.0, so I clearly liked it a lot.)
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 29, 2019 15:02:17 GMT -5
Yup, the true secret boss seems awesomely hard. Admittedly... I rarely use items in games like these (same with Souls or Zelda, etc haha), bad habit of mine being an in-game hoarder (I like how this approach can make some situations harder though haha). Now that I have a bunch of good recipes and can stock up on that food though, yeah I guess maybe anything could be a cake walk with dozens of heals. I'd say overall in this game it's kind of funny but potions seems worthless, same with high potions. It's better to just craft or buy the food items. I dug this up on the Steam forums from a developer staff member, this game looks like it'll have a nice long life like Shovel Knight did, so yeah I'm sure an Ultimate Edition will drop someday: Sarge: To be fair this is where I make those people hate me, but I hate to say I have no interest in Hollow Knight because its aesthetics does nothing for me. Then Timespinner was a big turn off when I read more into it for other reasons.
Get off my lawn... Igavania is all that I wanted!
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Post by Ex on Jun 29, 2019 15:11:29 GMT -5
I still have yet to see how Hollow Knight truly brings anything new to the table. I'm with Xeogred that Hollow Knight's visual design just does nothing for me. I'm not saying it isn't a good game - I've not played it yet - but the way it looks is personally unappealing. yeah I guess maybe anything could be a cake walk with dozens of heals My Miriam might be a fatty but she don't die! I think potions were downplayed to encourage the player to get into the crafting and cooking systems. From a distance Timespinner looks graphically appealing. I have read though it's got some divisive political undertones. I've seen and read about this kind of thing in other recent indie games. I don't understand why indie devs can't just make good games and leave the fucking politics out of it.
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Post by Xeogred on Jun 29, 2019 15:21:07 GMT -5
I've heard Hollow Knight has some serious issues with its map system too... that would drive me mad. Everything about the controls and way the game looks, doesn't look like it'd feel great to me. Kind of lacks that rigid sharp precision I like in my platformers, but I know I'm totally judging. Celeste isn't totally to my liking either, but this game looks like it has a fun vibe and might be cool. But yeah that Touhua Luna Nights might be the next Metroidvania type I check out.
As for Timespinner, yeah nothing more needs to be said. Bloodstained didn't even bother to try and forget about being a game. You're a badass female kickboxing magician and your goal is to kill demons and bring down this castle. Thank you Iga and company for remembering the most important agenda, is having fun and taking me to another world!
While we're at it, Axiom Verge and Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight are two I can highly recommend that checked all the boxes in my picky indie preferences. But yeah Bloodstained is the boss now.
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