Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4)
Jul. 28th, 2019 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWe hired the guy who made Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to file off the serial numbers and make us a brand-new Symphony of the Night. He did exactly that. I got what I paid for!
I found that there was some occasional jerkiness and odd loading instances on the PS4, but if there were places that crash the game (as I saw people complaining about), I didn’t find them. The “absorbing a shard” animation is a bit too much given how often you see it, but in general I didn’t notice any serious glitches or issues in a normal play-through.
I also heard complaints about there being too much stuff for the amount of game, and that’s a more reasonable complaint, I think. The crafting/upgrading system is a bit too broad; the farmer is unnecessary; and the amount of vendortrash you need to collect to craft, cook and upgrade everything is really absurd. (And honestly, while drop rates are clearly higher than other games, some of them are still absurdly low. Lemons drop from one of the first enemies in the game and I never realized it because they’re so damn rare.)
I suspect that if they keep patching the game some of these things will get fixed, but there were a few broken points that delighted me: The Flying Edge and its upgraded form, the Oracle Blade, are wonderfully overpowered and I used them for some three-quarters of the game. After you get the gravity flip power, there are several bosses who you can totally cheese by fighting them upside-down, because their attack patterns don’t account for it.
There are a few places where continuing requires a leap of logic that I found obtuse. Now, this is perfectly fitting with the genre, but it still rankles. (The noteworthy spots: You need to get an ID from O.D. the librarian in order to ride the train. You need to absorb the shard from the jellyfish monster in the water area and navigate through by pushing yourself around. You need special armor from the twin dragon towers that you can get with the gravity flip in order to ignore spike damage and reach the penultimate area.) For that matter, I ended up needing to use an online map to get the last 0.30% of the map completion, because I’d miss three tiny hidden rooms.
Overall: See the opening. If you wanted more Iga-style Castlevania, that’s what you’re getting. I wanted that and found this delightful.
I found that there was some occasional jerkiness and odd loading instances on the PS4, but if there were places that crash the game (as I saw people complaining about), I didn’t find them. The “absorbing a shard” animation is a bit too much given how often you see it, but in general I didn’t notice any serious glitches or issues in a normal play-through.
I also heard complaints about there being too much stuff for the amount of game, and that’s a more reasonable complaint, I think. The crafting/upgrading system is a bit too broad; the farmer is unnecessary; and the amount of vendortrash you need to collect to craft, cook and upgrade everything is really absurd. (And honestly, while drop rates are clearly higher than other games, some of them are still absurdly low. Lemons drop from one of the first enemies in the game and I never realized it because they’re so damn rare.)
I suspect that if they keep patching the game some of these things will get fixed, but there were a few broken points that delighted me: The Flying Edge and its upgraded form, the Oracle Blade, are wonderfully overpowered and I used them for some three-quarters of the game. After you get the gravity flip power, there are several bosses who you can totally cheese by fighting them upside-down, because their attack patterns don’t account for it.
There are a few places where continuing requires a leap of logic that I found obtuse. Now, this is perfectly fitting with the genre, but it still rankles. (The noteworthy spots: You need to get an ID from O.D. the librarian in order to ride the train. You need to absorb the shard from the jellyfish monster in the water area and navigate through by pushing yourself around. You need special armor from the twin dragon towers that you can get with the gravity flip in order to ignore spike damage and reach the penultimate area.) For that matter, I ended up needing to use an online map to get the last 0.30% of the map completion, because I’d miss three tiny hidden rooms.
Overall: See the opening. If you wanted more Iga-style Castlevania, that’s what you’re getting. I wanted that and found this delightful.
