Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night -PS4- 8

August 12, 2022

I just beat Bloodstained Ritual of the Night for ps4. My understanding is that this game was funded by a kickstarter campaign, and made by some of the same developers as Castlevania Symphony of the Night. I thought it was a very well designed Metroidvania that didn’t do much new for the genre, but was still a very solid example of how fun and addicting this type of game can be. The soundtrack was really nice and holds up well against some of the older Castlevania games. As for the graphics, it is a nice looking game, but I miss the hand drawn 2d graphics of the old Castlevania games. Obviously it would have been too expensive to handdraw all the frames of 2d animation, and they tried to make the characters look sort of hand drawn, but it’s not the same as older games of this genre actually being 2d. I’m giving Bloodstained Ritual of the Night an 8 out of ten. It’s very good, but Metroid Dread is still the best Metroidvania I’ve played recently. (The 3d graphics fit better with the sci-fi setting of that game, and the controls felt tighter and faster.) Now I will have to play Hollow Knight and see how that stacks up.