Disappointing. My initial feelings on Ritual of the Night were quite positive; starting aboard a ship in the midst of a storm made for a striking opening, the rpg systems seemed to have a decent amount of promise, and I loved the 2.5d graphical style here which created some really cool scenes.
It all just kind of fell apart the longer I played for though. Most of the rpg systems ended up either not being fleshed out enough, or more pressingly being a pain to actually engage with properly because of how much grinding for obscure item-drops they require. The story is a mess, and getting anything other than the worst ending will almost certainly require a guide due to excessively obscure progression checks. The last few regions in the game also felt like a significant downgrade in quality, with Den of Behemoths being easily the low-point. The balancing also felt off to me, which isn't surprising considering how much customisability there is but it was fairly trivial for me to turn one of the first spells in the game into something that just shredded every non-boss enemy (and most of the bosses, too) in the entire game.
It's sad as I really wanted to like this more. The variety of powers and subsequent character customisation is exciting, the game world is vast and varied, and the first half of the game features multiple really sweet moments with my personal highlight likely being the Twin Dragons fight. Ultimately the game did not stick the landing for me though, and ended up being just another fine, solidly enjoyable Metroidvania.
On a different note, I played the Switch port as it was what was available to me and strongly recommend people who want to play the game do it with a version of the game other than this one. I didn't let this experience alter my rating as I recognise most releases of the game likely don't have this issue, but the game did outright crash three times during my playthrough, setting me back to my most recent save room in the process, which is as frustrating as it sounds.
It all just kind of fell apart the longer I played for though. Most of the rpg systems ended up either not being fleshed out enough, or more pressingly being a pain to actually engage with properly because of how much grinding for obscure item-drops they require. The story is a mess, and getting anything other than the worst ending will almost certainly require a guide due to excessively obscure progression checks. The last few regions in the game also felt like a significant downgrade in quality, with Den of Behemoths being easily the low-point. The balancing also felt off to me, which isn't surprising considering how much customisability there is but it was fairly trivial for me to turn one of the first spells in the game into something that just shredded every non-boss enemy (and most of the bosses, too) in the entire game.
It's sad as I really wanted to like this more. The variety of powers and subsequent character customisation is exciting, the game world is vast and varied, and the first half of the game features multiple really sweet moments with my personal highlight likely being the Twin Dragons fight. Ultimately the game did not stick the landing for me though, and ended up being just another fine, solidly enjoyable Metroidvania.
On a different note, I played the Switch port as it was what was available to me and strongly recommend people who want to play the game do it with a version of the game other than this one. I didn't let this experience alter my rating as I recognise most releases of the game likely don't have this issue, but the game did outright crash three times during my playthrough, setting me back to my most recent save room in the process, which is as frustrating as it sounds.
2 Comments
You're welcome, have a good time :)
The_Trash_Enby
2 years ago