Koji Igarashi returns to deliver a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, but the end result is a re-tread of overly familiar territory that doesn't add anything new to the genre he helped create.
Bloodstained feels like a combination of Castlevania and Bayonetta, but plays closer to something like Valkyrie Chronicles or Shantae. The game does some work to set itself apart as a legally distinct IP for the advertising, but spends far more effort on homage and pastiche to make sure you know it's related the moment you start playing. You aren't a vampire, you aren't a dude, and you aren't fighting Dracula, but it is very much a game about gothic era heroes fighting demons using swords and sorcery in a gothic castle. All of the most fundamental aspects of the game are borrowed and recycled in a 'copy my homework' kind of way while failing to deliver anything meaningfully original.
Gameplay is clearly trying to evoke memories of Symphony of the Night but ends up feeling far too clunky and slow by comparison. Symphony was defined by it's flowing movement, attacks without interruption, a variety of interesting mobility options, and a subtle nuance to its simple combat design. Bloodstained meanwhile has attacks that interrupt movement, basic speed improvements locked behind late game equipment, mobility options that are highly circumstantial and inconvenient to use, and a slew of 1 dimensional enemies (some of which feel oddly sci-fi or just don't mesh with the setting at all). As beautiful as the levels are no thought has really gone into how you move through them and enemies are positioned just as arbitrarily, requiring the same attack / dodge / attack pattern until you can just tank and mash.
There's a very shallow streak that runs through bloodstained that leaves every sub-system feeling underdeveloped. Much of the game's design revolves around % drop shards and materials. The shards are unique to each monster and grant a different game mechanic while materials fuel the incredibly tedious crafting system. Both of these are designed with quantity over quality in mind featuring close to 120 shards (about 5 are required to beat the game) and over 120 materials used to craft a staggering number of weapons, items, equipment, and food, but the majority are redundant. In both cases you'll be fine to pick one damaging shard and one type of weapon to serve you, just swapping out to whatever does the most damage at the time. None of the enemies or levels require you to switch tactics or make any meaningful choices leaving all of these 'options' inconsequential.
Much of the game's design, then, feels vestigial. Only the strongest attack really matters, you have 10 types of weapon each with different special attacks to unlock but never a reason to use any of them. You can use magic or melee but neither meaningfully affect gameplay or challenge. Even the feature that makes managing your equipment easier is itself tedious to constantly update as you unlock and change equipment during a playthrough. All of the most practical ability and gear unlocks are saved for the very end of the game when there's barely any game left to use them on, and of course all the late game achievements involve unlocking every weapon, armour, item, and shard which would be fine if looking up items, monsters that drop them, and where they are wasn't also somehow designed to be a slow annoying process of going through 3 different menus each time you want to look something up.
It's stunning to me how the person who created a game as genre defining as Symphony could end up making a game that misses the mark on every aspect that made the original so fun. Bloodstained emulates the visuals, music, and character, level, and combat design of better entries that came before it. It is a game in structure alone and fails to ever really capture a sense of 'fun'. Its features are shallow and there is no interaction between magic, melee, and movement options, nor any enemies that might inspire you to experiment with them. The variety that exists is superficial padding to a bare bones platformer that adds nothing to the genre and does nothing that hasn't been done before. You'd be better off just playing the classics than playing a game that wishes it was them.
Bloodstained feels like a combination of Castlevania and Bayonetta, but plays closer to something like Valkyrie Chronicles or Shantae. The game does some work to set itself apart as a legally distinct IP for the advertising, but spends far more effort on homage and pastiche to make sure you know it's related the moment you start playing. You aren't a vampire, you aren't a dude, and you aren't fighting Dracula, but it is very much a game about gothic era heroes fighting demons using swords and sorcery in a gothic castle. All of the most fundamental aspects of the game are borrowed and recycled in a 'copy my homework' kind of way while failing to deliver anything meaningfully original.
Gameplay is clearly trying to evoke memories of Symphony of the Night but ends up feeling far too clunky and slow by comparison. Symphony was defined by it's flowing movement, attacks without interruption, a variety of interesting mobility options, and a subtle nuance to its simple combat design. Bloodstained meanwhile has attacks that interrupt movement, basic speed improvements locked behind late game equipment, mobility options that are highly circumstantial and inconvenient to use, and a slew of 1 dimensional enemies (some of which feel oddly sci-fi or just don't mesh with the setting at all). As beautiful as the levels are no thought has really gone into how you move through them and enemies are positioned just as arbitrarily, requiring the same attack / dodge / attack pattern until you can just tank and mash.
There's a very shallow streak that runs through bloodstained that leaves every sub-system feeling underdeveloped. Much of the game's design revolves around % drop shards and materials. The shards are unique to each monster and grant a different game mechanic while materials fuel the incredibly tedious crafting system. Both of these are designed with quantity over quality in mind featuring close to 120 shards (about 5 are required to beat the game) and over 120 materials used to craft a staggering number of weapons, items, equipment, and food, but the majority are redundant. In both cases you'll be fine to pick one damaging shard and one type of weapon to serve you, just swapping out to whatever does the most damage at the time. None of the enemies or levels require you to switch tactics or make any meaningful choices leaving all of these 'options' inconsequential.
Much of the game's design, then, feels vestigial. Only the strongest attack really matters, you have 10 types of weapon each with different special attacks to unlock but never a reason to use any of them. You can use magic or melee but neither meaningfully affect gameplay or challenge. Even the feature that makes managing your equipment easier is itself tedious to constantly update as you unlock and change equipment during a playthrough. All of the most practical ability and gear unlocks are saved for the very end of the game when there's barely any game left to use them on, and of course all the late game achievements involve unlocking every weapon, armour, item, and shard which would be fine if looking up items, monsters that drop them, and where they are wasn't also somehow designed to be a slow annoying process of going through 3 different menus each time you want to look something up.
It's stunning to me how the person who created a game as genre defining as Symphony could end up making a game that misses the mark on every aspect that made the original so fun. Bloodstained emulates the visuals, music, and character, level, and combat design of better entries that came before it. It is a game in structure alone and fails to ever really capture a sense of 'fun'. Its features are shallow and there is no interaction between magic, melee, and movement options, nor any enemies that might inspire you to experiment with them. The variety that exists is superficial padding to a bare bones platformer that adds nothing to the genre and does nothing that hasn't been done before. You'd be better off just playing the classics than playing a game that wishes it was them.