Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BIL
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BIL »

Marc wrote:
Blinge wrote:
Marc wrote:It's been years since I played them, but of the GBA games, Circle was the only one I remember as being a step down in quality, the other two were just as good as Symphony.
Fuck. He really just said Harmony of Dissonance is as good as SoTN.
:shock:
Is it not? Genuine question, I don't really follow critical opinion, so have no idea on how the various games are rated.
The most violent man of gaming has you covered. (NWS, extreme gore and graphic beast sex)

HOD is the messiest of the GBA three, unsurprisingly with it being IGA's first time at the series' helm (following estimable Konami veterans Toru Hagihara and Shigeharu "Umechan" Umezaki). COTM and AOS are safe attempts at rejigging SOTN's lovable ARPG toybox - for deadlier action and streamlined progression, respectively. HOD tries to outright surpass the leisurely grandeur of SOTN, and falls flat on its ass. It's too garish and shrill, too bloatedly mapped, and too mechanically awkward for that. It does have its successes (unpicking the dual-layered map is uniquely engaging; some spells are ruinously satisfying to connect; midsized enemies are fierce footsie partners; its scenery can be disarmingly beautiful and/or twisted), but they inevitably require caveats unheard of in the other games (the map is tiresomely padded and pocked by dead space; the air handling is astonishingly shitty; the boss roster is 95% tech demo; much of its humanoid spriting is execrably bad).

I don't hate it or anything - paid a decent bit for my JP copy. I like a good damage case. I concur with my ninja gaming colleague, the brashly impetuous Volteccer_Jack: fugly yet alluring.

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Mainstream critical consensus of HOD, certainly at release, could have you believe it's truly a miniaturised SOTN. EGM's rimmingly effusive review extinguished my heart's remaining goodwill towards gaming media. A favour for which I am forever grateful. Image
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Marc »

Cheers BIL. I'd love to go back and replay all these again, but so little time...
Not had a playthrough of Symphony for some years though, may have to fire that up again.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Blinge »

Man, that was a good breakdown - including the older posts. Nothing remains to be said objectively I guess!
Subjectively.. Well I always forgot where the F i was going or what the F I was doing in HoDiss and it wasn't fun to try picking up that thread again as everything was a monumental chore.

Movement speed was alright, I didn't mind mashing dem shoulder buttons to get around but i'm weird like that.
In other news, I strongly recommend shield dashing in SotN just for funsies.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

Even AoS is no SotN, but it's a fine outing for GBA and a massive improvement over HoD, especially when it comes to bosses. I enjoyed HoD, but it's definitely messy and a good chunk of bosses barely do anything.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Blinge wrote: In other news, I strongly recommend shield dashing in SotN just for funsies.
What is dis?

Speaking of sotn : last time I played, I experimented with the shield rod and all the spell it conjures with all different shields. I used it pretty much exclusively from the point I got it. That was pretty fun, since I never really use it, that made for a completely different playthrough.

I also love how there's a bunch of super-short range weapons(knifes, gauntlets) that are pretty strong if you get them as soon as obtainable, and they remain strong/useable for a little while. You can almost go from using one to the next and always have a good weapon. I always seek those out, they feel so satisfying. using that short range weapon that's more powerful than the rest of your arsenal, truly makes you feel like you're POWER MAD : you sacrifice reach(and thus defense), taking more abuse in the process, for the opportunity to rip through monster, and feel like a savage killing machine
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Blinge »

Triangle then Circle with a shield out. Raising the shield cancels the dash animation and allows you to chain another dash instantly.
Once you get the rhythm down it's insanely fun. It's still fun and fast if you do the inputs lazily and slowly.
That's how the speedrunners have insane speed outside of chaining the bat's wing smashes.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BIL »

Rodded Alucard Shield well and truly breaks the fuck out of everything, but can be amusing VS the inverted castle's deadliest straits (Inverted Entryway and Caverns' Venus Weed rooms in particular). Those same areas are a blast played more "fairly" too, of course... it's in SOTN's nature to choose your own power level. :mrgreen: Anyone else love hand-to-hand duelling that Grave Master who's chilling in the Coliseum's fountain? He can really chase you around the room... I just wish there were two exits for genuine RING OUT effect!

Speaking of Rods, Herald Shield = COMIN 4 DAT BOOTY Image Image

Image

I always get the Jewel Knuckles early on, and spend the next while knocking motherfuckers out. Image Doppelganger in particular, BOOF. I like the Army Knife from the abandoned mine too! Nasty short-ranged throat-gashing attack! Imma cut choo mayne! Image
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by sky-13 »

Before I learned of more broken combinations, the Osafune Katana was my go-to unbeatable weapon.

Being able to continuously use a Hadoken input to chain a special move that not only does great damage but keeps you completely invincible and at the cost of zero MP.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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On the subject of input chaining, I was gonna get a first-run JP copy of SOTN to replace my cheap n' cheerful PSOne Books reprint... but apparently, the ability to infinitely chain the bat's wing smash (hold X, 360, release) only debuted in the overseas version I had BITD. It was ported back over for the Japanese budget reprints. :o So now Books is the only NTSCJ ver I'd ever deign to have, because fuuuck not being able to deftly chain-smash straight through miles of enemies in a chorus of screams and explosions! (as long as your MP holds out ofc!)
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by FinalBaton »

BIL wrote:I always get the Jewel Knuckles early on, and spend the next while knocking motherfuckers out. Image
Mineth boy.

Jewel knuckles, Basilliard(that's the army knife you're refereing to I think) and to a lesser extent, the nunchuks. And the Fist of Tulkas (flurry of fist special move is fun as hell. but the homing fireball special move is kinda OP IIRC). Man, the fighting-game-input special moves are such a nice touch.

Yeah the shield rod has this crazy spell where huge swords fly about, that one is very strong! I don't remember them all but that one jumps to mind
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

All this talk over the past few posts, about alternate ways to play SOTN, and all the fun things you can do in the game, is exactly what I was talking about earlier! This game is just abundant with stuff, it's really unbelievable. You'd have to be mad to claim any of the succeeding handheld titles come close to approaching that same horn of plenty. Doesn't mean they aren't great.
BrianC wrote:Even AoS is no SotN, but it's a fine outing for GBA and a massive improvement over HoD, especially when it comes to bosses. I enjoyed HoD, but it's definitely messy and a good chunk of bosses barely do anything.
It's been a while, but as far as I recall, the bosses in AoS were all still completely lackluster pushovers. That was probably the biggest improvement in DoS.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Played on Hard + NOUSE, AOS has a quartet of good later boss fights: Death, Balore, Julius and Chaos. Death has the classic sickle dragnet, followed by simpler but viscerally imposing scythe attacks. Balore is half deadly targeted blows, half a laser jump-rope that intensifies as his HP drops until the floor is a sea of flames. Julius's duel is the standout, a worthy test of Soma's high mobility. Chaos is a pair of "danger room" fights with a good spread of aggressive, haphazardly overlapping threats to negotiate while taking down your targets. Not as organically deadly as Julius, but pretty good as these things go. All of these take a respectable bit of technique and endurance when items are barred.

I like the Headhunter's final form too - staying away from its tongue spear is fun - though it's nothing special in the long run. The new Legion is a bad joke of a chore, with neither the simple viscerality of SOTN's meatwalls nor its lethal desperation lasers.

The rest are forgettable and nearly all relegated to mid-tier status further in, rather like SOTN's Lesser Demons and Karasumans. Like those, they're at least not as bad as HOD's utter nadirs Max Slimer and Peeping Big - strong contenders for the two most useless pieces of shit in the entire series (Peeping Big's name is kinda cute though!). Legion Corpse is nearly as blatant a tech demo pinata... but instead of a fugly scaled-up zako, it's a memorably hideous unique design, so at least there's some spectacle to enjoy as you bash down its bloated HP.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Austin »

BIL pretty much summed up HoD perfectly. I tend to be overly harsh towards it though, more so than him, as my last playthrough (probably six or seven years ago now) was the most problematic for me out of the entire series. Many of the MetroidVanias can be cryptic at times (even SotN), but HoD took it to a whole other level between the convoluted dual-castle system and required hidden items (What, you never thought to go through the ceiling of a save room? PLEB). The garish visuals and music didn't help at all either, and I generally say to people that had the later been great, I might have been able to put up with everything else.

I need to fire it up again soon and give it another go with a more current perspective.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

Sumez wrote:It's been a while, but as far as I recall, the bosses in AoS were all still completely lackluster pushovers.
Some bosses in HoD were beyond completely lackluster pushovers and barely did anything. At least most of the bosses in AoS do something.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Sumez wrote:All this talk over the past few posts, about alternate ways to play SOTN, and all the fun things you can do in the game, is exactly what I was talking about earlier! This game is just abundant with stuff, it's really unbelievable. You'd have to be mad to claim any of the succeeding handheld titles come close to approaching that same horn of plenty. Doesn't mean they aren't great.
I feel they're two fundamentally different design choices though, that diverge at early stage. If you start to insert any kind of interesting or bizarre stuff in your game, such as shield rod summons, fists of tulkas, beryl circlets, or even the relatively easy to find Sword of Dawn, you are going to offer the player multiple ways to determine their own strength, as BIL puts it. In that way, you have to lose focus somewhere.

Ecclesia is the most far removed from this approach: relatively underpowered main character, very few gimmicky gliphs, and some hard areas built to test the player's skill. The Soma games have better initial balance but with all the souls, you inevitably end up getting the "game breaker" ones.

I feel Portrait, thanks to the two heroes, comes kinda close to SotN in sheer "horn of plentyness": lots of stuff in that game to collect and fun to be had experimenting with it. Lots of whips, swords, and a lot of subweapons for Jonathan to master.

HoD has a special place in my pantheon for all its flaws, it didn't get the core gameplay right but it sure did get the "aura". With a true Belmont, Ayami Kojima back to the drawing board, Dracula's relics to collect, and the *only* castle layout in the whole series able to replicate the clueless wandering of Simon's Quest (no matter how many times you replay it, you'll have to stumble into locked doors and backtrack every time, a masterpiece of convoluted design), it sure felt back then that the KCET team was indeed back at the helm. CoTM was a perfectly fine action game and offered some decent challenge, but felt as removed from the gothic aura of 1997 as the N64 episodes, really. Sporting only six original music pieces didn't help its cause, also.

edit: you know, seeing things in this perspective has me wondering if they're truly trying a new "Ecclesia" with Bloodstained RotN. I mean, so far there's nothing in the videos to suggest that: you have the cursed female lead, of course, but with all the shards collecting, I have the hunch they'll play it safe and try for a more relaxed, "Soma-like" metroidvania.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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BIL wrote:On the subject of input chaining, I was gonna get a first-run JP copy of SOTN to replace my cheap n' cheerful PSOne Books reprint... but apparently, the ability to infinitely chain the bat's wing smash (hold X, 360, release) only debuted in the overseas version I had BITD. It was ported back over for the Japanese budget reprints. :o So now Books is the only NTSCJ ver I'd ever deign to have, because fuuuck not being able to deftly chain-smash straight through miles of enemies in a chorus of screams and explosions! (as long as your MP holds out ofc!)
That’s an interesting tidbit! I couldn’t imagine not having the chainable Wing-Smash.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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The First PSX edition was "rushed" to the shelves, in the subsequent "The Best" edition they added the fairie's song when Alucard sleeps, for example. Pretty sure the chainable Wing Smash is in there also.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Interesting regarding the difference between early and later releses. I have this japanese copy, I guess it's the 1st jap iteration?

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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BIL »

Yup! I still kinda want one tbh, same with Gradius Gaiden. Would go nicely with the Gradius & Salamander Deluxe Packs. Image

(I've never really thought about it until just now, but I wonder if those just never sold very much... every other major PS1 Konami release I can recall got at least one budget reprint or another, including the Twinbee and Parodius packs)

Those Konami "(X) GAME" designations from the PS1/2 era are so cute. Was recently amused to check the back of my JP "Castlevania" (Lament of Innocence), and see its official genre is MUCHI ACTION GAME
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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That 1st print as a sweet booklet with some nice textured paper, and Ayami Kojima's lush watercolor art for the game, as well as a mini 10 page mango also by her. Truly a luxurious item. Oh and a soundtrack compilation disc. Do the other jap re-releases have this?

Sweet avatar btw. That's some fine 32 bit 2D azz
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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FinalBaton wrote:That 1st print as a sweet booklet with some nice textured paper, and Ayami Kojima's lush watercolor art for the game, as well as a mini 10 page mango also by her. Oh and a soundtrack compilation. Do the other jap re-releases have this?
I've only got the Books reprint - definitely not there. It's basically a slimline CD single case with a single-page insert, and a thicker manual externally packaged in a baggie. I just put the proper manual in a jewel case but even then, no back cover. 3:

But it was dead cheap and has dat bat smashing so I can't hate it. ;3
Sweet avatar btw. That's some fine 32 bit 2D azz
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Indeed :lol:
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Turrican wrote: edit: you know, seeing things in this perspective has me wondering if they're truly trying a new "Ecclesia" with Bloodstained RotN. I mean, so far there's nothing in the videos to suggest that: you have the cursed female lead, of course, but with all the shards collecting, I have the hunch they'll play it safe and try for a more relaxed, "Soma-like" metroidvania.
I've intentionally avoided watching most of the material from the game, but from what I recall actually seeing, there's been indications of Miriam visiting multiple locations, which would definitely hint at a more Ecclesia-like structure of going through several locales before eventually visiting the big open-ended castle. I really like that approach, because it allows them to potentially make the entire castle challenging, instead of having lower level areas, etc.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Sumez wrote:Ecclesia-like structure of going through several locales before eventually visiting the big open-ended castle. I really like that approach, because it allows them to potentially make the entire castle challenging, instead of having lower level areas, etc.
Same. Having the player gradually assemble an endgame character over a series of smaller, revisitable locales, then setting them loose in a nonlinear castle expressly designed to kill them was a masterful bridging of traditional and Metroidvania ethics. Departing on such a high note, I was unfazed by CV's subsequent travails as Konami faded. I hope ROTN turns out well, of course, but unlike say Silent Hill and its increasingly rushed third and fourth games, this series went out in top form.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

I also enjoy pretending the MercurySteam games don't exist. It's fair to say it's an entirely different series of course.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

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Sumez wrote:I also enjoy pretending the MercurySteam games don't exist.
Me too! :lol:
ChurchOfSolipsism wrote:I'll make sure I'll download it illegally one day...
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Jonny2x4 »

I was thinking about this the other way when I saw someone talking about Konami's STG compilations that were released on the PSP and I think they should do that with Castlevania on modern consoles.

Just hire M2 or Digital Eclipse and then repackage all the Castlevania games on compilations like Capcom did with Mega Man.

Vol 1. could consist of the original Famicom/NES trilogy and all the 16-bit console entries (CV4, Rondo of Blood, Bloodlines, Dracula XX). Maybe throw in the MSX2 and X68000 versions as well. They could leave it out the arcade game (Haunted Castle) if they feel it would cannibalize sales of the Arcade Archive version.

If it does well, then you could have a Vol. 2 with Symphony of the Night and all the portable entries that were released on the Game Boy, GBA and Nintendo DS (and maybe Dracula X Chronicles).

I don't know how you could fit in the 3D entries though. The N64 and PS2 entries are not exactly revered classics.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by soprano1 »

That would be wonderful, but Konami doesn't give a shit anymore, not even to make decent compilations like the PSP ones you mentioned.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Sure, but I'm not sure I need it. I already have every Castlevania game released, and I'm sure a lot of people here are in similar situations :)
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

yeah, the best we can hope for from Konami recently are those 7.99 AA releases from Hamster. I'm not even sure if they still have the license or if they are coming to other platforms aside from PS4.
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