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

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

Post by Squire Grooktook »

PoR never had an issue where it soft locked every single death.

I never experienced any bugs with PoR, but whatever people had, I don't think they could have been that bad.

So yeah no. This programming is shit.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Weak Boson »

Sumez wrote:My "loot build" now has a LUCK stat of 75 or more, which makes getting most stuff fairly simple.
only? 8)

I agree completely, though. I used to turn up my nose at grindy games but when done right I can't deny it's satisfying and despite my initial skepticism tearing round the castle in endgame to gather groceries turned out to be pretty fun. Grinding for things mid-playthrough is considerably less efficient, but at the same time that's when the extra shards will make a much bigger difference to your power. I decided to go out of my way to get 9 greatsword expertise shards before fighting Zangetsu, for example.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

I never had a single bug issue that I can remember in Portrait of Ruin.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by kitten »

i also can't recall a single game-crashing bug while playing portrait of ruin... or sotn for that matter - and i've played both of those games very substantially.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

kitten wrote:and i've played both of those games very substantially.
Yeah I should mention I've beat each of them 3+ times. Not sure I know the exact number but I've played them a lot as well.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Turrican »

Sumez wrote:This is the first time I've ever heard any mention of "unforgivable" bugs in POR, so clearly they can't have been that prolific.
How about:

viewtopic.php?p=291037#p291037

"Portrait of Ruin was practically a rushed beta release"

viewtopic.php?p=291123#p291123

"I was really put off by how half-assedly PoR was put together. There are dozens of glitches"

viewtopic.php?p=291233#p291233

"Some of the level design also screamed "preliminary". Add to that the ton of glitches and the sheer amount of recycled sprites and it becomes clear that the game was rushed out the door a good half year before it actually was finished."

Seems that these fondly remembered games are rushed into the market and ridden with bugs...
Sumez wrote:So the game actually crashed on you, and you consider that unimportant?
There's no way you can possibly compare the awful state of Bloodstained to POR or SOTN.
Sumez, I don't play many modern games therefore I thought It came with the package. It's not even an Unreal engine thing, I've played an "indie" such as 2064 on Vita and It basically hard crashes at every playthrough, making one trophy almost impossible to get. Dariusburst Vita also crashes quite often, and was patched more than once to have it more stable. I thought this was a problem of the modern age, like global warming or such... Something we got basically with the end of the PS2 days, not something we should really discuss on a per-title basis. So yeah... Bugs will be realistically ironed out in their majority. Not really something to fuss over.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Eh, some games have the issue, but in my experience it's very uncommon, and never as prevalent as what I've witnessed in Bloodstained.

I think it's also made worse by the fact that this is essentially a "simple 2D game" that still manages to unnecessarily suffer from absurdly bloated overhead from not only the unreal engine, but whatever else it is that they've stacked this game on top of. Though the game itself is good, playing it feels like handling a late-stage game of Jenga, and I often find myself taking detours through every single nearby save room out of fear that I'll lose progress to an unexpected crash.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Leader Bee »

Is it just the console versions because I'm playing on pc and haven't experienced a single bug...
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

From what I heard, the PC version is mostly free of loading times, which would definitely cut out a large majority of the issues i'm experiencing. The PS4 version is horrible.

I'm guessing the game was just developed exclusively on PC and then lazily ported to consoles with no real care put into it.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Dochartaigh »

I can't comment on other systems/consoles, but on Xbox One I'm at 60% of the map and haven't experienced a single bug, and load times are nearly non-existent (even after dying it's pretty quick to load your last save game automatically). I don't even think I copied the game to the HDD yet either, just the initial ~8gb update).

Was also able to get the silver bromide from the red chest, so I'm hoping I won't have to re-start the game from scratch once the update comes.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Turrican »

I guess what I'm trying to say is: let's put things into context and not lose perspective here. First, consider that in this day and age, releasing Bloodstained is an act of rebellion, that it took every single backer's faith to make it possibile. It is not even remotely a situation where iga "struck gold". In fact, in the modern days of Red deads and fortnites and whatever else people are playing, getting to make a sequel of this would require at least the same level of foolishness and faith.

Appreciate then the following differences between 2006's POR and 2019 bloodstained: P is undoubtedly a good game, but also comes as second on ds and fifth since Circle, therefore moves its steps in a tried and tested formula. P enjoys the privileged coding environment of a single platform exclusive. B Is on three or more different platforms, with several canned in development stage. P Is nurtured within konami for better or for worse, while B had to gather two or three teams to help the newly founded studio. Finally, yes, although the latter aims to offer basically that kind of vania experience, it must do it on the new terms of a complete 3D engine.

Could the game have gone "Gold" with the physical already having all the fixes of the day one patch? Undoubtedly, but It would have set the release date even further, angering a huge crowd of funders that were getting very very nervous about their money, especially considering that to this day, Kickstarter funded games have met lukewarm response, or are considered spectacular failures.

THIS is the context and THESE were the rather dangerous waters Iga had to swim into. The correct perspective now Is that the game is in relatively healthy condition, and manages to surpass expectations in a range of issues. I wouldn't discard all this premise by pointing fingers to a series of bugs that are being addressed rather quickly.
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Sumez
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Wait so you were the one who insisted on comparing Bloodstained to POR and now you just spent an entire post arguing why you don't think it makes sense to compare the two? :)
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Turrican »

Haha, no it's fine to compare. It's just that not even to myself I was hoping in such an outcome. If bloodstained's problems are the glitches, the game has won its battle already. Notice the very clear shift in tone in this thread: when people had access to trailers and demo, among the most pressing issues there was the questione of portraits and pets. The underlining idea was "this is gonna turn out a very mediocre game, and on top of that I'll have to suffer seeing mugs of geeks and improbable kitties".

As soon as people got their teeth into the game, saw that pace and rythm were spot on, and challenge was guaranteed by harder settings, no one cared about paintings and cats.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Vanguard »

Squire Grooktook wrote:That's kind of how I feel about Bloodstained, except Bloodstained is a 1:1 mechanical clone of a game I've replayed countless times alongside it's 5 cloned sequels.

That, and Luna Nights probably won't spontaneously crash 5 steps away from a save point or force me to restart my save file due to a day 1 patch that literally breaks the game.

I'll give it a shot. Looks and sounds wacky and vibrant enough to appeal to my tastes at any rate, even if it's flawed.
I'd be interested in hearing what you think about it. It's certainly got that hype factor you seem to go for, but it's not going to suit your RNG fetish at all.

That review I mentioned before is up now.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

Squire Grooktook wrote:PoR never had an issue where it soft locked every single death.

I never experienced any bugs with PoR, but whatever people had, I don't think they could have been that bad.

So yeah no. This programming is shit.
It was mentioned that bugs were fixed for the EU and later JP versions (not sure if later carts were fixed in the US too). I posted a link to a video that showed a glitch that could permanently make the game unbeatable unless the game was restarted from scratch (and it triggers by skipping a cutscene). It's also possible for the game to whitescreen during the Brauner fight, which happened to me a few times (if I remember correctly, it mostly occurred using one of Charlotte's spells).

edit: It sounds like I made the right decision in getting the PS4 version over Switch. The Switch version not only has some of the same loading issues, but it also runs at 720p 30fps docked.

Here is the link that was ignored from my last post. It shows a game breaking glitch in PoR that is triggered by skipping a cutscene. Anyway, my point is that PoR was buggy at release, not whether or not it's more buggy than Bloodstained. I also find it interesting that the author calls getting permanently trapped a soft lock, rather than a brief freeze.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Austin »

I don't personally recall running into problems with Portrait of Ruin, but in a single play session with Bloodstained (granted, nine hours mind you), I had the game crash outright once and I glitched out of bounds during a screen transition twice.

Example: https://youtu.be/kigJ1XYhCl0?t=30521
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by opt2not »

BrianC wrote:
edit: It sounds like I made the right decision in getting the PS4 version over Switch. The Switch version not only has some of the same loading issues, but it also runs at 720p 30fps docked.
It’s worse than that. At some points the frame rate drops to 15fps, and there’s input lag. They also downrezzed the whole game so it looks like a blurry mess.

I really chose poorly, changing my pledge for the Switch version. I just figured I’d like it on Switch as much as I liked Curse of the Moon, and would have liked to keep them both on the same console.

We’ll see how they address this issue, but I for sure am NOT going to go out and buy the PS4 version just because of their incompetence.
I might have to just cut this game loose.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

I haven't had any outright crashes yet in Bloodstained, but I did have some brief freezes (a couple during gameplay) and the occansional odd input glitch on the save screen (may be accidental press of back, but it happened twice).
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by ryu »

Anyone else often feel like the game is dropping inputs?
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

I accidentally opened the box to grinding "hell", and instead of fighting what I assume might be the final boss, I ended up going around grinding for loot and upgrades to all of my most useful supporting shards, trying to get all of them up to rank 9 along the way.
To be honest, I find this type of grinding process immensely satisfying, so I don't mind it. I could just as easily choose not to.
Turrican wrote:As soon as people got their teeth into the game, saw that pace and rythm were spot on, and challenge was guaranteed by harder settings, no one cared about paintings and cats.
I don't dislike the game. Aside from the mostly atrocious boss battles, it's a really good game.
I'm just genuinely disgrunted by the absurd lack of QA in a game like this.

I just reached a certain late-game boss yesterday that makes the Valac/twin dragon boss fight look smooth in comparison. One of his attacks makes the game's framerate immediately, and completely consistently drop to 5fps or less, making that whole sequence almost unplayable.
This happens every single time you fight the boss, and multiple times during the fight. The developers know very well this happens, so why do you let crap like this through QA and release the game?
ryu wrote:Anyone else often feel like the game is dropping inputs?
There are definitely times where I feel like an attack should come out and it doesn't. I think it's related to some gameplay mechanic I'm not grasping though. Whether it's intentional or not is up in the air. It doesn't happen much during normal gameplay, but in some boss fights it definitely came up a lot, most notably the first Zangetsu fight, which I assumed was due to the way I kept quickly stabbing and jumping out of the way during that.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

BrianC wrote:I also find it interesting that the author calls getting permanently trapped a soft lock, rather than a brief freeze.
This is pretty much the definition of a soft lock. You can still play the game, but are unable to progress.
I watched the video, and I didn't see the game freeze at any point?

I have the US version of the game for some reason (probably didn't want to way 3 months extra), but fortunately it never happened to me.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

Sumez wrote:
BrianC wrote: I watched the video, and I didn't see the game freeze at any point?
It doesn't freeze in that video, but if you skip death's cutscene before you fight him, and then come back to his room after you beat him, a single portal will be in the room and the doors will close, leaving no way to exit the room. If you save afterwards and come back to Death's room you'll be trapped with no way to progress without starting a new save (though there is a way to skip the room with another glitch). I was saying that he called getting permanently trapped a soft lock, though the game doesn't freeze.

I'm also not sure if this only affects early copies of the game. The video mentions that EU and late JP copies fixed the death glitch, but I was under the impression that later US copies may have fixed some of the bugs too (not sure on this, though).
Last edited by BrianC on Wed Jun 26, 2019 7:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

That's the reason it's called a "soft" lock though. :)
Normally if the game "locks" that means it basically froze and you can't progress. A "soft lock" means the game didn't freeze, and will continue running, but the effect is essentially the same as if it froze. It's a common term in speedrunning where glitches like this are often a risk.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by BrianC »

Sumez wrote:That's the reason it's called a "soft" lock though. :)
Normally if the game "locks" that means it basically froze and you can't progress. A "soft lock" means the game didn't freeze, and will continue running, but the effect is essentially the same as if it froze.
Yes, but earlier in the thread, the brief freeze after a game over was referred to as a soft lock.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Oh huh, didn't notice that. Yeah, that would be incorrect terminology. I'd say that's just a freeze or a stutter.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Leader Bee »

I'm enjoying the game much more now that I've decided not to use he Rhava Bhural (though I still believe I shouldn't have to do this and it should be balanced properly) but I still beat the dragon boss in the library using the steam powered greatsword and heretical grinder on my second try; I guess I should gimp myself again and stop using this shard?
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

Starting on hard mode, I still steamrolled that dragon boss in my first try, with no issues, simply using basic shard magic.

It'll appear as a random enemy later on though, so I'm not sure it really counts as a boss.
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Weak Boson »

Yeah that poor dragon has too large a hitbox to survive much time with Miriam. RIP.

Plodding along with my Nightmare run and encountered a funny glitch with the laser beam boss - after doing his laser attack he somehow got himself stuck in part of the scenery, making him quite defenseless. Sad, really. If something like this had happened in the double jump boss I would have thanked my lucky stars and moved on, but since this is actually a fun little fight I reloaded my save to do it legit.

Managed to get the medal, in fact. Only his laser beam attack seems to be random and I say fair enough, that's his thing, and clearly it's as much a problem for him as it is Miriam :lol:
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Re: Bloodstained RotN : Kouji IGA's new "Castlevania" game.

Post by Sumez »

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

Post by Squire Grooktook »

So far I indeed love Touhou Luna Nights way more.

There's lots of things I could talk about, but I love how they actually had the balls to let you move and attack on the ground from the get go. That was one of the things on my wishlist when Bloodstained was first announced and I had some vague hope that they might take the time to remix the mechanics a bit for a new franchise. I absolutely hate, hate, hate Igavania's "bunnyhop" combat, where there's basically no reason to ever not short hop while swinging for 90% of the available arsenal due to increased dps, mobility, and safety (another reason for Eclessia being goodest: the x/y chaining gave a slim advantage to grounded attacks for pure agression).

It's strange how a little detail like this makes the game feel so much more smooth and freeflowing.
ryu wrote:Anyone else often feel like the game is dropping inputs?
I swear that the charge attack-able swords on PS4 have some inscrutable logic to them. Sometimes I get the full charge for absolutely no reason when I don't want them (which is always because they suck) when I wasn't doing anything more than a tap.
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