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

[Marc]

Few times for me, sound locks up, freezes, ejects me.
I've also noticed that even though I never unequip the Eye of Horus, sometimes the game will zoom back to default view on entering a new area.

Cheesed the shit out of the mid boss in the Oriental level today, dangled from the ceiling and twatted him with a great sword. That was fun.

[XoPachi]

Booted this back up last night. That classic mode is great!

[Sengoku Strider]

Going for the platinum...man, they really bolted an entire MMO endgame onto the end of this thing, huh? It's completely insane. To get the "every item" trophy you need to complete multiple recipes that require ingredients from a single enemy that appears in one place with a 1/100 drop rate. Plenty with a 1/20 or 1/25. There are dozens upon dozens of weapons to complete, which require things like materials with a 1/25 chance from chests in a single region. I really liked the 8-bit nightmare, but sitting there for 2 hours finishing it 20 times to farm the boss was needless.

The thing that gets me is plenty of these things are endgame-gated, requiring materials/ingredients you can't get until you're basically at the end, making the comparatively weak items you get entirely pointless. It's not even like they built the grind to carry you through new game+ or something, it's just senseless bloat. There's a questgiver in the home base who seems intended to get you into the cooking aspect, but her entire series of quests basically can't even start until you're at like the 3rd last area because of an inaccessible ingredient.

I quite like the game but I wish Iga had just let the poor devs who had to do all this go home for dinner to see their families instead. Nobody anywhere would have ever cared if there were 50 less swords in the game. There was a way to weave this into the game better, it just seems like the players are the ones being farmed for engagement.

[Sengoku Strider]

Thanks to shmup-trained perspicacity, I pushed through and got the platinum. Fortunately being able to jack my luck through the roof by the end made it faster, but it still took hours & hours. And while there were some fun weapons in there, I stuck with various iterations of Black Dragon's Ode for most of the back half of the game, once I got enough weapon speed boosts it felt the most perfectly Castlevania. All in all a fun game I'll fondly remember though for all its rough edges.

But of course the final DLC just hit, which leaves my trophies at only 84%. It's second classic mode, this time based on Simon's Quest starring Dominique, has anybody tried it yet?

[NYN]

Lookit! Some thing from IGA that is NOT in parts a rip-off (ahem, pastiche) of Dragulas Curses! The nerve! The brass! It's from th' QUEST!

Dominique "lives", or so they say. That is supposed to be THE FINAL DLC!!! So they would finally be free from the obligation chains, for something finally new. Alas, 'tis will be something decidedly old, I forsee.

(did I read WayForward in this? after Galuga? the shudder!)

[Sengoku Strider]

Lookit! Some thing from IGA that is NOT in parts a rip-off (ahem, pastiche) of Dragulas Curses! The nerve! The brass! It's from th' QUEST!

Dominique "lives", or so they say. That is supposed to be THE FINAL DLC!!! So they would finally be free from the obligation chains, for something finally new. Alas, 'tis will be something decidedly old, I forsee.

(did I read WayForward in this? after Galuga? the shudder!)

Well, Classic 1 is clearly based on the original (with some of Richter's moves added in), so this is just filling in the gap. Which I found a welcome surprise TBH, without having actually played it the quest elements make it appear more substantial than the other spinoff material thus far.

Iga's a big enough name that he could definitely do something totally new, but the general sentiment seems to be that the market is so overcrowded these days that going on a complete tangent from a cash cow toward something without a built-in audience is a big risk, even for large companies. Given that the core game came out in 2019, was specced for PS4 and has never seen an actual sequel, I'd say they're well overdue for a direct followup on an engine for current hardware. Not doing that would probably be a mistake

I know kickstarter paid for the first game essentially for free and the Curse of the Moon spinoff sold quite well, but all told I'm not quite sure what they've been living off of in the half decade since. Watching the credits made me realize how little I understand about contemporary game financing. There were dozens of names listed as well as several subcontracted corporate entities, and a million dollars in revenue only pays twenty modest $50k salaries for a single year. Curse of the Moon 2 has been their only standalone release since, and most of the dlc was given away - there isn't even a storefront link in-game. You have to deliberately search it on the PSN store and dig through sub menus to even know it exists.

Looking at the trophy menu for Classic II, it's been out for a month and none of them have more than 0.1% completion rate (presumably weighed against the main game? Which has a staggering 8.9% for the platinum), so it can't have done huge numbers, at least on that platform.

Hopefully they're targeting the Switch 2 launch for a sequel with something that runs better than this did. I read that Curse of the Moon did gangbusters on Switch, so that would seem to be where their natural audience is.

[ryu]

But of course the final DLC just hit, which leaves my trophies at only 84%. It's second classic mode, this time based on Simon's Quest starring Dominique, has anybody tried it yet?

The load times are dreadful on PS4 and the level design as generic as it gets (judging by the first stage).

I played stage 1 on hard and it was super easy..Kind of a snooze, actually. It's actually an entirely different game btw, not like Belmont mode in other Igavanias

What's chaos mode? And wasn't there supposed to be a way to play as Zangetsu?

[Sengoku Strider]

The load times are dreadful on PS4

Yeah, that goes for the whole game, right from (incomprehensibly) the options at the title screen. It's why the platinum item grind was so brutal for me, going back & forth between screens was often a 5 second+ load time. The trophy guide sites rated it a 3/10 difficulty, but it was a 7-8/10 in willpower to stick with it.

As for Classic II being super easy, I mean aside from the stupid cliff puzzle so was Simon's Quest. Dracula went down in seconds at the end.

[ryu]

The difficulty actually increased a lot in stage 2. But I didn't play further. Never played Simon's Quest, but didn't it have a lot of RPG elements to it? This reminded me more of Castlevania 1...

[Sengoku Strider]

I beat Classic I. It wasn't NES Castlevania III tough, but it wasn't a walk in the park in the back half either, I had to come back to it a couple of times to get it down. When it clicked I was able to no-miss Gebel and I think only get hit by [REDACTED] once or twice, it seems to be RNG whether you end up in her worst traps (fire balls above + pillars trapping you on either side, or fireballs + she teleports to whichever side you slide away from them).

The levels are obviously quite derivative and not terribly memorable, but I thought they nailed the feeling of the whip and movement which is something even canon Castlevanias didn't always manage (*cough Bloodlines*). I was kinda surprised to see the credits were almost entirely Westerners. I know the enemies are pretty much just xeroxes of the older games so it shouldn't surprise me, but they felt more natural here than in the main game. Curse of the Moon got all the attention but honestly I think I enjoyed this better, I've had Curse for years but haven't pushed myself to beat the whole thing yet.

I liked how the ending was evoking Super Castlevania IV's right down to similar music, that was probably my favourite one. Certainly the most memorable to me.

What's chaos mode? And wasn't there supposed to be a way to play as Zangetsu?

It's a series of small micro-missions based on areas of the game like NES Remix or something. I only played it a little bit but I assume you have to unlock the other characters.

The difficulty actually increased a lot in stage 2. But I didn't play further. Never played Simon's Quest, but didn't it have a lot of RPG elements to it? This reminded me more of Castlevania 1...

I think you may be getting this crossed up with Classic mode I, which is based on the first CV. Dominique's Curse requires a separate purchase and is definitely doing Simon's Quest action RPG/adventure stuff: https://youtu.be/R8y2JzxLRzE?si=fQgIVafZGn91TjkC&t=576

I guess once I get around to beating Curse of the Moon I'll be the one to check it out, it does look cool.

[ryu]

Oh I had no idea there was paid DLC for this game. I thought every update was free because it was content they promised with their kickstarter.

Also I meant I thought there was a separate main mode where you play as Zangetsu, so I wasn't referring to Chaos mode when I mentioned him. Maybe that's also paid DLC? If it exists at all...

[Sengoku Strider]

Alright, I beat Curse of the Moon. I gotta hand it to them, that was one heck of a last boss fight. It wasn't that tough given how many resources you have, but I respect the mechanics. I liked the Bloodlines tower effect callback too. I was kinda put off by the 4-5 layers of parallax in a pseudo NES game, but I guess if I look at that as a Genesis callback too then I guess I can accept it (I think...now I don't remember if there were any scenes using that many layers at once in that game...there must have been, right?). I still haven't figured out the deal with Zangetsu. Why is he the main character? Why is his sword so stubby? Is he supposed to be a Ninja Gaiden callback or something? Or just a Grant analogue with no climbing or jumping skills or speed? That sword felt more like it was lifted out of Monster Land.

Anyway, this is a tight enough game that it seems worth coming back to to learn properly instead of the spammy way I got through it. I guess that's what the nightmare mode you unlock at the end is for.

[sky-13]

Zangetsu was originally planned to be the lead of RotN, gameplay wise I think he is supposed to be a Ninja Gaiden call back.

When you play through CotM with only Zangetsu he does have a Ryu Hayabusa feel and the fewer stage checkpoints is more in line with Ninja Gaiden.

[Austin]

I always thought of CotM as an 8/16-bit hybrid. There’s clearly an 8-bit art style, but the way it throws around objects, does tons of background effects and how it handles massive boss fights is more akin to 16-bit releases.

Anyway, the next step is to kill all your helper characters instead of taking them on. Massive upgrade in Zangetsu’s abilities and a different ending to boot.

Then after that, Zangetsu only with skipping (not killing) your potential partners. Another different ending.

Then there’s the higher difficulties…

Tons of replay value in this one.

CotM 2 is really good too if you can adjust to some of the different mechanics. It’s a large difficulty spike over the first, too.