Iga Does What Konamdon’t: A look at Bloodstained Ritual of the Night
I have a long history with the metroidvania genre, and a shorter but no less distant relationship to Koji Igarashi’s installments in the Castlevania series. Iga’s metroidvania Castlevanias (or “Igavanias”) consumed a good chunk of my life back in 2017 as I played through all of them, most for the first time. I played them all back-to-back and wrote far too many words about them and their relation to my beloved Metroid series. Now there’s a new game in the series, so here I am again. Shameless self promotion: You should read my Castlevania writeup here.
Similar to Keiji Inafune and Hideo Kojima, Iga left Konami to pursue his own interests by making a spiritual successor to the series he’s known for. Back in 2015, Iga launched a kickstarter campaign for his new game, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. After four long years, it finally released earlier this year. The development had been somewhat rocky, with early visuals looking rather sloppy and disappointing. Iga and his team took the criticism to heart and went back for an extensive polishing pass to give us the final product we have today.
I had backed the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (henceforce just referred to as “Bloodstained”) kickstarter campaign, so naturally I jumped right in on launch day and put more time into it than any other Igavania. I’m obligated to write too many words about Bloodstained now. I’m going to be talking about all parts of the game, so There Will Be Spoilers. If you’re just looking for a simple, spoiler-free review, stop after this paragraph. Bloodstained is good and you should play it.
Let’s start with the basics. Like all other Igavanias, Bloodstained is a 2D side-scrolling metroidvania. It’s not afraid to wear its spiritual predecessors on its sleeve, with many concepts, mechanics and creatures copied wholesale from Castlevania. You play as Miriam, a girl imbued with magic shards as she explores a massive, magical castle in a search for its proprietor.
While its premise on the surface is very similar to Castlevanias, there are a few differences that set it apart. At the beginning of the game, Miriam encounters an old friend, Gebel, who has been clearly corrupted by a demonic influence. Miriam and Gebel, being the last surviving shardbinders, are constantly under threat of corruption from the demonic shards embedded in their bodies. Miriam’s corruption was halted by a mysterious deep sleep and certain alchemical techniques. Gebel, on the other hand, succumbed to the influence of a high ranking demon, Gremory.
Miriam vows to release Gebel from Gremory, which becomes her primary motivation. Defeating the demons is also a goal, but being primarily driven for compassion of a friend, despite them being the source of all of this trouble, gives Bloodstained a slightly different tone than the other games. Combined with a hint of survivor’s guilt for Miriam due to all other shardbinders being killed for the Alchemist Guild’s ritual, Bloodstained feels less aggressive and more sympathetic at its core.
Another difference is the instigating force. In Bloodstained, while Gebel is the one that summons the castle, the demon invasion begins due to a ritual performed by the Alchemist Guild. Fearing alchemy was becoming obsolete, they wanted to scare the population into valuing them by summoning a few demons to stir up some chaos that they would then easily quell. You’ll never guess what happened next: The demons went out of control and ruined everything! Wow! The root cause of the scenario being short-sighted, arrogant incompetence gives a dramatically different tone than “someone is evil and wants to revive Dracula”. It inspires contempt, frustration and anger, instead of simply nebulous outrage.
Beyond Miriam and Gebel, the supporting characters are surprisingly strong compared to other Igavanias. Zangetsu in particular creates a rare link between gameplay and story, such as when he assists on the train, when he forfeits his sword and when he helps with the penultimate boss. He even has a bit of a story arc, making him slightly 2-dimensional. He begins the game being very hostile to Miriam because of her shardbinderness, even flat out attacking her as the first real boss of the game. As the game goes on and he learns more about Miriam, Gebel and Dominique, he begins to soften toward Miriam, culminating in sacrificing himself so that Miriam can survive to defeat Bael.
Compared to other Igavanias, Bloodstained includes a wealth of worldbuilding, both through NPC dialogue, environmental storytelling and various books scattered about containing journal entries by various characters. While it does more than any other, it’s very much out of necessity. Being cutoff from the wealth of backstory from decades worth of Castlevania games, Bloodstained needed to start from scratch.
Story and characters have always been a minor part of Igavanias and Bloodstained is no different, but it handles them better than the rest. It manages to make the story compelling enough to make me care about the plot and characters to more than a negligible degree, which is a first for the series.
Alright, enough of the story nonsense. Let’s get to the real meat of Bloodstained: the gameplay. At its core, you’re exploring a bigass Hell Castle. You’ve got many distinct, but interconnected areas containing various upgrades that let you access progressively more areas of the castle.
The basic traversal of the castle is about on part with Aria and Dawn of Sorrow in that you’ve got one massive, contiguous world dotted with warp points. Progressing through it was mostly smooth in my experience, with a way forward being apparent through the majority of the game.
There are a few exceptions that I think could’ve been handled better though. The Aqua Stream shard is one of them. It’s required to progress as it allows swimming underwater, but it’s acquired as a normal, random drop from an enemy. The main problem here is that this essential, required upgrade is not a guaranteed drop. The enemies aren’t particularly easy to kill, as they’re based in the water, where you’re at a severe disadvantage initially. I wasted the better part of an hour wandering around until I, by chance, had the shard drop for me. I can’t fathom why this wasn’t presented as a normal, direct upgrade, or at least a guaranteed drop from these enemies. There are, however, NPCs which give hints as to your current objective. Unfortunately, these were somewhat cryptic and unhelpful at times.
I’ve heard a few complaints regarding the spacing of the traversal upgrades (the double jump does take a while to find), but I never took much issue with it. The double jump in particular is a very strong upgrade for both traversal and combat, and combined with the scope of the game, I wouldn’t expect it to show up particularly quickly to keep upgrades spaced out appropriately. The traversal upgrades themselves are an interesting lot as well. You’ve got your standard double jump, but it goes to some interesting places from there. The reflector beam that teleports you to the beam’s endpoint is quite novel and interesting at first, though I found it to be rather cumbersome and finicky once the novelty wore off. Thankfully, it was used rather sparingly by that point. The more direct teleport later on lets you straight up teleport through walls, feels quite a lot like the reflector beam, and in many places completely replaces it by being quicker and easier to use.
The last traversal upgrade I need to talk about is the big one. I could write an entire article on this one, but I’ll try to limit myself. If you’ve played Bloodstained, then you know I’m talking about Invert. This thing literally inverts the castle, letting you walk on the ceiling. When I first found Invert and saw the camera do a fucking aileron roll, my head exploded at how brilliant it was. The best upgrades in a metroidvania cause to you to re-contextualize the world and Invert smashes any previous context with a sledge hammer.
I was fairly critical of Symphony of the Night’s inverted castle because I don’t feel like it offered any sort of interesting progression or design and leaned on late-game go-anywhere traversal upgrades for the design to be playable. The Invert upgrade essentially gives you the entire inverted castle and lets you swap back and forth at will. This solves the problem of having to do dual-purpose level design without cheesing it with flight upgrades. If an inverted room’s design doesn’t let you through, then the player can simply un-invert. This means the designers only need to focus on the areas where they want the player to use Invert, allowing Invert to be used as a traversal and puzzle mechanic. This alone brings it leaps and bounds above the SotN inverted castle.
The castle in Bloodstained is quite large (supposedly the largest in any Igavania), so navigating it effectively requires mentally compartmentalizing the various areas. Creating unique and compelling sections to the castle is especially important the larger the space is, and I think Bloodstained excels at that better than most. With the exception of a few of the earlier areas (like the entrance, garden of silence and the cathedral), each area has a distinct personality to it. The Oriental Lab, for instance has corridors with back-lit paper panels, letting you see only silhouettes, as well as teleporting archways and music that really stands out (and fuckin’ slaps).
I gave a few examples of areas that don’t feel particularly distinct, so why don’t they? The entrance, garden and cathedral, on their own each have a solid enough theme, but the biggest flaw in them is their proximity. All three of these areas have a similar color, architecture and musical scheme while also being staples of the Igavania series. By having them be the first three areas of the castle proper that you explore, their boundaries and identities begin to blur together, which left all three as one giant blob in my memory.
There’s one last note about the castle design, specifically the repetition in rooms: it’s better. A criticism I had about Igavanias in general is that many of the rooms tended to be long corridors or shafts with the same platforms and/or enemy groups copied and pasted several (sometimes many) times. These made traversing the castle, particularly for backtracking, really dull. Bloodstained improves on this noticeably. While there are still long, flat corridors, they’re less frequent (more often there is some sort of obstacle or platform or something), tend to not be as long, and have a greater variety of enemies. Just on a room-by-room basis Bloodstained’s world is more interesting to traverse than the vast majority of Igavanias.
The exploration and traversal of the castle is very solid, but Bloodstained would be a shallow game without all of its supporting mechanics. Shards, cooking, crafting, shopping, status and equipment take Bloodstained from a very good Igavania to the best Igavania. It includes many of the mechanics from previous games that worked well while ditching those that didn’t.
First and foremost is the shard system. At first glance, it seems to be copied and pasted from Aria or Dawn of Sorrow, but there’s a bit more to it here. Most enemies in the game have the chance to grant you their shard, allowing you to use an ability related to that enemy. These shard effects can range from throwing a bone like a standard skeleton, to summoning a pillar of flame, to summoning a leviathan to slap everyone with its gross tentacle. With the huge variety in enemies in Bloodstained, the variety of shards is even larger. It encourages frequent experimentation as you acquire new shards throughout the game.
Balance is important with so many shards though. It’s easy for a handful of shards to take the spotlight and encouraging the player to lean on their greater effectiveness, stifling experimentation and variety. This happened to me for a portion of my first playthrough. The Riga Storaema shard became exceptionally strong, particularly against larger enemies, making me lean on it too much. A few bosses even felt trivial because of it, leading me to intentionally try weaker options in a search for challenge and variety. Fortunately, this has since been mostly fixed with a balance patch. It toned down a few shards, including Riga Storaema, to make them less overpowered.
Riga Storaema on its own was a fairly standard shard- just a simple fire pillar- but it’s the shard upgrading system that really made it take off. Every shard can be upgraded, enhancing some attribute of its effect. Which attribute is affected is different for each shard. It’s rarely a direct upgrade to damage, rather it’s usually the size or range or duration that are enhanced. This does lead to some underwhelming shards staying underwhelming due to poor damage, but in most cases it improves usability, which tends to be more helpful in the long run and adds another layer to character progression.
In previous games, upgrading souls was done by collecting multiple copies of the same soul. While these bonuses weren’t particularly massive, it still added an element of grinding that was usually tedious and boring. Bloodstained’s shard upgrades are done with normal materials found throughout the castle. In your travels, you’re basically guaranteed to come across some items that can be used upgrade your shards. Grinding to upgrade shards is a rarity in Bloodstained, and mostly relegated to the highest levels, where rarer materials may be needed.
Like most of the other Igavanias, Bloodstained has a variety of weapons that can be equipped, such as swords, whips, spears and even guns. All of the basic weapon types return in mostly the same fashion as they were previously, so there’s not a lot to say about them.
Guns, however are far less common in the series and have some interesting mechanics in Bloodstained. They’re very long range, but also very low damage by default. This is made up for by special ammunition. The basic shots are infinite, but special bullets can be bought or crafted and loaded for greatly increased damage and various other effects, such as adding elemental damage. The low quantities and relative high cost of special bullets severely limit the usefulness of gun, but with planning and investment they can give a powerful edge in a fight. I haven’t used Bloodstained’s guns all that extensively, but I very much appreciate having an option to fight from long range. The designers know the importance of range in an Igavania and clamped down on it in a way that keeps it effective but at a suitable cost.
Crafting in Bloodstained is essential to keeping your equipment update to date and your consumables stocked. It’s a very simple system: collect various materials throughout the world, bring them to Johannes in the town and, bang, you’ve crafted a thing (I guess Johannes technically crafts it, but don’t be a pedant). When something has been crafted once, it’s purchasable indefinitely from Dominique across the hall. This is particularly useful for consumable items and other crafting materials that you may need to buy in larger quantities.
In addition to shards, potions and equipment, Johannes lets Miriam cook as well. It’s done in the same way as crafting, but the result is a delectable dish that restores some health when eaten. Food is a powerful healing source in Bloodstained, especially since the normal limit of 9 of each healing item doesn’t apply. It’s another, higher cost, option that can ease the difficulty on a particularly difficult fight. Food isn’t just for healing though. Each time a new dish is eaten for the first time, in grants a small, but permanent stat increase. I went out of my way several times to craft some good looking food entirely for these permanent bonuses. The bonuses are usually small, but they add up to an appreciable difference. The magic regeneration bonuses from food in particular are quite useful in that they can boost your magic regeneration rate to several times the base value.
Also in town, near Johannes and Dominique, are Lindsay, Harry, Abigail and Susie. These are your side quest givers (for a broad definition of quest). Lindsay sends you out to kill X number of Y demons, then report back for a small reward. Harry takes a bag of seeds you might have and cultivates them into food items, like rice or wheat. Abigail wants specific items, usually pieces of equipment in exchange for a reward. Finally, Susie wants a certain food dish in exchange for a reward.
While I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with these NPCs (except maybe Lindsay’s kill quests not retroactively giving credit), I do find them rather uninteresting. All of the “quests” are very rigid in their structure and represent things you would be doing in the process of completing the main quest. I would check in with them periodically simply to see which quests I had completed accidentally in my travels, rarely seeking out what they want explicitly. While the rewards are sometimes nice, there’s so much more that could’ve been done with side quests to make them engaging and interesting.
It’s been a long time coming, but now that I’ve finally played Bloodstained I can say with confidence that Iga’s still got it. Bloodstained combines many of the best qualities of the previous games into a single, hefty and surprisingly polished package. The castle is diverse and unique, the shards, equipment and upgrades give new levels of customization and variety and the story and characters are more interesting and engaging than ever. Iga and his team have made, in my eyes, the best Igavania yet with Bloodstained.
Despite the two or three of hitches that left me wandering, the game flowed surprisingly well and kept me wanting to see what was around the next corner. The goofy bits peppered throughout the game almost always gave me a good laugh (the first time I encountered a Tamako-Death, I absolutely lost my shit) and the sections with unique gameplay or style (like the train and the spinning tower of twin dragons) kept it feeling fresh. All in all, I had a ton of fun with Bloodstained. It’s not perfect, but Iga has come a long way, even from the highs of Aria of Sorrow.
Iga and his team have proven that they know what they’re doing and don’t need Konami to make a really good Castlevania. I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors, because I’ll buy the shit out of any new Bloodstained games they release.
