Really looking forward to this. If there's still any spare code left: I would also love to play the demo!
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night | Official Update Thread
- Thread starter Zonar
- Start date
This is fun!
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of how Mercury Steam approached the Metroid II remake: oldschool sensibilities with modern refinements. There's depth to the crafting/upgrades, farming enemy drops (items, shards/skills, etc.) gets addictive, and like SOTN or Souls, the weapon/gear types feel unique with distinct pros/cons.
Lots of secrets too, even in this short demo. There was an area where I thought to try something I didn't think the designers had accounted for, and I was pleasantly surprised by a secret stash of upgrades waiting for me, which felt very Nintendo-like.
I've had issues since the beginning with certain visual aspects (particularly the backgrounds and the conversation mouth anims are just silly right now) and quest structure/information/communication should be improved, but I like the character/monster designs/VFX, the VA is solid, and the music is trademark Igavania.
Definitely feeling good about it!
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of how Mercury Steam approached the Metroid II remake: oldschool sensibilities with modern refinements. There's depth to the crafting/upgrades, farming enemy drops (items, shards/skills, etc.) gets addictive, and like SOTN or Souls, the weapon/gear types feel unique with distinct pros/cons.
Lots of secrets too, even in this short demo. There was an area where I thought to try something I didn't think the designers had accounted for, and I was pleasantly surprised by a secret stash of upgrades waiting for me, which felt very Nintendo-like.
I've had issues since the beginning with certain visual aspects (particularly the backgrounds and the conversation mouth anims are just silly right now) and quest structure/information/communication should be improved, but I like the character/monster designs/VFX, the VA is solid, and the music is trademark Igavania.
Definitely feeling good about it!
Someone beat you guys (via PM) by five minutes. Sorry. :(
I'm really looking forward to people ripping the soundtrack from the demo and throwing it up on YouTube where I can listen to it anytime. I'm hoping the soundtrack disc I get with my backer tier is the whole shebang and not just like 10 songs. If that's the case, I hope they at least put the entire thing out there for people to get somehow.
Thank you! Worked. Downloading now.
Only 6 more hours of work though :/
I played through the entire thing in an hour. It's the upgraded boat section + village section with crafting and NPCs + one castle area plus parts of another. There are some branching paths and some exploration to do, tons of enemies (with their shards) and weapons. The gameplay feels right. Lots of variation (I went with a Claymore that I promptly upgraded to a Flamberge and the arrow shard). Music is phenomenal. Voices are okay. In-game yells get annoying quickly. Graphics are much better than the previous demo but need a lot of polish still (mostly better shadowing and some kind of SSAO or even just circle shadows to ground figures in their surroundings).
I could see this being released within 6 months or so. Feels quite polished in terms of gameplay.
I could see this being released within 6 months or so. Feels quite polished in terms of gameplay.
I hope this is as good as hollow knight because it's going to be hard to top it for me right after playing it
I have 2 separate steam entries now for Bloodstained. Beta demo and the very first ship demo. I hope they clean this up on official release.
i really doubt it will be as good... don't get too hyped, i'm sure the game is fine, but nowhere near the perfection of hollow knight
$60 backers, aka the next tier up from where you were. If you backed for the backer-exclusive content, you got the demo.
I've played a decent chunk of the demo. I'm still not a fan of the art style, as it just isn't consistent enough for my liking. That said, the game play feels incredible. It's nice being able to equip a basilard and have it feel just as you expect it to from having played certain Castlevania games. There's a ton of content in the demo; I probably had close to a dozen different weapons by the time I got to the town. I do hope that they're just front-loading most of the systems at the start, though, as I don't know if I could deal with this much stuff continuing to be introduced to me throughout the game. I love the addition of a mini-map, as I found myself not having to access the map very often compared to how much I accessed the map in similar games. Some of the menus seem to be nonexistent and/or incomplete. I couldn't figure out how to access a bestiary, for example, which is vital for games like this with a lot of potential item farming. Very pleased so far, in either case. This game's gonna be incredible when it's finished.
Some small details I noticed after playing till the first boss, you can see Zangetsu on a raft on the background went you first reach the upper deck of the ship. Also shoes and the katana weapons a special attack by inputting quarter circle forward + the attack button (the shoes one can also be done in the air).
For some reason, my Oculus Store app starts up at the same time I start up the Bloodstained E3 demo. :\
That's a pretty regular bug with Unreal Engine indie games. I think the engine has a VR flag enabled by default, and it ends up detecting your headset and launches in VR mode. Developers need to manually disable these settings, and if they don't have a headset, they'll never notice this issue. Epic should probably patch UE so that this flag is opt-in, not opt-out. There are many fixes online, but I never got them to work properly. You should disable the OVRService in task manager, and if that doesn't work, disconnecting the headset is your best bet.
To disable the service, run services.msc and set the Oculus VR Runtime Service to "Manual" instead of "Automatic". This will prevent the OVR service from starting until you open the Oculus desktop app. You may also need to disable automatically starting steamVR in steam.
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Tried the demo, ended up quitting once I got to the village. I felt like it was all waaaay to focused on story and cutscenes, which is really not what I'd want out of a metroidvania.
I also wasn't impressed with the movement / combat, I kinda wish it would have been a little tighter.
I gotta say I've lost a lot of confidence, but I hope they spent the time and refine the gameplay (and I guess I can always skip the story)
Maybe I'll try and finish the demo later.
I also wasn't impressed with the movement / combat, I kinda wish it would have been a little tighter.
I gotta say I've lost a lot of confidence, but I hope they spent the time and refine the gameplay (and I guess I can always skip the story)
Maybe I'll try and finish the demo later.
Are there audio sliders so that I can, say, lower the SFX or voice overs and/or churn up the BGM? Castlevania SOTN needed that and badly. I could never enjoy the music during gameplay because the SFX and voices were so fucking high when compared to the music so I couldnt turn up the volume too much.
Assuming this is basically like the Castlevania games, it's going to be very different from Hollow Knight outside of the exploration aspect.
You stopped right when the story is mostly done (for now) and there's a long stretch of action...
Yes, there are. I lowered the SFX a bit.
Thank God!
I especially hated those zombie enemies in SOTN that carried a knife because, when killed, they'd bend backwards and very very noisily bleed out and yell as they died. It made by ears bleed if the volume was too high. So we dodged that, thanks!
I believe I found the stash you were talking about, pretty neat.
What platform and region are you in? They've sent out every single code except Xbox One codes for Europe, some Asian and South American countries which are being sent out tomorrow. Check your Fangamer survey link you must have in your email from ages ago. You'll find if your code is already there if you follow that. If you're in Xbox One NA region or any other platform/region you should have it already.
They were added to your backer key page where appropriate.
At first I felt a bit bummed out when the demo didn't really seem to support keyboard controls,
until I realized I actually have a controller that I could use. ^_^
until I realized I actually have a controller that I could use. ^_^
The constant comparisons to hallow knight are gonna be interesting. On one hand there's a lot of of overlap and hence room for that conversation to happen, but to some extent they do go for different things. Hallow knight has more of a focus on atmosphere and worldbuilding, and combat is solid but a little more simplistic and one-note. Castlevanias are more rpg element-centric, have a greater variety in weapons/skills/combat approaches and have a huge bestiary to compliment that. Neither approach is better necessarily but they are different games despite structural similarities.
If anyone else has a spare code I would love to give this game a try. All the recent E3 hype is getting to me.
PC would be awesome.
Thanks regardless!
PC would be awesome.
Thanks regardless!
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Anyone got a spare backer code for pc, realised too late that I hadn't backed it for enough cash to access the demo.
I'm really liking what I see up to now and highly anticipate the release.
I'm really liking what I see up to now and highly anticipate the release.
This is definitely Igavania revived with some neat tricks and whatnot from modern hardware (I like the turning of corners and stuff, really making it more of a proper 2.5D game in my mind). But the firing items that use the right stick make me long for back triggers to jump while aiming, too bad the Steam controller doesn't have a good D-Pad, leaving me to either go with the analog stick, try to get better with that pad, or get an Xbox Elite Controller.
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I made a mistake I see my download key now and saw that the beta demo was only for steam thanks.
Y'all that know me know how much I love metroidvania if anyone has a spare code. <3
(This really should of been the game that broke my no crowdsourcing attitude gdi)
(This really should of been the game that broke my no crowdsourcing attitude gdi)
So you have a gaming PC but no decent controller whatsoever until you got that one with Splatoon 2? Do you only play RTS and FPSes or something?At first I felt a bit bummed out when the demo didn't really seem to support keyboard controls,
until I realized I actually have a controller that I could use. ^_^
