Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

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Friday
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 22, 2019 4:11 pm

Hello, I'm Friday, age uhhhhhhh how old was I when I first played SotN uhhhhhh we'll say 20? I mean I was probably 20ish yeah let's say I'm 20 and welcome to my review of Bloodstained.

In this thread I won't be spoiling the game or plot at all, but I will be talking about mechanics and stuff so if you don't want to know anything about the game before you play it, now's your chance to leave.

I beat the game last night and have 99.9% map completion (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa) so I'm pretty much an expert now on the subject

Alright, let's get down to the review:

Chapter One: It's an Igavania

Thanks for reading my thread guys! Remember to hit those thumbs up and leave a bell and subscribe to every single social media site in existence. I stream every day from 11-6 and I have it set up so if you donate 10 or more dollars David Hayter will read your text in a silly voice
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Sat Jun 22, 2019 4:11 pm

okay but now time for the actual review:

It's an Igavania

Alright see you guys later
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Newbie » Sat Jun 22, 2019 5:02 pm

But more like a Symphony-era Igavania than a DS Igavania. Subtle, yet critical distinction.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:50 pm

i mean, not really? it's basically dawn of sorrow with the shard mechanic and all

speaking of, if you max out any passive (yellow) shard at the alchemist (not by grinding them off of enemies) it will become a permanent passive you don't need to use the slot for anymore. if you use the slot anyway you'll get double effect.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:51 pm

i played more than half the game with the bunny boots and bunny scarf on. i never used any weapon that was not kicks. i'm sure there are more broken weapons than kicks but who cares, kicks.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:53 pm

also friday did you fight the secret boss not the ones in the special rooms the secret boss right before the end of the game because if you did you should go find where the secret boss hangs out afterward because it's pretty good
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Sat Jun 22, 2019 8:02 pm

ALSO it turns out they severely nerfed some primo farming shit in the day one patch which is interesting, because i didn't realize it until the very very end of my game because the day one patch FUCKING BROKE THE GAME for anyone who started playing on day one prior to the release of the patch, so i kept my ps4 disc unpatched until i beat it. i probably won't roll back to base game to change things, but alkahest dismantling used to only cost like 1 or 2 alkahest, and alkahest itself was like 50g a pop or something, and now it costs 800g and can use 9-10 alkahest per good item to dismantle. with the original economy, you could use the alchemist's bounty shard to craft multiples of items with one set of mats, then break them down, then rinse and repeat for infinity money.

also on the original patch: standing in the corner of secret money boss and spamming kick would just let you hit him nonstop and beat him in like 15 seconds because his guard wasn't perfect. also i think the secret boss i mentioned can only be fought post-ending on 1.02 but you can fight them before beating the game in the original patch i think?? so you might not have fought them actually

what's the best gag item i was pretty fond of the voice changer
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Newbie » Sat Jun 22, 2019 9:04 pm

I was more referring to the gag items, particularly stuff like the monocle or nearsighted glasses. That kind of "just stick whatever in" attitude feels a lot more reminiscent of Al's secret boots than anything I can think of post-Aria.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Sun Jun 23, 2019 1:26 am

My demon list is complete Niku so yeah A+++

also special voice lines 006 and 013

also agreed re: voice changer
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Fri Jun 28, 2019 6:03 pm

oh Niku I forgot to ask

what is your favorite regular enemy and why is she Tamako-Death
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Tue Jul 02, 2019 10:59 pm

that's not how you say puppy
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby IGNORE ME » Wed Jul 03, 2019 4:02 am

It kinda is though

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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby MarsDragon » Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:21 am

Bloodstained is good.

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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:23 pm

Fun fact: I've now played through this game without using consumables and shards (except those required to progress, like the bouncy ray thing or the inversion) on Hard.

I'm not bragging, (well, a little) just saying it because I love that the game is so well designed in terms of being fair that you can actually fucking do that. Similar to SL1 club only Dark Souls runs or whatever.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby François » Wed Feb 26, 2020 5:18 am

I wonder how much the planned roguelite mode influenced that whole factor. The game has to be built fairly in that sense from the ground up, otherwise it wouldn't be playable if you scrambled it up to a point where you can't guarantee that the player has access to any given resource.

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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby beatbandito » Wed Feb 26, 2020 11:58 am

To bring this further off topic, that's probably the best distinction I can think of between a roguelike and a roguelite, and the reason roguelite mechanics suck.

If you're going to be based on procedural generation, also trying to make a design that offers a path to victory on every run will make it borinb by the very concept. You need to accept some number of runs will be ultimately untenable to allow for real variance. That's why almost every game these days is procedural, yet LttP randomizers are so much more gripping.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Thad » Thu Feb 27, 2020 1:08 am

It's tough creating a random level generator that still generates compelling levels. Spelunky makes it look easy but it's not.

I think the main reason I never got far into 20XX is that the very first time I played it it generated a level that, near as I could tell, was impossible to actually complete. There was an early wall jump that kicked you right into spikes and there didn't seem to be a way around it as far as I could see. It was right at the beginning of the game, which I guess is a plus because I'd hate to run into something like that when I really had something to lose, but it kinda put me off the whole experience.

And I haven't played a whole lot of SMT, but I definitely feel like the dungeons are the least compelling part of Persona 4, and the procedural generation is a big part of it.

Course, here I am talking over in the Lefthanded Gaming Thread about how I want to take a crack at the Mystery Dungeon games. I have played some solid Roguelikes. Though I haven't really gotten into any since the 1990s.

Hell, this may not be the thread for it but I got Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain (DND, get it?) and Castle of the Winds from the local dialup BBS back in the DOS 6.2/Windows 3.1 days. (DND should run in DOSbox. As for CotW, I think you can still get 16-bit binaries to run on Windows 10, but it requires some extra configuration.) I have some pretty fond memories of those, which is part of why I'm interested in giving the Mystery Dungeon games a shot even though Roguelikes and Roguelites haven't really been my jam for a very long time.

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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Thu Feb 27, 2020 9:41 am

Spelunky is a genius, amazing exception but outside of that, procedural generation is pretty fucking garbo.

Want a game that feels like procedural generation but isn't?

It's called Simon's Quest.

All the dungeons are boring and flat, all the enemy placements are boring and flat, and everything is this samey, blobby design.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Niku » Fri Feb 28, 2020 8:04 pm

the thing that makes mystery dungeon and actual rogue likes good is that level design has very little to do with their appeal; it's much more about the combat and enemy design, and how every random assortment of threats can make a unique challenge that you might actually have the ability to overcome given enough ingenuity and/or cowardice. trying to translate that to other input / skills like platforming takes a lot more than a "scramble it up" button. The reason something like mystery dungeon works and P4 doesn't is because P3/P4 DOES have interesting resource management and combat, but it's divorced from the actual act of moving around the dungeons because the only real variable becomes "how long am I spending here".

thad, I haven't done too deep of a look, but maybe the DS mystery dungeon games (chocobo, pokemon, izuna, and shiren are all there off the top of my head, with shiren being pretty much the best) would be playable with the touch screen in a way that would work alright. though balancing or holding a ds could also make things just as difficult.
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Re: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Postby Friday » Sun May 10, 2020 10:58 am

So my very first random run (with everything set to max random in all) gave me the Valkyrie Sword (one of the strongest weapons in the game) on the fourth or fifth screen, Dimension Shift from the first boss, Flame Armor from a random drop, and High Jump (Flight/Gravity Boots) from the third boss.

I'm 20 minutes into the game and I have maximum mobility and endgame gear.

I will probably never be this lucky with any random run in any game that has it ever again.
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