I’ve been playing a bit of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and until yesterday, I was enjoying it quite a bit. The combat, while not exactly groundbreaking, was fun, the environments were beautiful, and the game was the very essence of Castlevania. The problem is, it’s the essence of the very worst of Castlevania. The traversal in this game thankfully has teleport rooms, and it’s a damn good thing, because you’ll be utilizing them quite a bit while you’re wandering the castle for hours on end trying to figure out just WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO.
Saying that Bloodstained is a Metroid-vania is kinda like saying a tree looks like wood. They’re not only synonymous with each other, they’re the same fucking thing. But where the piles and piles of Castlevania sequels and tributes have evolved over the years, they’ve always been built with the same logic in mind; some areas require special skills or tools to access, and if you don’t have them yet, you will. You know you will. It’s only a matter of time.
However, the acquisition of said skills and tools in Bloodstained are so fucking obtuse, you’ll be wandering aimlessly for hours on end until you either accidentally discover the answer (as I did) or you finally crumble and ask Mr. Google.
I sunk a good amount of play time into overcoming one such roadblock, and once I found the answer, not only did I not feel good about myself, it made me want to turn the game off right then and there.
Allow me to explain:
The going was great, for a while. Every so often I get stumped by a boss battle, but for the most part, a little bit of preparation and some pattern memorization and the problem would be overcome. Yay me. Until I reached a point in the game where I was faced with several roadblocks, i.e. the staples of any “good” Metroidvania, the inaccessable barriers. I had three.
One such barrier was represented by reflective plates that looked like mirrors. It was easily identifiable as requiring something I didn’t have yet. Fine.
Another barrier was a train depot that had a gate of sorts that I couldn’t pass through. I needed something. It didn’t tell me exactly what I needed, but alright.
The third barrier was water. That’s right, water. Apparently, Miriam can swim along the top of the water, but for whatever reason, is completely incapable of doing the one thing every living creature knows to do from birth; holding her breath. Instead, Miriam bobs on the top of the water like a rubber ducky and everything below her is completely out of her grasp. Fine. Whatever.
These three obstacles kept me from progressing any further into the game. No explanation was given (that I knew of) as to where or how to obtain these requirements. Yesterday, before going to work, I was streaming a playthrough of the game, and I reached the tower with the two-headed snake/dragon thing, and I felt great because on only my second try, I kicked its ass and was able to proceed exploring the area. I opened a chest at the bottom of the tower and received some silver bromide. Now, I had some downtime before playing this game again yesterday, so I didn’t quite remember what I was supposed to do with said bromide, nor did I realize it was an important item.
In games like Zelda, when you open a chest and get an important quest item, you’ll get the classic da-nuh-nuh-NUH! Ya know, that audible note that tells us morons that we found something important? Well, I didn’t get that here. Silver bromide could’ve been an ingredient for rice balls, for all I knew. So I continued to wander the area aimlessly, completely baffled at the realization that there was nothing else in this tower, and nowhere else to go on the other side of it. It was a dead end. Why the hell did I go all the way to a tower and kill a boss, only to be rewarded with… nothing?
I didn’t completely forget about the silver bromide though, so I took it back to the “camp” and spoke with my allies. Speaking with Dominique, a.k.a. “the hot nun” prompted a conversation about photography. Alas! I remembered that from my previous play session. I did need to get her something for the camera. So we did the photo thing, and she gave me a photo that could be used for “identification.” Um, okay! Now we’re getting somewhere. Perhaps I could use the identification to get past the train platform!
I hauled ass all the way over there, excited that I could finally move on in the game, only for that fucking gate to not open and leave me not only stuck in the same area I was before, but now with fewer answers (as far as I knew, I did the silver bromide, and it worked, and now what?) There was no other “quest” to pursue, and I was aimless yet again.
I wandered that fucking castle for hours. It wasn’t until, by complete fucking accident, I wandered into a room with a guy sitting in a chair. I had forgotten all about this guy. I checked a book out from him once. That was his purpose, to lend books.
Or so I thought. Anyways, since I was there, I decided to talk to the guy to swap out the book I borrowed. Originally, I had one that buffed my ranged attack, which was now useless since I had crystal shards that completely defeated any shitty pistol the game could give me. However, when I talked to the guy, it wasn’t a conversation about books, it was about… getting on the train? He told me I needed identification, but that was impossible because “humans haven’t invented photography yet.” Miriam was like “Hey dipshit I have a photo right here,” and the guy was like, “Oh.”
And that was that. I could now get on the train. AFTER THREE FUCKING HOURS OF WANDERING AIMLESSLY, all I had to do was talk to some obscure fucking librarian sitting in a chair in one room of this entire gigantic map. I wasn’t even happy. I was dumbfounded. Who thought this was a good idea? Who said to themselves, “Hey I know, i’ll make the progression of the entire fucking game hinge on this one chance encounter with this one unimportant character.” I mean, fuck. That’s almost as bad as holding a red crystal and kneeling at the edge of a lake until a tornado picks you up and carries you to the other side and… oh, wait. It’s almost as if Igarashi took some inspiration from more than just his own Castlevania games.
So the night wore on, I progressed, until I walked into room that had a throne, and on that throne sat a man named Gebel (pronounced Jee-bull.) Yeah, it’s a stupid name. But anyways, I’m thinking, okay, this is kind of a random place. And then, without any ability to back out, I’m forced into a fight.
Well, I was quite over-leveled, due to the fact that I wandered a castle for about five hours longer than I probably should’ve, and I kicked Gebel’s jibblin’ ass up and down that room. I kicked it so hard that apparently, I ended the game.
That’s right, I killed him.
I was like, alright. I know that can’t be it. But it was, and I was treated to the shittiest of shitty endings, tied up with a Game Over screen. Again, the game left me dumbfounded.
Now, I’ve played enough of these games to know a “Bad” ending when I see one, and I know I didn’t see nearly everything the game had to offer (Miriam still couldn’t hold her breath, for fuck’s sake.) So I referred to Mr. Google to confirm my suspicions.
And they were correct. I got the worst ending I could possibly get; Not by any fault of mine, of course, I was just exploring and wandered into the wrong room. It’s not like I walked up a huge staircase suspended in the sky with the moon in the background and all. There wasn’t much hint at what I was walking into. But anyways, it was fine. I’d just take a look and see what was required to get the “True” ending.
This is what I found:
First, you need to fight a guy named Zangetsu to get his sword, Zangetsuto.
Then, you need to go and fight Gebel, but instead of killing him, you wait until the moon in the background turns red, and use the Zangetsuto sword to hit the moon. Yeah.
After that, you need to leave that room and head to a completely different part of the castle, where there is another red moon, and hit that one with the sword as well. This will open up a portal that you will take you to a different area, where you will fight a list of bosses until you beat the final one and get the best ending.
Yeah, that’s some bullshit. Not only would I have ever thought to do any of that without looking that shit up online, but it just further convolutes a game that’s already horribly convoluted. I’m sorry, but no. Why can’t I just traverse my way through the castle, beat the boss, and give myself a pat on the back? Why does everything coming out of Japan nowadays have to be such a complicated piece of shit?
I didn’t even touch on how you get the Zangetsuto sword in the first place. Before you even reach the guy, you have acquire three specific shards by killing three specific enemies, one to GO UNDERWATER, one to let you WALK underwater, and one to let you walk on the ceiling. No explanation about this anywhere in the game, but entire areas are locked off until you kill something that might give you what you need. If it doesn’t, hey, exit the room and come back in and farm that shit until you get what you came for.
That. Is fucking. Stupid.
Maybe I’ll give this game another chance one day, but for now Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night can go fuck itself.
