BLOODSTAINED: RITUAL OF THE NIGHT aka the Spiritual successor of Symphony of the Night

if they wanna make the largest IGAvania castle ever, they should focus on expanding the castle instead of underground and noncastle related areas.

the main character is only a waifu to horny dudes like you.
you are implying that there should be no female protagonist in videogames, that is very sexist on your part.

also since the player is the main character, that means playing the game as Miriam, you are Miriam. So you gonna waifu yourself and touch yourself or something?
not sure if that’s called self marriage.

I like when they have a lot of non-castle areas tbh. Having the game take place ONLY in the castle is part of what made most of the metroidvania games get so stale to me. OoE did a cool thing by having the castle come up after you’d been through a bunch of outside areas.

and yet the castle was not even 1/4 as epic nor filled with as much bosses as SOTN’s.
CVII had great towns and outdoor locations and mansions, but the castle was basically just a few screens worth of ruins and an underground room.

SOTN had a large amount of space dedicated to underground areas, but no one felt the castle itself was stale at all.
a game like SOTN proves the genre can take place in a castle, and have lots of interesting rooms, and floors, and basically have the entire castle accessible.

Bloodstained castle being larger, can still have lots of interesting rooms and sections in each floor.
forests, and other outdoor things are found in every game, but not a lot of games have IGAvania tier castles.

Bloodstained has a ship, some kind of village and now an underground area. it’s senseless adding other locations that aren’t the castle, especially with the scenario taking place on an island where basically only the castle domain sits there.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/ritualofthenight/images/5/58/Bloodstained_Castle.png/revision/latest?cb=20150521035942

though not sure if those towers in the back are a part of some kind of cathedral or towers separate from the castle.

the larger the castle, the more intense and labyrinth it feels, and the IGAvanias design their rooms very well with lots of places that stand out.
I didnt like location warping gimmicks like Portrait of Ruin. being in the castle then suddenly in an entirely different terrain and location was cheap.
ROTN’s castle should be more cohesive like SOTN’s and becomes more nonlinear with progression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtnXAZ0XaTY

Yeah, I don’t want the setting to be confined to a castle. I am glad we are having more varied locations.

IGA worked on Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclesia.
Saying they are not IGA like makes no sense.

Also this supposed to be a fricking Magic Castle in each game
If the Castle wants to warp to new terrain, have warp, have non-euclidean geometry or even lets say a forest or even lets say whole pirate ship at sea as one of the rooms of the castle

Because it is a Magic Demonic Castle, I find all of that acceptable.

And in before you say having a pirate ship at sea as a room inside the castle proper is not logical,
Symphony of the Night had magically a second castle on top of first castle but upside-down with everything other your self and the monsters their operate on reverse gravity, Like water falls flowing up.

I didnt say IGA make those. anyone familiar with Castlevania knows IGA directed those games.

and even Circle of the Moon, which IGA wasn’t involved with, is a masterpiece metroidvania too.

yes its a magic castle, but I still feel warping to different lands takes away from the castle aspect. SOTN didn’t resort to that gimmick, it would of had a smaller/oversimplified castle if it had warps to other dimensions/terrain not a part of the castle.

I didn’t say the pirate ship at sea isn’t logical. I would prefer if it started right at the castle’s doorstep, but the pirate ship is acceptable.
also SOTN’s 2nd castle was actually appropriate, at least that’s TWO castles to explore instead of only one. and the 2nd castle has ENTIRELY NEW horde of bosses to fight, as well as different and rearranged enemy locations and other secrets.

so at least that extra location was another castle. a upside down castle, but still a castle.

not saying Bloodstained should have that upside down castle (they wouldn’t reuse that twist anyways),

I prefer the actual castle having the size of both SOTN castles combined, with the other 50% of the castle providing new types of rooms, hallways, etc. with designs that are suitable for a castle.

And you disregarded everything that was said.
As the director Iga has final say over all design and creative choices. And even as a director you have some hands on the creative process. Lot of it is via delegation, but the skills of composition and technical planning goes along ways. Things aren’t done a certain way unless he gives the green light for it.

And with magical castles, things do not have to follow a logical order. If i am doing a IGA metrovania style castle I would so have the Pirate ship at sea in the center of the castle, and you have to go though the catacombs on the roof to get there, then warp to the center. You also need to finish the crashed alien ship and the down town metropolitan city first

SOTN has 1 Castle. Turning it upside down doesn’t make it two Castles.

Was this Dracula’s excuse to the local authorities?

“No I didn’t need the planning permission for a second castle, it’s just a loft conversion”

Dracula would be in deep shit with his home owner’s association if he didn’t happen to kill them all too.

It is kind of interesting though how much more challenging it is moving through the same castle when it’s turned upside down. Even before you take into account the enemies even.

It’s just a pain imo. I am in the small camp that thinks the upside down castle while a neat idea and appreciated, is super over rated. The castle is not fun or challanging to navigate its tredious. Just having to transform between human and bat a ton of times to make your way through the castle.

It’s not bad, I like the upside down castle, I’m just glad they never ran back to that well, it’s the kind of gimmick that only works once.

I think it was brilliant.

AND that it is something that only works once.

are you kidding me? it counts as two castles. they don’t even have the same enemy layout, loot, nor boss fights.

so then I guess Gauntlet only has 1 floor, since all the other floors are rearranged versions of the 1st floor.

or saying 2D fighting games have only one stage, since the background and floor are basically just wallpapers/reskins

I’m not saying it wasn’t a pain sometimes, but it definitely made me appreciate the layout of the castle in general that it worked both regular and upside down.

Are they planning on making an Android version of Bloodstained?

No it doesn’t. Its one Castle turned upside down. Exact same layout. moving enemies and some collectables around and putting in new bosses doesn’t make it 2 Castles. It’s 1 Castle upside down and with different enemy positions. Still the exact same Castle tho.

See I don’t think it does work upside really, it only works because Alucard has abilities to bypass the shit the doesn’t work. Without High Jump and Bat Form most of the castle can’t be navigated and you rely on those abilities so heavily to navigate the castle that it becomes tedious.

I’m not saying it doesn’t work as a way to extend game time and be an awesome as hell secret, I’m just saying that gameplay wise it doesn’t work as well as a well designed layout should, which makes sense, it’s a pretty well done layout…upside down. Wasn’t really meant to be traversed like that.

Not really Bloodstained but its related as Koji Igarashi decided to share this to his Kickstarter Backers

Get ready for a rare ‘super blue blood moon eclipse’

Also

And the actual Update

I’ll be pissed if it’s canceled for PSV.

Well if nothing else I am sure the Wii U version getting canceled

Sotn is 2 castles, damn. How could anyone even argue that?