Finished: Days Gone
Playing: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Added: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Blue Reflection, Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon, Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, Sega Genesis Classics
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ROCKS!!!! It's the best Metroidvania game that I've played. I've played some good somewhat low budget indie ones, but they've always felt low budget and indie.
Ritual of the Night doesn't. It's a somewhat big budget retail released game as opposed to a digital only indie game like the genre usually is.The graphics and music are really good, but it's the design and gameplay that really stand out. While it's an open-ended side scrolling action platformer at its core, it also has RPG elements. Basically, it's an action platformer with depth. Side quests, leveling, loot, shops, crafting, etc. it's all here. Exploring is rewarding making you want to explore everywhere possible since there's almost always something to find off the beaten path.
The game is challenging making you need to change weapons and shard magic depending on the enemies that you're up against. There's a lot of variety to the enemies, and a lot of them require different tactics. So you definitely can't just use one type of weapon and shard magic all the time, you need to mix it up based on the enemies that you're fighting. There's a lot of different weapons and shard magic, and they keep combat varied since you have to use different ones in different situations.
This is basically a Castlevania game which used to be one of my favorite series back in the day. As much as I liked Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, it didn't really feel like a Castlevania game. Ritual of the Night does despite not officially being a Castlevania game. It's nice to basically play another old school style Castlevania game now with current gen bells and whistles.
