"Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night"

[kane_magus]

(EDIT) I've just cancelled my pledge for this game, due to the asinine "backer unlock" achievements bullshit. I'll still get the game when it comes out eventually, don't get me wrong, but I'll just be waiting for the inevitable 50-75% off Steam sale now, is all. Seriously, video game industry, plain and simple, please just make a fucking video game if you're going to make one, and don't do all this stupid, extraneous shit. (/EDIT)

(EDIT 2) And... I caved in and backed it again anyway, just a couple days before the Kickstarter ended. Oh well. So much for principles and all that good shit, I guess. >_>; (/EDIT 2)

Seldom are the video game Kickstarter projects that actually grab my attention these days. This here is one of those rare few (even if the pledge level for just the digital version of the game is a wee bit pricier than normal). I'm interested in this in a way that I wasn't even in Mighty No 9, given that I was never all that big of a Mega Man fan as a kid, but was always a huge Castlevania fan.

Just to note, it's already over double-funded as of the time of this post.

Even though this obviously can't be called "Castlevania," Dracula himself is public domain, so he could very well make an appearance in this game. I suppose he'd have to be sufficiently different from the Dracula in the games, but that wouldn't be very hard to do, given that Dracula's appearance isn't consistent even across Castlevania games. I kind of don't see him showing up in this, though. Why retread old ground (at least as far as characters go) when you can go in a completely new, original direction? As for retreading old ground as far as gameplay and such go, however, I am all for that. I'd probably play new Metroidvania games from now until the end of time if I could.

(Strange... I thought I had a "Castlevania" LJ tag, but apparently not...?)

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I read about this on Atari Age before the kickstarter actually started - they did some kind of poll to determine what the main weapon should be, sword or whip.

I'm not going to be backing it (Not that they need me, given how fast the cash is flowing in on the kickstarter (About 500k per day or so at present!) It's like they can't put up stretch goals fast enough. Even now the new goal they added at some point today, for a new boss, has already been passed.

Reason I'm not backing it is because it's for systems I don't have, or would not be able to play it properly on for years to come anyway. (Never touching Xbone, While I admit this would be awesome, it's not worth a 500 dollar PS4 console purchase, and my PC isn't going to have a chance of playing it - and I won't be getting a new one til 2017 at the earliest currently.)

I am a bit peeved that already included in the game to be is what are essentially pre-order DLC - the kickstarter-only in-game bonuses the kickstarter makes reference to. Even if they give way to "public demand" and make those kickstarter perks standard paid DLC later, it's essentially hitting on my planned-DLC pet peeve.

Luckily it'll probably be out digitally for a good long time before I'm in a position to buy it, so I'll see what the DLC situation is at that point and either throw money at the screen or boycott it officially at that point.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "stretch goals" are another of those chinks in the armor of Kickstarter that makes me more hesitant to back games nowadays. In the old days, that shit was called feature creep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) and was considered to be a bad thing. And you know that when (not if, when) they hit that $2,000,000 milestone, they won't stop there and more goals will be pulled out of their asses.

And that "backer achievement" bullshit for Twitter followers and Youtube subscribers and such... ugh. That's disgusting. Not enough so to make me cancel my pledge, mind you, because it's still mostly just periphery stupid shit, but it's still a rather vile practice.

If it wasn't IGA and a Castlevania-style Metroidvania game, I probably actually would withdraw my pledge over that shit at this point. Why can't they just make a goddamn game, pure and simple, and not do all this extraneous, asinine horseshit?

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

Actually... I think I will withdraw my pledge. I'll just wait until the shit is released on Steam and then hits a 50-75% off sale, same as with everything else I buy these days.

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

But, I will say this. Konami must be kicking themselves in the ass right about now if they're paying attention to the kickstarter. Had they kept the talent happy and employed, this kind of success would have been something they would have profited from.

They should have listened to the fans that kept screaming for more metroidvanias, particularly PROPER HD metroidvanias. (No, the multiplayer ... thing... on PS3/360 isn't proper.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about Harmony of Despair, that thing that we played online a few times, it was... okay, I suppose, but yeah, I'd much have preferred another actual, fully developed, singleplayer Metroidvania game to that.