The Gaming Den

Anyone played Bloodstained yet?

I beat Rondo of Blood some months ago, still play it on occasion 'cause I like how the jumping feels. Been meaning to play the DS Castlevanias

I played it over the last week and a half. I had a bunch of fun with it, and if you're a Castlevania fan then you'd like this one. It combines some elements from former games, like sidequests for villagers and "monster ability collection" in the form of equippable demon shards.

I do have one quality of life tip for new players, although it's a bit spoilerish.

Don't be compelled to sell "extra" shards. Having more shards of the same ability increases its Grade which can make it more effective. There are many savepoints before bosses and plot-critical moments, so "overloading" on shards is not something to worry about.

I've only played Curse of the Moon but it is a very good NES castlevania clone.

Bloodstained is *basically* Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow with the serial numbers filed off. Multiple weapon options, quests for NPCs, every monster has a magical shard to collect...it hits all the same points. If you liked DoS (which I did), it's a pretty sweet game. If you've played any 'metroidvania' game in the past ten years...it's a fairly solid one. If you're new to the concept...go emulate Castlevania: Symphony of the Night first, and if you enjoy that, Bloodstained is a solid enough follow up.

I thought Bloodstained was pretty fun! I'm glad it didn't take itself too seriously, the demon barber was definitely worth a few laughs. Even playing it on a keyboard exclusively, the controls were decent.

I'm not a HUGE fan of the move to 3D graphics, but they did some really cool stuff with it and Curse of the Moon delivers on that side well enough. A great deal for my kickstarter money.

Gonna leave this here

https://youtu.be/mm0vHyo-rp8

Spoiler: he actually enjoyed it.

Lemme tell you my tale of woe.

So, in Bloodstained, you get medals for defeating bosses without getting hit. Cul, right? Right.

I'm currently on my fourth playthrough of the game, this time on the Nightmare difficulty. Oo, scary. Anyway, I've managed to get a medal from every boss so far up to Valac, the two headed dragon. Why up to Valac? Because he's a motherfucking no good piece of aborted shit, that's why.

For those not in the know, Valac fights by having both heads surrounding poor Miriam - one on the left, the other on the right. The fight starts with the fuckface dragon breathing jets of fire from both heads, the flames moving back and forth, with a small area of safety in-between. Now, it is really difficult to stay between the flames without getting hit... which is why I'm having problems with Valac. I mean, I could beat him easily otherwise, since he's kinda a pushover, but trying to beat him without getting hit is like Dark Souls level hard. The worst part is that he won't die until the flame attack is finished - you can attack him and reduce his HP to zero, but he won't expire until he's done using Flamethrower. So you can't end the fight before he can deep-fry you. RUDE.

I've tried everything - Stopping time, buffing my fire resistance, using Directional Shield and Beast Guardian to guard both fronts, trying to get a Bovine Plume to carry over to a new game plus so I can get the High Jump shard early (which you can't do because the Bovine Plume item doesn't carry over) - none of it worked! I'M AT THE END OF MY FUCKING ROPE!

Why do I want these medals so badly, you ask? Because I've beaten the game, gotten every item and shard and enemy and filled the map and I need a new challenge, plus I'm curious what happens if you get them all. BUT THIS MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON IS RUINING MY LIFE! FUCK!

Anyway, that's all. If anyone has tips, I'll gladly take them... as long as it's not something like "Don't get hit", because who needs that?

I found frantically jumping like a spazz and landing in the safe spot when it hesitates at the edge of its back and forth pattern helped me dodge that. I tend to misread the tongueslaps or the double head lunge attack.

So I've decided "fuck it" and just beat Valac without trying for the medal. If it turns out that there's some really bitch-ass reward for collecting all the boss medals - like being able to play as Johannes in a string thong bikini - then I will be very cross.

Might you be... Grand Cross?

Bloodstained is all it was promised to be.

Konami is dead, but Castlevania lives on in Bloodstained. I love everything about it, from the concept designs to Yamane's music, and it plays as good as it looks and sounds.

Dogbert wrote:Bloodstained is all it was promised to be.

Konami is dead, but Castlevania lives on in Bloodstained. I love everything about it, from the concept designs to Yamane's music, and it plays as good as it looks and sounds.

I agree, even with some of the jankyness of some aspects of the game.

We can add the Doppelganger boss to the list of both "things I want to punch game designers in the face for" and "boss that is too fucking difficult to avoid being hit by and thus cannot get their medal".

Totally unrelated, but how the fuck do you do the "does not equal sign"? Every time I try to put it in I get a "cannot insert new word matches" message and the symbol gets replaced it with a "?". The hell?

Consider using '!=', rather than hunting for a unicode character.