I'm not really feeling Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

It's hard to believe that the Metroidvania genre nearly died a decade ago. With Konami and Nintendo basically moving on from the likes of Castlevania and Metroid, it fell on indie developers to continue the legacies that those series started. While lacking the brand recognition from both franchises, gamers have been inundated with Metroidvania games in the years since. If you've been dying to relive the glory days of Samus Aran's adventures, you have more than enough titles to pick from.

That doesn't mean gamers would be opposed to seeing both of those franchises come back. Nintendo got the memo and released Metroid: Samus Returns in 2017, but Konami has sat on its IPs and done nothing to honor them. Possibly because of this indifference, Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi left Konami in 2014 and began brainstorming ideas for how he could make a spiritual successor to the games.

This gave birth to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. After a majorly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015, fans were elated to see what they perceived as a continuation of Castlevania come to life. Continuing on in the legacy of games set forth by Symphony of the Night, Bloodstained was set to be the glorious return to Metroidvania gameplay that fans had been dying for.

While I won't deny that Bloodstained feels remarkably similar to Igarashi's past titles, something about the game hasn't clicked with me.

from Destructoid - RSS http://bit.ly/2G9JTMQ