Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Nintendo Switch

So the port is bad to the switch 30fps compare to 60 for ps4/Xbox 720p compare to 1080 Oh the steelbook. Is a ps4/Xbox one. They just switched the plastic to hold a switch game. I know they came with the game could you be any cheaper . It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still an ugly pig.

As you would know by now, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a Castlevania Symphony of the night clone, and a very good one. The game mechanics, presentation, action is very good. The story is interesting, and presented in a good way. The draw back to the Switch version is it runs in a lower resolution, and has graphical glitches. Hopefully will be patched later on. But if you want to play on the go this is the only way to go.

This much maligned Switch version Of Bloodstained isn’t nearly as bad of a port as it’s made out to be online, especially after a number of fixes present thanks to the latest patch. Sure, there are frame rate issues every now and again, and the visuals aren’t quite as good as they are on the PS4 and Xbox One versions, but the ability to play Bloodstained portably on the Switch makes this the definitive copy to get in my opinion. As for the gameplay itself, it’s a Metroid-vania style game courtesy of Koji Igarashi, the man behind perhaps the best Castelvania game of all time (Symphony of the Night), so all of the different systems and RPG elements should be familiar to people that have played this style of game before. For the uninitiated, what that means is a compelling mix of combat and platforming, with the added intrigue of character progression via leveling up and character customization with items. The shard system in particular is interesting, allowing you to really hone your character in based on your play style, be it with items that grant you huge bonuses for lumbering greatsword attacks, or stats that benefit a long range gunplay strategy. The items are designed in such a way that they rarely feel like simple upgrades, instead offering different bonuses for different sorts of play styles, leaving it largely up to the player to decide what sort of demon slayer they’d like to be. All of these things come together in a package that winds up being pretty fun and addicting, albeit with a few technical hiccups here and there. It’s not an overly long game, but thanks to a tough but fair difficulty level and a whole host of side missions and extra items out there, it doesn’t feel scarce content-wise. If you listen to everyone else on the internet, this Switch version should be avoided. But in my opinion it’s the sort of game that feels uniquely well suited to play on the go in bite size increments, jumping from one save point to another in the space of 10 or 15 minutes. In short, this game is fun and you should buy it, and that recommendation goes doubly if it’s on sale at all. It’s a heck of a lot of fun despite some minor blemishes, and it’s the closest thing to a real Castelvania game that we’re going to get at the moment.

As a lifelong fan of the Castlevania games, I've played them on the NES, Super Nintendo, Playstation, Gameboy Advance, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, and more. Some of the best titles of all time are in the Castlevania franchise- Symphony of the Night being one of the progenitors of its own genre, Metroidvania. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is like unto Castlevania Symphony of the Night meets Order of Ecclesia- and that carries all of the positive connotations it possibly could. The character, environmental, and sound design are all top notch and clearly make this a game that must be experienced if you're even remotely a fan of Metroidvanias. The level design is superb and you'll find yourself backtracking and finding all sorts of secrets, which is accompanied by phenomenal movement that makes traversing locations a joy. There are tons of little, interesting things to find, plus there's crafting and cooking on top of it. However, the Switch version ain't it, chief. At release, this game has tremendous issues- visual effects missing and insanely low quality textures are just the tip of the iceberg (even the rose tattoo of Miriam, the character on the box art, can sometimes show as a splotchy, pixelated mess not even visually representing a flower. That's how low quality the textures can present). This version of the game crashes a lot, which is wholly unacceptable for a game that doesn't have auto-saves. Sometimes you can crash while selecting the bookcase that *lets you save the game*! It's insanely frustrating to lose progress repeatedly due to game bugs. Notwithstanding, the frame rate is also quite low- it's 30fps in some locations, while dipping to as low as 15 in others, like the tower. This is probably one of the best games I've played in recent memory. Unfortunately, this just isn't a good port of that great game. Keep an eye out for updates that hopefully improve playability (fps, crashing needs to be at the top of the list of things to fix). If you only have a Switch, still consider this version after waiting a bit. This game is fantastic, even if I'm negative over the bugs this product shouldn't have, and those problems hopefully get patched. If you absolutely can't wait to play, the PC version of the game on Steam would likely give you the best experience.

To begin, I've never played any Castlevania game, except for the very first one on the NES. I'm not familiar with Symphony of the Night or any other title similar to this one. This game caught my eye after I played Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon on PC. First, the good. The game feels nice. Movement is great. You have a lot of weapons to choose from to change your play style a little bit. The levels are fun to look at and have a lot of secrets, like hidden items and rooms in walls. Hitting enemies is satisfying, bosses are fun, and there's a lot of things to do. Crafting, making food, and enhancing equipment will keep you busy for a while. Then, we have some problems. Gameplay-wise, sometimes you get lost. It's not exactly super clear where you're supposed to go, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be time consuming. That's about the only complaint about the game itself. The biggest flaw about this game is the port itself. You get 30fps on average, and in some areas such as the Tower of the Twin Dragon, the game gets really choppy. The graphics are also pretty mediocre. But my biggest problem with this game is that sometimes it crashes. It doesn't happen often, but I've crashed a few times, and I have to re-do everything from my last save. If you're not careful and find yourself in a long stretch in the game without saving, you could crash and lose all of your progress. So basically, save whenever you can and wherever you can. Hopefully this particular problem can be solved with patches and updates, because this is a really good game, but not a great port. Overall, the core game itself is great. But it has its fair share of technical issues which makes me not able to rate it much higher than 3/5 at this time.

The person who created castlevania, that was enough for me to pick this up and it didn’t not disappoint. The graphics are great , story is great , music is awesome. Artwork is beautiful. And they made a second one .

Love these type of games and thoroughly enjoyed them on the NES, SNES, 3DS, and PS. My issue with this game is that instead of going with sprites, they used 3D models which ended up making it seem very low quality and washed out. Gameplay wise I don't have many complaints.

This was made by the creative team behind the classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I played through that game multiple times so I was very excited about this release. At time of release the Switch version had a lot graphics and load time issues. Thankfully a patch has since been deployed that has cleared those up and there is another patch on the way to improve load times even further. I've spent a few hours with the game now and can say I've seen zero hiccups. This game is a worthy successor to Castlevania. Side scrolling action- RPG. Very easy to pick up and play the controls are tight. This will be one of my go to games when playing the switch on the go. Highly recommended.