31 Days, 31 Screams: A New Beginning- Day 15 (Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night)

An interesting bit of out-of-sequence discussion, but the hell with it. It's spooky, I played it, I remember it, we can make something of it. All I've got to do is waffle for a couple hundred words and we've got ourselves a post. It's fitting we do this out of sequence, almost. Last year I almost did the game this is a spiritual successor too. I didn't finish it. Sometimes anxiety just pops up and you get a negative association with the thing and don't want to touch it any more. So, before we square away what this is, we need to square away the legacy it's following: Castlevania. Castlevania, as a series, can be divided into distinct eras/styles. You have Classicvania, which are (mostly) linear stage-based action platformers of a certain vintage. In 1997 a new form of Castlevania came about for the Playstation, when Koji Igarashi and his band of Konami pals mashed the aesthetic of Castlevania into a Metroid-esque exploratory platformer. Thus, a new style of Castlevania was born. People like to portmanteau it as Metroidvania, but we'll call it the Igavania. 

Over the next decade there were six more games from him in this style, and they have their fans. I honestly prefer the Classicvania style, but I have played and enjoyed most of the Igavanias. They don't light my world on absolute fire like they do for other people, though. So, years later when Koji Igarashi and new pals kicked off a Kickstarter for a spiritual successor to the Igavania style of game named Bloodstained, I was like "neat" but didn't back it. As it turned out, a stretch goal met for this Kickstarter was a Classicvania-style Bloodstained game. That I was into. Bloodstained Curse Of The Moon was one of my favorite games of 2019. It took Classicvania in the style of Castlevania 3 and improved upon it with snappy quality-of-life features. I adored it. What, then, of Ritual Of The Night? The new Igavania game, the whole reason for this Kickstarter? It seemed neat but the Igavania wasn't my jam, so I held off on buying it. 

Good thing I did, because I got a copy on the Switch as a holiday gift. I appreciated the gift very much, and played the thing once a patch came to fiddle with the Switch version's apparant notorious glitches. I cannot blame my giftgiver for those, however. Anyway, I had a copy of Ritual Of The Night! The grand return to form for Igavania! I played it. It was fine. This is where my own perspective differs from the big fans of this style of game. Curse Of The Moon, I felt, was an improvement upon the foundation of Classicvania, spiritually succeeding it and making it quicker and better. Ritual Of The Night, to me, felt like another Igavania. Another one of those. If there were quality of life improvements, I didn't notice them. It played with the same mechanics as a particular Igavania duology, Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow. Aria and Dawn are very good Igavania games, and cribbing their mechanics also made Ritual Of The Night good. It didn't make it feel like an improvement, though.

Nevertheless, it was enjoyable. Just like all the other Igavanias are enjoyable. There's a huge amount of enemy soul powers you can siphon to gain their special abilities, all to mix and match in order to beat foes and traverse to new areas with mobility powerups. A lot of the puzzles are quite neat, and the difficulty can definitely get up there. I don't want to seem too down on it. This is a fine game. I appreciate the gift. It just didn't light my world on fire like Curse Of The Moon did. That's just fine, you know. We can chalk that up to personal taste. I'm glad that Ritual Of The Night got its funding and got made. Not just because I got Curse Of The Moon out of it, but because all the Igavania fans out there got another one of those. I hope it was everything you wanted and it improved upon the formula for you. For me, it was fine. I spent very little of this talking about the mechanics of anything, but sometimes you just gotta use this space to tell a story. Also I had a bad day and needed a breather. Sorry. Tomorrow, if I'm feeling good, I'll watch something and not talk about Bloodstained. We're not quite done with Bloodstained, though, but that's for later down the line.