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Game Review: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
This game caught me completely by surprise. I backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night as soon as I became aware of it based mostly on the strength of the Kickstarter video--and apparently I backed a physical copy, so I guess I'll be getting that at some point in the future--but I haven't really been paying much attention to the updates. I rarely do, especially with games, because I don't want too many spoilers before I actually get to the game itself. So as it smashed through stretch goals and climbed up the Kickstarter rankings, I completely missed the "Free 2D, pixel-based, retro-styled prequel mini-game" that they promised. And then all of a sudden it came out at the end of the last month and it looked amazing.
It is amazing.
”The Sign of Blasphemy That Pierces the Heavens." The English name is "Blasphemy unto Heaven," which is pretty close.
Do you like Castlevania III? Then play this game. That's my capsule summary; go forth and play.
Curse of the Moon has character switching. It has subweapons and alternate paths that require specific characters to get to. It has a jump arc that the characters can't deviate from once they commit to it. It has lanterns that drop items and powerups when destroyed. It has Miriam, the heroine of Ritual of the Knight, who's more mobile and fights with a whip. It has Alfred the alchemist, who is slow and frail but has extraordinarily powerful spells as his subweapons. It has Gebel, a demon-infused monster who can transform into a bat and who attacks with a spread of three bats. If these sound like Trevor Belmont, SyphaFernandezBelnades, and Adrian Farhenheit ŢepeşAlucard, you are correct. Like Alucard, Gebel has no subweapons because his bat transformation is enough. Like Sypha, Alfred has fire, ice, and lightning spells, and a fourth subweapon that's not that great. Like Trevor, Miriam throws daggers and wields an axe, as well as a scythe that crosses the screen and returns. The game makes no attempt to hide its influences.
There's no Grant Danasty equivalent, though. Instead, Curse of the Moon stars Zangetsu (斬月, "Cutting Moon, Killing Moon", and playing off of 残月, "Moon visible during the morning"), a samurai from the East who has traveled to Europe searching for a way to break the curse that afflicts him. His basic attack is an iaijutsu strike, and his subweapons are all Shintō-based. He fills the roll of being a slow heavy hitter with a relatively short range, and because of that I often didn't use him much. I preferred Miriam, since her whip's range and her subweapons are much closer to what I'm used to from Castlevania. But whenever Miriam was dead, Zangetsu was my second choice.
As soon as Zangetsu picks up his first companion, it's possible to switch to them at any time and without delay--unlike Castlevania III, there's no shifting animation. Each companion has a separate health bar, and the death of one does not affect the others except that it sends you back to a checkpoint. But once dead, that companion can't be used until all companions are dead, which costs a life and returns you to a checkpoint, usually one further back than the companion death checkpoint.
Good luck, Alfred.
I feel like this sounds better than it works out in practice, or maybe it's just that I'm not as good at platformers as I used to be. Generally I'd play with Miriam or Zangetsu, with Gebel as a kind of buffer health bar when the other two would get low. Alfred I'd only swap to for brief moments to use one of his spells, since they persist between characters. All subweapons do, but while Alfred's fire shield is the most obvious use for this, it's also possible to use Zangetsu's flame powerup, which increases his damage, and then swap to Miriam for her longer range. Generally, what I did was use Alfred's freeze spell and then try to hit bosses with Miriam's axe, since a frozen enemy takes double damage and the axe does more damage than any other subweapon.
I had to change up my tactics in the game's Nightmare Mode, though. After beating the game the first time, Nightmare Mode unlocks, which has all companions unlocked from the very beginning but no Zangetsu. This makes some early stages much easier, since a single death no longer leads to losing a life and it's possible to use Miriam and Gebel to reach areas that were previously off-limits, but it also removes one of the main damage-dealers. The first time through the game I finished with 9 lives and never even came close to having to start a stage over. The only reason I didn't have to continue on Nightmare Mode is because there was a 1-UP before the final boss.
Under the moonlight.
Curse of the Moon was made by Inti Creates, the same studio that made Blaster Master Zero, and I feel like that's especially relevant here because even though this game isn't an update of Castlevania III the same way that BMZ was an update of Blaster Master, they show the same understanding of the original source material and craftsmanship in bringing it forward. Curse of the Moon sticks to the NES palette, or at least as close as makes no odds, and original resolution. The music isn't as good as the old Castlevania standbys, but it's still pretty good, and the Defiler of Taboos Theme could stand together with classics like Vampire Killer, Tragic Prince, or Theme of Simon.
And it's not just Castlevania III that the game draws on for inspiration. The bosses have a final desperation attack just like in Rondo of Blood, and like in Rondo of Blood, avoiding the attack earns an extra life. There are also two soul-stealing portrait minibosses, borrowed from Rondo of Blood, but unlike that game they're paintings of Iga with his trademark cowboy hat. There are eagles carrying frogs, much like the birds carrying fleamen in Castlevania games, and the final area of Nightmare Mode has a simple staircase leading to the final boss with the grossly-swollen full moon in the background. I'm not immune to nostalgia. Every time I recognized a reference, I smiled. The game is good enough that it seemed like a special treat rather than the pandering that a worse game would make it.
Inti loves to put in special extra modes into their games, like the extra playable characters in BMZ and Mighty Gunvolt Burst, and something I didn't realize until after I had beaten the game for the first time is that Curse of the Moon also has multiple modes of play. Nightmare Mode is the most obvious since it automatically shows up, but there are others based on Zangetsu's actions toward his companions. He doesn't have to recruit them; he can kill them or simply ignore them, and either of those profoundly changes the gameplay. Ignoring them obviously makes the game extremely difficult, but killing them grants Zangetsu "Soul Arts" that grant him increased capabilities.
I got a couple levels into a "kill all companions" run, but it's harder than Nightmare and I took a break to write this. There's still some playtime left for me.
This boss represents the comments section.
If I haven't sold you on Curse of the Moon, I'm not sure what else I could say that would do so. It's a perfect tribute to NES era Castlevania without those games' sometimes-punishing difficulty, but with the ability to dial the difficulty up or down according to the player's preference. There's even a Casual mode with unlimited lives, no knockback on damage, and more health drops for people who want to play through but don't have much experience with platformers.
I've been a bit nervous about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for a while now. It's far past the deadline, the art style is that kind of 3D-but-2D aesthetic that I honestly really dislike, and I'm worried it'll be another Mighty No. 9 where the series creator comes back promising a return to glory and it all just ends up as ash. But since the Kickstarter resulted in Curse of the Moon, it's not a total loss no matter what happens with Ritual of the Night. Even if that game is a debacle, I'm still glad I helped get this game made and got to play it.
It is amazing.
”The Sign of Blasphemy That Pierces the Heavens." The English name is "Blasphemy unto Heaven," which is pretty close.
Do you like Castlevania III? Then play this game. That's my capsule summary; go forth and play.
Curse of the Moon has character switching. It has subweapons and alternate paths that require specific characters to get to. It has a jump arc that the characters can't deviate from once they commit to it. It has lanterns that drop items and powerups when destroyed. It has Miriam, the heroine of Ritual of the Knight, who's more mobile and fights with a whip. It has Alfred the alchemist, who is slow and frail but has extraordinarily powerful spells as his subweapons. It has Gebel, a demon-infused monster who can transform into a bat and who attacks with a spread of three bats. If these sound like Trevor Belmont, Sypha
There's no Grant Danasty equivalent, though. Instead, Curse of the Moon stars Zangetsu (斬月, "Cutting Moon, Killing Moon", and playing off of 残月, "Moon visible during the morning"), a samurai from the East who has traveled to Europe searching for a way to break the curse that afflicts him. His basic attack is an iaijutsu strike, and his subweapons are all Shintō-based. He fills the roll of being a slow heavy hitter with a relatively short range, and because of that I often didn't use him much. I preferred Miriam, since her whip's range and her subweapons are much closer to what I'm used to from Castlevania. But whenever Miriam was dead, Zangetsu was my second choice.
As soon as Zangetsu picks up his first companion, it's possible to switch to them at any time and without delay--unlike Castlevania III, there's no shifting animation. Each companion has a separate health bar, and the death of one does not affect the others except that it sends you back to a checkpoint. But once dead, that companion can't be used until all companions are dead, which costs a life and returns you to a checkpoint, usually one further back than the companion death checkpoint.
Good luck, Alfred.
I feel like this sounds better than it works out in practice, or maybe it's just that I'm not as good at platformers as I used to be. Generally I'd play with Miriam or Zangetsu, with Gebel as a kind of buffer health bar when the other two would get low. Alfred I'd only swap to for brief moments to use one of his spells, since they persist between characters. All subweapons do, but while Alfred's fire shield is the most obvious use for this, it's also possible to use Zangetsu's flame powerup, which increases his damage, and then swap to Miriam for her longer range. Generally, what I did was use Alfred's freeze spell and then try to hit bosses with Miriam's axe, since a frozen enemy takes double damage and the axe does more damage than any other subweapon.
I had to change up my tactics in the game's Nightmare Mode, though. After beating the game the first time, Nightmare Mode unlocks, which has all companions unlocked from the very beginning but no Zangetsu. This makes some early stages much easier, since a single death no longer leads to losing a life and it's possible to use Miriam and Gebel to reach areas that were previously off-limits, but it also removes one of the main damage-dealers. The first time through the game I finished with 9 lives and never even came close to having to start a stage over. The only reason I didn't have to continue on Nightmare Mode is because there was a 1-UP before the final boss.
Under the moonlight.
Curse of the Moon was made by Inti Creates, the same studio that made Blaster Master Zero, and I feel like that's especially relevant here because even though this game isn't an update of Castlevania III the same way that BMZ was an update of Blaster Master, they show the same understanding of the original source material and craftsmanship in bringing it forward. Curse of the Moon sticks to the NES palette, or at least as close as makes no odds, and original resolution. The music isn't as good as the old Castlevania standbys, but it's still pretty good, and the Defiler of Taboos Theme could stand together with classics like Vampire Killer, Tragic Prince, or Theme of Simon.
And it's not just Castlevania III that the game draws on for inspiration. The bosses have a final desperation attack just like in Rondo of Blood, and like in Rondo of Blood, avoiding the attack earns an extra life. There are also two soul-stealing portrait minibosses, borrowed from Rondo of Blood, but unlike that game they're paintings of Iga with his trademark cowboy hat. There are eagles carrying frogs, much like the birds carrying fleamen in Castlevania games, and the final area of Nightmare Mode has a simple staircase leading to the final boss with the grossly-swollen full moon in the background. I'm not immune to nostalgia. Every time I recognized a reference, I smiled. The game is good enough that it seemed like a special treat rather than the pandering that a worse game would make it.
Inti loves to put in special extra modes into their games, like the extra playable characters in BMZ and Mighty Gunvolt Burst, and something I didn't realize until after I had beaten the game for the first time is that Curse of the Moon also has multiple modes of play. Nightmare Mode is the most obvious since it automatically shows up, but there are others based on Zangetsu's actions toward his companions. He doesn't have to recruit them; he can kill them or simply ignore them, and either of those profoundly changes the gameplay. Ignoring them obviously makes the game extremely difficult, but killing them grants Zangetsu "Soul Arts" that grant him increased capabilities.
I got a couple levels into a "kill all companions" run, but it's harder than Nightmare and I took a break to write this. There's still some playtime left for me.
This boss represents the comments section.
If I haven't sold you on Curse of the Moon, I'm not sure what else I could say that would do so. It's a perfect tribute to NES era Castlevania without those games' sometimes-punishing difficulty, but with the ability to dial the difficulty up or down according to the player's preference. There's even a Casual mode with unlimited lives, no knockback on damage, and more health drops for people who want to play through but don't have much experience with platformers.
I've been a bit nervous about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for a while now. It's far past the deadline, the art style is that kind of 3D-but-2D aesthetic that I honestly really dislike, and I'm worried it'll be another Mighty No. 9 where the series creator comes back promising a return to glory and it all just ends up as ash. But since the Kickstarter resulted in Curse of the Moon, it's not a total loss no matter what happens with Ritual of the Night. Even if that game is a debacle, I'm still glad I helped get this game made and got to play it.
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(The release date is still just "2018" as far as I know)