I Need
You
To Rescue My
Daughter
The Dark
Lord…
Kidnapped
Her
And
Imprisioned
Her
…
In the the
The swamp
To the east
Of
The castle
…
Make Sure
to
Visit my
Advisior
in
The
Next Room…
He Has
Important
Information
To Give
To
You
…
Now
Go Hero
Rescue
My Daughter
From The
Dark Lord
…
The
Kingdom
Needs You
…
Hero
…
so many people these days just want to make zzt games without knowing it imo
to me at this point the generic cartoon girl aesthetic is way more of a video game thing than an animation thing
of course, there is probably a huge catalog of anime full of this crap that i just don’t know about, but yeah there is enough variety in art styles in anime these days that it doesn’t really seem like that accurate an own
feel really great about SB that was literally the first thing that was observed about this here. we still got it baby
I don’t really care about the crossovers but if it means Bloodstained gets new content and support, I’m more than happy to see it
What? I might buy it even though I played it on game pass becuse What?
they might have hooked me with this, it being the content that i crave
aren’t they supposed to be working on a sequel? seems weird that they’d still be putting out side content like this. it looks neat though.
What a rad NES Igavania-style game
Speaking of Bloodstained, I played the Aurora (Child of Light character) free DLC on Switch and I was having a rough time bc her moves are so tough to use.
Then I bought Bloodstained on PC since it was on sale and just replayed a bunch of it with Randomizer on and with everything set to max chaos and it was so much fun. I own Bloodstained on PC, PS4, Switch now oops.
I really think Bloodstained would be better if:
had a draft here from over a year ago that i forgot to finish, sorry! i hope the discourse is still relevant
i’m similarly cold on Super Metroid, and SotN didn’t make me feel much at first – however something really clicked around the point of discovering the Outer Wall and Long Library, and i spent a while in some sort of a flow state for the next few area reveals (Caverns, Chapel, the hidden upstairs passage above the central clock room) feeling overwhelmed by the game’s sense of place and character
it’s still more of a blur than i’d like and i wish i could pin it down to specifics, but one way to phrase the appeal would be that it wasn’t like one cohesive vision for a game, but a whole lot of diverting bits and pieces that reminded me of, or suggested ideas for, other games building on similar concepts. for instance there’s the one projectile sub-weapon that launches in a diagonal line and reflects off walls. it feels like the mechanical potential of that is both chaotic and subtle enough that you could design a whole game around it alone. other parts throw me back to pace and flow of a scrolling arcade game, like the reward potion which materialises after defeating bosses, seeming to communicate “great job, now get a move on”.
you might step into a room and a snake head bursts out of the wall, writhing and flailing like something out of Contra: Hard Corps, and then it turns out that this is a component of a larger boss you fight in another room, suggesting there can be continuity beyond the boundaries of one screen. the Doppelgänger fight imparts the sense that the castle somehow knows more about you (Alucard) than you know about it. same goes for characters (Librarian, Oarsman) of uncertain allegiance who live in the castle but help Alucard out.
i really appreciate, and find rare in media, the sensation of dropping into a larger story partway through, which is fully intent on pressing on whether you’re with it or not, never turning around to wink or lower itself to your level. it’s all very wrapped up in its own mythology, speaking a language only it really understands.
there was also a persisting sense after you found one new type of secret, that similar things could be around the corner anywhere. it’s so overflowing you even trip over stuff unintentionally. the input method for spells is bizarre and esoteric and i would often discover i’d picked one up by accidentally casting it. i just went to a video while writing this and found out about an invisible elevator behind a destructible wall that activates just by standing in place. what the fuck
there’s a finite number of these things and they may ultimately be shallow parlour tricks but the game has a way of turning my mind into soup and unfolding the castle’s passages out in endless directions
no, i still haven’t played Bloodstained
Yes!! That’s one of the key appeals of SOTN. That sense of wonder does go away when you play later games and the levels become a bit more straightforward/barren because of the limited budget of the GBA/DS games.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about Bloodstained if you ever play it. At worst, it’ll just feel like a retread in a different skin, which is still pretty neat.
bloodstained has secrets outside of breakable walls?
Yeah but they’re all mostly stuff that was done before in SOTN
btw we added a toned down english voice track for all the haters 
is it the same release date on alll systems? also is there a physical release on ps4?
yep, day 1 on all platforms. no announcements yet for physicals