I’ve put in dozens of hours into as many Metroidvania games at this point, and whenever I play them I get anxious. Mostly about getting hopelessly lost, failing to circle back for something important, or forgetting the extensive and mostly unspoken rules the genre has developed over its history. After playing Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night, I think I’m starting to properly get the appeal.
If you’re not au fait with decades-old portmanteaus, Metroidvania is derived from smashing together Metroid and Castlevania, the two series that defined this action-adventurey subgenre. If a game’s progression is tied to exploring and backtracking through an interconnected map, and finding new abilities to unlock even more areas to explore and backtrack through, it probably falls into this category.
My enhanced enjoyment of this Metroidvania in particular may have something to do with its development being led by Koji “Iga” Igarashi, a 10-year veteran of the Castlevania series who worked on what many deem it’s greatest entry, Symphony of the Night. At the very least, fans loved his work enough to fork over more than $5.5 million on Kickstarter so Igarashi could make Bloodstained, a spiritual successor.
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