Partridge Senpai's 2019 Beaten Games:Previously:
2016 2017 2018* indicates a repeat
1.
Night Slashers (Switch)
2.
Bye-Bye BOXBOY! (3DS)
3.
GTA4: The Ballad of Gay Tony (Xbox 360)
4.
Katamari Forever (PS3)
5.
Detention (PS4)
6.
Donkey Kong 64 (N64) *
7.
OctoDad: Dadliest Catch (PS4) *
8.
FlintHook (Switch)
9.
God of War (PS4)
10.
God of War HD (PS3)
11.
Tiny Barbarian DX (Switch)
12.
God of War 2 HD (PS3)
13.
Starlink (Switch)
14.
Shin Gundam Musou (PS3)
15.
Battle & Get! Pokemon Typing DS (DS)
16.
Banjo-Kazooie (N64) *
17.
Super Mario 64: Rumble Edition (N64)
18.
Mario Party 3 (N64) *
19.
Paper Mario (N64) *
20.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) *
21.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (GBC) *
22.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GBC) *
23.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC) *
24.
Yoshi's Island (SNES) *
25.
Super Mario World (SNES) *
26.
Super Mario RPG (SFC) *
27.
Kaeru No Tame Ni Kane Wa Naru (GB)
28.
Final Fantasy VI (SFC) *
29.
Final Fantasy IV (SFC) *
30.
Final Fantasy V (SFC)
31.
Final Fantasy III (Famicom)
32.
Mother 2 (SFC) *
33.
Mother 3 (GBA) *
34.
Hebereke (Famicom)
35.
Donkey Kong Country 2 (SFC)
36.
Donkey Kong Country 3 (SFC)
37.
Donkey Kong Country (SFC) *
38.
Wario's Woods (Famicom)
39.
Paper Mario: Color Splash (Wii U)
40.
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (3DS)
41.
Luigi's Mansion (3DS) *
42.
Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)
43.
Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga & Bowser's Minions (3DS)
44.
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story & Bowser Jr's Journey (3DS)
45.
Tomato Adventure (GBA)
46.
Corpse Party (PSP)
47.
Rave Master: Fighting Live (GC)
48.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) *
49.
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)
50.
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA) *
51.
New Super Mario Bros. 2 (3DS)
52.
The Outer Worlds (Xbone)
53.
Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Xbone)
54.
Guacamelee 2 (Xbone)
55.
Steamworld Dig 2 (Xbone)
56.
Yoku's Island Express (Xbone)
57.
Guacamelee (Xbone) *
58.
Blazing Chrome (Xbone)
59.
Minit (Xbone)
60.
Dishonored 2 (Xbone)
61.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Xbone)
62. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Xbone)
Bloodstained is the last of the Metroidvanias on Game Pass I have to play, and I was saving it for last at least in part due to trepidation on my part. The product of a crowdfunding campaign started by "Iga", the guy famous for Konami's Metroid-style Casltevania games and really helping bring that style of game outside of just Nintendo's wheelhouse (especially once Nintendo stopped doing it so much), Bloodstained had quite a legacy to live up to. I knew it was a big deal, but I also didn't wanna be disappointed by letting my hopes for its quality get too high, as I really love a lot of Igarashi's previous games. Bloodstained is a fine game, but far from my favorite Metroidvania of the past few years. It took me 21 hours to beat the game and do all the extra things I felt like doing in it (which was a LOT, I'll admit, but not even close to the full extent of things, which I'll get to later).
For anyone who has played any of the "Igavanias" (those being any of the Metroid-style Casltevania games other than Circle of the Moon), especially the Aira games or Order of Ecclesia, Bloodstained will immediately feel pretty familiar. You're a woman with mysterious powers to absorb the souls of demons and use their powers to fight more demons in a castle that definitely has nothing to do with Dracula. The story is very textbook Igarashi, although it's not the best of stuff he's done. I won't get super into it here as to not spoil anything (for all that's worth), but even for an Igavania story, large elements of it felt a bit contrived to me. I'll admit it takes some moves with its story that I applaud it for, as I didn't see them coming, but it's otherwise just another Igarashi story. For many that is likely a total non-issue, but when games like Hollow Knight, Iconoclasts, and Timespinner are challenging the notion that Metroidvanias are just action games with who-cares stories, I can't let Bloodstained's unimpressive narrative slide in good conscience.
The combat of the game I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I think a lot of the bosses are pretty darn good. The player has a ton of tools at their disposal, as you have your normal weapons, you have activatable spells, you have aimed spells with the right stick and right trigger, AND you have channeled spells by holding right bumper. That's all on top of passive spells you can have equipped as well (and passives who are upgraded to max have their base-level ability active permanently). As you fight enemies in the game, you be able to collect their souls, and each soul falls into one of the above spell categories. You also start out with your back dash and ground slide, so a ton of mobility is available to you right from the start. You can craft new equipment with tons of materials that monsters will drop, as well as upgrade your spells to higher levels to increase their range/effects. Put a normal "kill stuff to get EXP to level up and increase base stats" system on top of that, and you will always be able to grind your way to victory if a boss is giving you trouble.
On that note, I want to take this time to mention the game's cooking system, as I think it's on of the most ingenious elements of its design. I don't know if it's original or not, but I have come to really appreciate it. Like you can find materials for crafting, you can also find them for cooking, and eating a meal will restore health when you're damaged just like a potion will. What cooking ALSO does, however, is give you a specific stat boost each time you eat each meal. This means you can go and farm specific enemies for their item drops to then go and make a food you know will help you in the specific stat area you want. You can do targeted, specific grinding instead of just general stuff, and it's also totally optional. It's a really clever twist on level grinding that the game encourages you to do really well through an NPC you meet really early on who requests all sorts of rare foods, so you're always on the lookout for crafting (and you can buy any meal/item you've crafted from the shop once you've done it once, so you never need to choose whether to do the quest or to boost your stats).
ALL THAT said, on the other hand is how the game plays. I'm probably just used to more quick-paced Metroidvanias, but I always felt it was really awkward just how hard you stop in your tracks whenever you initiate a weapon swing animation or a spell casting animation. You can break that animation by back-stepping or jumping to quickly do your attack again, but because you can do that, the whole massive pause after the weapon swing never really felt like it made sense to me. I found one special weapon off of a monster like 6 or so hours in that let you both swing very quickly at short range but you didn't have to stop to move, and the DPS on it made it an alright option the entire rest of the game. Similarly, I found a directional spell I loved just a few hours in, and it's the only one I used for the rest of the game. While this is kind of a good thing, in that weapons and spells do scale really well with upgrades and stat boosts, so you don't need to move onto new stuff if you don't really want to, it also highlights one of my biggest problems with the game's design: bloat.
A lot of Bloodstained feels there because it can be. The game has 127 monsters and about as many spells (total across all types), but so many of them feel redundant or simply not worth upgrading because you'd need to farm for SO long to get the upgrade stuff for them, when very similarly good spells can be found and upgraded much earlier. It makes the start of the game have this overwhelming element of choice that masks a system that is mostly just huge because it can be. A lot of the weapons fall into that category too of "it's another one of these", which is normal for a game like this, but that is also very true for spells. I spent more than half of this game not even trying out new spells I got because what I had already worked so well. That's a problem both Aria games had as well, don't get me wrong, but it's one that Order of Ecclesia more or less solved by only a few of its many enemies being able to drop a soul. Iga had already made a fantastic game in this style following a "less is more" mentality, and I can't help but ponder if the crowdfunding origins of Bloodstained helped contribute to how this game seems to have so much stuff for no real purpose.
The same goes for the tons of side quests in the game. Now I call them side quests, but they're largely just bounties for items or monsters with the exception of one actual sorta sidequest helping a guy get home after he got lost. They help push you into stuff like item crafting and exploring the world, so they definitely have a point, but most of the time I spent with them is because of the game's REALLY uneven difficulty curve. I wanted something to occupy my time and give me that "you did a thing!" dopamine hit to help boost my levels to get past this most recent boss who was giving me so much trouble. Bloostained has a lot to do, but a lot of it isn't exactly the most satisfying of content to engage with. The voice acting is good (or at least the Japanese I listened to is), but for the parts where characters weren't talking, I usually had a podcast on because I was trying to find the one ingredient I needed to fulfill the next quest. I spent 21 hours in Bloodstained, but if you were just doing the story, you could beat it way faster and I'd honestly recommend you do that.
The presentation of the game is fine. It doesn't look amazing, but it's a pretty 2.5D game with some funny ragdoll physics at times when you kill enemies. Miriam, the main character, has a character design that is kind of like if someone saw Shanoa from Order of Ecclesia and thought she wasn't sexualized nearly enough (it's almost like a parody of that, to be totally honest). But despite having a named main character, once you meet a certain NPC you can change her hair, skin color, primary and secondary colors on her costume, and the accessories and hats you wear as armor even appear on your model. I really wish you had an option to hide those to see the fun hairstyles, but that's just me. I only had podcasts on when I was grinding for stuff, but none of the music was particularly memorable for me.
Lastly, I'm gonna hit upon the biggest problem with this game for me: the performance. I played this on a base-model Xbox One, and the performance was absolutely unacceptable for a game with these graphics. I'd heard the Switch version has some pretty serious issues, but the Xbone's issues cannot go unmentioned. One of the main ones I don't actually think is a hardware thing is hit detection. Especially on certain bosses, it is at times very unclear where your hitbox actually is. This is compounded by the sometimes quite cluttered visual design of the background or boss enemy attacks, and there was more than one boss I had trouble keeping track of where I was during the battle for, especially since some hits make you FLY back into a wall when they hit. The most damning thing is the loading stutters though. As you play, the game will hiccup for like half a second at times. This often isn't a problem, but if you're in the middle of some tricky jumping to avoid some very nasty boss attacks, those will cancel your current jump and send you falling down to take a big pile of damage. I don't mind the soft crashes the game does ever 3 or 4 hours, but those loading stutters were so bad I cannot let the game get away with them, especially when it's been out for almost six months.
Verdict: Recommended. As much as I talk bad about the game, I DID mostly enjoy my time with it. Exploring the castle and finding new loot is fun, but that's the main the game really has going for it and not much else. Numerous people, including myself, pondered prior to the game's release if Bloodstained would feel a bit redundant by the time it came out considering how many other great Metroidvanias have come onto the scene since Bloodstained's Kickstarter campaign, and that worry has come to pass. You should really watch the hardware you play it on, but Bloodstained isn't a bad option if you choose to play it. There's just a lot else out there you'll probably enjoy just as much, if not more so, on more platforms, so it's not super easy to recommend for someone whose gaming time is limited.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me