As per title, how is it for you?
I don't think I meet requirements for the game/trying to limit buying. So i wanted to know how it was.

From some streams I've watched, it looks pretty fun. I just wish it was 2d, but that's just me.

It's alright. I find it quite unballanced, but it's fun to finally play a quality Metroidvania. I hate most characters and I find the music Lackluster (considering the people involved and the age they are composing in within the budget), but other than that, pretty solid.

But let me tell you, It ain't no SotN...

It's a solid game with some flaws, at least so far (played it a couple of hours). Some times, it drops frames for a few seconds, seemingly for no reason. It doesn't happen all the time, but it still happens too often (especially considering it doesn't have high-end graphics). I don't know how common this problem is. The art direction does a good job, so it looks good, despite being a small-medium budget game, and most animations look good too (although the floating animation in the water is pretty bad). Some of the flashier attack animations can cause you troubles, hiding less visible projectiles, but it's really rare.

The gameplay is nice, it does have some interesting powers, but some of the shards are really strong, while others are really weak. I didn't unlock any "movement boosts" so far, so it feels a bit slow, but I assume there will be ways to navigate the areas more nimbly in the future. The game has secret techniques (kind of like secret moves in fighting games), lots of items, different weapons, etc, and the level design seems alright so far, but I think it could have been a bit better. The overall layout is good, but some of the platforms/enemy placement could have been more thoughtful. There are maybe too many "one way" falls at the moment, which can force you to backtrack a bit.

I think characters and writing are fine for this type of game as well. Nothing too deep or impressive, but they help frame the events nicely.

Honestly, my only real complaint is that I have yet to unlock something like a double jump or a dash or temporary flying or whatever, as it feels a bit slow at times, especially when you have already seen a certain area (there is a secret attack that allows you to kind of dash mid-air, but it consumes too much mana, so it's mostly to reach some items earlier, right now).

I have played for a couple hours so far and I feel like I am enjoying it.

Liking it a lot so far. Though it's not without its fair share of flaws. Namely:

* The shards are horribly unbalanced, and the weapon types aren't balanced well either. That's not to say you can't enjoy a fair few of them, but it's very hit&miss, some are just rubbish. But upgrade Summon Bat early to 4/5 and it takes a long long time until you need any other red shard. As an example.
* Movement is slow with no running option.
* Animations are kinda weird. For example the Flying Edge has 0 attack animation unless you're standing still, and even in that case it just recycles the one of a normal 1H sword despite you throwing it towards the enemy.
* Armor not showing is a huge missed opportunity.
* Some areas like the wet ship or the underground areas look meh.
* One voiceover in particular - the kill quest lady - is horrible in both languages.

On the positive side some areas are quite gorgeous, the soundtrack is amazing, there's tons of loot flying around which feels nice and the voiceovers are surprisingly good for a Castlevania. Also the special attacks are a neat idea, even if most are way undertuned.

Addendum: And there's the bugs.

Fun one I got: Those purple diamonds marking NPCs? The first time I ran into Benjamin, after helping him, his diamond never got removed. Ever since then no further NPCs like the hairdresser, the librarian or further Benjamins produce any diamonds. Super annoying as far as legibility of the map goes :(

I like it pretty well. It's not incredible or anything and I'm talking more about the gameplay, neither was SotN, neither of these games really excel at being fluid, which is the only big gripe I've got with them specifically. Although, SotN was a lot closer, this one feels a little bit rigid at times with its controls, not a lot, but enough to be noticeable.

One thing this game could do a lot better, is have a quicker refresh on hitting the ground. I don't think I'm the only one who noticed a bit of an animation delay on the landing.

Another, is the speed of the combat, not a fan of it and the enemies moving faster than me are a major piss off factor, I would really have liked if movement was faster instead of the brisk-walking pace I have. Maybe there is an upgrade later on doing exactly that, but I'm already fighting these annoying enemies right now, like the Flying huge dress whores, I hate those ones..

Next, I like some of the fast weapons, but I think like in SotN, they dominate if they hit more frequently, still, maybe it comes with the territory, or maybe 2h, slow as heck weapons need some more damage to justify the amount of danger that comes from being locked in those long animations? I noticed there was a way to break mid-attack with dodge.

Last thing to note. Magic. This is pretty cool. Double magic, giant tentacles summon, grinder sword, love that one, although, that last one might be just a bit too powerful.

Let's see... I'm nearly done with the game, got all 3 endings now. Working on 100%ing it. This is coming from the perspective of a player who SotN on PSX when it was new, as well as the follow on Castlevania titles on GBA/DS. I'm also now a game developer myself.

So, at first it feels a little...well, little. The main character is, by pixels, HUGE when you compare her to Alucard in SotN. This has the side effect of making rooms feel smaller/cramped by comparison. This also means fewer details on the screen at once, as well as fewer visible enemies. I'm not sure how anyone could fix this after the fact, but being able to zoom out to see more of the castle on the screen at once wouldn't be bad. Maybe as an adv option. It'd take an hour or so for a dev to add the option, then 24-48ish hrs for QA to go over it. Not sure the cost in time spent would be worth it though.

I loved Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, but their weakness is still Bloodstained's weakness....the souls/shards. There are _SO MANY_ of them, especially the bullet and directional ones, and once you have one 9/9, there's little reason to change it. I used Flame Cannon from the VERY beginning and 9/9ed it the moment I got to town the first time. Never even tried another red shard. That said, I'll probably be 9/9ing them all today and testing each one. Maybe do a Youtube vid review of them all. *daunted* Solution? Red shard effects need to each be functionally unique, so instead of "one size fits all", you think of them more like a Swiss army knife. Right tool for the right job. The directional shards address this a little, with some of the tool-like directionals, like the underwater jet and the beam ray you can ride on. One way this could have been better is wider use of resistances and even absorption of elements by enemies. When I realized I was going into the volcano area, I stopped and went and powered up my ice/water shards. Didn't need to at all, my Flame Cannon 9/9 tore through everything there just fine. Extremely missed opportunity. All that said, I dearly love that passives can become skill shards and stay on all the time if you max them out. I'm still not sure that the familiars needed to be shards. I'd have been content if I'd run across them like you do the barber and they have a short conversation with you and then join your cause...or better, have to convince them of your cause through dialogue choices...at the very least.

Weapons. Ok, so this is going to be a bit of a rant in that this could have been a LOT BETTER. Why just throw a lot of weapons at us? Sure, I like choice and selection, but once I realized that I was going to end up with a katana for the sake of the story, I ignored all other weapon types to boost that passive shard and techniques. Again, make heavier use of the resistances/immunities in the enemies. I'm not sure if there were, as I used mostly magic all the time (another problem with weapons, they couldn't compete with good spells...), but being forced to change up your routine to deal with different enemies or bosses would be much more engaging. I'd have made weapon types build on themselves as you used them. Like Sword Proficiency 0-100%, and have it level up on a diminishing returns curve relative to the weapon you're currently using until you replace your weapon to the next "higher version", at which point your proficiency returns to leveling up quickly again. At some point, a weapon like a short sword or knife would cease to level up their respective proficiencies. This whole system could handily replace the "Techniques masteries" feature, which was so irrelevant I never even bothered to try any until i'd already finished the game. They look cool, and the ones in SotN I liked, but that's because there were only a couple of sequences that worked for all weapons. I'm already hard pressed to care about physical weapons beyond being a stat stick. Also, in SotN, many weapons had _really freaking cool_ effects when you used the special move combo for them. Shield rod. Osafune. Alucard's Sword. I could go on. There's no such thing here. At all. Just some extended reach effects or motions. You really missed the boat here, Iga. Sorry. :(

Armour, including helms and the like...is good. I dearly loved the nod to the SotN Axe Knight armor easter egg with the Shovel Knight armor. I'd have liked to see more of the armor change Miriam's appearance and not just the helms or the Valkyrie set (Which DOES change everything, but is uncolourable. :( ). I'd have liked to see a greater range of elemental resistances and armours for them, as well as a need for them, but this is OK too. Spells and weapons are expected to be changed out frequently, often mid-battle. Armour, is not.

Accessories. I love them! I just wish for more, and to greater effect. If I put on a DEMON'S bunny ears, I better turn into a spellcasting bunny with a sword...and a higher base jump height.

Farming could have done a lot more than just 3 crops. Also some foods could have had some temporary buff effects other than just the permanent passive boost. Radish soup anyone? How about fresh shiitake mushroom soup? Simple Sandwiches?

Story was good...enough. It's simple, engaging, and does the job to give the player a reason for being there.

The quests though...UGH. I wanted to murder the lady that wanted to eat like a glutton while people were dying and all manner of horrors were just meters away overhead. Why couldn't she be used instead to request various crafting materials to "make mementos for lost loved ones"? And yes, the person doing that was messed up for two reasons. First she was asking for a whole variety of crap..some of it was really expensive too. Second, why not have you find and retrieve the bodies for burial instead? No need to make it graphic, have them be already sewn up in a burlap sack (Who did that for them? No idea. Does it matter?) that you have to find and carry back, unable to use weapons, directional spells, and some items while doing so. Also the guy that's lost? I liked the idea, searched for him intensely when he kept failing to show up back in town, but when he finally did...he does NOTHING!? Ugh...

Then there's the "KILL THEM DEAD!!" lady. Yes, she gets her own paragraph. Holy crap, could you have at least used a few alternate sayings for her? She's the meme generator of Bloodstained. A boss giving you trouble? KILL THEM DEAD!! Can't get a certain item to drop in an area? KILL THEM DEAD!! Medusa heads (I know they're called something else here, but they ARE medusa heads) bothering you? KILL THEM DEAD!! Other than the obvious writing/voice acting problem, why not tie her to the NPC doing the above-suggested corpse retrieval quests where she examines the bodies you bring back, determines what killed them, and THEN sends you to KILL THEM DEAD!! one at a time instead of unlocking a laundry list every time you finish the last one?
UI issues:
The Map. Why can't I choose the color for selected rooms? Why do I not have a range of marker icons to use to mark things? Why aren't there certain built in filters, like color code rooms by area? Why can't I make notes as to where monsters or items were found? Also, having to press the map button again to CLOSE the map doesn't make sense in practice. The cancel/B button should close anything, including the map. I spent HOURS trying to figure out how to get to that glowing glyph mark on the map that I hadn't seen earlier. It was only by accidentally placing another one of these "markers" that I realized what they were. Why are they set to the default cancel/B button in the first place?

The Alchemist. Craft and dismantle should be in the same menu UI, and set to different buttons with the dismantle option triggering a confirmation box "Are you sure you want to dismantle <item>?". There are some bugs here, specifically where it looks like you can still craft a thing (usually shards) but you're already at 9/9 and you just have enough materials to make more. Better checks are needed in the UI here.

The Shop. Not much trouble here, but could have been all merged into a single UI for sales and purchasing, using alternate buttons...with confirmation dialogues. I think the only major design complaint I'd have is that looted materials are never sold in the store, in spite of being able to buy items made with those materials and then dismantling them just to avoid having to go farm more of them. I don't see the reason to need a money sink in a singleplayer game. This is unnecessary complexity. Just stock materials if the player has used them to build/cook anything with them.

NOTE: Huh, I had more to say, but it seems GOG cut me off, and keeps trying to append any further posts to my last post. Very weird forum behavior. Someone please post anything so I can post the rest. :P

I basically stoped using weapons altogether once i got the mana regen boosts I just spammed the dagger and arrow shards all game long.
I'm starting again in hard mode to see if it's any better but as many stated the enemy resistances are weak.
It also doesn't helt that switching weapons or shards takes too long. I wish the radial selection shard would allow for a quick weapon/shard selection among the favorites.

Thanks, The Slider! :D

I really liked the monsters. good variety, some were reused for different varieties of the same "species". Expected and appreciated. I REALLY liked monster #44 and the bugs that wouldn't appear without there being a certain environmental effect in place. I wish there were more such environmental effects taken into account for more enemies, or have such things affect their behavior. Ooo...or better yet, bullet/directional magics that do things like fire sludge balls that glue enemies to the floor, or oil that you spray on them and the environment to set alight.

As for the Kickstarter content, I liked the "backer rooms". The Celeste room still has my attention...I expect it's a red herring, but I'll be testing it thoroughly before giving up. :) The paintings are a nice touch, in spite of some players complaints. I think they work fine. I kinda feel bad for the Millionaire Room backer though, he should have gotten a lot more for a $1 million backing than a room with a <insert the monster here> in it. I'd have given him an entire casino zone of the castle.

The IGA DLC was...much simpler than I expected. A quest. A boss. A shard. A weapon. I was hoping for a Dracula-esque dialogue with a side impact to the story, ending with Iga tossing the glass (that he loves to toss in his kickstarter videos) proceeding the actual fight. Visually the fight is beautiful, but there's not enough room to really give Iga justice. You needed a wider battlespace. I'd have liked defeating Iga to have, again, a side impact to the story as well. Even if it's just a comment in a dialogue like <insert end boss's name here> saying "You've already defeated HIM!?!" <shocked facial closeup> and skipping most of the original dialogue to summon <thing> faster in a panic. As for the Shard...NG+ is the only way to 9/9 the shard, so it's not a big deal that only one drops per game. The weapon, however, has no way to "grow", and is already junk by the time you can defeat Iga to get it. Also, why a quest? I'd have preferred this to have been a total secret as to where or what it was, only finding it by accident. Lastly, I want a way to mod the game so I can drop in my MP3 of Dance of Illusions to replace the music for this fight. :)

The spiral effect of the towers and how it was worked into hiding secrets was very clever and unexpected. The train is genius, It'd have been cool to have changed after the story element passed when you defeat the boss to having a ghostly staff that walks along checking tickets and offering snacks off the trolley. The giant-sized area and monsters feels like you were running out of ideas here. It's interesting, but something like the Chaos Realm from Aria of Sorrow would be been better I think. The "clocktower" elements of the spiral towers weren't annoying enough. There was a distinct lack of spikes, medusa heads, petrification, gear rotation puzzles, and disintegrating floors. I was actually able to get through there in a reasonable amount of effort. xD There were a lot of chairs around the castle to sit in. It'd have been nice to have at least an achievement for having sat in them all.

Lastly, Invert. Ok, I get it. The Inverted Castle from SotN would have been a huge amount of work to get into the game. While Invert opened a few areas and reached some treasures, I'd have liked to see it more widely integrated into gameplay. The monster that can Invert itself was really cool. It only seems to do it when I invert myself too, so it's unexpected. Monsters that you can only fight (or best fight) while inverted would have gone a long way to making me happier with this.

Wow, you're still reading? Ok, awesome! Thanks for taking the time to read everything over. I honestly hope Iga runs across this and takes a read, but if not, well, I'll probably see him at GDC next year anyway. Lastly, please remember that this is a PlayStation black disc. Cut #1 contains computer data, so please don't play it. But you probably won't listen to me anyway, will you? ;)

I love it so far. (Map 10%).
I think it is the most SotN metroidvania game I've ever played. And I have played a lot of castlevanias.
Haven't had bugs till now.

I'm almost through the game (99,80 %) and at the moment I'm hunting down the last missed secrets, enemies and shards before engaging the final boss. The game is quite fun but some design decisions just make me wonder. I almost never used any weapon besides this flying sword (Flying Edge in English, I think) and it's upgraded version. These two weapons don't deal as much damage as most others, but they give you a very good range to stay out of the reach of your enemies. Plus you become very agile, as most other weapons prevent you from moving while you hit your enemies. The fact that you can hit multiple times with one attack evens out the disadvantage of the lower damage, this is even more valid for the upgraded version as it allows you to throw 2 swords at a time.

Same goes for the shards. There is a vast amount of them but you will never use most of them, because you don't have to. The game requires you to have and use some of the utility shards to get through certain passages, that's it. Enemies seem to have weaknesses and strenghts against certain elements or types of damage, but it is not really noticeable. I hardly use any magic for normal enemies at all and even the bosses mostly fell without the use of shards.

Later in the game (means: near the end) you can get a boost ability that let's you rush at a really high speed. I wish this would have been available much earlier. It is such much fun to boost through the stages and even is fun to use in combat for hit and run maneuvers. The developers also missed the chance to utilize it for jumping riddles or to reach hidden areas, maybe even in combination with a wall jump ability.

To come to an end: The game is fun, but it could have been much better. There are a lot of missed opportunities and (at least on normal) it is not very hard. Don't know if I'll replay it later once I finished it.

I gotta love Japanese voice. The different weapon styles and motion patterns... The special abilities... Although, for some reason, it seems to be something like "fluid" and lacking polishing a bit of sorts, these mechanisms feel great to toy with! The optimization on pc, is also feeling great! Even my potato can run it FLAWLESSLY on max/cinematic settings, despite the alpha demo lagging terribly and being sh_t, back then.

I like the design, the artwork, the enemy lore/concept and the girl protagonist. That blue clothing style, that pitched voice, those eyes, that bold idealism and unbudged determination... If only she had been a blonde as well, i... :'( No, nevermind, something got stuck in my eye again, damn.

Great. I don't know yet if it's at masterpiece level, like its predecessor, but for me and my tastes, it's easily GOTY rank. Especially when it is going to be complete and the rest of the features arrive. My only gripe, is the soundtrack being delayed; to me, it was the single most important thing out of this project and i strongly desired to get it first.

You can change her hair style and color in the game, and it changes everywhere including in the menu. My Miriam was a green-eyed redhead throughout the game. :P