Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.40 Update + DLC

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a Metroidvania-styled video game developed by Japanese indie studio ArtPlay and published by 505 Games. The game’s development was led by former Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi who is considered a spiritual successor to the series. The game was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, in June 2019, for Amazon Luna in October 2020, for Android and iOS in December 2020, and for Stadia in July 2021. Igarashi conceived the game after he departed from Konami in 2014, prompted by numerous fan requests to continue making games in the style of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. He used the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to demonstrate the demand for the game to potential sources of funding for it in 2015. The campaign successfully raised more than $5.5 million from backers, eleven times its original goal, making it one of the most successful video game campaigns on the platform. Ritual of the Night received generally positive reviews upon release, with many describing it as a worthy successor to the Castlevania games that inspired it. Ritual of the Night was the second game to be released in the Bloodstained series; a retro-style companion game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, was developed by Inti Creates as a stretch goal and released earlier in May 2018. It received a sequel, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2, in July 2020. A sequel to Ritual of the Night was announced to be in early development in June 2021.

GAMEPLAY

The game follows the Metroidvania-style gameplay of the post-Symphony of the Night games of the Castlevania series. As Miriam, the player explores a labyrinthine series of rooms presented as a platform game, fighting monsters and bosses and gaining keys or powers that let them explore areas that were previously impossible to reach. Miriam can use various weapons to perform melee or ranged attacks to defeat monsters or special abilities granted by the shards she possesses from monsters to perform magical attacks. Miriam has both a health bar and a magic power bar.

Health is lost to monsters and environmental attacks, and should this drop to zero, the game is over, requiring the player to load the last save state. Health can be restored by using items or finding health drops from monsters or environmental pieces.  Magic power is drained by using shard skills, and if out of mana, the player cannot use shard skills, but mana can be similarly regained as with health. The player gains new weapons, armor, and accessories throughout the game by defeating monsters and looting chests. This equipment provides various attributes to Miriam along with offensive and defensive bonuses. For weapons, this also sets the type of attacks that the player can make.

For example, short swords allow a variety of fast, close-range attacks, spears enable slow but long-reaching attacks, and guns allow for long-distance shots but with no melee possibilities. The equipment can be changed on the fly via menu screens. Shards are obtained by defeating monsters, and generally contain a power reflecting the essence of the monster it came from. The player can only equip a limited number of shards, but like equipment, shards can be swapped out on the fly. The maze of rooms includes save rooms, allowing the player to save their game and fully regenerate Miriam’s health and magic power.

Additionally, warp rooms allow the player to quickly jump from one region of the map to another previously discovered warp room. Following the game’s prelude, the player also gains access to a set of non-playable characters located at the start of the map that provides stores to buy and sell weapons, shards, ingredients, and crafting services to make new weapons or upgrade shards. The game is presented in a 2.5D style, presenting the game in three-dimensional graphics but restricting movement to a 2D system. Igarashi stated the choice for 2.5D was to follow the style of previous Castlevania games, such as The Dracula X Chronicles and Mirror of Fate.

PLOT

Bloodstained takes place in 18th-century England during the Industrial Revolution. Fearing the loss of their influence over their wealthy patrons, the Alchemy Guild researched methods to summon demons and created Shardbinders, humans forcibly fused with demonically charged crystals that attuned them to their powers. These Shardbinders were sacrificed by the Guild to summon demons from Hell in what was meant to be a scare tactic but instead brought uncontrollable destruction that wiped out the Guild and much of England until the Church was able to banish them. Of the sacrificed Shardbinders, only one named Gebel survived. Another Shardbinder, the main protagonist Miriam, is spared due to falling into an unnatural slumber before she can be sacrificed.

Ten years later, in the game’s present day, Miriam has awakened from her slumber and has learned that Gebel has summoned the demons to destroy England as he seeks revenge on the surviving alchemists for what they did to him. Accompanied by Johannes, a former member of the Alchemy Guild, they sail across the ocean to Arvantville, a destroyed village on the outskirts of Gebel’s castle, the Hellhold. They meet with Johannes’s friend Dominique, an exorcist who helped Johannes care for Miriam during her slumber and has been sent by the Church to help them stop Gebel. As Miriam begins her journey into the Hellhold, she confronts Alfred, a surviving member of the Alchemy Guild and the former mentor to Johannes.

Alfred seeks to recover an ancient book used in the demon summoning by Gebel, the Liber Logaeth, and threatens to kill Miriam if she does not leave. As his former student, Johannes deeply distrusts Alfred’s motives and fears he may be making another mistake, partially feeling responsible for the actions that Alfred and the other alchemists took in harming Gebel, Miriam, and the other Shardbinders. She also crosses paths multiple times with Zangetsu, a demon hunter from Japan who initially distrusts Miriam due to her Shardbinder powers having ties to demons, but over time begins to respect her strength. Zangetsu explains that he is seeking a demon named Gremory, who is continuously eluding him for fear of his power. He gives Miriam his katana thinking that Gremory will not expect her to be wielding it and drop her guard.

Miriam confronts Gebel in the Hellhold’s throne room, and she attempts to reason with him by reminding him that during the trauma of her transformation into a Shardbinder, he was the one who taught her to never give up on her humanity. Though he briefly seems moved by her words, Gebel remains defiant, and the two Shardbinders fight. Should Gebel be killed, he will thank Miriam for stopping him, but the game will immediately end as Miriam wonders if she made the right choice. Using Zangetsu’s katana, Miriam instead exposes Gremory’s hiding place in the throne room and she escapes. Freed from the demon’s control, Gebel is only able to give Miriam his final apologies before the crystals in his body consume him completely.

Alfred then arrives to steal the Liber Logaeth from them and flees. Miriam chases Gremory and Alfred through a dimensional portal into another part of the castle. Inside, she finds Alfred mortally wounded and the Liber Logaeth gone. As he dies, he explains that he was trying to use the Liber Logaeth as part of a spell he had cast throughout the Hellhold to destroy it. He also reveals that he was the one who put Miriam in her slumber ten years ago to sabotage the Guild’s summoning, knowing her power as a Shardbinder was so immense that it would have brought even worse destruction than what was summoned had she been sacrificed.

Reuniting with Zangetsu, Miriam tracks down Gremory. Zangetsu uses his power to bind the demon in place, but he is seemingly killed in the process and so Miriam defeats Gremory alone. She then locates the Liber Logaeth and the one who stole it: Dominique. Craving the power to defy and destroy God for letting everybody die during the demon summoning ten years ago, Dominique reveals that she has turned herself into a Shardbinder through extensive study of Miriam and Gebel, and uses the Liber Logaeth to summon Bael, the king of demons. Miriam banishes Dominique and Bael, and Johannes uses the Liber Logaeth to complete Alfred’s spell and destroy the Hellhold.

As peace returns to the land, Miriam mourns the sacrifices made for her victory and wonders if the world will ever truly be free of the demons. Johannes consoles Miriam by revealing that with the Liber Logaeth, he may have the means to permanently stop the crystals from consuming her body. Miriam and Johannes leave Arvantville while an unseen person’s shadow steps into view revealed to be Zangetsu, who survived the events of the story after managing to escape Hell. He retrieves his sword, Zangetsuto, after watching the pair walk away.