Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Retrospective

please instead watch the remastered version of this video, which can be found here:    • The Metroidvania Castlevania Retrospective   0:00 how bloodstained got here 5:54 what it is 8:32 castlevania map stats 9:18 more to come 11:43 future research bonus:    • 53 minutes of cool stuff in Bloodstained R...   image at 11:46:   / 1649102490330185746   bonus for music fans: this great cover of the track "lost garden" by shnabubula: https://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/track... I have not made any part of this series about the Lore or stories in these games, but since some people are really drawn to that part of games, I thought that there’s no better time than now to start. Finally free of being forced to write stories in the mess of a universe that is Castlevania, with its gothic-horror set dressing peppered with the goofiest stuff imaginable, Bloodstained takes this opportunity to mostly do the same thing all over again, with only a few key changes. The power of the holy is swapped out for fantasy alchemy, but the Church is still there. The best part of the actual Bloodstained lore is that since the demon castle and its demons were summoned using the power of the alchemy guild, parts of the castle and some of the demons within are created by the alchemy guild that was supposed to be good, and not just demons from hellish chaos, birthed from the darkness within the hearts of men. That’s fun. Especially with the hint from Johannes that you get early in the game about the existence of the giant zone in the castle. Iga is very good at coming up with the scenarios for games. Symphony of the Night is seen as one of the best stories told in the Castlevania series, which you’d know even if you only saw the Netflix show, as about half of the story content there comes from bits and pieces from Symphony of the Night, even though Castlevania 3 is what the first seasons actually portray. Circle is very basic in its storytelling, having only 6 speaking characters. And although Iga didn’t like Circle, he liked the concept of Nathan and Hugh’s rivalry enough to remake it himself with Juste and Maxim in Harmony of Dissonance. The story of the first Castlevania includes that the 2nd form of Dracula is not actually Dracula at all. After Simon defeats Dracula in Castlevania 1, the demon that appears is supposed to be the force of chaos itself, the force that created the demon castle. Rondo of Blood sort of retcons this. Iga was forced to run with that both in Symphony, and games moving forward, like Portrait of Ruin. This left the opportunity open, though, to reintroduce the chaos concept as the heart of the demon castle, with Aria of Sorrow. No comment on Dawn of Sorrow’s story, it’s just very silly and has no interesting facets. Portrait of Ruin’s story is good for what it is, I think it does justice to the theme of family while also being the most over-the-top anime of them all. Order of Ecclesia definitely has the coolest story told in the Castlevania series though. It’s got a sort of Wonder Woman-ness to it. Ritual is interesting. In building the new franchise, Iga spent a lot of effort making the game's setting reasonable in a way that Castlevania could never achieve. In an interview with shmuplations, found here: https://shmuplations.com/bloodstained/ Iga explains that with thorough research, he decided on the time and place for Bloodstained’s story based on a volcanic eruption event that devastated most of Europe, but that curiously, in England, there are no surviving records of tales of the event. You have to admire his dedication to making his game scenarios Feel Right. With the setting ready, all that was left was setting up the Belmont power equivalent, which are the Shardbinders, and filling the demon castle with a bestiary of enemies to whack. The enemies pulling mostly from the 72 demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon makes perfect sense, as Castlevania already took some of its enemy demons from there. One of the most unfortunate parts of Castlevania lore is that 3 different games all include information on an event in the Castlevania timeline as ripe as possible for its own game, but Iga never got the chance to make that game. Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, and Portrait of Ruin all build up a demon castle war, also called the battle of 1999, where Julius Belmont, at the age of 18, helps Alucard and the Church permanently kill Dracula and seal away Castlevania in a solar eclipse (until the events of Aria). For now, it looks like an official game about this event will not be made. In a Q&A during the Bloodstained kickstarter campaign, (Ask IGA #5), he explained that he does have plans for that part of the Castlevania story, but that unfortunately, it’s completely out of his hands now. If it comes down to it, enough time passes, and the battle of 1999 game becomes an impossibility, maybe eventually someone can convince him to leak his notes, like what happened with Half-Life 3’s story.