Part of the reason I started digging through the various titles available on Game Pass was to fill in some gaps and catch up on games that I missed out on for one reason or another. Speaking of gaps, I’ve never played a Castlevania game for more than a few minutes. Even Castlevania: Symphony of the Night—the definitive metroidvania by most standards—never crossed my path despite being on the original Playstation, which remains my favorite console of all time. I intend to remedy that at some point. In the meantime, I began playing its spiritual successor, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and I have to say that I quite like it. The visuals aren’t great (the Xbox One version looks like it’s running at 900p or possibly even lower, and many areas are blandly lit) and the backtracking is pretty intense even for a metroidvania, but it says something that I want to keep playing.

That’s not even the full list of technical issues. There’s tons of slowdown, I’ve experienced 4 different crashes, going into water sometimes results in being unable to jump out of it until you let something attack you (39:29), and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night outright eats my inputs when things get chaotic.

Despite all of those issues, I’d still rather continue playing this game than any of the others I’ve started and quickly abandoned on Game Pass. I fully recognize that the past couple of days have consisted of little more than sniping at subpar games, but I’ve been giving them all a fair shot; only Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has been designed to keep me wanting more. Part of that is the way characters keep up as you reach new areas to make the journey less lonely than other such games. I’m also a big fan of how many weapons and armors you obtain, which adds strategy to boss fights.

It’s refreshing playing a metroidvania like this after the mess that was Cathedral. Attacking walls for secrets makes sense here and isn’t an imposition because you have options (in my case, a sword that shoots out and up before returning, testing a large part of each wall in a single attack). Enemies are dangerous, but their attacks are easily readable and you can tank a decent number of their hits before you’re in trouble. Most importantly, the map is designed in a way that makes sense, and the rewards for exploration are profound—often a new weapon that feels totally different than the one you’re using, or a piece of equipment that benefits something else you have lying around. I may not “get” all of the references to Symphony of the Night (which I’ve read exist), but Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is perfectly enjoyable on its own. I plan to finish it.

I like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – Game Pass, part 4 first appeared on Killa Penguin