It's important to note that they are asking something like 40$ for the game without sale. At that price, with people like Igarashi and a multi-millions dollar bugdet, my expectations was very high and because of this, my experience was even more dissapointing.
I finished the game once and explored ~95% of the map.
First thing that struck me was the graphic. I don't want to say that this game is ugly, but it kinda is. Backgrounds looks like something from 2013 indie game, "art direction" is practically nonexistent and "random stuff go" policy is strong in this title (escpecially when we looking at the enemy desings). Some areas looks okayish, but most of them are simply not pleasant for eyes, for sure not for UEngine from 2019. But that's just graphics.
I can't say anything good about plot and lore. It's not even okay, it's just straight up bad and boring - non original, full of cliche and completly skippable. They was not able to make even a single interesing character, just bunch of anime-like archetypes with cartoonishly silly motivations and zero depper personality. As I said, you can skip it all and lose literally nothing.
But the worst thing about Bloodstained is how much of an insult it is to entire Metroidvania genre. You can completely ignore stupid plot and bad graphics, it's bearable, but how bad the metroidvania elements are, is on another level. In the first half of the game they was trying for sure, there is some connections beetween areas and some areas are really well inter-connected (like towers or livre ex machina), but the deeper you go, the worse it is. After accesing Bridge of Evil you just go to one area, kill a bunch of enemies in linear corridors, kill the boss that gives you some important ability and that's the end of the location. Then you go back to another part of the map and repeat it like 5 times just to go to the final area and do this one more time (last ability you get is literally just for one room before final boss and I'm not even exaggerating). All of it with terrible travelsal (escpeccialy for second half). For this reason, you are not able to progress your game in any other way than this designated by authors. There is one optional boss, everything except him need to be done in strict order.
RPG elements and fighting is pretty good, but only bacause it's almost 1:1 mechanics from Aria of Sorrow. They added new abilities and weapons, but after all it's quite clear that they wanted to stay as close to old Castlevanias as possbile. For the itemisation, it is satisfying, you really feel the power on the new weapons and armors. However, it can't be that good. There is one thing connected to this - crafting. Who came up with the idea to add crafting/cooking mechanics to Metroidvania? It's pointless and harming the game, harming the exploration. I found maybe 10 potions throught the entire game and possibly 100+ chests with this garbage. At some point I wasnt even bothering myself with opening chests just because there was like 95% chance of dissapointment.
There is more problems that should be noted - unclear hitboxes on 3D models, lack of variety in enemies, poor level design, main story progress locked behind farming one mob for his ability and finding one random chest (literally) etc.
I can't reccomend this game. There is many good new and old metroidvanias to play that are much more enjoyable and fun to play than this one. I still cant believe that the bugdet of this game was so high considerng how cheap this game feels. If you really want to experience this game then you can buy it for 2$ anywhere, even here on sale, however there is no reason to do this other than appreciate other metroidvanias by playing this one.
