Press B 217: Back to Bloodstained in 2024

[00:00:00] Gentlemen, you know why we're starting late? I was hurrying up to make dinner and I sliced my finger open. And now my clothing is all bloodstained. I'm never going to get it out today on Hey, everybody, welcome to another Press B To Cancel, your favorite podcast that's

[00:00:40] talking about bleeding. Are we talking Ertri Smaar? Are we going to talk Elden Ring and Bloodbuild? Sure. No, we have we have beaten that tree. Well, like a no, we haven't. Jake and I are going to review it later.

[00:00:56] Oh, dear Lord, we can't do a fourth of an Elden Ring. Charred, what are you nuts? We can't do that. This one is the greatest game. For those that didn't get from the intro or the title that's on our live stream or

[00:01:10] whatever, we're talking bloodstained Symphony of the Night. Ritual of the Night. Ritual of the Night. Thank you. It's ROTN, not SOTN. Don't sue us. Don't sue us. We're talking bloodstained a game that I've started and stopped.

[00:01:27] It might be a good candidate for a Sisyphean for me because I've probably started and stopped this game six times. We're talking about that today. I'm not alone though. I'm joined by three of my favorite people. Well, two. And Charred. Charred, how are you? Better now.

[00:01:46] Now that that's all out on the table. I hate it here. What's transparency is important on our team, right? I see that, yes. I'm joined by two of my favorite people and Wolf, how are you today? Ah, so good. Unbelievable. You have no idea. Awesome.

[00:02:04] And I'm joined by two more of my favorite people and Jake. Jake, how are you today? See, the important thing is to use some like was that tied stain remover pen? Oh, yeah. You can get that costume. Over there. Over there. Over there. Over there. That's positive.

[00:02:19] But don't eat the pods. No, don't eat the pods. Yeah. I mean, unless you want to, I'm not going to stop you. You're so committed about that. Charred, you look like you got that. Yes. A little bit. I, yeah. Anyway.

[00:02:34] So as I said, I've started and stopped this game. This game, as far as I understand it, is kind of a spiritual successor to the miss, the misnamed game. Like I referenced a moment ago, Castlevania Symphony of the Night. This was also a Kickstarter.

[00:02:49] If I'm, if I'm correctly remembering who wants to talk history on this? I'm going to ask a question so that someone can talk the history about it because I want to make sure that I'm right. But didn't the team that did the Symphony of the Night or

[00:03:05] at least like the lead person that created Symphony of the Night was involved, if not totally involved in this project? Yes. So I can answer that. Whatever his name is. Koji Igarashi. Yeah, that's it. Ega. And he is kind of considered the godfather of the

[00:03:25] Metroidvania Castlevania because I think he took over with Symphony of the Night. Then they call it an Ichivania. Isn't that like? Egavania. Or the term. Egavania. Egavania. Right. Yeah. Instead of just a Metroid at Egavania. Yeah. Right.

[00:03:37] So he is, I mean, he's the one who applied that mechanical system to Castlevania in the first place. I believe Symphony of the Night was the first Castlevania he got to helm. I think it's one of his earliest games as well.

[00:03:54] He was a young developer when he was doing Symphony of the Night. Like he was not that experienced. He took, he took Castlevania to a whole new level. Whole new level. Yeah. Anyways. Who wants to, who wants to kind of lay this out?

[00:04:06] Tell me about Symphony of the Night because I also have started and stopped that game a lot. Really? You didn't play, you didn't finish the night? I batched that thing. That thing that I love that game. Essentially what Symphony of the Night did was take

[00:04:22] Castlevania and apply the super Metroid sensibilities to it. The mini map system, the hidden things everywhere, secrets, multiple bosses. Wall troops? Exploring at your own. What's that? Wall food? No, that's Castlevania sensibility. That's Castlevania. But yeah, it was that's basically what it was is it

[00:04:45] it applied all the stuff you expected from super Metroid to Castlevania but gave it a little bit of an RPG funk instead of the action RPG funk where it's just like here's your, you know, you get another block of health, another block of health, another block of health

[00:05:01] or, you know, X amount of power ups. Instead it was you had an equipment system and HP and magic system and all that. And so you had to manage your resources and things like that. You can grind too.

[00:05:13] You can level up in that one if I'm not mistaken. There was actually an XP system to increase strength. Yes. You couldn't you couldn't distribute it. I think it was just like a blanket, you know, upgrade or whatever that you get. Right.

[00:05:25] And I think if I'm not mistaken, if I'm remembering correctly the experience system and that worked like Suicoden to where as you got stronger, the amount of XP you got from enemies got squished down. Yeah. So it became harder to level. Yeah.

[00:05:39] Yeah, you didn't you definitely gain power from it. But I think the biggest jumps in power and sent to the night was the items that dropped right? Is there such a large number of items that dropped in that game?

[00:05:49] It was really mind blowing when we say like taking the Metroidvania or Metroid stuff to it. It was that plus plus so much more right. The half RPG mechanics, their spells in the game, the combat was melee focused and just so many items, so many. There's a lot.

[00:06:05] Really quite interesting. Every enemy has at least two items, one with a higher drop and then one with a, you know, two to five percent drop that you had to go and find. But every single every monster you thought had

[00:06:17] some kind of item drop, maybe armor or weapon food or something that you could use later on. You could get lucky and get some really powerful weapons from some random ass monsters running around the building. But to really truncate this a little bit, but move forward also.

[00:06:35] It was sort of. I hesitate to use the term refined because not all entries were, you know, improved upon necessarily, but we got Castlevania Circle of the Moon, which was another Metroidvania. Then we got Harmony of Dissidence, then Ari of Sorrow, then Dawn of Sorrow and

[00:06:58] then Order of Acclade. Oh, no, Portrait of Ruin, then Order of Eclatia. Wow. These names, honestly, like that's the set of star when you flubbed the name of Ritual of Night. There's there's a good reason because I did the same day. Ari of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow.

[00:07:13] So flowery these titles. So we're talking. We're talking Ari of the stained Ritual Night tonight. Sam's Tung, Zenith of Sorrow. I don't think we're allowed to talk about that on YouTube. No, we're probably not. All these games are going to get us canceled. Yeah.

[00:07:30] But I think when this Kickstarter first came out, I think it was I think it was 2015 when the Kickstarter launched and it had like something stupid, like a half million dollar goal. And it was definitely not name recognition from like bloodstained is a pretty

[00:07:42] generic game named to me. And Mirstle of Night does not improve things. The reason I was interested was because it was supposed to be like it's a love letter to Castlevania from the guy who made the genre basically, right? Like a garage himself.

[00:07:55] So but I think it raised five and a half million dollars on Kickstarter. It was one of like the the last most successful games on Kickstarter because you don't really hear a lot of any titles cleaning up on Kickstarter like they used to.

[00:08:07] There's a good couple year period where there's a lot of success stories and this is one of those, but not so much lately. So I thought that was interesting. Five and a half million dollars for this. It looks like 2017. Let's let's also clarify on this as well.

[00:08:23] Bloodstained is a series. So yes, it is. Well, ritual of the night is its own game, which is what we're talking about. But bloodstain also has two other games that are more more Castlevania ask in the side scrolling with the retro classic. Yeah, as it's right to you.

[00:08:41] Yeah. Yep. And the 2D look while ritual of the night is more 3D looking and more of the the Iga Vanean style play through. Yeah, the other two are like a pit style. Yeah, first of all, one or two and they're done by anti creates,

[00:08:57] which I think I mean, we've we've talked a lot about anti create games on this podcast. Like we flashed a little bit zero gunvolt. Oh, they did last. They're there. Zero. It looks like I see it. I see it now when I play.

[00:09:09] Yeah, they did Blaster Master Zero. Did these come before or after? They came after the Kickstarter, but before ritual of the night was released. Yeah, right. They're like a prequel to ritual of the night, I think. So we we we've got we've got a little

[00:09:26] a little time weirdness there. Well, because in yeah, and what in the Curse of the Moon, you play as one main character and in ritual of the night, you play as another main character, but you see the other characters from Curse of the Moon in ritual of the

[00:09:39] might as NPCs or Blake, whatever else is out there. So well, actually in Curse of the Moon, you actually play as three characters. You got Miriam Zingatsu, I think his name is. Yes, I'm not wrong. Or Zengatsu. Yeah. And Zutite. Yeah. So in those three characters

[00:09:58] and it's like I think it's like a prequel to ritual of the night. If I remember right, the ritual of the night stars Miriam, but we can talk about later how there is also multiple multiple characters in ritual of the night as well.

[00:10:08] But Circle of the Moon kind of focused on this Castlevania III style. You have three characters you switch between them type of thing. It was kind of neat for that game. Nice. Let's talk about why we're talking about this tonight. Wolf, do you want to?

[00:10:23] So basically what happened is I've been meaning to play this like I heard about it when the Kickstarter came out. I was super excited about it then. And then I was really excited about it when it released, but I didn't purchase it right away

[00:10:35] because I saw a lot of people saying, oh, it's buggy for this. It doesn't run well on the switch, stuff like that. So I was like, well, give it time. And then eventually I picked it up on deep discount and then still didn't play

[00:10:49] for a couple of years. So I finally just played it in the last two weeks after the Dominique's Curse DLC released. I was like, OK, that looks really cool. I want to play that, but I want to play the main game first. So I played the

[00:11:06] main game front to back like 100 percent of it. I think my I think Miriam was level 99 by the time I got to the last boss. Like I ground everything out. I had one of every item that you can get in the game on a standard playthrough.

[00:11:23] Nice. So what you're saying is you could have been much more dedicated to this game. Maybe a little bit. You destroyed this game. I'm laughing at how much you played this game in the last few weeks because like I I did pick this up when it

[00:11:36] came out the time the switch was fairly new for me. So I was playing everything on the switch and man, did this disappoint on the switch. It ran like crap. It's a lot better today. But at launch it was awful. The frame rate was terrible

[00:11:48] and for game that is basically a 2D game in any title I thought it would run fine the switch because everything else does at the time. This ran terrible. So I kind of bounced off it initially, but I would go back and visit it because

[00:12:00] since release they've released multiple DLCs right like cosmetics, new characters, all kinds of great stuff. And I would always revisit on the switch and it would never play very well. So I want to talk about this because I was debating going back to it now on Steam

[00:12:14] because now I have a Steam Deck and it runs great on the Steam Deck in 2024. Yeah, this I didn't know there was any DLC for this because I I got it for PS4 many, many moons ago. So of course I'm not playing it very often unless I turn

[00:12:28] on my PS5. So I'm not getting any updates that there's DLC and you guys are like, yeah, there's like a whole another game attached to it. And I was like, what? When? When did this happen? And I was like, they must just shadow dropped it or

[00:12:40] some shit. That's crazy. No, I just didn't have it on Steam. So I had no idea that it was released because that's that's literally where I get on my gaming news these days for fucking steam. Yeah. So it's like what do you want?

[00:12:53] Do you want to start with the DLC, Wolf? No, no, let's start with the main game. Yeah. OK. And there's going to be a few spoilers in this podcast. The game is a few years old at this point. La la la la. And honestly, the new DLC

[00:13:08] if you've read about it all, it spoils a little bit of the main game anyway. So that's the spoiler I'm going to get into. So it's not going to be. And honestly, the story in the game is nothing spectacular. Yeah. Yeah. That was probably the weakest

[00:13:25] point of the game in my mind was the story. But Ritual of the Night like it kicks you off into this world that feels like what's a good way of describing it? It's it feels like an unlicensed Castlevania. Yeah, which I mean. Yeah, it's not wrong.

[00:13:46] You've heard you feel like you're going to go. Nintendo is coming after you. Like when I read the title of the game as Ritual of the Night, keep bearing mine. I literally just finished playing Symphony of the Night for however long it took me

[00:14:01] to badge that goddamn game. And then this was like a gift where I was like, this game is really good. So I was like here, play this. And I went, I'm going to get sued. I can't play this. Someone's coming after me for this shit.

[00:14:12] Ritual of the Night really? I'm in trouble, but you know, you had your groundskeeper willy moment. It's like, do you want to get sued? You want to get sued? It just it seemed so. I felt that way when we when we played a game, I felt that way

[00:14:30] when we played power together. I was like, I are they going to shut down my Internet? They're coming for my PC. Anyway, sorry. All right. I mean, you you fire the game up and here's how it went for me. I fired the game up, started a new file

[00:14:47] and immediately it's like, you have this, you have this, you have this. I was like, I don't know what any of this is. I've never played the game before. I have no. What do you mean? I got bombarded with a bunch of like

[00:14:56] update news the first time I played it. I was like, I don't know what any of this means. Just chill the fuck out. Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Let me play the game. So and then the first thing it asks you when you go to start a

[00:15:08] character or start a file is like, all right. What do you want to name the file? The second thing is which character do you want to play? Yeah. I'm like, I still don't know anything about it. Well, because with this game launch, they had promised Zangetsu.

[00:15:22] I know I said that wrong, but at launch they only had Miriam, the main character. They didn't have anything else at all at the game. Like they had a lot of great plans that were unlocked because of the Kickstarter, but none of that was in the game

[00:15:33] when it first launched. That's kind of interesting that you're bombarded with all this cool stuff that you would have had when it first launched. That's all the stuff we wanted when we turned it on. But I then as soon as you start to file,

[00:15:49] so I chose Miriam thinking, OK, well, that's the one at the top. She's probably the main character. Like I somehow I've managed to avoid spoilers for this game all this time. No idea how, but me too. Then it starts giving you story and it's narrated and badly,

[00:16:09] which is surprising because it's David Hader. Oh, the Salt Snake guy really? Yeah, the narrator was David Hader. Like all I could hear while he was talking was Metal Gear. Oh, wow. What? And then he's also Zangetsu. Mm hmm. OK.

[00:16:30] But I mean, even Carrie Walgren is in this game. I don't know if you're familiar with who she is. She was on SNL for a season or two. She gets smaller parts in a lot of movies. So even she's in it.

[00:16:42] So they got some like actual Hollywood talent outside of just the video game voice actor cruise. Right? Mm hmm. I'm glad for that. But it sounds I've for me, it sounds like it's not a list actors. Like I felt the voice over and this is one

[00:16:59] of the weaker parts of the game. Like I love I do like this game, but the opening cinematic and when they're explaining what the lore is with Miriam and then the voice acting in the beginning with the cut scenes are you talking to Johannes? I think it is.

[00:17:12] I felt that dialogue was awful. Like Final Fantasy 10 awful to me. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Like watch yourself. Well, the quest lady that sends you out to kill all the monsters, kill those murderers dead. After every single quest accepted. And you're usually accepting like three to five

[00:17:33] of them at a time. So she has some anger. Yeah, I'll do it. Kill those murderers dead. And then you have to talk to her again to accept the next one. And it's like, oh my gosh. So no, the voice acting in this was not great.

[00:17:47] However, if you remember Symphony of the Night, it wasn't particularly special in that either. No, it wasn't. How about you? Memorable, yes. Great, not necessarily. What is a man? So B movie material here with an A level game for sure. Yeah, essentially.

[00:18:09] So really bloodstained to me as I started playing through it, it feels like a total love letter to all the Igavania Castlevanias. It's got it kind of pulls from all of them. Like it's easy to look at it and be like, OK,

[00:18:24] it's a semi-3D Symphony of the Night to a point that is true. But it pulls it like it picks and pulls aspects from the various other games. Like a good example is the shard system. It's very much like the soul system in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow,

[00:18:39] where you kill a monster, you collect its soul, and then you have that ability. And that's you kill the monsters in this. They drop their shards. And, you know, when I've been talking about it, I refer to them as souls.

[00:18:53] Like, even when I'm talking to myself, I'm like, where the hell? Like, and I'll get to this in a bit. But I've been playing the randomizer mode. And I'm like, OK, what the hell? I need to get the soul from this monster.

[00:19:02] I need to. I'm like, oh, there's sharks. Yeah, because isn't the idea of this game is you're not a vampire, like Castlevania, right? You're not you're not Alucard, but you're infused with demonic crystal. You're like a demon witch, like sort of kind of like that's kind of your.

[00:19:20] So. The the the crux of the story is basically these children were experimented on, infused with demonic shards, crystal shards. And that's how they got their powers. So the main character, like that's how she got her powers. She can control the shards.

[00:19:39] They make a reference of other characters in the world being able to do that. And it was the Alchemist Guild that did this. And the reason they did this was partly to stoke fears of the people. To be more mindful of demonic powers coming into our realm.

[00:19:57] That's it. So you know, it's here we got it. We found it. You should fear that and support us. We can. And here's the reason this thing that we created. Yes, it's a big cat is why you should fear that like.

[00:20:11] Um, it sounds a lot like something we're dealing with these days. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a political story. It's a manufactured fear, basically. OK, OK. Jake, is there a reason you froze on the cat? Sorry, we can talk about monsters later.

[00:20:31] But when we're talking about low budget feel, but one of the monsters are like a giant cat. Yeah, the cat. I think it's actually like that. There's like three of them. That's like one of the programmers or or somebody's like animal.

[00:20:47] There's like pulled people's things put into this game. Like the portraits are people that donated like high in the Kickstarter. The back. And I think some of them were like put my animal in there. So that's why there is a giant demon cat in there.

[00:21:02] So, in fact, it just feels like. The cats because they like all the three giant cats have the same animations. Right. And they're all like when you're too close, they like bat at you. That's their attack.

[00:21:15] And then when they die, I love it because it looks like they just gave up. Yeah, right. Just look like, oh, what was me? Overdramatic cat death. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I know we're selling this game right now.

[00:21:31] It does feel like low budget, but there is a lot they like in this game. But there's definitely a cheese factor to it. That is there is thought when I first played it. But it's like I think it's a charming kind of thing.

[00:21:41] Absolutely, I do not mind the cheese level at all. From I mean, the reason that I bought it is because basically I was told if you like Symphony of the Night, you should play this game like it's that level of quality.

[00:21:58] And, you know, I mean, I think that it does do that be be movie acting aside. I think it does that. I just need to finish it. By the way, I own it twice. I looked, I have it on Steam and on God.

[00:22:11] So what do you do with those indies? Let's say, you know, I know what we're doing next year. Yeah, this might be my Sisyphean for 2025. We'll see. Well, I do recommend it for anybody who's been thinking about playing it and hasn't absolutely recommended. It was so much fun.

[00:22:31] The grind did not feel too much like a grind. And that's because of the way they handled the mechanics that affect drop rates. You can really manipulate that to your advantage and make it so it's not the most painful grind in the world for things.

[00:22:46] And I didn't look up anything in this game, my first playthrough. Like I got stuck at one point for probably 10 hours. I did not look anything up until I figured out how to get from A to B.

[00:22:58] And I was like, oh, and that's because this game actually has a very small amount of puzzles that are very much like the super Metroid puzzle in Meridia. If you guys remember that the first time you're playing through super Metroid, you may not get it.

[00:23:17] But later playthroughs, it's obvious that you use a power bomb in that glass tube and it breaks the glass tube. And it lets you explore Meridia. Yeah, you don't know that at first. The game never sets up a rule for that. Right. But there it is.

[00:23:33] That's one of the things this game kind of does that same thing. It doesn't set up a rule for using that for traversal right off the bat. But yes, that's a thing is using the shards for traversal in points.

[00:23:46] And so once I figured that out, I was like, OK. There's a lot of like the map in the game is really confusing. At least it was for me. Like I got lost quite a bit playing it. I probably wasn't as

[00:24:05] good as Wolf was about looking shit up because I was like, I'm tired of beating my head against this wall trying to figure out where to go or what chariot to ride or which way to turn.

[00:24:16] And I'd go back to like old boss arenas and I'm like, Jesus, I've already been here like 800 times. Where the hell do I go for the next thing? So I might have cheesed it a few times to look it up. But it is very vast.

[00:24:30] Right. It's very easy to get lost in. So in many games, usually there's like there's usually items or abilities that will gate you to certain parts of the map. Like I thought I played a lot of bloodstain,

[00:24:41] but I don't think I played that enough enough to get to those. Like what are the gatekeeping items in this game that kind of prevent progress? So you have to unlock like a double jump, for example, or jump boots, I think, or the animal forms.

[00:24:53] This doesn't have that, does it? It does. It has a double jump. OK, it also has. I don't know if you saw her whip out that giant hand that grabbed on to the item. You'll have large objects that are in your way

[00:25:09] that have like a silver glow around them. That giant hand can whip out and pick it up and then you can move around. So that's a thing. But there's also, like I said, I'll give you an example. It's one that drops off a boss is the reflector ray.

[00:25:26] So it lets you point that ray at mirrors and you see like that's explained to you because the boss does it in his room. And so you see that you bounce off of those mirrors and it lets you traverse further than it would just on its own.

[00:25:41] And so you can use that in certain points. You'll have seen the mirrors by the time you fight that boss that you're like, oh, OK, I go back there and I go up that way. So there's things like that that are. Definitely shown, not told.

[00:25:55] But then there's like the one that I got stuck on was one that was a little bit more obtuse. And it was just a shard that I assumed was just an attack shard and it was not. It was actually useful for getting around. Oh, OK.

[00:26:11] And I don't know. You see what it is? There's a big spoiler. Save it for people who haven't played. OK, maybe hang on to it then. OK. Yeah, because that one, once I figured that out, like I was simultaneously super impressed with the game

[00:26:26] for not making it super obvious and annoyed with myself for not reading through descriptions of things. Oh, so it's open. Got to read that item description, man. How else you got to know this story? First off, I hadn't actually collected that shard yet.

[00:26:44] So I was at a point where I was like, OK, I'm going to go around and collect all the shards. And then I still got stuck for a while. And then I was like, all right, let me read the shards.

[00:26:52] And once I read it, I was like, oh, I'm just dumb. So that sounds like so it's simply a night. I've known people who played Symphony of Night and only played half the game because they didn't realize in that game there's a whole spoilers.

[00:27:08] There's a whole other castle where it's upside down. But to unlock it, you have to use a certain item at a certain encounter. Otherwise, you don't get half of the game, basically. So is it kind of like that obtuse where you can totally miss it that way?

[00:27:22] Or do you think it was a little more reasonable to find? So there's it's very similar to the, you know, at the end of Symphony of the well, what you perceive is the end of Symphony of the Night. You can just kill Richter. And boom, bad ending.

[00:27:41] You can do that in this. Otherwise, you have to find your way to this other area to be able to advance and not get the bad ending. Right. OK. It's like it's it's a very, very much similar story plate that you do where you kill something

[00:27:59] you shouldn't get the bad ending or find out a way around that to get the continuation. Yeah, that'll advance the plot and it'll tell you how to do things so that you're not just outright killing this guy. But instead taking on what's got a handle on him

[00:28:16] and stopping that. OK. So it's like Deadpool. Sorry, I watched that last night where the one scene where Colossus is like, you only have four or five moments to be a hero. You can be a murderer hobo for their entire time in the game.

[00:28:34] But there's a couple of spots where maybe you should just think about it for a minute. Yes. It's probably something else you can do. I guess I don't need to be super obtuse about it because you're introduced to the characters right off the bat

[00:28:44] and they make it pretty clear. So this game has an analog to Richter and Shaft, which is Jeebel, which I never would have thought that's how you'd pronounce his name reading it. Durable. It looks like Gebel, but it does look like it's Jeebel.

[00:29:02] And then a demon that's always accompanying him, Gremory. And that's who Gary Walgren plays, by the way. But yeah, that was like there's a way to take out Gremory in the fight with him instead of killing him directly. Oh, that is like Shaft then. OK.

[00:29:22] Yeah, I mean, it's a neat callback to the game that was based on. He's one bad mother. Shut your mouth. Honestly, like that's one of the few gripes that I have with this game is it feels like it borrows a lot from Symphony of the Night.

[00:29:37] There's even a giant waterfall that you kind of come into the exact same way and it's got secrets on both sides at the top and bottom just like in Symphony of the Night. The game in Ritual of the Night. I mean, yeah, one of the points.

[00:29:51] That's like I'm going to have a nice drink of my spepsi. Or my or my fucking to Coke. Yeah, delicious, delicious. I prefer I prefer delicious lemon lime spite. Yeah, I mean, Dr. Thunder of pop is like it's like AI designed your coke can.

[00:30:15] The same thing. But yeah, it's that's one of the things that very much lends it to be like an unlicensed Castlevania. Yeah. But I think I do think that's the point. But that's OK. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm fine with that. The gameplay was great.

[00:30:30] It seems like they've got a plan for moving forward with the franchise with sequels, given how the DLC ended. Well, and to be honest, for people like me who didn't play Symphony of the Night. Now, I do have a way with my

[00:30:46] Mr. To Play Symphony of the Night on modern hardware today. Right. I mean, I guess modern hardware, whatever we're calling the Mr. But, you know, I mean, sure, you could emulate, but this feels like essentially, hey, we're going to give you mostly a symphony of the night

[00:31:04] that can run on, you know, today. Yeah. And I do want to point out that at least now with a couple of options tweaks, because it does not start with that the proper resolution when you first fired up on your Steam Deck.

[00:31:21] But if you alter the options just a bit to give it the right resolution, oh, it looks so good on Steam Deck. It plays so well. It's great. You have to you have to go configure it to the 800p.

[00:31:32] OK. Yeah. Because I'll probably I'll probably spin it up tonight after we're done talking on my Steam Deck. And so yeah, I'll set it to the 800p. I played it for about 45 minutes. And then I was like, man, this does not look that great.

[00:31:46] And then I was like, I wonder, and I went into the graphics and I was like, oh, it's the wrong resolution. So it actually starts at 720p or something. Yeah. And so it looked extra blocky. And then once I put it to the proper resolution, looked amazing.

[00:32:01] Well, it makes sense. The Steam Deck is specifically not 720, which can use a lot of games. Right. Yeah. So yeah. I will say like this is a game. I playing this game on a big screen TV doesn't look as great as you might want it to be.

[00:32:17] I think this game shines definitely on a handheld device. That's another reason why I liked on the switch. I didn't play it on a big screen TV, but I did play it on this monitor in front of me for a little bit

[00:32:27] for probably about 12 of the roughly 90 hours I played. 90 hours. You shared that image. It says 90 hours. Uh huh. So that's embarrassing. But I did play it on this monitor here. He wants to go. It's a 20. 2160. Oh, it's OK. It's a 1440p. OK.

[00:32:56] But it's like 28 inch and it looked really good on it. Well, if you have almost as much time in this game as I did completing Witcher 3 like 30 more hours, all you needed was 30 more hours. Well, you have to factor in.

[00:33:15] This is not like it's it's easy to be like, oh, yeah, it was just the base. No, it was not just the base game. It was the base game. It was a little while in the classic DLC. It was quite a while in the randomizer mode.

[00:33:27] It was a fair amount of time in the chaos mode. And also the recent DLC classic two was another nine, ten hours. So it was across all sorts of aspects of the game, not just one file. Did you play the other characters at all or no?

[00:33:45] Yes, I also did beat it as Zangetsu. And I played a little bit as the I can't remember her name, the character from Child of Light. I want to say Arya, but I may be Aurora, I think. Aurora, that's it. Yes.

[00:34:00] So did you realize there's another hidden character as well that you can play as? No. You didn't beat the game fully. Enjoy your 12 hours. Mostly other characters. Bloodless, you know, the boss with the blood in the umbrella. You can play as her.

[00:34:17] They released her as a DLC update at some time ago. So you enter bloodless as your name and the character select screen, which is a call back to city of the night where you could put like Axe Lord or whatever for.

[00:34:27] Yeah, I don't think I want to play as her because there's a mode where you can play as the bosses. And I did not like it. And she was the character I picked and I hated that. So she does get upgrades as you play.

[00:34:39] So I think it's just another spin on the game. But they're definitely they're definitely at the highlight. It's like playing as Richter in Symphony of Night. You can do it and I've done it, but it's not as fun as playing as Alucard, right? No, I mean, it's interesting.

[00:34:50] Zangetsu was very much the Richter mode, and I really enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun. He didn't get any upgrades other than level ups and like extra health and mana, I think or something. But right. Yeah, I've seen Aurora actually had and he does speed runs

[00:35:07] as Zangetsu and watching him play Zangetsu speed runs is wild because it's a lot of backdashing to speed through the levels. It's really a fun speed run to watch. But yeah, Aurora actually does get upgrades as she plays. And then there was so let's do we want to

[00:35:27] go into more detail about the main game or should we talk about the other modes? Um, I'm good. I mean, I'm playing active audience. And so, I mean, I don't want spoilers myself. So I'm good talking about the other aspects.

[00:35:44] I will say before we move on to the other stuff. The main game, the main campaign as Miriam, it sends you to some really interesting looking places. And sometimes the some of the dialogue in the game is like cheesy on purpose.

[00:36:04] Like what I mentioned that giant hand that grabs onto things, you meet a guy early on the guy who runs the chariot back and forth. There's a big object in his way. And when you talk to him, he gives you a hint.

[00:36:19] It's like, you he's like, there's something in my way. So I can't do anything. You could use a giant hand to move stuff. If you had a giant hand, you could do some wild and crazy things. If you were a character from never ending story,

[00:36:36] you could solve this problem. They look like such strong hands. Yeah. So it was kind of silly how they handled that. But I mean, tact is not this game specialty, let's say it that way. But it was very good. And like some of the areas,

[00:36:58] like there's a point where you you're cross a bridge and I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's not just crossing a bridge. It was a really cool locale. Yeah. OK. The area is called the Bridge of Evil,

[00:37:12] but you have to get a pass to be able to cross the bridge. So you need to find a thing to take a photo of yourself so that you can make the pass across the like, it's really weird. Sure. They handle things.

[00:37:26] So you're a 17 year old kid that wants to go into the bar. Trying to get a. Yeah, you're going to get a fake idea. You get past the fake idea, Jake. Don't mean to trigger you. OK, so there are other modes.

[00:37:40] As I said, there's and I didn't try the randomizer mode right off the bat. Jake was the one who told me you should try this after I had done all the other stuff. Really fun. So the the first thing I did was fire up Zangetsu

[00:37:55] and played through the whole game as Zangetsu. And I didn't I will say I didn't like it as much as playing as Miriam, but it was still a lot of fun. I didn't hate it. But that one assumes it's a bad ending.

[00:38:13] So it's an ending that assumes Miriam did not accomplish her goal. Ah, gotcha. That's because the shards are randomized, I guess. So you can't get that one shard that you need. Yeah, well, the idea is that Zangetsu is the one who kills the boss instead of Miriam.

[00:38:30] OK. And so it changes the trajectory of the ultimate story. And then there was Classic Mode, which I was like, OK, well, Classic Two just came out. I don't want to try that just yet. I'll try Classic Mode.

[00:38:44] And while it seems really cool, I could not stomach it. I tried. Yeah. I wanted to like it, but I don't know why this game runs smooth like butter the whole game. Then you go into that DLC and it's got 15 second loading times between areas, not levels, areas.

[00:39:06] And like the only thing they do differently with the graphics is they zoom it out a bit so you're more like, you know, Classic Mania style sprite size. And I don't understand why that is enough to trigger 20 second load times because you're not kidding.

[00:39:18] The load times are ridiculous. Like it's like they pulled the retro load times in the PlayStation era and threw it in this game. It's awful. Maybe that's what they were going for. Maybe. I don't know. They're like, you know, let's go back to crap.

[00:39:32] Let's let's remember what we once had and how much we hated it. Y'all y'all like those old, you know, black CDs. Let's go. Yeah. You know what's funny, though, is the original Symphony of Night was, I guess a pioneer in a way, because the way they solve

[00:39:47] load times was with the CD rooms where you just walk through a corridor and the time it took you to cross the corridor was the load times. It was pretty neat, yeah. Which honestly, Ritual of the Night does the same thing between regions.

[00:40:00] Well, and that was stolen by Dead Space because you get on the elevator, you don't realize, but that elevator's a load loading. Right. But that's fine. At least you're like, it doesn't take you out of the game. It doesn't kill the immersion.

[00:40:13] Right. You don't feel like you're waiting on loading time. So it's not frustrating. Whereas between regions in classic bloodstained, the classic mode, it is just literally black screen, little loading icon in the corner. Fifteen, twenty seconds of that. Make a sandwich, go to the bathroom.

[00:40:33] That feels like that feels like they're trying to throw the classic feel of like loading the game as well at you. But I mean, if that's what they're doing, it's too much. I'd get maybe three, five, three to five seconds,

[00:40:46] but not sitting there staring at nothing for 15 to 20 seconds. At least give me Miriam's face that we can stretch and nose out, pull on the nose. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cross the eyes or something, make the horns longer.

[00:41:01] But what I will say about that is it plays very much like probably Castlevania 4 in the way the gameplay handles. And then you can actually enter a code at the title screen of classic mode that and that changes it to 1986 mode.

[00:41:23] And that makes it to where you can't jump and land on staircases and things like that. She makes it even more control like Castlevania one. So you can jump through staircases now, which I thought was pretty neat. I mean, that's great.

[00:41:42] But that feels like a thing that you'd turn on and do like three jumps. And then you'd be like, OK, that's enough of that shit. Like for me, the reason I bounce off classic mode, both of them

[00:41:52] was because you get hit by an enemy and it has that class of Vainia classic Vainia knockback, which is just a motherfucker when you're near a pit or something. Yeah. Yeah. Knockback. But after that, I tried the chaos mode, which I thought was really cool.

[00:42:07] And I wanted to try that with somebody before tonight's episode, but we didn't get the chance because it has a two player mode, which is what I'm really curious how that works because it's very arcadey the way it works. You start on a.

[00:42:24] I hesitate to call it a level because it's just one of the big rooms from the game. And they use like five of them. There's essentially five stages sandwiched by bosses. So it's stage boss, stage boss, five times.

[00:42:37] And then if you beat all five, you've beaten that mode. But as you're playing through the stage, you get experience from killing the monsters. So you get level ups, you get stronger. You find equipment in a couple of treasure chests in the room

[00:42:53] if you happen to come across them. And then you also are given a special task for that stage, be it, you know, kill everything, kill everything in X amount of time. Get to the end in X amount of time. Don't hit anything and don't use special abilities

[00:43:11] or the five I can think of that I saw. So there's all those. And if you make it to the end, you generally get a better bonus piece of equipment than you would have found on the stage. And then you're given a boss

[00:43:23] and the boss is like a very weakened version of what the boss was in the game. Go on to the next stage and so forth. And it's it's fun. It's just like a short bite size mode. It's like I think I beat it in 17 minutes

[00:43:35] when I finally was able to beat it. So it's not long. There was there was Symphony of Night, one of the releases years after originally came out of PlayStation. I want I'm going to say Xbox 360. I could be wrong, but there's a multiplayer version of that.

[00:43:49] It might have been something stupid like Ouya or something. But it was a multiplayer cast of any of Symphony of Night and they probably drawing inspiration from that because I heard that was the blast to play if you get the players to do it.

[00:44:02] I'll have to check this out. I do want to try the two player because that is interesting. So I know it kind of reminds me when you and I played Galgardian multiplayer. Oh, yeah. That was that was pretty interesting as well. So this kind of game,

[00:44:13] it could work with multiplayer because it does sound fun. Yeah. And then so there's that mode, which I liked. So after that, I was like, all right, let me go and get the DLC classic to Dominique's Curse. And this is very much, very much Simon's Quest.

[00:44:31] With some modern day quality of life improvements. So day night cycle. Yes. Yeah. English instead. And translation. You can understand. So it's got like a blood moon cycle is what it is. So it's a terrible. And then the blood moon because. Bloody moon. Right. Right. You are in.

[00:44:53] So in the DLC, you're playing as Dominique, which that is going to be a spoiler for the main game. But you're playing as Dominique, she's in Purgatory. And trying to get out. And so that's your goal is to get her out of Purgatory.

[00:45:08] And so she travels the this Purgatory realm full of demons trying to acquire all the things she needs to be able to get back out into, you know, back to earth. And. It's it's clunky like Simon's Quest.

[00:45:25] It does have the you can land on a staircase in midair kind of thing. Like that quality of life is there. In Simon's Quest, you had the whip upgrades that you could like buy a stronger whip and then a stronger whip

[00:45:38] and then a stronger, but you could essentially skip a weaker whip to get the next year beyond that if you just saved up enough. This does away with that. Instead, what it does is you get objects that make your whip stronger and upgrades that make it longer.

[00:45:54] So it's like Castlevania One, but it's the upgrade combined instead of being combined. You get. Yeah. OK. It's not replacing your whip. It's just upgrades so you can buy them out of order. It's fine. Your whip gets extended. This has the towns, right? Simon's Quest, right?

[00:46:12] Towns, although they're populated with monsters as the NPCs. There's people give you hints like it is so much Simon's Quest. Like it's I hate it just because I hated Simon's Quest. It's just I play it. But it has rough. It has obtuse puzzles like Simon's Quest did.

[00:46:28] Yeah. But the NPC demons also give you clues to those things. And you don't have to go all the way. Like if you didn't pay attention, their what their dialogue is actually stored away at the menu. You can check it later.

[00:46:43] You don't have to go back to them to read it. Oh, good. So as long as you've spoken to a character, you keep track of their dialogue in your menu. So again, modern day sensibilities to make it quality of life improvements. But the map was actually really big.

[00:46:59] And I had a lot of fun with the levels, too. Like it was just really cool playing. The music was great. It's very eight bit. I loved it. It was so much fun. I'll chip to me. OK, cool. And the music was good, too.

[00:47:14] Like it wasn't just like, you know, chip to and that's like, oh, this is good because it's a chip to and I enjoy chip. It was actually Mario RPG. No, it was actually good music. Fantastic. It was. It was nice. Yeah, it was catchy.

[00:47:30] Like there was a couple of tunes just stuck in my head for a few days. Mario RPG are the boss fights in the classic DLC because like Bloodstained, the main game of Bloodstained, the bosses were actually really awesome, like screen filling.

[00:47:44] They're very good set pieces, very, very huge. The classic ones have that still or they kind of do their own bosses more like the classic Benio games. I don't know about classic one because I could not make it to even the first boss with those loading times.

[00:47:58] I just got fed up. OK, yeah, fair. But in classic two, it reuses bosses. So like there's a big boss. There's a giant room filling boss in Ritual of the Night that has like giant poker chips and he's throwing coins at you and things like that.

[00:48:16] He's one of the bosses in Dominique's Curse. And they do share the same very, very last boss. OK, please tell me this room filling that's throwing chips and stuff at you is literally called pit boss. Be good if it was. I don't remember his name.

[00:48:36] This is the gambler. You're like, but still pit boss like, you know, anywhere card throwing. The Moon and in Circle of the Moon, it was coins. There's a room full of coins and you had to jump on stacks of money to hit them. It was actually awesome.

[00:48:52] Boss fight in Circle of the Moon. His name is Valafar. So that's I'm just going to call him. I'm just going to call him pit boss. Yeah, it was much better names. But he's up there with gerbil as a name. It's the naming in this was not great.

[00:49:07] Gibbles, Gibbles, Gibbles. But I I thought the level design in this was really good. And yes, it does have like pits of death. You fall in a pit and you die. You follow the water, you die, that sort of thing. Right. And I know the game.

[00:49:24] I know the DLC got some negative reviews for that. But it's like it's Simon's question. Obviously, at least you can understand what they're trying to tell you. Right. Yeah. But I guess it doesn't really convey that it's going to be that punishing in the DLC page.

[00:49:43] And so people who bought it probably didn't realize, oh, this is going to be like an NES game. But, you know, again, I think that's that's what you want. I think in something like this where I mean, I've liked the retro one or

[00:49:55] the retro two one because I'm not a big fan of those Castle of Eden games as much. But the fact that they went to that degree to recreate those experiences in this game is you got to respect it.

[00:50:04] It's it's awesome, especially if you like that kind of stuff. And with a name like classic, right? Classic one, classic two. I mean, right. What do you what do you expect? Right. Is it your target audience? Like that's the thing too, is like in the base game,

[00:50:20] you don't have to purchase classic one. It was a free DLC that's just in the game. So if you played classic one at all and then you go and buy classic two Dominique's curse and expect something that plays more like the regular game,

[00:50:35] it's kind of on you at that point. Right. Yeah, especially when they release a trailer for it. And the trailer is pretty clear what they're going for. Like when you see the towns and you open the menu in the shop menu

[00:50:45] for the first time, you're like, oh, that's what they're doing. Right? The day night cycle. Yes, it's definitely NES inspired. And that's that's cool for those who like it. I do feel like this one being a paid DLC is probably them testing the water

[00:50:56] to see on the interest in the franchise, because they've been working on this one so much over the last few years, just feeding new updates every few months. And I think they're just testing to see if people are still have an appetite for this game.

[00:51:09] I don't know. But hopefully it's better about announcing this kind of shit because this is something that I would totally be into. And I didn't even know it was there until you brought it up, you know?

[00:51:19] I mean, I've been a bit of a ritual the night for literally for years. I mean, I beat it years ago, but it just seems like this would be something cool to add to the rest of it. I mean, I have Cursed the Moon.

[00:51:30] I have both of those and those are fun. But I really liked Ritual of the Night and knowing that there is some DLC that brings in Simon's quest to it. I think that would be a lot of fun to check out.

[00:51:41] So, you know, don't shadow drop your shit, people. Come on. Yeah, I kind of came out of a left field. What's that? I thought they announced that the game awards. I think they announced it a while ago, but then they just didn't do it

[00:51:52] or release date and then they just shadow dropped it. But I think they did announce it, I think. But yeah. Well, I don't know. I feel bad for like ignoring this game for so long now.

[00:52:03] But at the same time, I'm also glad I didn't get into it until after that DLC dropped because now I got the full experience and I'm absolutely loving it. It's so much fun. And I 100 percent of the DLC as well,

[00:52:16] like literally the file, I think where it saved says 99 percent. And that's just because I need to go beat the final boss. It's neat because there this is like such a key genre right now. Like there's so many metrovania, especially like just even recently

[00:52:32] last year and this year, there's a number of metrovanias are coming out and it's definitely a thing, especially in like the 60 bit pixel art style. There's a lot of them and it can be hard to figure out which ones are worth your time and which ones aren't

[00:52:45] because some of them are kind of short. Some are the combat is not, you know, we kind of bounce off of it. There's one that me and you played Wolf last year I thought was going to be,

[00:52:52] you know, awesome and it turned out to be kind of boring. But then you're like, the one with the chip step grade your your shots, I think. I have to have to look it up. It was a it was a sprite based one. So memorable.

[00:53:06] You can't even remember the name. You can't remember the name. Yeah. But then you have something like the point right? You have like nine souls, right? Came out and that's killing it. Of course, you know, Hollow Knight and everybody's just dying for a song.

[00:53:19] And these are all metrovanias are going to kill. But there's a dozen other ones that come out. Yeah. Not yet. He legends is coming out later this year. That looks amazing. Yeah. So yeah. Nine souls on my list. That looks like a phenomenal game. Yeah.

[00:53:34] But I think it is one of them. I hope you don't forget nine souls is on my list too. And it gave me a bunch of points. I believe nine souls is from the same people that are doing Mariachi legends. Oh, I can't wait for Mariachi legends.

[00:53:50] For those that really good. Don't know. We're doing a team fantasy critic. What's what draft? Well, I guess it was draft, but whatever you want to call it. And I had nine souls and it did all right for me. Oh, maybe maybe it's not nine souls then.

[00:54:09] Is there something else? Nine souls is the one that just came out then, right? Like a few months ago. Yeah, a few months ago. Yeah. OK. And then I think Humble just dropped one too. Bo was a Metroidvania as well. Haven't heard that one.

[00:54:24] I remember the full title, but it's B.O. So many and then something. And a lot of these, a lot of the success of these newer ones, I think is in due part because of how well bloodstain was received, right?

[00:54:34] Like it kind of brought people to this genre again. And now it's just people are running with it. It's super popular. Sure. But awesome. Any other DLC we wanted to talk about or any modes that you didn't cover? Yes, there's the randomizer mode.

[00:54:49] So after I beat the DLC to that's when Jake was like, you should also try the randomizer mode. Now it's like, all right, fine. And I didn't have the highest expectations of it to be super interesting, but it's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.

[00:55:04] I played through it once and I didn't see anything too wild. And I like shuffled everything. And it's cool to kind of stuff that give you options for shuffling because you can shuffle the quest, you can shuffle the alchemy,

[00:55:17] you can shuffle the shop, you can shuffle monster drops. And like with some of the things you can make it shuffle to where it's like the same type of item pool. And some of it, you just like shuffle everything. And I was like, just shuffle everything.

[00:55:31] Just shuffled as much as I could. And shake it up. My randomizer mode. I was maybe 10 minutes in and got the final armor. Oh, that's why I love these things. It doesn't like half hour later. What's that? It doesn't shuffle the map though, right?

[00:55:51] No, no, no. No, OK. No, but there's an option to shuffle the save rooms and the teleporters. Yes. And I turned that on too. Which I kind of regret now and then, but I don't mind. Yeah. But yeah, it's it's got all that.

[00:56:09] And like a half hour after I found that last armor from the game, I found like one of the final weapons. And I was like, all right, I'm basically unstoppable at this point. And then I beat it.

[00:56:24] And then I'm doing a second randomizer run and it is a struggle because the gear I've found blows. That's why those are awesome though. Like I've been having a lot. I had a lot of fun with trying to play Elden Ring straight right now.

[00:56:37] But I had a blast playing the randomizer for that mod. There's a randomizer mod and it's hilarious. You're getting some great endgame gear or you get nothing and you're fighting with your fists for first couple hours. And it's a blast. And I love how many options are there.

[00:56:49] Like it's so much fun for me, the randomizer. I wish more games had this mode because it just gives you more replay value for a game. And there's already a lot to do in this game, replay value wise. And this is just icing on the cake.

[00:57:03] It's really good. And it's really neat. Like the randomizer mode has the ability to and I didn't see anything like this in my first playthrough. It was all basically the same gear I had my first playthrough. But in the second randomizer playthrough,

[00:57:19] it's just throwing random wacky items in the shop and the alchemy. Like I can make Dan's head from Game Grumps in the alchemy shop. Really? Yeah, the item is called I'm Not So Grump, which I mean, I'm a huge Game Grumps fan. So I love it.

[00:57:36] Like I was like, yes. But and I like to just X party, but I haven't found the items to make it. But it's funny because like there's a scarf that's an end game scarf. And if I want to make it, it requires five swords,

[00:57:49] five like four epis in a Hikari. And so those four epis that could go by from the shop across the hall, the Hikari, no clue. I haven't seen it yet. I don't know where to find it. But it's funny that it takes five swords to make a scarf.

[00:58:04] You know? End game scarf. I thought it randomized the recipe is hilarious. Yeah. And I mean, like the items I've seen, there's a potion that's like item string not found is the name of the item. Nice. And like there's one that's just like

[00:58:20] a paper plate smiley face that's a mask. There's a sword I can make. That's like a gamer LED power strip. Are you sure you have- I didn't see any of your items I didn't see in the base game. Are you sure you haven't been playing Bellatro?

[00:58:35] These sound like jokers. Yeah, glitches. Like there is 8-bit weapons in the game. I think you get an 8-bit coin at some point. You can get one of them, but there's definitely stuff they fed into it. 8, 16 and 32. Yep, right. Yeah. And then.

[00:58:52] So those items aren't necessarily 8-bit items, but they use the 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit coins. And then I think for the final form, because it upgrades the weapon with each of those. For the one that requires a 32-bit coin, you also need an item called the 8-bit nightmare.

[00:59:06] And yes, the main game does have like secret areas that are not on the map. Of course. That you can go to. So they don't contribute to the map exploration, but they have shards and items that you wouldn't otherwise find. So. Right.

[00:59:21] And that's the thing too is like this shards, I don't know if we said how many there are, but there are dozens of shards in this game, dozens and dozens of weapons. All the weapons feel differently. Like if you're using a great sword,

[00:59:30] totally different field than from daggers or the Kung Fu shoes. Like there's just shards are all different. There's different types. There's summons like henchmen that follow you. There's directional shooty ones. There's buff ones. There is so much. So when you're playing with a randomizer

[00:59:45] and you don't know what you're going to get, it's just a lot of tools are thrown at you that are fun to mess with and put together. Mm-hmm. And the familiar shards vary quite a bit too. So there's like the fairy,

[00:59:56] which is very much like the fairy familiar from Symphony of the Night. She'll point out secrets. She can heal you if you have items that she can use, things like that. And then there's like one that's just a sword. But as it levels up,

[01:00:11] you also have it as a sword in your inventory. Yep. And so as it levels up, it gets stronger just like the sword brothers in Symphony of the Night. And then there's one that's just like a silver knight. And I was like, oh, that's not exciting.

[01:00:24] But on my randomizer run, that's the first one I found. So I started using it, leveled it up. He blocks projectiles for me. He stands between me and the enemies and eats the hits. Is it bro? I was like, this is great.

[01:00:35] While he's sitting there smacking them with his lance, he's taking the hits for me and I'm not getting hurt at all. So I mean they vary wildly. Yeah, there's quite a bit. The one thing I had an issue with though, and I think you mentioned offline too, Wolf,

[01:00:51] is there's a few cosmetic deal sees that came out. There was one, it was like a tie in with Shante. So there's a Shante outfit and some stuff from there. Well, that's just in the game. Yeah. So that doesn't even require anything. That's just in the game.

[01:01:03] So now when you fire up a new save file, you have the Shante equipment in your inventory. Right. And the other one was the succubus, which is, hello DLC, because that's some TNA right there, which is funny because when the game first came out

[01:01:16] and people were modding it, that's what those are the kind of mods they were doing. So it's interesting they released this DLC for this. This is the Kami of Bloodstains. You very much so, inflated Kami. But it's weird though, because it's an item that you equip.

[01:01:32] Like it's armor, it's chest armor literally that have changed its appearance. But you had mentioned that it's not the greatest armor in the game. And if you change armor, you lose that cosmetic appearance. And that seems kind of a wasted thing.

[01:01:45] Yeah, I thought it was strange that it's a, you know, it's armor that requires being equipped. It's equipment that requires being on your character, eating up slots that you might want different items to fill. So that's what I was. Gotta be thirsty later.

[01:02:02] Yeah, like it just seems weird that they would do that and not make it something that you can just toggle on and change what she looks like. Yeah. Maybe they made the active choice of you can either be thirsty or you can have real armor.

[01:02:18] Or it could beat the game. That's true. Challenge mode, maybe. Maybe that's the idea. It's like, because there was like a thirsty challenge armor. It's the ladle run. The ladle run. The fucking ladle run. That's for you, November. When you listen to Siphy of the Night ladle run.

[01:02:38] I do love the fact that there's even a... This is not a huge spoiler, but it's fun when you come across it. There is a demon that can change your hairstyle. Yeah, he's the scissor. He looks like he's like fucking Sweeney Todd or some bullshit.

[01:02:58] Yeah, his name is Todd. His name is Todd. And he is a barber. Yeah. I love it. Is he down on Fleet Street? He's my B. Well, I just thought it was funny because I was like, Todd is not a scary name.

[01:03:12] So I took a picture of it and sent it to my friend. Like, you know, he's talking about how he's a barber and he's a demon and his name is Todd. And then my friend is like, did you find Sweeney Todd?

[01:03:22] And I was like, I didn't put that together. But yeah, I guess so. That's awesome. Yeah, like the cosmetic stuff, dozens of things in this game, like there's more in this game. And I don't know if that's just because $5 million later in the Kickstarter

[01:03:38] and they had the time and money for this or what? But there's just so much jam packed into this metroidvania. It does kind of raise a bar for me when I play other games like this. There's just especially the items. There's just so much. Yeah, it's really cool.

[01:03:54] There's also a system in the game. I guess I should mention this. So there's alchemy, like I said, where you can make equipment. But there's also a food preparation system. Yeah, you could. And each food that you come across the first time you eat it,

[01:04:11] it gives you a permanent stat boost. Oh, is it permanent? It's permanent. Oh, shit. Okay. For each food, you only have to eat it once to get the stat boost. After that, it's just HP or MP recovery.

[01:04:25] But it even shows you in the crafting menu for the food. If you've eaten it, you'll see, or in your own inventory, if you've eaten it, you'll see a little knife and fork next to it. Like you've eaten this. So... I should pay attention.

[01:04:38] It'll give you different stat upgrades. Sometimes it's a boost to experience. It's a boost to mana recovery. It's a boost to luck or strength or intelligence, mind, whatever. But it's HP. Like there's all sorts of things it can boost. And they tell you what they'll boost

[01:04:54] the first time you eat it. And those are a huge boost to you playing through the game and not being underpowered. Because it is pretty easy in this game to find your way somewhere that you are not ready for. Okay. Yeah. So if I feel like I'm underpowered,

[01:05:13] I probably am. Uh... I want to say yes and no. Mostly yes. In some cases, it might just be because you haven't upgraded your equipment in a while. Okay. Or you haven't eaten enough of the foods. Like those are a huge help. And honestly,

[01:05:37] one of the first few bosses, I had to grind before I could beat them. Like it was kind of a hockey stick with like the second or third boss. But then after that, it was fine. It's my favorite. You love the hockey sticks.

[01:05:53] That's because it's a lot of weak enemies that are like easy to just barrel through and get to that boss. But if you start like trying to farm some of the equipment out of the enemies and make sure you've got better gear and drops,

[01:06:07] by the time you go fight him, he's not a problem. It's like one of those things you don't think about. Yes, because you're cruising through the whole area. And then you realize, oh, I need to grind these guys to get the shards from them

[01:06:18] or weapons or whatever they're going to give me so that I'm a little bit better boosted. So yeah. And sometimes it's not grinding for either riders. It's just going back to your inventory of shards and equipment and looking to see if maybe you should try a different build.

[01:06:30] Right? Like the shards can be quite a bit of a different gameplay style. Like some of them are can be, you know, low damage, but they fill the screen in terms of what they hit. But sometimes you want that more localized attack shard.

[01:06:41] I remember using like the chainsaw sword. For a lot of the game. But when I got to certain bosses, it just wasn't cutting it anymore and I had to switch up my shards. I already had a bunch to pick from. I just never played around with them, right?

[01:06:52] So if I'm fat rolling, I need to try. I need to respect. Yeah. Just get something that has a higher weight load and you'll be fine. It also has another cool aspect where with the yellow shards specifically, they're considered passive shards that you equip.

[01:07:08] And, you know, they might bump a stat specifically or make it to where, you know, within this circle radius, you can see secrets, things like that. But if you rank them up because you can enhance shards at the alchemist,

[01:07:25] if you rank them up to nine just the passive shards, they they actually become completely passive to where you don't have to have it equipped to get its bonus. Oh, so you can actually then you take it off. You can have multiple through that mechanism.

[01:07:41] Right. And then if you equip most of them, if you equip one at the same time as you've got it as an actual passive, you get the double the bonus. OK. So it really sounds like you could break the game in terms of your power level.

[01:07:55] I didn't realize you can go that in depth with the permit upgrades. If I'd known that, I might have gotten through this game because I was struggling with a lot of the bosses. Yeah. So like early on, you know, you see passive shards

[01:08:07] as like double jump and things like that, just a couple of them. And then once I realized that, I was like, at the end of the game, I've got like 30 passives. That's nice. Yeah. OK. So it sounds like I mean, it's not shallow.

[01:08:23] It's not a shallow game. No, no, there's a lot of depth to it. Yeah. For sure. Good. And honestly, I'm probably going to play through randomizer a couple more times before I'm done with it because I want to see the other wacky stuff that's in it.

[01:08:36] And I want to see how my other randomizer runs will go because it's just cool to see, you know, this very low barrier of entry to get the randomizer going. It's cool. Yeah. So Wolf will compete with my time playing Witcher 3 by the time he's done.

[01:08:52] I was about to throw up my Elden Ring time and be like, OK, challenge. You want to call that out? Because I know how much I saw. You call me out. You can call it out if you want to. I think it was 254 hours. Yes. So far.

[01:09:09] Now I got to look and see what my most played game on Steam is. And I think it's minus still Zodiac age. Mine still mine still so did Zodiac age, Final Fantasy. Mine's our. I think I'm warframing for me.

[01:09:25] I think it's either Warframe or Skyrim one of the two. And I would argue. I would argue my times are skewed because there are times where I was streaming them and I took breaks and walked away and left them running.

[01:09:37] So five hundred something hours on Zodiac age seems an awful lot for somebody who didn't do everything because I didn't. So I got six hundred and thirty three hours in Terraria. There you go. That's another game. Yeah, that would do it. But fifteen hundred in Rocket League.

[01:09:54] I was almost a journeyman. They're getting that Rocket League trades money. Not. I mean, this game is this game is totally dripping in value. I mean, it goes on sale all the damn time. I this DLC is new, totally worth the money.

[01:10:12] I think this is this is what you want in any title. It's not 60 bucks. There's loads of content. It's awesome to support something like this. And sure if it is a franchise, I'm all for it. I do like I do like the D-Makes version

[01:10:24] like Circle of Moon a lot too for what they are. But Bloodstained on its own is exactly what I wanted in the game. I just need to finish the damn well. And if people continue to buy this, there's a good chance there will be a sequel to absolutely.

[01:10:37] This would be something I go back and get on Steam so that I can play it on my Steam Deck again, because it's it is a lot of fun. It is a it's a good game to have like in multiple. I think that's why I have it twice

[01:10:48] is because I wanted to play it on my Steam Deck. Steam Deck does all man does it all. Yeah. And like I said, it plays really well there. I that's where I've played probably 80, 85 percent of my ritual of the night. Nice, very nice.

[01:11:07] Cool. Well, any other call out thoughts? Things that we haven't talked about. We are a little over an hour here. So not that I can think of. There was one enemy in the game.

[01:11:24] And I'm not going to point it out because it was a weird one to find. But if you find it, that one's a frustrating one to try and farm its shard because you can literally only spawn it once per visit to that area. Oh, OK. Awesome.

[01:11:44] OK, well, I think we've I think we've put together an episode, gentlemen. I think so. I think so. Cool. Anybody want to call out anything that they're doing? Yeah, Charred and I recently did an episode of another episode of Super Podcast, Super Pod Saga Cup podcast.

[01:12:02] I believe our episode is next week, I think, where we talked for two and a half fucking hours about Final Fantasy, the entire franchise, the entire franchise. You mean I talked for two and a half? Charred talked about the franchise. I kind of carried that.

[01:12:18] They got to eight and I tried to be I tried to be chilled. And I was not there was no chill in me for eight. Yeah, go check that out. That that was a lot of fun with those guys and go get a Super Pod Saga

[01:12:29] follow as well and subscribe to their YouTube channel as well. They're great dudes and they're a lot of fun to hang out with. Yeah, yeah, it was a good time. We took over their channel once, too. We did. It was great. All the four of us did. Yeah.

[01:12:42] The entire. Awesome. Anybody else want to call anything out? I have a I have an Elden Ring size hole in my heart since we beat it. We were successful in beating Rodan this last Tuesday.

[01:13:01] And, you know, you know, I related it today to these guys as a summer fling where, you know, you know, you're going to have a good time, but you know, it's going to come to an end.

[01:13:12] And yeah, I'm sad that it's over and I have to find another. It's just scratch that just isn't. It just isn't. I don't know. It's just not going to do it. So what we're going to do is we're going to flip the script

[01:13:27] and we're finally going to start the remedy connected universe play through of Alan Wake, control, quantum break, Alan Wake, too. And subsequent things. And we'll talk about like the bridge between the American nightmares. I'm not going to play that again because it is very it's slow

[01:13:44] and it's and it's boring and I'm not playing this. It's a gel of usage. Just like that. And yeah, we'll do that. And I'm actually going to be uploading my play through. I'll do it on Twitch, obviously. But we're going to do like 30 minute snippets on here on

[01:14:00] press to cancel. I'll upload the play through so you guys can follow along. If you're not just watching on Twitch, but you're interested in the story and the lore, we'll figure out how to get all that compacted onto here.

[01:14:09] And I'm still debating on whether I'm going to do the 30 minute snippets. Oh, you're just going to have to sit through the four hours that I stream the shit. And I don't know we haven't decided yet, but you can come and check

[01:14:19] that out here and also me at twitch. W W W. Twitch.TV. Ford slash charred monk.org. And check it out. Hey, Charred, if you're ever want to go back to Elden Ring, you can do it. Miss Mika did Miss Mika recently beat Elden Ring

[01:14:37] on the PS5 and of the PC at the same time. Yeah, I was in a dance pad and a PS5 controller. I watched you beat it at soul level fucking one. Yep, I know, you know, I'm decent. But I'm not something I'm not that good.

[01:14:53] I think Charred should do a ladle run for for Elden Ring. There's no lead line on ring. I'd have to do it in Dark Souls, too. I don't know. Maybe I could learn how to do a souls level one run on that and just cry the entire time.

[01:15:07] No, see, I want to enjoy my play through. So, you know, we'll figure it out. Well, Elden Ring will be back. Don't worry. I'm not done with it yet. I'm just done with it for now. We'll go back because it's the plague that keeps the gift

[01:15:21] that keeps giving. It is the gift that keeps on plaguing. I want to beat Radon with everybody because I did it on my steam deck with a build that was OP as fuck. So I'm just going to try not to do it new game plus this time

[01:15:33] and see how different the two are. That's really, it's kind of like sitting there going, God, I wish I hadn't done this in a new game plus five. Why did I do this to myself? So, but yeah, it's done.

[01:15:45] It's done no more Elden Ring for a little while, but you're going to have to hear me talk about it because I love that game. So. All right. Well, gentlemen, I think I think it's time. This time to it.

[01:15:57] It's time to talk about DJ Spinner Star every Monday and Tuesday on Twitch. You're right. Yeah, yeah. Check out our friend, since Star over here, watch him spin some fat music on Monday and Tuesday. Yeah. Go give him a follow up.

[01:16:09] Oh, apparently Wolf doesn't want to go, but that's cool. Wolf's like, I'm done. He's like, you know what? Episode's over, little bitches. I've done enough. Go follow DJ Spinner Star, please. And give him give him your love and affection because he's a good dude.

[01:16:22] No, I've been I've been having fun with it. So that's good. All right. Well, this has been a press be to cancel. We're not going to stain your shirt with blood anymore. Killed those murderers dead.