I was actually gonna make a thread about this game this morning after playing it late into the night last night.
But I'll toss my first impressions here.
I've never been a fan of Castlevania or Metroid games. The 2d action exploration platformer never really appealed to me, at least not since I discovered JRPG's. I have always watched people love on Symphony of the Night and Metroid games from afar, respecting them for the games they are and the fanbases they generate much in the same way I don't like Zelda games but can understand why people love them.
So Bloodstained is a game that offers no nostalgic feelings for me. I feel almost lucky because I get to play the game completely fresh with no previous games to base any feelings on.
My first thoughts are pretty good. The art design is great and the exploration is fun. I do like the rpg mechanics in place of leveling up but also being able to grind the monsters to get their shards. Being able to control my own progression is something I always enjoy in games, where i have the freedom to be as strong or as weak as I like. The equipment system is nice as well though I don't understand why everything has a unique model on your character except body armor, like if they could model hats, scarfs, and weapons, then why couldn't they also change Miram's (or as I called her "Tattoozilla") main outfit. I'm still early in the game so maybe that outfit only changes for very special dresses I find later on.
The story is....well it's there, and since most of this game is just about clearing room after room of monsters and loot I can most over look the story. The story so far is such a small part of the experience that the environment becomes more of a story device than anything else, much like a Dark Souls game though less obscure.
Combat is responsive but a little slow for my liking. Each swing of your weapon seems to cause Tattoozilla great effort even with it is just a kick to the balls. I equipped a 2-handed sword and took one swing with it, saw that it took five minutes to finish, and never equipped anything big again. Even the one-handed weapons swing just slow enough to make me wish they were a little faster. Big and slow would be fine, except you take contact damage from enemies like in horribly hard NES games and when you are locked to a 15 second fuck off swing attack the enemies have plenty of time to just give you a hug. Which is really weird to me, because the enemies also attack really slow, so your swings being slow make sense and serve as a fair enough game balance. However because you take that contact damage (which does more damage to you than what a normal enemy attack would have done for some reason) then they don't actually need to attack fast they just need to run into you. And contact damage always feels cheap in a game about melee combat. It's typically a mechanic designed to let the player know to keep the baddies at a distance, except you can't because you have to get in their face just so you can cut it off.
So combat feels better when I overpower it. Which like I said above is fine, I like to grind (after all I play JRPG's and MMO's which are the two cornerstones of grinding in gaming) so it works. Enemies re spawn every time you reenter a room so just fine a section with easy to deal with mooks and run back and forth until you can one-shot god. Simple enough.
There is also a hub town and a crafting system which makes the game feel a bit like Rogue Legacy, allowing you to craft upgraded weapons, armor, and healing items. There is also a crafting food menu which I kind of like because the first time you eat a recipe you gain a permanent stat increase which made me actually want to craft as many food items as I possibly could so I could beef out Tattoozilla as much as I possible could.
So first thoughts are pretty good. Now the test is to see if the game can keep me invested to at least finish Normal mode, or if the seemingly endless maze of rooms start to blur together like one of those magic eye puzzles that you have to look at cross-eyed to actually see the picture.
