E3 Demo Feedback for the developer's team

Good demo. Gameplay felt like typical metroidvania. The final boss was... funny: "laser" beams, tentacles, boobs... just slap moe eyes on her. But the controls didn't work for me as they were supposed to. Maybe because I played with my DualShock 4 connected to the PC. Still you should have added better PC controls (backstep on Z, right below the WASD is a bad idea) and tutorials for them since Steam is the platform for demo.
Anyway, here's my feedback:

• The Level Up animation interrupts the game. Waiting for 2-3 seconds in the middle of the battle really slows you down. You should cut it down to 0.5-1 seconds or don't pause the game.
• The chests. Again, stopping and opening the chests slows down the pace of the game. Maybe it's okay when they are in the corner and after obtaining the reward you just turn around and go back to your main course, but while ON the main course it might feel a little tedious.
• Stopping for atacking. Speed once again. When you get close to an enemy - you stop to attack. Why? Halfway into the demo I already could beat half of the enemies with one hit. So why can't I just slash through them and continue onward without ever stopping?

• Full control of your weapon. It was amaizing controlling your directional shard. Being able to fire in all directions really made battles a little more dynamic. So why can't you do the same for main weapons? Bind Attack and Jump to triggers and/or bumpers and let the player always use the right stick for aiming. It will make battles A LOT more dynamic, especially if you add interesting enemies to "dance" wtih.
• Equipment appearence. Of course it's only a demo, but still. Make different equipment stand out on character. She is not Alucard with he's cape making half of his sprite: so you could notice it's color change. She is a relatively small 3D character. And I could barely see that teeny-tiny hat on her head. What's the use of different appearences when you can't see them?

That's all I can say for now. If I come up with something new, I'll post it here.        

Thanks so much for the demo! Played it through once - going to give it several playthroughs. Only a couple of comments. When I used the kung-fu boots, Miriam's feet seemed too big and out of proportion from the regular model. Looked duck-like. Effects like jumping in water and other hit effects gave a very small visual impact. Looked like weak particles. The ghosting when running up against walls didn't feel or look right. Felt like it was breaking through graphics and not solid compared to the rest of the play. Lastly, there are some areas in the ship jumping platforms that aren't too distinguishable from the background, causing a blindness to them being there. Make the platform decks (where you jump straight up to the ship exterior or interior or rope/net pieces) more distinguishable. Just some minor things to point out to make this game even slicker! Keep it up!

It's very hard to be overly critical on such an early build of the game, but I'll share my initial impressions and comments.

When the game launched, it was in windowed mode, I had to press alt+enter to make it go full screen. The graphics options were very simple, so I didn't expect to see a full suite of settings. I do hope the game takes advantage of 120hz+ monitors for ultra smooth gameplay in the final build!

As for the game itself, I'm really digging it and was very impressed with how much progress has been made. It plays well enough and I was instantly familiar with the game systems as soon as I pressed start.



Alot of my cons have been pretty much said by people in this thread so I won't repeat them, but I have full confidence of the final build! Bring on the beta ♪☆＼(^０^＼) ♪(／^-^)／☆

Firstly, I'll say that the demo overall plays well. It needs a ton of polish and features and personality, but presumably those will all come with time. I hope that weapons will have attacks beyond slash/crouch slash.... Upwards swing? Also multi-directional swings while jumping?

But I'm mostly here to say something else. I realize that the demo is a little late in the game for this feedback, but here goes: I'm so disappointed in the use of 3D models. I'm sure this discussion has been had repeatedly elsewhere on this forum, but I'm just voicing this now. Games like SOTN, Aria of Sorrow, or even Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger, count amongst the most beautiful games I've ever seen. Detailed 2D sprites have an artistic quality that is just lost in 3D.... I really hoped that Bloodstained would stand above the modern crowd of 2D games with mediocre 3D models.
Ugh, those barrels in this demo are so ugly. So generic....

I hate being a fanboy complainer, but there it is... Still wishing the best for this game though!

Hello, everyone! I just finished playing the E3 build, and while I see a lot of my thoughts already addressed, I thought of leaving my impressions of it.

Controls:
Really reminiscent of the original Igavanias, which is always great, but the 2.5D transition still feels kinda floaty. From videos and screenshots it was hard to fully appreciate the movement, but in my own hands it feels great. Love the backdash cancel.

UI:
Loving that you are going to add the minimap, though I would probably disable it, having that option is really thoughtful. I would like to suggest if controllers allow it a button for inventory hotkeys, to allow healing/mana regeneration with a simple button prompt, and avoid using the inventory menu in the heat of battle. As for what is already there, I have no complains, but is the plan to change Miriam picture when you customize her in the future?

Combat:
Again, pretty reminiscent of what we all love and wanted to return, of course, it's hard to get the full grasp with only two weapons, but it's not hard to picture the rest of them keeping on par with what's already shown. I loved to see the diagonal attacks in mid air and on the ground return. Is there any chance to add upwards attacks as well?
No combat items in the build, so I'm curious, will they return?

Navigation/Exploration:
This is the one that worried me slightly, mostly because the transition to 2.5D. I know everyone said this before, but there are plenty of weird clippings that I'm sure they will be addressed, so I won't complain about them being in this build, but I really, really hope they find a workaround this issue. It's mostly, like I said, the transition, but new tools require new approaches to the same issues. And while we're on the subject, I think some platforms suffer the same problem. Clipping in 2D wasn't much of an issue because you never get to see the floor in the platforms you clip through, but in here, due to the 3D rendering, you can see them and it's weird to see the Miriam clip through it. My suggestion would be to have her briefly be on the front while clipping, then returning to the original state, but I never worked with 3D, so I'm not sure if that's possible (or rather, simple enough to bother with)

Graphics:
I am still one of those who think this should be a proper 2D game, but I'm conscious of the costs, so I'm not gonna harp on it anymore. Having said that, I really like how the game looks, the enemies, the Galleon itself looks wonderful, and the mini cutscene when you reach the boss makes me realize that with 2D, making it wouldn't be that simple, so I'm hoping to see more stuff like this. Loved the details with the Kung-Fu boots and headband in Miriam's model, and Miriam really comes out the details of the background, so that's my biggest plus. My only critique is that the colours in the background looks bleached. That was probably a conscious decision rather than a mistake overlooked, but I don't like much the desaturation, specially with colours like green/light blue. This is another personal nitpick, take it as such.

Final words:
I put this here because I'm not sure this is a problem of mine, but I felt sometimes Miriam was unresponsive when I hit the attack button, and always in the same moment, when I'm about to reach the peak of a jump and when I stopped from walking. I am playing at this moment with a wireless Keyboard and Mouse, so there's a chance that was it, since I haven't seen anyone mention it, I'll do more tests soon with a controller just in case.
This build got me really excited, and glad I backed it, I can't recall how many times I played it, and I still want to see how far I can take the level up for Miriam, maybe try to speedrun it too, but I'm not sure I can have that precision with KB+M. We'll see.

I am looking forward to more news soon (Especially who's going to voice Miriam)

Just finished the demo and for an alpha everything seems pretty solid. I am definitely looking forward to more. There are likely quite a few things on your To-Do list Dev team, but I will list what I liked and what I didn't like below.

Likes:
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Looks and feels like Castlevania (yay secrets!).  The 3D models and such that you're using look great!
NO performance issues, everything ran smooth on my PC (GTX 770 4gb VRAM, Intel i5-2500(2nd gen?) 3.30 Ghz, 8GB ram, Win 10).
Controls are responsive, but seems to favor D-Pad over a stick, so options to tweak analog-sensitivity would be welcome.
Map size was good, for an opening level.

Dislikes:
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The Dullahammer's shard doesn't seem to work in the air. Appears out in front of you for a moment and then vanishes.
The boss was easy. I was able to tank most of the hits and I didn't take much damage to need to get out of the way.
Music was too quiet.


Other than the listed things, I really wanted more of everything. Which means you're on the right track, keep up the good work!

In my case, I didn't miss it, nor I am surprised. I said specifically that I would prefer if the game was in 2D rather than 3D. I knew what I signed for when I backed it, and that still doesn't change my point.

The demo looks good indeed, but I still hope is not representative of the final product. I know from friends how awful is to deal with Unreal lightning, and that plastic like shining, and the boss does shows that.

Played the demo the best I can since my laptop can't really run it well, but based on what I've played, I'm loving it! I was able to jump right away and instantly feel the similarities of the controls and mechanics from IGA's past works. Although, there are somethings I would like to suggest.

- I think having an item hotkey where you can assign healing items to would be neat, that way you don't have to pause to your inventory constantly.
- I would also like to see the "Level Up" animation to be speed up a bit since it takes a while to get back to the game after a level up.
- Also, similar to IGA's past works, I hope to see stronger versions of Shard attacks as you collect multiple ones from the same enemy.
- I would also love to see the return of special weapon attacks by doing special inputs as you attack and using a bit of MP, as seen in IGA's past works.

Things that should stay the same are.

- Movement Speed: Really like the default speed while moving normally. I also do like how fast Backdashes are in this game compared to other IGA games.
- Backdash Cancelling: I always do enjoy Backdash cancelling my attacks together to rapidly attack enemies. Glad to see it in this demo and hope it stays in the final game.

Other than that, I really do enjoy the demo and things are looking promising so far.

Why being able to choose direction of attack should be the main defference between main weapon and sub-weapon?  Even with free aiming it's possible to make weapons diverse (e.g.: with shoe-weapons character shouldn't be able to attack the enemy directly above her for obvious reasons, or the previously mentioned axes should be among the weapons wtihout free aming because of ark-attack).
And why do you refer to sub-weapons as REPLACEMENTS for main weapons? Shouldn't they be more situative and work in synergy with main weapons?