Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon REVEALED!

Aside from liking the game a lot for many reasons, I'm not a fan of no-air-control-jumps. Most of my deaths were caused by this and it always felt because the jump-feature is clunky rather than because I didn't have enough mastery over the game. I feel like some minor air control would have made the gameplay feel a lot more fluent.

As for the casual mode: I'm totally in favor of it. It lets everyone experience the game the way they like it without any drawbacks. I especially like that it was explicitly stated in-game that there were no drawbacks of choosing this mode. Great design decision in my opinion!

Committing to your jumps is a staple of Classicvania though. Take that away and it becomes just another platformer. That kind of floaty gameplay works for IGAvania since platforming is nowhere near as much of a focus, but Classicvania is all about precise jumps and tricky enemy placements.

He could be controlled in Super Castlevania IV I belive, off hand I don't remember with Bloodlines, Dracula X/Rondo of Blood, Rebirth etc.

The thing with providing too many options in a game your making is that you can't have that tight game design that Classic Castlevania games were known for, if everyone has the option to turn this and that off or on, then you have to design levels and enemies with those things in mind, rather than knowing exactly what will happen when player does "X" action. Both arguments have there merits and both can lead to great games. And I still enjoyed CotM and will continue to enjoy it when I get it for my PS4.

roguedragon05 Haha, yeah sure But nah, the point is that with jumps like that, failure feels like a fault of the clunky jump rather than my fault because I wasn't good enough. Most of my jump-related deaths happened as a mishap rather than because I was beaten by the challenge. That's how I feel about it anyway, others might feel differently and that's totally fine

In some sections I noticed that too - Miriam's higher jump was not exactly set up for some of the more precise platforming sections. By the way, that's another thing that even slight air control could have solved (ok, I'll shut up about it now ). Other than that I actually preferred Miriam's platforming abilities. I sort of felt more agile when playing as her.

I have to agree with Yän about Miriam. She feels like the best at platforming of the four characters in Curse of the Moon. I haven't had any real trouble using her, compared to the others.

Meanwhile, Gebel doesn't even need platforming. Just transform and fly over almost every section of a stage (and ram into the undulating Dullahammer Heads). There's plenty of opportunities to get more Weapon Points throughout each stage on all difficulties, so I never worry about wasting them all on Gebel's flying.

This is a pretty late take, but I've been absolutely devouring this game, so I'll start by saying the game is fantastic. I feel like the upcoming games I'm anticipating the most are retro-style (Mega Man 11 for instance) so Curse of the Moon absolutely sates my appetite for that. The level of difficulty rises very nicely and the game as a whole feels incredibly balanced.

I think the game is pretty easy outside of a few nasty platforming sections though. Mostly because of health drops. I understand it's kiiind of necessary since you've got four pals to cycle between, but they feel too common, combined with more often than not optimal subweapon setups. Also Extra Lives respawning is a bit much. I frequently had 9 by the game's end whereas Dracula's Curse wears me down to nothing each time I play it. The difficulty rises if you try to double down on weapon types though, as stage 6 ended up being really nasty because I was too stubborn to let Miriam use anything other than the axe and the lightning on Alfred. I feel like there's juuuust enough lack of coverage between Subweapons if you try to hold onto the stronger stuff; Gebel's attack and Zangetsu's ball and chain don't cover the air like Miriam's rapiers, and Alfred in general has trouble with the air. There's clearly a lot of thought put into enemy placement combined with level layout, but that's really IntiCreates' strongest aspect, isn't it?

More than anything, I wish there were some dipswitches akin to Adventure: Rebirth allowing you to do stuff like toggle health pickups, air control, and how whether partners would show up if you already got one. That's just my personal preference though, I'm getting into nitpick territory. Honestly, all of the hazards are laid out so having control on your jump arc is kind of superfluous. The boss designs are all fantastic and I even found a lot of the easier ones to be really difficult with solo Zangetsu. There's so much replay value here and I can replay each of the levels and find new facets of the level layout and TONS of hidden areas, so even the stuff I brought up hardly bothers me at all. It's a fantastic game, and rather than compare it to Castlevania, I really think the most relevant comparison is Shovel Knight, given how it modernizes a lot of existing caveats of old-school NES ideas and does them better.