My 2 Cents on the Backer Demo (Feedback & Thoughts...So far)

NOTE: This is a work in progress (see what I did there ) as I'm definitely gonna be tweaking this post over the next week or so as it should be plenty of time for me to gather/better process my thoughts on the demo (as I write this it's been a long @$$ day so trying to remember everything I want to say is kinda hard right now and I want to play through the demo again a dozen or so times along with the previous E3 demo that backers got to see if the bad/nitpicky things I mention below are because of my PC/Controller or something to do with the game/demo itself)

- Crafting System (sucks y'all limited what could be crafted in the demo cause I was having sooo much fun crafting stuff)

- Overall Weapon & Shard selection (felt there was a sizeable selection of weapons to chose from & shards to find scattered throughout the demo)

- Overall Level & Enemy Design (most of the levels & enemies looked good and I loved the design of the Save Rooms, but there were a few things I saw that I felt needed some work as there were areas where the level & Miriam didn't seem to mesh and during those instances Miriam noticeably stuck out like a sore thumb)

- Demo Length (this demo was a lot longer than I thought it was gonna be  and I've so far managed to put in a combined  6-7 hrs into it)

- Overall Gameplay (outside of some sluggish/non responsive controls & slow normal character speed the demo played & felt like a solid traditional Metroidvania style game)

- The final boss fight (really enjoyed this fight and liked the nice little touch of Zangetsu using his sword to block the arrow shard attack when directly attacking him with it)

- Little details like how certain enemies in the Castle Entrance area leave a splash of blood when you kill them with a sword weapon (though I wish that this had extended to the ship & village areas)

- The addition of special inputs that adds a unique special attack to certain weapons (like the Katana like sword having a 4 attack special combo chain you can perform if you have enough MP)

- Encountered the crate bug on my first playthrough of the demo

- Had multiple instances of Miriam freezing about the ground (some from getting hit by enemies on a ledge, some from getting hit by enemies as I fell from a ledge, some from trying to jump plus attack while getting hit with the new shard animation) which would last until either 1. about 20 seconds had passed, 2. an enemy hit you, or 3. you hit the backdash button

- No health bar for bosses (this is more of a nitpick, but it's something that I feel is a little bit more important so I thought I'd put it under the bad section instead)

- Still need to fix Miriam's partial flip animation during the boss fight on the galleon (the bit in question occurs when Miriam goes to flip over Vespar's attack during the boss fight intro cutscene, and instead of doing a complete forward flip she does this rather slow floaty looking forward flip, while she's in mid air the camera suddenly cuts to Miriam landing on her feet)

- Despite the little bit of dialog Anne has in the demo I feel she needs a lot of work cause she just sounds awful to me (like a bad actor trying to imitate a lame British accent while pretending to play the role of Oliver Twist during the "more porridge" scene)

- Speaking of Anne the scene in which she & Dominique are introduced needs some work as Dominique doesn't do jack to the creature before Miriam kills it from behind and yet she says that she showed/displayed (to Miriam) her skills as an "exorcist" when she clearly didn't so there needs to be something to indicate that Dominique is doing something to the creature before Miriam shows up to kill it.

- Some of the areas in the background looked empty/dead (some of the village/underground tunnel areas and parts of the Castle Entrance area) compared to other parts of the demo (this ties into my comments on overall level & enemy design)

- There were quite a few instances where there was no music, just ambient & environmental noise (sounds made by Miriam & nearby enemies) which really sucked cause the music I've heard so far has imo been amazing and I'd like to hear more of it rather than just sound effects.

- Did not like that Miriam's Silhouette while passing "behind" things (i.e. foreground objects/hugging walls) from the previous E3 Demo was still present in this demo when it should have been either removed completely (meaning no silhouette at all when Miriam walks behind foreground objects) or made transparent (the foreground object itself, not Miriam) when she walks behind them (Note: I did not mention this during my feedback of the E3 demo because it was clearly an early build of the game so I figured it was just a place holder effect and would be removed by the time we got to the official beta demo)

- There is a area in the Castle Entrance where there is a pool of blood that Miriam can jump into, but cannot swim down into (at least not in this demo) and I found it odd that when she got out of the bloody pool that her character model was not covered in/dripping blood during & shortly after getting out of this pool. So my little nitpick is that I'd like to see that kind of effect (where she goes from soaking wet/dripping water/blood all over the place to dry after walking a short distance) in play as it would not only make for a neat touch but would also further tie Miriam to that world (in other words it would make it clear that she's actually there in that environment and that it can essentially interact with her just as she can interact with it)

- When the little title video pops up right after you leave the Galleon (which I do have to say was a nice little touch) they (aka the "Narrator" aka David Hayter) should have said "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" instead of just "Bloodstained"

- Character walking speed needs some improvement (the current walking speed with the Speed Belt should be the normal walking speed and the character with the speed belt equipped should be walking even faster than Alucard did during SotN) and the reason I say that is because the game's castle is supposedly gonna be huge so unless there are a buttload of teleport rooms spread across the castle Miriam's gonna be traversing it on foot so she needs to be able to get to places in a decent/reasonable amount of time.

- I miss the trailing particle effect that was emanating from the scarf in the previous E3 demo (It was a nice little effect) and would like to see it return for the full game

- There are noticeable gaps in certain weapon's "hit boxes" which leaves you open to a animation interrupting attack from enemies (to me this was most noticeable with the whip as there is an area withing the whip's crescent C arc animation that enemies can be within before the start of the whip's attack animation starts and not get hit when they should've been)

- I am not a big fan of the way the whip works in the demo (a mid size arcing animation that is locked in regardless of whether you are walking, jumping, or crouching) as it currently is it, to me at least, feels (outside of quick jumping attacks, which I found myself doing almost exclusively while using the whip because it was imo more effective than the normal standing whip attack & crouching attacks in order to get smaller enemies) about as effective as the peanut was in SotN (which is to say not effective at all), heck I found the spear's standard standing attack in this demo to more effective than the whip which is sad because I generally hate using spear weapons in games (the only real exception was in Castlevania Bloodlines, but that was because they made it as effective as the whip was in that game especially when fully upgraded and it could be used to get to areas you normally couldn't get to with the whip) and love using the whip weapons instead. Now I know that y'all put a lot of work into those animations and aren't gonna scarp this animation so could you at least make a compromise by adding a straight forward attack animation for the whip (it should have the attack length of the spear, but have the quick attack speed of the long sword) that could be used just for normal standing/walking and doing higher/bigger/longer jumps (to help in fights against floating/bigger bosses as well as small airborne enemies such as bats & Alleos) and leave the arcing attack locked in for crouch attacks & quick jumping attacks. 

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