3.5/5 ★ – Hill417's review of Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.

When Koji Igarashi set out to create Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter he wanted to recreate the Metroidvania spirit that immortalized Castlevania, but one of the stretch goals for the Kickstarter was a full 2D side scroller in the style of the OG Castlevania games. So now he was overseeing two projects that had to recreate the experiences that Castlevania was known for. I have to respect his ambition. The game was developed by Inti Creates who were the perfect choice. 8-bit throw back games is their speciality. With Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, what we get is a nice balance of both old and new. Our narrative is about a swordsman named Zangetsu, who is out on a quest for revenge after his family was murdered by demons. So naturally he takes up his sword to exterminate demon kind. Along the way he will run into potential allies like Miram, Alfred, and Gebel, all of whom are either Shardbinders or Alchemist (who are intertwined with demons) so after you complete a stage you can choose to recruit them to your cause, straight up kill them and steal their powers, or just ignore them and carry on. I would recommend recruiting them as they have their own play style along with their own strengths and weaknesses. Miram has a whip and can slide. Alfred has a staff, but has excellent magic spells like a fire circle that will instant kill anything that comes into contact with it, but he has very low health. Gebel doesn’t have any special weapons, but he can transform into a bat if you feel like avoiding enemies or those challenging platforms that you keep failing at. A cool feature is that if one of your allies takes a hit, you can switch between another character on the spot and they all have their own health bars. So if Miram falls in battle, then don’t worry because you have three other characters to finish the level. It is like Castlevania III only made much easier… unless you want it to be. There are two difficulties “Casual” and “Veteran”. Veteran gives you a limited number of lives, enemies take less damage while dealing more damage to you, and reintroduces knock back. So you better have a precise timing because if you are on a platform and get hit then you best believe you’re going to fall down and get a game over. Casual mode is exactly what it sounds. A more fair and balanced experience with infinite lives and no knock backs. I did try out Veteran mode for a few levels, then immediately switched it to Casual. I didn’t feel like ripping my hair out. Then there is the Nightmare mode and I think that is self-explanatory. If you are brave enough then they're our multiple endings to try out the higher difficulties. I was tempted to try to get the other endings because the sprite work in the background and bosses are very detailed. My only real gripe is that there is not enough levels. Yes it is short and sweet, but when a game makes me wanting more then it is doing something right.