Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Co-op Review

This spiritual successor to Castlevania: SOTN is mainly single-player, but it does have a co-op mode.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night will always be remembered as the game that popularized the Metroidvania genre, and one of its key contributors is Koji Igarashi. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Igarashi and his studio, ArtPlay, along with 505 Games, released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night in 2019. Bloodstained is a 2.5D Metroidvania and a true spiritual successor to SOTN. Following years of updates, Bloodstained finally gained “Chaos Mode,” the promised co-op mode earlier this year. Thus, it’s time for us to review the game and what Chaos Mode has to offer.

Upon first booting up Bloodstained, players can start the main game (found under “Game Start”) or numerous additional modes (found under “Extra Mode”). The campaign has three playable characters (plus a secret character). Miriam offers the primary, Alucard-style experience, and she should be played first. The other two characters are intended as secondary experiences. Zangetsu is a samurai who plays a bit like Richter from SOTN, and Aurora is a guest from Ubisoft’s Child of Light for some reason.

ROTN’s story is just as deep as that of any Castlevania. In the time of the Industrial Revolution, a guild of alchemists began to experiment with demon summoning as a way of maintaining relevance. The guild’s experiments led to a cataclysm that destroyed much of England. Only two of the young people who were experimented on survived the event: Miriam and her former friend Gebel. Ten years later, Miriam learns that Gebel has allied with demons and taken over a castle. She sets out to save him from the demon and hopefully, exterminate the unnatural residents of the castle. Meanwhile, an exorcist named Dominique, Zangetsu the samurai, and an alchemist called Alfred all have their own plans for an ancient book lost inside the castle…

The core gameplay closely resembles SOTN’s. Miriam can wield a variety of weapons, including swords, whips, spears, knives, clubs, and even pistols. Guns allow for a fully ranged approach, but they don’t deal much damage by default. Limited use ammunition deals different types of damage, and it can be found, bought, or crafted. Miriam can also perform slides and backsteps. Before long, she’ll gain access to several types of demonic shards as well.

Every enemy in the game has a chance of dropping its unique shard when killed. Shards serve as equippable sub-weapons that consume magic, but they’re also key to the powers that will allow Miriam to explore more of the castle and enhance her abilities. Shards fall into five categories, with one shard from each category being equippable at a time. The most important shards allow access to new areas by enabling a double jump, letting Miriam move heavy objects, letting her move underwater, and more. Every shard can be leveled up in two different ways: by collecting duplicates and by enhancing the shard with crafting materials. Enhancing and leveling shards is mostly optional but will add plenty of playtime for players who like to farm stuff.

A key structural difference from SOTN is that Miriam has a base of operations: a town located just outside of the castle. There, our protagonist can complete a variety of quests for NPCs, buy items and equipment, and use alchemy to craft items and enhance shards. Naturally, the town also has save and warp rooms. As for the quests, these involve killing target enemies, crafting foods, and delivering equipment. Quests aren’t necessary for beating the game, but chasing after them will lead to lots of extra farming for completionists.

Bloodstained’s campaign is a truly epic Metroidvania experience. Just rushing to the end will take about 15 hours, but you’ll get more than 30 hours if you hunt down all the shards and complete every quest. The campaign has the aforementioned additional characters, multiple difficulty levels, and a “New Game Plus” option to further extend its playtime. There are even a whopping six additional modes found under the Extra Mode menu: Speed Run, Randomizer, Boss Revenge, Chaos, Versus, and Classic. Disappointingly, none of these extra modes offers any Achievements or Trophies (though the “Classic II: Dominique’s Curse” DLC does add some). Why not give gamers some incentives to play the extras?

Among the extra modes, the one we’re naturally focused on is Chaos Mode, which supports 2-player local and online co-op. Chaos and Versus Mode even have online matchmaking, but you’re unlikely to find partners that way since Chaos and Versus are small extra modes in a years-old game.

At the start of a Chaos game, players have the option of customizing their characters. Only Miriam is playable at present, which makes no sense and limits the replayability of the mode. Both players have to be the same character, and that’s that. Customization options include randomizing Miriam’s colors or loading her appearance from a campaign save file. Players can also pick from three starting weapons: a sword, a whip, or shoes.

Chaos Mode tasks players with progressing through a randomized series of rooms and boss encounters from the main game. In each room, our heroes will face enemies and other hazards on their way to the exit. Enemies will sometimes drop random shards (not enemy-specific ones), and the team can find weapons and armor in chests as well. Shards and gear must be equipped on the spot; there’s no inventory management in Chaos Mode.

Each non-boss room has a quest that will award a random piece of gear to keep or reject when completed. These quests include killing all enemies, not killing any enemies, not using shard powers, reaching the exit within a time limit, and more. Co-op players can’t heal each other, but a downed player will be revived with a small amount of health if the other player reaches the next area. Bosses become increasingly powerful in this mode, so a partner can certainly increase one’s chances for survival.

Clearing rooms, completing quests, and defeating bosses is a decent foundation, but there’s not much more to Chaos Mode than that. If you finish the mode by defeating 8 bosses during a run, there’s absolutely no reward. Chaos Mode is set up like a roguelite with randomized rooms, quests, and gear, but the developers neglected to add any metagame elements or rewards to keep players coming back for more.

While Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s undercooked co-op mode is disappointing (especially after five years of waiting for it), the main game more than warrants a purchase. This is a beautifully made Metroidvania with ample depth, great writing, fully voiced cinematics, and plenty of extra content. Exploring the castle while hunting and upgrading shards is addictive and fun. It’s easy to see why Bloodstained already has two spin-off games and a sequel in development; the tight gameplay and gothic charm of Castlevania live on in this series.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night sells for $39.99 on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. The Steam version is fully Steam Deck compatible.

An Xbox download code was provided by the publisher for this review.