Listen to the Rain

Back in 2015, I learned about the Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night from people who had watched it and noticed its similarities to my favorite platformer of all time, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. In the video, Igarashi Kōji promises to make a game in the style of the old Castlevania games now that Konami isn't interested in doing anything with the IP other than making uncomfortably sexual pachinko games, and basically that's it. There's almost nothing about the actual game in there other than that it would be in the style of Castlevania, but that video! Igarashi walks around an old castle lit by torchlight, he sits at the head of a table and takes a swig from a wineglass before hurling it to shatter on the ground, and he walks outside and transforms into a cloud of bats. I fully admit that I was sold entirely on the game based on the pitch video without even really knowing what the game would be like.

Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't follow the development very closely, then. Through reading USGamer I heard about bringing in Inti Creates, who made the excellent Blaster Master Zero, to help work on the game. I saw the video of all the complaints about the art style where Igarashi once again threw down a wine glass and shouted "I will prove them wrong!" This had all the ingredients of a disaster in the making.

Then Curse of the Moon came out and it was great. And now Ritual of the Night came out and it's fantastic. We wanted Symphony of the Night reborn, and by G-d, that's what we got.


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