Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a game Kickstarted into motion by Koji Igarashi in 2015 as the spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night may be having a public perception problem. This is undoubtedly in part due to the rocky road of its development cycle, which has included several lengthy delays, the addition or subtraction of various release platforms, the switching of the primary development team from Inti Creates to DICO, and bringing on board further support from WayForward. Through it all, the game has been steadily taking shape toward what has become a Summer 2019 release window. But now it faces perhaps its greatest challenge: the muddled history of the franchise it is attempting to succeed and the public’s relationship toward it.

From person to person, media outlet to media outlet, one’s perception of Castlevania may be wildly different. This has resulted in some rather distorted comparisons with contemporary retro-inspired games like The Messenger and the recently unveiled Cyber Ninja, which actually take their primary inspiration from another classic action-platforming series, Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden on the NES. To understand why this confusion exists, we need to take a look at the history of how Konami’s Castlevania franchise has struggled to maintain its identity and place in the cultural consciousness of gamers.

Two ’Vanias: Classicvania and Metroidvania

Let’s start by getting some terms out of the way. There are two main strands of Castlevania gameplay: Classicvania and Metroidvania. “Classicvania” is what you would call a pure “action-platformer,” whereby you have largely linear, timed, scored, and stage-based progression that goes from Point A to Point B with various enemies, obstacles, and set pieces to overcome through the interplay of attacking and platforming. You have a set number of lives to complete the traversal of a given stage, your movements are limited to one degree or another to mesh with the level design and enemy placement, and your character can only power-up impermanently with things like sub-weapons.

This is the genre that constitutes the origins of the recent conflation of Ninja Gaiden with Castlevania, but it’s problematic to do so. While both began as 2D action-platformers, these two franchises were (and remain) as different as Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. Ninja Gaiden encouraged moving as fast as you could through a stage because lingering meant opening yourself up to all kinds of danger, especially the unforgiving rate of respawning enemies, and the character’s running animation and wall-bouncing acrobatics highlighted this. Castlevania, on the other hand, was always slower and more deliberate, which is best represented by the humorously plodding march of nearly all of its main protagonists. This pacing gave rise to methodical areas that could be punishingly so, like those handful of sections in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse wherein the player has to maneuver around falling blocks as they slowly create a series of platforms necessary to advance to higher ground. This strategic and disciplined back-and-forth between knowing when to move, when to duck, when to jump, and when and how to attack is a hallmark of the Classicvania games, and there’s a distinctive timing and rhythm to it—particularly with its whip-centric method of attack—that separates it from other action-platformers of its era.

2018’s Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon by Inti Creates, an alternate-universe retro spinoff title for the upcoming Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night that was a “stretch goal” from the aforementioned Kickstarter, specifically paid homage to this Classicvania genre. Yes, it included several optional non-linear and light RPG elements from some of the more ambitious and diverse Classicvanias, like Rondo of Blood and the previously noted Dracula’s Curse, but it was definitely not a retro-themed Metroidvania, as some have gone on to mistakenly claim.

It was from this older Classicvania formula emulated by Curse of the Moon that a second genre of Castlevania games were born—what has now become known as the “Metroidvania.” The prototypes for this type of entry began to emerge very early in the franchise with the MSX2 home computer’s Vampire Killer, released in 1987 about a month after the first game in the series in Japan, and Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest for the NES, which arrived in North American hands at the end of 1988. However, it was Symphony of the Night, the primary catalyst for Bloodstained’s creation, that defined the emerging genre almost a decade later. Metroidvania games emphasize non-linear progression through one large interconnected yet segmented construct that requires players to advance or backtrack with permanently earned abilities and items to open up the next required area. Along the way, the main character evolves through an RPG meta-game of leveling up through experience points-earning combat, as well as finding and equipping different pieces of clothing and weapons that boost stats like strength, defense, and the magic-integrated intelligence category.

These entries intentionally retain some of the methodical pacing and obstacles of the Classicvanias, but are much less strict in how they’re implemented. Stressful “insta-kill” scenarios like “death pits” are nowhere to be found; enemy placement generally isn’t quite as strategic (or dastardly); characters control with a greater freedom of movement that often grows throughout the game to varying degrees; and the overall experience emphasizes atmospheric exploration—to the extent that the combat is less consequential moment-to-moment and the overall pacing can sometimes seem almost leisurely or meandering. There is never a timer, so this kind of Castlevania game invites players to stop to take in the sights of its mazelike confines; if you stumble across an optional hidden room or solve a puzzle while you’re at it, all the better.

Though its map system brings to mind Nintendo’s Metroid franchise—hence the first part of the Meteroidvania moniker—this kind of Castlevania game was originally intended to be The Legend of Zelda as a 2D side-scroller, according to Igarashi. Further, its myriad of changes to the Classicvania formula were intended to appeal to gamers who felt older Castlevania games were too challenging—evidenced, for example, by the more forgiving, floaty “hang time” during jumping in Metroidvania entries. Later Castlevania games of this style placed a greater emphasis on collecting new magical abilities to diversify the combat and puzzles. Some games further segmented the world map, and some, like Circle of the Moon and Order of Ecclesia, brought more Classicvania-style combat and/or platforming challenges into the mix. Nevertheless, when it comes to the Metroidvania formula set by Symphony of the Night, traditional action-platforming is nearly always secondary to non-linear exploration and building up your character.

Power of Perception: A Franchise’s Muddled History

Now, when you take into account that there are these two kinds of Castlevania games, each with their own core philosophy, you’re already stuck with a built-in identity crisis when trying to continue the legacy of Castlevania in a new franchise. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has tried to make it clear that it was pulling from Symphony of the Night, a Metroidvania, but that doesn’t mean it won’t pull from other franchise entries on either side of the aisle in the process—and even throw in some brand-new tricks of its own for good measure. All the same, when you factor in the variances between games in both the Classicvania and Metroidvania styles, and the fact that there were a handful of Castlevania entries that don’t neatly fit into one box or the other, things become increasingly complicated for the public and media’s perception, as many expect it to be able to succeed this thing called “Castlevania” altogether. But the history of how and when Castlevania was experienced by a given player has only complicated that further by generating foggy memories and mixed mental metaphors of expectation.

Most media members’ familiarity with Castlevania is almost always more casual and/or selective, no offense. Super Castlevania IV, Symphony of the Night, the GBA games, or the DS entries are the ones people are most familiar with, but few played all of these, and even among those who did, they did not necessarily linger on any of them to understand what makes them tick or different or similar from other Castlevania entries—or even other action-platforming/adventure games. Those most familiar with the GBA and DS titles even assume that Castlevania has only ever existed in the Metroidvania format.

There’s a reason for all that, though. It’s really not surprising that Castlevania has such a strange “Rorschach test” reputation based more on memories, interludes, and hearsay than comprehensive experiences, because it simply hasn’t had a consistent presence of notoriety in media and popular culture outside of Japan (nor likely inside Japan, though I don’t know those specifics). Whereas just about every Zelda or Mario game gets top-billing coverage and is adored and dissected ad nauseam, the Castlevania franchise…well, it hasn’t had that benefit for quite some time.

Speaking for North America, by my estimation, Super Castlevania IV was the last game of the original Classicvania era of Castlevania that was received with some fairly heavy fanfare and fame. Before that title, you can point to Nintendo Power magazine’s Simon’s Quest cover feature and Simon Belmont being chosen to stand alongside video game icons in the Captain N: The Game Master cartoon as signs of how Castlevania was in the mainstream gaming conversation and had a public presence. With few exceptions, games came regularly on just one company’s consoles—there were six Castlevania entries between the NES, Game Boy, and SNES from 1987 to 1991, which adds up to more than one game a year in some cases.

But right after 1991’s well-received Super Castlevania IV, there was a bit of a crisis in how the brand was disseminated: 1993’s Castlevania for the Japan-only Sharp X68000 home computer naturally wouldn’t find its way to North America until it got a PlayStation port at the beginning of the next decade. Dracula X: Rondo of Blood for the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM2 add-on was also a largely unknown commodity outside of Japan in 1993 that your average consumer at most caught a glimpse of in a wistful magazine article or import catalog; it wouldn’t show up officially in the West until 2007 as part of a PSP legacy package. Castlevania: Bloodlines was mostly overlooked on Sega Genesis in 1994, affected in part by the ongoing Console Wars in a franchise that had most of its reputation built on Nintendo consoles, as well as a roughly three-year gap between it and the last North American release. Castlevania: Dracula X (known elsewhere as Vampire’s Kiss or Dracula XX) was too late to the party in 1995, both on account of the legends surrounding Rondo of Blood by this point and the 16-bit era coming to a close.

So, in total, that’s around six “lost” years as a franchise before Symphony of the Night then garnered critical notoriety on the popular Sony PlayStation, with coverage coming right alongside impactful contemporaries like Final Fantasy VII. In the process, Symphony of the Night and its yet-to-be-christened “Metroidvania” formula became the new standard-bearer for the franchise, and therein changed the expectations of how every Castlevania should look and play. But that had unintended consequences…

Castlevania: Legends was a blink-and-you-missed-it Game Boy title in 1998. The ambitious Nintendo 64 entries, Castlevania and the remixed Legacy of Darkness, were more talked about than most people recall, but were still controversial and largely misunderstood in 1999. Castlevania: Resurrection for the Sega Dreamcast was cancelled despite a fair amount of buzz in 2000 amid internal decisions to shift resources to PlayStation 2. Castlevania Chronicles, a legacy reworking of the import-only Castlevania X68000, was pretty much seen as nothing more than a side novelty when it finally showed up in late 2001. That means there was almost three more years of floundering for relevancy in the public eye after Symphony of the Night.

But in mid-2001, there was a game that started to get more attention, and that was the Metroidvania-style Circle of the Moon on the Game Boy Advance (a launch title for the GBA, in fact). While not involved with this game’s development, its success led to Symphony of the Night‘s Koji Igarashi (aka IGA) coming back into the fold for the rest of the GBA entries (2002’s Harmony of Dissonance and 2003’s Aria of Sorrow), setting a new baseline and reference point for the series returning to some level of public reputation. There was a perception that Castlevania was back in the hands of the man who would bring out its best and create “true” Symphony of the Night sequels. However, regardless of this notion and the critical success of Aria of Sorrow in particular, worldwide sales for these two titles together were reportedly only about half of what Circle of the Moon did, showing the finicky uphill battle for consistency Castlevania has with public consumption and retainment.

Between these, 3D entries Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness in 2003 and 2005, respectively, failed to move the needle very far on the home console market, which limited Castlevania’s growth and reach amid the rise of 3D action games like Devil May Cry 1-3 (2001, 2003, 2005) and the first God of War (2005). These two Castlevania games sought to emulate those sort of hits to some extent, especially with their combo systems, but Devil May Cry and God of War were fast considered the modern replacements for Castlevania along with the 2004-rebooted Ninja Gaiden, despite the non sequitur of their combo-driven gameplay and limited platforming. Already, with this sentiment, you see a rapidly evolving confusion brewing over what Castlevania is.

The 2005 to 2008 Nintendo DS games—Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia—semi-stabilized Castlevania, but did so in a very specific way that kept the franchise bottled up with the limited audience of handheld gamers and those insistent on the 2D Metroidvania format. The worldwide sales numbers of these DS entries did better individually than IGA’s two previous GBA games, but none of them got anywhere close to Circle of the Moon numbers, despite the DS having a strong install base. To the public at large, these releases seemingly became seen as a small-scale, cyclical, amusing but innocuous commodity to be taken for granted, like during the NES era of Mega Man post-Mega Man III. Circle of the Moon just had the added benefit of being the first out of the gate.

Dracula X Chronicles in 2007 was made with the best intentions, collecting an edited Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood with a new 2.5D remake of Rondo of Blood; but rather than breathe new life into the franchise, it was sort of just a glorified “legacy collection” on the limited-audience PSP. A Java-based cellphone-exclusive entry called Order of Shadows that same year went almost completely unnoticed. Meanwhile, well-intentioned but really left-field experiments like the Wii fighting game Castlevania: Judgment (2008), the cellphone puzzle game Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night (2010), and the online multiplayer game Harmony of Despair (2011) were not very well received. Within all this, right or wrong, there was an ever-increasing, rather biased, and self-fulfilling perception that Castlevania works best (or solely) as a portable 2D series in a Metroidvania formula. Period.

Between those last three, 2009’s Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth was mainly overlooked on WiiWare. This was partially because it was a semi-“budget title” on Wii and partially because it wasn’t a Metroidvania, since there had been such a push to brand Castlevania in that mold—even going back to the N64 titles, where some people complained they weren’t the same as Symphony of the Night, forcing the franchise into a tinier and tinier box over time. The Lords of Shadow reboot era tried to broaden Castlevania in an almost desperate way with three games between 2010 and 2014—combining and even force-feeding disparate “modern/popular” elements from properties like Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, and God of War—and this actually did bring in new fans. There was heavy media buzz, too, with Metal Gear’s Hideo Kojima given a producer credit. Even so, there was too big of a gap between home console releases and too much discrepancy between what direction it should take, resulting in more rifts, confusion, and another crash for the franchise.

Rather than try to redefine Castlevania on its own terms, these alternate-universe Lords of Shadow-branded games ultimately became seen as alienating to many longtime fans and “also-ran” 3D action titles to the general public. Truthfully, there has yet to be an attempt to bring Castlevania into modern times on its own terms; the closest attempt was probably the controversial and rough-around-the-edges N64 entries two decades ago. And so, even Konami’s upcoming 2.5D iOS multiplayer game, Grimoire of Souls, is pleading the Fifth on that front.

All of this is a big part of what makes Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night an extension of Castlevania’s “Rorschach test” reputation. Within that lengthy, muddled, and increasingly distant “soup” of a history, it’s no surprise that there is no mainstream consensus on Castlevania in 2019, and that shows in how many gamers are only now finding out about it through Super Smash Bros. Ultimate of all places.

Mistaken Identity: Whose Genre is it, anyway?

On top of everything discussed, there is one final and crucial element affecting perception, because you have to add on the confusion of the fact that, in 2019, Metroidvania has gone well beyond its Castlevania origins. This strand of Castlevania was prolific for a time—producing seven such 2D entries in eleven years, and six of those in seven years, not including two additional 3D entries that flirted with some of the same principles. But when the franchise went dark for years on end, and the genre became only tangentially connected to its Lords of Shadows efforts in between, indie developers stepped up and started doing new interpretations of the Metroidvania genre. And wouldn’t you know it, a significant chunk of gamers experienced those new titles with either no knowledge of Castlevania or only foggy memories of a few games they enjoyed reviewing and/or playing years or perhaps a decade or more ago. As a result, these newer, more diverse Metroidvania games—Cave Story, Guacamelee, Axiom Verge, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, Shadow Complex, Ori and the Blind Forest, etc.—BECAME Metroidvania, simply by virtue of their Metroid-ish structures in some cases.

So, there is a huge perception gap right now, because many of these games have added or subtracted from the way Metroidvania was presented in Castlevania titles, which is the identity that Bloodstained is aiming for. Whereas the Castlevania-based Metroidvanias had certain restrictions or quirks fostered from Classicvania, and subsequently developed more of their own, the new-age Metroidvanias had no reason to keep those kinds of elements as they tried to achieve their own goals, retaining only broad strokes, much like memories, of how a Metroidvania—as defined by Symphony of the Night—should move and function. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s Kickstarter has tried to separate itself right from the start by using the term “IGAvania” to differentiate the older and newer strains of the genre, but this has largely been ignored within the amorphous catch-all that this genre has become as it has exploded in the years since Bloodstained was announced.

What Does this Mean for Bloodstained?

Full disclosure, I backed Bloodstained, despite the fact that my preferences have been more toward Classicvania over the years than Metroidvania. There are a number of things I can and have nitpicked elsewhere, but overall, from what I’ve seen and played, Bloodstained is turning out better than I could have hoped thus far. It promises a still-to-be-seen Classicvania-style Classic Mode among its numerous options, yet its main Story Mode is already blending some of the more intense action-platforming and environmental hazards of older Castlevania games into the nuanced exploration, customization, and character-building that has taken center stage in many later Metroidvania-style Castlevania entries.

I like how it’s deliberate in how it’s doing this, staying true to itself while consciously using its 2.5D graphics to logically evolve its scenarios. In a sense, it is generously blending Classicvania and Metroidvania as much as it can without alienating the fans that lean more toward post-Symphony of the Night than pre-Symphony of the Night. This is smart, because that’s its target audience—those with a special fondness for the kind of experience they got out of games like Symphony of the Night or, perhaps even more accurately, Aria of Sorrow. At its heart, it wants to present an alternate reality where Symphony of the Night received a proper home console follow-up, with all the whistles and bells that would entail. At the very least, its succeeding on that front; however, at best, it may very well be shaping up into an experience all fans of Castlevania can celebrate.

When outlets discuss something being “Castlevania,” few know or care deeply about the Classicvania roots these days, and Metroidvania has been defined for many not by Symphony of the Night now, but either foggy memories of that landmark 1997 game, newer things like Hollow Knight, or some combination of the two superimposed over each other in their mind’s eye.

I don’t think the one-size-fits-all AAA-game mentality that’s gotten into gaming in recent generations is healthy. If a game wants to be more deliberately paced and doesn’t want to emphasize combos, it shouldn’t have to. It’s not a regression. Whereas some might be tempted to brand it as too slow or too retro, it’s a intentional choice that changes how the flow of the gameplay and strategy therein are executed. For instance, when you’re fighting and jumping between platforms, a focus on combo-driven action might not be the best choice for gameplay. Moreover, the speed of a character is tied together with character-building options and the discovery of fast-travel methods, and the same is true for the customization of the combat. It’s less about combos and more about equipping the right kinds of weapons and magic in these games. Even Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild couldn’t easily zip across Hyrule and plow through every type of enemy straight away, and judging by its success, few felt disappointed by that fact. By taking these kinds of alternate, measured gameplay and progression choices into its design, new innovations may come from Bloodstained, which the game has already hinted at with abilities that include inverting the screen and turning into a ricocheting laser beam.

But with all of this said, it’s now a matter of if people will give Bloodstained a chance and play it by its own rules to experience where that journey takes them. Will the media and general public do that? That’s the question.

I myself would have enjoyed an alternate history where Castlevania evolved beyond both Classicvania and Metroidvania—not as a pure clone of anything, but on its own terms. But reality being what it is, Bloodstained’s attempt at showing love to both strains is the best thing going right now for those who really enjoyed the kind of distinctive pacing, stylish yet gritty Gothic atmosphere, and variable challenges the Castlevania franchise has presented the gaming world. The Castlevania brand has suffered in the past when it tried to be other “popular” games, and I don’t want Bloodstained to make the same mistake as it carves out its own identity in 2019. With any luck, gamers and reviewers alike will give it the room it needs to breathe and make its own mark on the modern gaming market.

Peter W. Smorynski is a creative conceptualizer, author, freelance writer, and lecturer with a passion for video game design. (Contact PWS |@AGO_Plus | AGO+ Podcast on Youtube| AGO+ Features by PWS | ARM X Novel Series on Youtube) | Art/Design Gallery ~ Under Construction

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