Amusingly, some of the reviews I read for this game on Steam were complaining that it wasn't worth the hype - that it was a fairly standard metroidvania game with all the same features we remember from Castlevania games of old. Of course, the Castlevania games are awesome, so I really don't know why those people were treating this as a problem. (Admittedly, those were a small percentage of the total.)
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the newest game made by one of the developers of previous Castlevania games (Koji Igarashi) and it is just as good as all of us were hoping for as far as I'm concerned.
One of the first things that struck me about the game was its complexity. There are a lot of different types of weapons, each with its own attack range and special techniques, and the player will run across four or five different types in the first thirty minutes or so. There are crafting systems not just for gear, but for food and other types of crafting ingredients. Just about every enemy in the game has a rare drop that gives the main character different magical abilities, so you have to manage collecting and upgrading those as well... Certainly a lot of it can be safely ignored, but then you'll be slightly less powerful if you don't take the time to do at least some of it.
The graphics are quite good, in general, although some of the models seem a bit off (the main character's scarf or hair jumping around in weird ways in particular). The game does use the same models for conversation and cutscenes as it does for normal gameplay, as far as I can tell. So if you modify the main character's appearance or wear a particular accessory, you'll still see it in the cutscenes, which is a nice touch.
Exploring the castle also works fairly well, with only one or two minor issues where it wasn't clear where I was supposed to look next. Admittedly, those one or two moments were quite frustrating (it's not common for random common enemies to drop critical movement techniques), but overall it wasn't that hard for me to remember what I had and hadn't seen and where I could try using some of the new techniques I'd found. Trying to stay alive in the process was a bit unexpectedly difficult on several occasions, and the solution I settled on feels a bit cheap (i.e. relying a bit too much on ranged magic attacks), but still doable with a little practice.
Overall, I think the complex extras and challenging combat will turn some people off, but I still highly recommend this one even if you are worried about those issues. It's awesome enough in story, exploration, and creative options to make up for those two traits, and even that is assuming one has a problem with those traits. Since I don't, I think it's just all-around spectacular.
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