Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night Is Getting Shantae Cosmetics

Dig the gold accents on the vest and harem pants. Reminds me of the somewhat brief period where Shovel Knight and Shantae would cameo in practically every indie game lol

Castlevania: Dance through the Night

I'm pretty sure games don't even actually patch in Shantae collaborations any more, they just grow on their own over time.

@Bobb EXCATLY what I came here to say. Look, this is nice and all, but I'd really like a second installment. This game was absolutely fantastic and deserves a sequel!

Too bad about the performance (still).

I'm hoping the game's gonna reach its content completion soon, I've been looking to replay it.

I think the game's updates and bonus/DLC lacks focus and the Switch version is awful, even after updates.

@MirrorFate2 I hate to agree but I didnt think it rebounded performance-wise on the switch. I waited til after some of the major updates (i think) and it was abysmal, hitting rock bottom w/ the final boss. Hesitant to replay because of this

@Glasso Only on Switch. Other versions are fine.

Personally, I'd rate the Switch performance as good enough. I played the game on Switch maybe a year ago and had a lot of fun. The only annoyance were occasional freezes in some bosses. Recently, I replayed a substantial part of it on Steam and I didn't notice that big of a difference. I'm sure that if you put both versions side to side, there's a noticeable difference, but the experience didn't change in any significant way for me. I bought it again on Steam because it was cheap I don't mind double dipping when I really like a game, but after playing that version, I came to the conclusion that I could just have replayed the Switch version and be fine.

This game was OK, it does seem weird that they are still adding kickstarter updates to it after so long. Once I beat the game I never really wanted to go back and revisit it besides a few optional bosses that I missed. I think a second game could improve some of the things (especially the grinding for enemy drops, dang sea horse enemy things). The grinding for drops just left me not wanting to replay, or the market system/fusion of items seemed off. I was at the endgame and still would never be able to upgrade some items...

Are they ever gonna actually fix this game? The last time I tried to play a bit on my Miriam save was after the Child of Light update and the performance was utterly abysmal, constant stuttering and dropped inputs. Even worse than before that update.

In the past, the game has also crashed on me way too many times playing as Miriam and Bloodless in various boss rooms, and the Doppelganger boss always gets stuck in the wall. The game is just generally unpolished and any sort of loading, including opening the menu and talking to npcs, feels like the game is gonna crash.

It's pretty unforgivable, even if I still managed to beat the game as every character and get all the shards and items and such as Miriam. The game was still fun before the last patch, at least at times, even with poor performance and weird load times, but man they need to just throw in the towel and get someone else to do the Switch version for them, it's embarrassing.

In the 2000's, they'd be working on game #5 by now. 😆

If they make a sequel I hope they go for a different art design for the levels, too many wet looking caves.
The castle portions are awesome and the gameplay is just as an Igavania should be.

wow this is really cool!

Always down for anything Shantae-related. It's by far one of my favorite third-party/indie game franchises, due to the unique world that it built. Heck, I love it so much, I'm currently trying to write a script for an episode of a Shantae animated series that I would love to pitch to franchise creator Matt Bozon!

Also, I think the game suffer from feature creep.

@Bobb Let's just hope that Matt Bozon would at least be receptive to the idea. I envision it as being like the Disney cartoons from the 1990s, such as Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.

i really want a new game. Also..... ily Miriam

Replaying the GBA games recently and getting on the DS games now really makes me realize how much this game was missing the magic. Those games obviously borrowed a lot from SOTN but still had their own unique flair, even with Aria borrowing assets from Harmony. Bloodstained just riffed way too hard on SOTN and Order of Ecclesia. Hopefully the next one has its own identity, and hopefully they don't make so many stretch rewards and get stuck in this endless tail again.

game is unplayable on the switch

I'm pretty sure Shantae wore more silk than cotton.

So the Kickstarter launched in 2015 9 years ago while the time from SOTN to Order of Ecclesia was 11 years.