Topic: Review of Bloodstained ROTN CLASSIC MODE II: DOMINIQUE'S CURSE aka 'Bugstained'

[zangetsu468]

Hi all, it's been almost 4 years (-20 days to the exact date) since I dropped a belated review of ROTN.

Disclaimer: This format and text structure are a blatant rip of the previous review I did of ROTN, so no, this isn't deja vu (...Or is it??)
As the review progresses I will be referencing the section-by-section scores I initially assigned to ROTN, so a comparison can be seen re: the  overall score out of 100, meaning some sections will be compared and contrasted, given this mode is an off-shoot of the base game. As an added bonus I will also drop a small theory of my own in the 'Story and narrative' section of the review.

Enjoy!

Belated review of Bloodstained ROTN CLASSIC MODE II: DOMINIQUE'S CURSE aka 'Bugstained' 27.02.25


Gameplay/ Controls

Once again, this is easily one of the best parts of the game and why us Castlevania fans admittedly keep 'returning to Castlevania'.

The touch of turning Dominique's wrap into a whip is a brilliant way to maintain the cohesion of the whip mechanic imo.

There's nothing inherently wrong with controls, although I do have a gripe, which concerns the gameplay, by way of the placement of candles directly over pitfalls. Given the jumps being classic and more reminiscent of CVI-III are more fixed, or static and less 'malleable' than ROTN's floaty style of what I like to label as SOTN jumping. The main issue here being that placing candles directly above pitfalls, with Dominic's jump being particularly arched high, feels like the player has to be just landing the jump on the absolute edge of the next platform.. While this isn't an absolute deal breaker, it does get very annoying after a while. Here are ways the Classic II team could have improved this:

- Add another few pixels/ real estate of hitbox for candles, specifically, to allow the player to jump more freely
- Move the candles to either side of the pitfall (however, this creates a no-risk, no reward scenario)
- Add a technique later in the game, which allows Dominique to blitz through candles, including mid-jump e.g. Black Panther styles moves

This wasn't an issue in ROTN, so I'll assign the same score, deducting 1 point for the above issue, given how often this occurs during gameplay.

Total =  7/ 10
(ROTN Total = 8/ 10)


Music

While most of the music is good, the town theme for me is the one that really stuck out the most. I have no issue with the other tracks, although I don't recall or believe they're at ROTN's level of both variety and / or uniqueness.

Given this is a smaller portion of the main game, I'm assign the same score I gave to ROTN, but I will add 0.5 for the fact that the town theme and the 'horrible night's curse' theme are quite memorable in this instance, which is no easy feat when you're re-imagining something a very iconic game(Simon's Quest) has already done. The music also does feel incredibly 8-bit mid file wholesome, somehow. 

Total =  7/ 10
(ROTN Total = 6.5/ 10)

Graphics, Presentation, Art Style & Consistency

I originally said I wasn't a huge fan of the ROTN graphics, I also wasn't very fond of Classic Mode I and in certain instances, some of the animations looked awkward. However, Classic II's graphics are consistent, they look good and run with stability, particularly for a 2.5d game which was an afterthought to ROTN.

I liked that they canned the blown-up character sprites and switched back to simple text boxes again. The only presentation improvement that could have been had, would be a complete 8-bit mode with Curse of the moon graphics as a substitute to 2.5d.

I do maintain that as per my ROTN review, that some of the backgrounds (case in point Meggido, or the Water Temple) feel like they may be lacking some depth or detail. The best example which springs to mind is Meggido, which was was supposed to be ruins. Imo, however, it doesn't evoke a ruin-like feel. It definitely feels abandoned, not destroyed, maybe because the backgrounds are looking a bit too clean/ untextured to be classed as ruins. it may have worked better on the Switch, playing on a smaller screen, where these things can't really be seen as clearly.

While some of the enemies and bosses in particular(Gremory mainly) don't look as polished as ROTN, I wasn't expecting them to, either.
The town enemies(demons) while cool and adding something to the consistency of the context of 'Limbo', become very repetitive imo. Although the fact that they are more humanoid in form evokes in me an implication of the class system and some form of sophistication, even among demons existing in Limbo. (It reminds me of Grimmjow's backstory in BLEACH, which was explored during the Las Noches/ Espada arc, many las Noches full moons ago.)

A few more drawn cutscenes (as per the ending) may have been a nice to have, however, maybe this wasn't explicitly required and much appreciated was the addition of the world map, although slightly ambiguous in areas, it did look cool and served a purpose.

For this reason, I'm going to assign the same score I have to ROTN. I would push it a half-point higher, however, the 'art style' isn't really a focus of this mode, which slightly reduces the consistency of how visually appealing the overall aesthetic is and I don't believe it should receive a higher score than ROTN, in all fairness.

Total = 6.5/ 10
(ROTN Total = 6.5/ 10)


Story & Narrative/ Design & Plot Progression

Story & Narrative were interesting, maybe more so than ROTN. I say this not in a character sense, more in a world building sense, for the following reasons:
- The gems dropped pertaining to the context of what Limbo is (see previous section)
- The overall lore from the townspeople and texts, which the player collects along the way, specifically to do with Limbo, how the world operates (day, night, effect on the overworld) and the potential of escaping and what this feat entails.
- My own theory/ head canon: The implication that time passes differently in Limbo - perhaps not at all - inferring that Baal was weakened from battling Miriam, providing Dominique the opportunity to triumph. This added interest to the game, despite the 'light-on' ending's explanation, implying Dominique may become the next Shanoa, bereft of her memories (and likely, starring in another entry to the series).

4 / 5
(ROTN = 3/ 5)

Departed are the Spirited-Away-train and the random jellyfish soul drops (YES!!) and arrived are the inclusion of the long missed water stage boss and the re-envisioned sense of Simon's Quest. This was an improvement over something which wasn't good, so I'm not sure it is an 'improvement' as such, but whatevs bruh.

Our stowaways, unfortunately, are the bugs... Hence the 'aka Bugstained Classic II' title.
Similarly to ROTN, I experience a few bugs, one of which was gamebreaking during the course of play (SPOILERS AHEAD - skip to the final section of the review if you haven't played this game/ mode yet). Here are the two bugs I experience in my short and concise playthrough:

(click to show/hide)

• Icons appearing on the overworld map at the incorrect time: In this instance, the Simon Belmont Hunter icon was appearing on the overworld map at a point in time when it shouldn't have been. Basically, the player needed one more item in order to be able to summon the secret boss at the graveyard. This lead me to wander for a while, during a point in the game where I thought I was unable to progress, which brings me to bug number 2;
• After the Meggido two-souls/ going under water section, I went exactly where I was supposed to, went to the forest/ wooded section to the bottom left of Meggido and tried to find my way in. After a few attempts I did either use items to switch from day-to-night and entered in both day and night times. (at least once; one of the two or one each) For some reason, with night time being triggered in my initial playthrough, I was still unable to enter that wooded area, to obtain the double jump, which meant I couldn't progress to the lava stage..

While the above wasn't the worst bug I've seen, it's incredibly frustrating and took me back to the R3 function not working the first time I'd played ROTN, meaning I couldn't pull the shelves out in the library section of the game, causing a similar roadblock to occur.
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Given the length of the game, unfortunately, I will be deducting 1.5 points off a score of 4. Normally I wouldn't care, but ROTN in general suffers from far too many bugs and if I had to bet money on it, I've noticed that 90% of these bugs are to do with the game not loading properly, whether it be an area, a boss, etc.

I will also deduct a further 0.5 points for the world map, while necessary, the connection point between specific areas feels ambiguous and is not that helpful when trying to recall which paths Dominique has already traversed. The inclusion of a more traditional SOTN-style map would have been much more handy imo.
 
2/ 5
(ROTN = 1/ 5)

Total = 6 / 10
(ROTN = 4/ 10)

‘BONUS POINTS’

These have already been added and deducted as part of the above, as there isn't as much to this game as there is to ROTN.

While the lack of replayability (partly due to getting the best ending on first playthrough) is a thing, I won't deduct points, as the mode itself is an indication of replayability for ROTN.


OVERALL VERDICT
Grand total Score = 26.5/ 40 (66.25%)
(ROTN Grand total Score = 28/ 40 (70.0%))

Final thoughts: It's better than 'Mirror of Fake'(Alucard....)

[PFG9000]

Cool review!  I haven't kept up with Bloodstained updates and didn't know there was a Classic Mode II until now.  I've barely touched Bloodstained after beating it and never even downloaded the updates like Iga's backpack.  I did play the first classic mode, so I must have played around with the post-game a little.  But I'll have to check out Dominique mode.

[RichterB]

Dominique's Curse is the best thing to come out of Bloodstained since Curse of the Moon 1. I really enjoyed my time with it. Classic Mode 1 felt sloppy and uninspired, but Classic Mode 2 was a different story. The base Ritual of the Night game is solid and I enjoyed it, but I didn't fully love it. I was happier with Dominique's Curse overall, in spite of it being just an add-on. I hope its sense of lore and puzzle-solving is in the RotN sequel.