Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

• Genre: Action Platforming
• Time Played: ~5-10 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's a nice quick romp with some replayability.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pleased with it.
• Why I played: I like Castlevania games, but I guess more importantly I thought Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was amazing. I also wanted to finally get around to playing Curse of the Moon 2, and thought it was finally time to finish this.
• Recommend to others: I would definitely recommend it to anyone who like old-old school Castlevania. Not exploratory-action-platformers.

Curse of the Moon succeeds at what it's trying to do as an ode to classic Castlevania. It's strongest inspiration coming from Castlevania 3. It's a good game and can be knocked out in around an hour - give or take. I played through til I got most of the endings, as far as I am aware of, but I also split that between... years? Not sure. I know I have gotten a bad end, or maybe just not the "true end" so I'm not sure if I recorded this on here because of that. Usually I'll "qualify" a game as beaten on a credit roll unless it's a fake credit roll like Nier, or something.

This game requires multiple playthroughs to see everything and at least a few strategic uses of the "Curse of the Moon" feature. Which takes you back in time in the game but with stuff you have acquired. So some things can be a little repetitive and that might be why I took a bit of a break before finally fully finishing the game.

But it's fun. Having multiple characters, each with their own abilities and quickly swapping between them is fun. Having some modern quality of life features make it less stressful than some old Castlevania games can be. It's also a little quicker paced in general, which is a good thing.

I just wish the mechanical side of the game took some more modern approaches. Controls and whatnot. It would be nice to be a little less limited - per character, and not be locked in to your jump trajectory. Some of the platforming can feel pretty clunky/unfair because of it. Especially when knockback is involved. I say definitely play the game in Casual mode unless you love getting knocked into pits and restarting. I don't, and thought the game was way less fun until I tried casual mode, but then I had a blast.