Some thoughts about… Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 (Patreon)

CotM 1 was the rare spin-off game that was vastly better than the source material. And now there’s another one! That’s kind of just new levels and characters for the previous game, so if you liked the first one, you should like this one.

It still has a lot of the issues I had with the previous game. There isn’t a lot of creativity in the game, it’s still a pretty straight rip-off of Castlevania 3. There’s not a lot of variety in enemies since many of them use the same attack patterns or are just reskins of each other. You meet a big monster and you know it’s going to stand in one place and fire a projectile that causes a shockwave you need to jump over. There are many enemies that do that exact thing, so if you’ve fought one, you’ve fought them all. They even reuse a boss from the first game.

The story doesn’t pick up from the endings of Curse of the Moon 1. What was the point of the big cliffhanger if you just ignore it in the sequel? And it’s a shame Zangetsu is still the main character. He’s so lame!

The music is pretty disappointing. There are one or two good tracks but nothing really memorable. The Castlevania franchise has some of gaming’s best music, so it really stands out extra for a game that so blatantly copies CV to have forgettable music.

The new cast is pretty interesting though, so they’re the main fun new addition.

You can play as a version of the stripper nun from the main Bloodstained game and she’s both healer and damage dealer, so you really have to make a choice on which spell you want for her.

The sniper is a neat idea for having a long distance character, but he can’t fire in any direction other than straight ahead and he’s slow and he’s weak, so he’s kind of lousy to fight with. But he can kick off walls to do extra jumps, so that’s neat, even if it’s rarely helpful in actual gameplay.

And then there’s a dog. In power armor. That can float. And can turn invincible. It is a very good boy.

The game’s structure is weird (and super grindy).

You beat all the stages with a cast of 4 to finish episode 1.

Then lose all your upgrades and go through the stages a second time with a cast of 3 to finish episode 2.

Lose all your upgrades again and go through the stages a third time with a cast of 4 characters that are significantly weaker to finish episode 2.5.

Lose all your upgrades again AGAIN and go through the stages a third time with a cast of 7 characters with the weakened main character to finish episode 3, but there are some extra stages at the end so there’s SOME new content.

And then you have to complete chapters 2 and 3 a second time if you want all the endings!

Having so many alternate routes through the stages is kind of annoying because you’re limited on which ones you can take each loop so it’s not like you’re seeing different ones each time. It feels like you’re missing half of every stage when you play them but sometimes missing the same half you missed previously.

They could have fixed these two problems pretty easily. Consolidate the episodes into like 2 instead of 3 and you take Route A in episode 1 and Route B in episode 2. No extra work for the team and a more enjoyable game for the players. Everybody wins!

By the end, I really wished the game had a “make me invincible” or “give me unlimited magic” toggle or something. It just becomes tedious and boring on your third loop through the stages and then you start playing poorly, which leads to you dying and having to do sections over again.

And they put unskippable “cutscenes” before bosses/during boss form transitions, so if you die, you have to rewatch them every single time.

A slightly minor thing I want to praise is how quickly the game loads. From launching the game, it takes only 8 seconds to get to the title screen. Glorious.

That’s about it. Short thoughts because there’s not much really unique about Curse of the Moon 2. It’s a good game, but like the first one, the test if you should care is just “hey, do you like Castlevania 3?” If you like Castlevania 3 and are okay playing the same content over and over, you’ll like this one.