Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon Critic Reviews

If Konami won't give us our Castlevania fix, at least we know its legacy is in bloody good hands!

Beautiful pixel art, good music, well designed levels and several endings to promote replay. Only a few more levels and maybe a more modern controls would have improved what's already a game no Castlevania fan should miss.

The prospect of playing such a lovingly crafted tribute to the vintage heyday of Konami's seemingly abandoned Castlevania series more than makes up for a few out-of-place boss fights and a slightly too punitive death penalty. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon delivers a brief but effective burst of nostalgia, and thanks to its many creative modifiers it contains enough replay value to engage (and challenge) anyone who pines for gaming's bygone days.

If you miss Castlevania or you can’t wait to play Bloodstained, this is a great choice. A good homage at a good price.

It might not blaze the trail on anything new like a few other recent Inti Creates projects have, but it does exactly what it needs to do, and helps bolster the new legacy of Bloodstained proper before it's even out.

Curse of the Moon is a very enjoyable old-school Castlevania homage that’s well worth the price of admission—as long as you have nostalgia for those games. Those of you who have no patience for the first three Castlevania games in particular may want to give Curse a wide berth, but I daresay there are systems in place here that may tickle your fancy.

Bloodstained: Curse Of The Moon is undoubtedly aimed at a very specific audience, and you’ll know if you’re part of that just by looking at the screenshots. If those, combined with words such as these, make your heart sing, however, it’s definitely worth your time. It’s like Castlevania just decided to come soaring back into all our lives, and how can that ever be a bad thing? Exactly.

More than a retro-inspired mini-game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon takes influence from the classic Castlevania NES titles and adds many quality-of-life improvements (and a few surprises) to the 8-bit, nostalgia-driven gameplay.

This 8-bit spin-off of Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is at the same time a nostalgic linear sidescroller and a modern game that manages to be accessible to new players.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon brings back the essence of the 8-bit Castlevania games in a masterful way. Even though it's short and has its frustrating moments, long-time fans of the series will find a lot to love here.

The game is only a few hours long, though, and the levels are winding and secret-filled enough to support that kind of repeated exploration. And while the developers may not have figured out how to mercifully handle losing a party member, they did put a lot of effort into creating varied difficulty options that can appeal to different kinds of players.