Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is one of the best metroidvania games in years, standing proudly alongside Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest as a highlight of the genre originated by Samus Aran and Simon Belmont. The game has received a huge amount of post-launch support since its original release, and is set to gain even more next week in its 1.5 update, releasing May 9 on PC.
The keystone of the update is the addition of two brand new game modes to completely alter the way Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is played. The first, Chaos Mode, takes the game’s Metroidvania progression style and transforms it into a roguelike-esque series of randomized rooms filled to the brim with demons and bosses. By completing challenges prior to each boss, players can acquire powerful upgrades to level themselves up for each subsequent run. This mode can also be played alone or with another player through local play or online matchmaking.
The second, Versus Mode, isn’t exactly what it sounds like at first. Rather than pitting two players against each other in a 1v1 fight to the death, Versus Mode instead sees two players in a rival battle to defeat the most demons and acquire a larger amount of souls from their corpses, using them to upgrade their own abilities and also negatively affect their opponent’s gameplay, such as through reversing their controls or filling the area with blinding fog.
Simply survive longer than your opponent, through whatever dastardly tricks are available to you, to find yourself the winner of this mode. Similarly, this mode can also be played using local play or online matchmaking.
In addition to the game modes, this update also introduces three new premium cosmetic packs available as in-game purchases, and a cosmetic pack for Miriam that is completely free with the update. As for after this update, Bloodstained is also set to get another new mode in the form of the retro-inspired Classic Mode II, with its release date still to be announced.
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