WOOOO! I just beat ________!!!!!

[The Lurker]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

Problem was that it wasn't an attempt to recreate the Castlevania experience.

Technically it was.

[Lesbunny]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

Problem was that it wasn't an attempt to recreate the Castlevania experience.

Technically it was.

Not as described.

[Variety of Cells]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

I agree with you 100%. The story should be able to just be in the background with this kind of game. However, there were multiple points where you couldn’t progress without having read a bunch of the boring text, unless you googled it. To get anything other than the lamest of endings that excludes at least 3 of the last bosses, the game requires you to read a ton of boring and convoluted text.  And I think that’s a problem.

[Pak-Man]

Finally beat Fire Emblem, The Three Houses. Well, actually I beat it a few days ago, but I lost Petra and didn't want to count that as my official win. Tonight I have conquered it without losing a single troop.

I took the hidden-ish Edelgard path, which is significantly shorter than the other three paths, so I still have a lot of three-housing ahead of me. I feel like I got the good ending and can't see how the other endings could possibly be happy ones, but from what I've been hearing, every ending feels like that because you get a different perspective and the chance to have a positive influence on your house, so I'm looking forward to seeing the other endings and getting the full story.