YMMV / Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

• Anti-Climax Boss: You can make short work of Sariel in 2 if you recruit Dominique, since the moon gravity combined with her High Jump and vertical stab allows her to ignore the boss mechanics completely. If you recruit enough allies and get enough items to tank Sariel's attacks to keep Dominique alive, she'll barely pose a threat.
• Demonic Spiders: Axe Knights and Hammer Knights are a doozy. They employ Throwing Your Sword Always Works with their respective weapons, and they can mix it up with high or low throws. Hammer Knights also have Boomerang Comeback applied to their hammers to boot. They aren't bad on their own, but the game likes to stick them in places where they become a massive pain in the ass to deal with, typically next to Bottomless Pits or surrounded by hazards.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • In the sequel, the game starts taking itself seriously starting Stage 5, where you are constantly assailed by platforming segments involving lava and volcanoes as well as enemies with high speed, long range, or frustrating placement, and it only continues ramping up from there.
  • Episode 2 cranks up the Nintendo Hard by a crazy degree. Most of the bosses are much more difficult, enemies have been shuffled out for harder variants, and newly-accessible routes are tougher in exchange for providing new shortcuts and upgrades. You also lose Dominique until the Final Episode, which makes survivability that much harder.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Hachi instantly became well-loved when he was revealed by virtue of him being a corgi piloting a steampunk mech. Him being an incredibly useful character in the game itself helps.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Many fans hate when casual players say that Curse of the Moon is a prequel to Ritual of the Night. While originally announced as one, it was decided to turn it into a stand-alone Alternate Universe game very late into development, with the game's story being incompatible with Ritual of the Night's.
• Fridge Logic: How come Zangetsu obtains Crescent Moon, a circular slash technique, by killing Miriam, and Blood Moon, his Double Jump, by killing Alfred? Miriam's main attack is a straightforward whip, and she cannot attack in arc without her axe subweapon. Her unique feature is that she can jump higher than anyone else, which would've translated well to Blood Moon. Meanwhile, Alfred has no special mobility ability of note, but his basic attack is him swinging his staff in an arc, which then would've fit Crescent Moon. (At least with New Moon, it makes sense since it's a sprinting technique taken from the only character who can dash, even if not in human form.)
• Game-Breaker: Frostcalibur + Axe combo pretty much annihilates every boss in the game short of the final boss. Frostcalibur works on bosses but doesn't result in a One-Hit Kill like normal enemies; however, it creates an opening long enough for you to get a hit in with Miriam's Axe, which is the highest single-hit damage in the game and is normally Difficult, but Awesome until you add Frostcalibur to keep bosses in one place for you, and as a bonus, frozen bosses take double damage from the next hit. This also takes some doing in both finding and maintaining both subweapons (as others may be more practical in parts of the stage), but in the Boss rush mode, this is a moot point as you can select what subweapon you want.
• Genius Bonus:
  • If you know about Ars Goetia, you may understand why the bosses are designed as such in the game (even though some liberties are still taken). Example: The Goetian demon Focalor commands the seas, so what does the Focalor boss do? Why, try to kill you with water, of course.
  • In the second game, in a solo run on the final episode, the Final Stage will be renamed "Luna Secare", which is Latin for the episode's title "Cleave the Moon". Fitting, considering what Zangetsu does in the solo ending.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The jumping toads, of course, being Castlevania´s fleamen distant cousins. They act the same, jumping frenetically around you. They are incredibly fast and can tear your life apart quickly if you cannot kill them as soon as they leap at you. Especially their appearance in the last stage, where they respawn infinitely in a place filled with Bottomless Pits.
  • You will learn to hate Dullahammer Heads fast. Much like the Trope Namer of Castlevania infamy, they are often placed in areas with heavy platforming over Bottomless Pits, and the threat of them knocking you to your doom in Veteran difficulty is pretty dang high. Even moreso in 2, which has many more Dullahammer Head platforming sections that will make you want to throw your peripheral of choice when you lose yet another party member to the exact same trap.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Any attack with a sufficiently large hitbox can double-hit if the attack's hitbox is moving through the target while attacking. It's most obvious with huge attacks like Ultimate Zangetsu's Charged Attack and Miriam's Axe and is most easily accomplished with forward jumps; the timing needed is pretty strict, but mastering it allows you to shred enemies.
  • If you use Frostcalibur to freeze Miriam's Scythe, it gains an active hitbox while it's defrosting (blinking). Setting this up correctly allows you to demolish bosses that the Frostcalibur/Axe combo wouldn't work so well on.
  • A popular speedrun tactic is to use Frostcalibur to freeze objects then use Gebel's bat form, fly into the frozen object, then reverse the transformation to clip through walls and go out of bounds.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The ending of Nightmare Mode has Miriam having to put a corrupted Zangetsu out of his misery. Flash forward to Zangetsu Mode in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and it happens again... this time the other way round, with Zangetsu having to put a corrupted Miriam out of her misery.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A common critical complaint is that the game is almost a bit too similar to the game it's an homage of, and doesn't do enough to try new ideas.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Alfred has no real mobility, his normal attack is terribly short ranged, and his health pool is pathetic. While he can cast magic and has a decent mana pool, it's better to just cast and change to a better character, since the spell doesn't disappear if you do switch.
  • Robert is cool in concept but he's also probably the weakest new character in the sequel. His normal attack may be long ranged but is also weaker and slower, his subweapons are very situational and his wall jump/slide may sometimes be the cause of frustration.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Downplayed. Ritual isn't without its fans but for fans of the more action-focused, platforming-heavy Classicvanias prior to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, this is their preferred game.
• Porting Disaster: There have been a few fans who complain that the game's 3DS port is susceptible to lags and frame rate drops.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Many critics disliked Curse of the Moon 2's approach to unlockable content, as it requires the player to play through the same game several times for the sake of getting to the new bosses and scenarios.
  • Hachi's hover in Curse of the Moon 2, while very helpful, it's downright finicky. Hovering requires the player to hold the jump button, but sometimes, even during platforming, the player can jump and accidentally hover in mid-air while not holding the jump button. This can cause a lot of unnecessary deaths.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: Curse of the Moon is effectively Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse with a different skin. Not only is it an 8-bit platformer that curbs off of classic Castlevania's game design and mechanics, but three of the four playable characters are heavily reminiscent of the ones in Dracula's Curse.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: 2 is a continuation of the Inti Creates tradition of making the sequels harder; characters have less health to start with and are generally able to take less punishment than in the first game, enemies are more durable and are more frequently placed in unfavorable positions, and platforming segments are more frequent and many of them involve Bottomless Pits and Goddamned Bats. The bosses are also more complex and typically require more proactive strategy on the fly than in the previous game.
• Spiritual Successor: As mentioned, Curse of the Moon is designed to be one specifically to Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Curse of the Moon 2 was subsequently followed up by its own Creator-Driven Successor, Gal Guardians: Demon Purge, a Gal*Gun Spin-Off that shares many common gameplay elements with the series.
• That One Achievement: Unlocking all the shiny fun features of Boss Rush Mode proves to be a hell of a challenge. This is mainly because of a major catch in how Boss Rush works: Subweapons are limited and can only be used once per run, and vanish after clearing a boss. This also includes Gebel's Bat form and Hachi's Invincible Iron, which means that you no longer have the ability to cheese bosses with Subweapon abilities without very careful routing of which ones you want to use at which boss. Furthermore, there is a massive Difficulty Spike at Gremory, as her patterns are much more difficult to react to and due to bosses in the second half being balanced around having the Gauntlet and the Armor, they take significantly longer to die and hit much harder.
• That One Boss:
  • Titankhamun in the sequel is overwhelming by sheer virtue of how many things are happening at once. First, the boss's weak point is located at an elevation tall enough to be basically unreachable by every character's basic attack from the ground level, even Dominique and Ultimate Zangetsu, requiring you to stand on large pillars that erupt from the ground that will quickly move out of reach if you don't react fast enough. Second, said pillars both shoot lightning at the floor and disintegrate after a short time. Third, said elevation is guarded by rows of arrow turrets on both sides of the room that are hard to hit without Subweapons, and on Veteran they will knock you off if you aren't standing on the pillar correctly. Fourth, the boss constantly summons flying rings that move at a difficult (but consistent) flight pattern and will also knock you off if they hit you. This boss becomes several times worse on Hard Mode, as both the arrows and rings are now doubled and pillars try to dissuade you from standing on them for too long with lightning strikes. If you're on Episode 2 or EX, you also won't have Dominique to clear the turrets, making the fight that much more challenging.
  • Vepar is normally one of the easier bosses in 2...until you fight her in Episode EX without Hachi and his immunity to ice physics and ability to destroy spikes. This makes the second phase a nightmare as you'll be constantly slipping off platforms into the spikepits while you're trying to get into a good attack position.

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