Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

This sequel really came out of nowhere, most of us did not expect this announcement, and then releasing the game so soon.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 continues Zangetsu’s journey towards extinguishing evil, and now he is able to recruit 3 new allies. Dominique represents the church, and she fights with a spear to attack, pogo and jump around.

She also has a very helpful revival ability, and also had an appearance in Ritual of the Night. Robert is a fragile yet sharpshooting gunner that can kill enemies from afar in a horizontal line, and also crawl and wall jump his way around.

Hachi is literally a dog controlling a mechanical suit because Japan, and his body can walk over spikes, destroy certain walls, become temporarily invincible and hover in the air for short distances. Each character is viable and more effective at certain points.

Featuring roughly even more content in overall, the game is split up into 4 “Episodes”, of which I beat most of them on Veteran mode. Most of the 8 stages per Episode are in general the same, however you will unlock and recruit different characters between them, so that you will be able to undertake different routes per stage.

They all also have a different final boss, and each one gets better. Eventually you will be able to play all 7 characters in the series so far, which is quite impressive. Curse of the Moon 2 was a harder game to me, especially that nasty stage 6 and it’s Egyptian boss.

I did laugh and enjoy that the team put references and nods towards Gradius and Lifeforce here, as Moai enemies appear, and lava sprites looking very similar. In overall, it’s a better sequel, and I feel spoiled. Some of us won’t like having to beat the game several times in order to see it all, but I think the replay ability is fair and different enough.

Rating: 8.2