VinnyVania: Bloodstained - Part 02

After the day I've had, this stream was the perfect antidote. Thanks guys, you bunch of heretical grinders!

What is with this page? It's showing Pt. 1 with some weird overlay saying p2 is coming in 6 hours? What?

EDIT: Looks like video was posted too soon. All good now. Thanks, Papa Vinny!

Vinny finally enjoying Bloodstained

I have to interrupt this Vinnystainia-cast to ask you fine, talented duders out there to please make a gif of Vinny giving Dan a thumbs up then pointing at himself when he gets that second warp/stained-glass room, at 33:52. The bottom left shot. It's just a perfect vinnyism. Thank you.

Dan's MK story is awesome.

The start-up of this stream has some strong "waking up with a hangover" energy.

Wish I could unsub and still get UPF, this place has obviously lost all integrity.

iTs OnLy cOsMeTiCs

Do you believe that love can bloom in a Castlevania?

Dan with an anime shirt!

@sykdom: Them defending "it's only cosmetics" is not a new thing. They have defended that forever.

I haven't played this game yet but after Vinny struggling to enjoy it last week, the turn that happens in this episode where things get really silly makes me very happy.

Without a doubt, one of the best video series from Giantbomb this year. giantbomb always has that one golden set of videos where the game's sense of humor matches so well with their sense of humor that always reminds me why i love this site, and for me this was definitely that,

lmao get a grip

The old lady that wants food and the priestess running the shop are voiced by the same person, by the way.

I...have no words.

Back to the topic at hand, please keep doing what you're doing, GB! Glad to see Vinnyvania back and that Vinny is enjoying the game! Honestly makes me want to get back to it real soon after I finish gearing up in FFXIV ShB

I'm kind of excited by Vinny's turn in this episode.

Alex was very quick with that knifey-booty joke.

Heretical Grinder is so good. It nearly breaks the game. The Zangetsu fights can be tough though.

This is a real silly game!

Vinny, try the whip again. If you use the whip while jumping, the recovery will be canceled if you touch the ground. Its best to use in the air.

Was this the stealth return of Small Businessman?

Man I love Loved this game and am always down for more STAINIA. My major takeaway from the first two episodes: Dan has absolutely no idea how to play this game and is a terrible guide. I know vinny wants to play as organically as possible but with dans comments vinny just believes him and doesn’t explore further. When he made him run back and doesn’t mention waystones, he doesn’t really push for the cooking, doesn’t mention that you can craft up to 9 regular potions, he says you can buy at the shop instead but you have to craft most items first before they are purchasable, doesn’t show him the other two NPCs for item giving quests and planting seeds. Anyway! Great series luv u all

@limiter31: This is true for all weapons actually, you can make your own little combo with jump attack (land) standing attack (back dash) standing attack. Comes out ridiculously fast, personally never got used to the whip (bad hot box IMO). Probably just didn’t give it enough time

For the love of God, answer Miriam's calls or she won't stop grinding everyone.

It´s fun to see that they´re gelling with the game now.

@vinny@alex@danryckert Here are some notes and what is and isn´t a Kickstarter backer reward:

• Portraits are backers, but there was no additional tier that separates the attacking portraits from the non-attacking ones.
• The Cat demon was indeed a backer reward, a "put your pet in as an enemy" thing.
• The names for the avenge quests are not a backer reward thing, as far as I know, but a lot of them I recognize as names of Castlevania characters.
• All the weapons you can get with the 8-bit coins are weapons "designed" by backers, this is also why you can eventually upgrade them with 16-bit coins and 32-bit coins to make them viable through the whole game.
• There is also one more thing that´s a Backer reward that I won´t list because you haven´t come across it yet.

And some other notes that might be interesting or helpful:

• Upgrading a Shard in the shop increases its Rank, which does things like increase the number of projectiles or the size of the spell. Collecting more of the same Shard increases the Shard´s Grade, which generally just increases its damage or use effect. Both Rank and Grade top out at 9.
• A Yellow Shard that hits Rank 9 becomes a White Shard and won´t need to be equipped to gain its effect (however also equipping it will strengthen the effect even further).
• The Bookshelves list the weapons that can use a special move, but there is also a concept of Mastering a move which lets you use the move with any weapon of the same weapon class. You would need to use it to kill enemies a lot though.
• The shoe special move can be used 3 times in succession in the air or on the ground. The "Un" will make more sense then.
• The Doofus you helped with a Waystone is listed in the Archive as Benjamin Judd, making him a reference to the very same Ben Judd who used to work at Capcom, and whom worked with IGA as his agent during the KS campaign.

I hope vinny is prepared for this game wrecking his shit later on, some of the bosses are really really damn hard. Yet some are hilariously stupid easy. Honestly my biggest criticism I feel like the overall difficulty balancing wasn't handled so well but it sure is some dumb fun.

This turned into Fun-time. Glad to see it.

I'm glad Vinny got ahold of my two favorite weapons and loved them so much. The damn light saber and the knife shoes

Are you serious? Cause outside the bevy of technical issues the number one complaint I always see is difficulty wise the game is a complete joke past Zangetsu. There are dozens of spells that seem borderline broken in how powerful they become with a very little amount of upgrading and a large majority of the bosses can be outright face tanked if you go full spell caster. You saw how quickly he started smoking things with the heretical grinder once he got that, and it's not even that great a spell in the grand scheme of things. I honestly don't see Vinny having any real trouble from here out.

Okay this game won me over. It took a little doing but yeah. This is a great game.

It's actually kind of interesting to see how Vinny tackle this. I thought based on the way he plays open world game and the completionist in him would guide him to do everything else available to him before getting into a boss, yet here he is banging his head against the boss at way sub optimal set up in the beginning. It is also interesting how he said he prefers the pre SotN Castlevania games again based on his tendency want to go after every little thing.

Good that they spent time on upgrading their shards, hopefully they realize how powerful that is. The weapon passive shards can get stronger still, buying or crafting cheap weapons and feed them to the shards increase their effectiveness. Gathering more copies also helps especially once the maximum 9 is reached.

I wonder if they will ever walk one screen back from the home base and discover there are two more NPCs with one more side quest and opening up farming for ingredient. The Dullahammer slaying quest should hint them to return to the boat. And they really shouldn't overlook cooking.

The light saber is one of the better weapons in the game, they can grind out the money and buy a 16 bit coin from the shop and get a better version of it that is not locked by game progression.

Glad to see Vinny having a good time with the game! Though it'll be interesting to see how he handles some of the later bosses, I got my ass kicked in the back half. Best advice is to actually look at the crafting system and try to track down some better weapons when the time comes. Made all the difference for me when I got some decent gear, which is a positive aspect of the game in my opinion.

There is two more NPCs at the left side of the village/home hub.

Dan is giving misinformed advice to Vinny just like he did to Drew and Abby.

I miss playing this game but don't have enough an incentive yet... as soon as Zangetsu becomes a playable character, im gonna finish it again, and then Alfred and then Gebel!

@soimadeanaccount: I think he is banging his head against the boss exactly because he likes earlier Castelvania games where you just tackle the boss when you get to him - there are no stats to level up so you don't even think about it.

This game continues to look rough but glad Vinny is getting some goofy fun out of it.

His natural WAAAHHH is leaking out.

The song playing around 3:50 minutes sounds just like the song Crucified by the band Ghost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DMho9gMqHk

Is anyone else's video hitching literally every second?

Well, it happened. Game became a tour instead of a challenge. But hey, if that's what Vinny wants out of it, god bless him for finding his shards early.

Personally I avoided the spammy attacks like the Heretical Grinder and Rhava blades because they just break the game. I hope they don't try to grind those barbers.

I really don't want to backseat game on this one vinny is having so much fun, but he really should go left from the base and meet the other 2 NPCs. Its the one thing Dan should be nudging him to do.

My understanding has been that he doesn't dislike SotN per se, but just that it's so different from everything prior that it's "not true Castlevania" to him.

I just rewatched the Rondo of Blood Vinnyvania and the first time he tried playing as Maria - who is fun and silly but also kind of OP in certain situations - Vinny seemed to think it was against the spirit of the Vinnyvania series to alter the gameplay and mood so much. It was a weird bit of purism that I feel like is mirrored in his stance on SotN.

I cannot BELIEVE he beat Zangetsu without ever trying to jump over him and attack from behind while he's blocking.

That IS playing on hard mode, as far as I'm concerned.

And I changed my hair SO MUCH. I'm an absolute sucker for costume changes, and I made GOOD use of Todd's skills.

I know several people in the chat, myself included, were frustrated that they weren't listening to folks who were posting solutions to questions and problems they were having, but I think, in retrospect, they were right to ignore us, because the advice tends to devolve into laundry lists of YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND THISTO PLAY THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY, which are never fun or, in practice, useful. If we have them missing obvious stuff to get moments like the lightsaber battle, I'm just fine with that.

My memories of the game currently are dominated by some really poorly-conceived puzzles at the end, but seeing the parts of the game Vinny's experiencing again reminds me that the game really is easy and does have maybe a bit too much stupid stuff. Granted, there are some glorious "stupid stuff" moments, and a lot of the stupid stuff (like Fairy Zombie Kei Miriam designs) is opt-in, but...maybe they should have focused on the best bits and culled some of the rest.

Alex "A Regular Skullcrease" Navarro

@garwalk: Probably the biggest reason Vinny didn't have a good time with SotN is that the chat for that game was absolutely awful. Screaming non-stop 'advice' about how to play (it's why he used the stupid Shield Rod the whole time), criticizing his play, and pretty much not letting him explore the game for himself. It's probably one of the biggest reasons why they seem to be flying solo on this, and I'm glad that they're just figuring things out on their own.