Bloodstained’s Switch Port Needs Some TLC

Over our holiday break, Lisa and I delved into a game I had previously reviewed a few years back. I had followed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night since its Kickstarter campaign and when it released I played the PS4 version for a while. Playing the Switch version over the holiday has led me to a discovery. The Switch version needs a lot of attention.

The developers are still rolling out content that was promised to the Kickstarter backers and there have been steady updates. However, there are crashing issues in the Switch version that I never encountered even at launch on PlayStation 4. For example, in at least 1 out of every 5 times I speak to an NPC in Arvantville to turn in a quest or do shopping, the game crashes.

The crash is so frequent and in the same place, that I find myself saving before I do anything in regards to crafting, upgrading, buying/selling, or turning in quests. Some have said it could be a Unity issue, but I have played dozens of Unity games on my Switch that haven’t had this persistent crashing. On top of that, there are some framerate issues in areas that have a lot of graphical things going on.

I should also point out that my PS4 version of the game has none of these issues. I have uninstalled/reinstalled the game on Switch, it is up to date with the latest version, and I have tried everything I can think of in order to fix this. Nothing has worked, and so I have reported the bug to the dev team, hoping that perhaps something will get fixed.

Gremory has enlisted five demonic bosses to protect his castle. Can you survive each level and defeat each boss?

Classic Mode launches January 14th.#BloodstainedROTN pic.twitter.com/PN1BNGfkzc

— Bloodstained: RotN (@SwordOrWhip) January 8, 2021

Considering the sheer amount of folks on the internet having this same issue though, I’m not sure whether or not they’ll get around to fixing it. This begs the question, “Why are they adding new content when the base game itself has catastrophic bugs?” and the answer to that is simple. They don’t want to make people wait for the things they have promised from the Kickstarter campaign.

Because the crashing seems to only happen on Switch, it is likely a low priority. It is a sad fact, but I would wager that the dev team and the publisher have it at the very bottom of their to-do list. I could be wrong, and I would love to hear from someone involved if I am, but it just seems like they don’t care too much. It’s sad too, because Bloodstained is a fantastic game, and it plays well aside from the crashing in one specific area.

However, there are a lot of folks who wouldn’t “stick with it” and be careful to work around that series of crashes. I have decided to beat the Switch version just to see if I can manage it, but there are a lot of people who won’t make that choice. People talk about games like Cyberpunk 2077 being buggy at launch, but there aren’t many folks who talk about issues like this.

Bugs and issues that are still popping up a year after release tend to be ignored. We expect it out of developers like Bethesda, who are known for buggy releases. Yet it is disheartening that a single version of an otherwise fantastic game is ignored. It is especially disappointing considering Bloodstained is a great game to take on the go or would be if the crashes weren’t prevalent.

With that being said, the development team has done some substantial bugfixes to the Switch version. Upon a bit of research, I discovered that apparently, the Switch version was worse off at launch than it is now. With that in mind, maybe there is a scenario in which these new content updates also bring in fixes to commonly reported bugs.

There is also the knowledge that sometimes with new updates, bugs crop up that weren’t there before. It may take time for the dev team to iron out the bugs that have surfaced in the wake of adding new characters and modes. Hopefully, these things get addressed.

Essentially, having crashes in the same general area makes it an easy thing to avoid. However, that is a little beside the point. I hope I’m wrong in saying that these crashes (avoidable as they may be) will not be fixed. I hope that the development team sees people talking about it and figure out a way to resolve this issue. Until then, I would suggest that if you want to pick up Bloodstained on Switch, wait for a sale.