overdrive's Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night review

I wanted to love Bloodstained, but the 2.5D aesthetics were a really turn off to me. I felt like I was controlling a potato; moving around and such felt so imprecise.

I don't recall ever having troubles with that. I did find it a bit disconcerting to see the 2.5 in effect during the rare outdoors are (going into the castle, going to the clock tower) since that wasn't happening while inside, but nothing like what you said.

For me the weirdest part was how, in some ways, it was tougher at the near-beginning than expected. I'm used to, in these games, for them to be easy overall with some tough bosses and maybe a tough place or two if you're not prepared. While that was there (to a degree; it was tougher than dude's earlier CV games, I thought), I was surprised when I got into the castle and it was work just to get through a couple entrance hall rooms because of Miriam's low health combined with how 2-3 bats would swoop at once and one often hit me and they'd take off a fair amount of health. As I recall, that problem instantly disappeared when I did a quest for one of the townspeople and got a nice early-game suit of armor, but it was pretty weird for a bit.