Slowly but surely
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is aging like a fine wine. The latest update for the Nintendo Switch version, update 1.04, isn’t as substantial as the last one, but it brings noticeable improvements.
Here are the patch notes, courtesy of publisher 505 Games:
- Stability issues, such as crashes experienced while interacting with bookcases.
- Fixed an issue with corruption during dialogue which could lead to a crash.
- Some performance improvements related to animations.
- General bug fixing.
- Regions that were on 1.02 (SE Asia and Korea) will have all the 1.03 updates included.
And with that, I’m one step closer to double-dipping. Those crashes sounded irritating.
The development team says it plans to roll out even more “overall performance improvements for Switch,” but considers update 1.04 “an important step leading into the upcoming Zangetsu release.” The new playable character – voiced by Metal Gear Solid‘s own David Hayter – is a long time coming.
How does the Switch port of Bloodstained handle now?
At least according to one player, redditor TheSupremeAdmiral, the slowdown plaguing the Tower of Twin Dragons was improved. “In fact, the lower section runs close to flawlessly as far as I can tell, while the upper section dips a tiny bit, it’s still hugely improved over the slow-mo slog that it was before.”
The user also noted that there are still “some slow loading screen transitions, unfortunately.”
Bloodstained was among my favorite games last year – I’m genuinely surprised it didn’t make the cut in my PlayStation 2019 Wrap-Up results – and when I get the inevitable urge to do it all again from scratch, I’ll go with the Switch version. Portability will be key during my chilled-out second playthrough.
The game’s production schedule has gotten away from it time and time again, but I don’t mind waiting.
Switch update 1.04 [Bloodstained Official Forum]
