Recommended Soundtracks: Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has been in the news a bit lately, though not for good reasons. The game was confirmed to be delayed until sometime in 2019, making this its second major delay. Not that this was surprising, as it clearly wasn’t making this year given how we didn’t have a release date in late-August. It will now be coming a while after the Kickstarter completed in May 2015, and well after the original target date of March 2017. To be fair, this is partially due to the developer being switched from Inti Creates to ArtPlay midway, though they never fully elaborated on why that happened.

The Vita version of the game was also cancelled, with the reason provided being Sony’s dropped support for it. While that’s true, they didn’t want mention how much of a hassle it would have been to get an Unreal Engine 4 game running on the system, which may not have been worth the cost.

But at least ArtPlay and Inti Creates have given us some goodies in the meantime. This partly came in the form of a fairly robust beta that showed how progression is being made on the game. But the biggest gift came in the form of NES-style throwback Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, a side game developed by Inti Creates after they were taken off the main game. It’s a quality throwback to the 8-bit era which resembled an NES title as people remember them, meaning no one complained about how the game couldn’t have actually run on the system from a technological perspective. The core game is great, but one of its stand-out features was its soundtrack.

Like the game, the soundtrack resembles an 8-bit title’s, and features the talents of composers working on the core game like lead composer Michru Yamane and Inti Creates mainstay Ippo Yamada. But notice my use of “8-bit” there, as the music is beyond the quality of NES games. It’s actually on par with the three Famicom games that used the VRC6 mapper for expanded audio capabilities. The most well-known title among them was Akumajou Densetsu, the Japanese version of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. Out of the classic Castlevania games, COTM takes after Castlevania III the most by having multiple playable characters who play like those from that game, so this was assuredly intentional.

An official soundtrack has yet to be released, so there’s unfortunately no way to tell who composed which track, and there are six total composers named in the credits. The tracks themselves don’t have official names either, though the names that accompany the stages work well enough for most of them here.

COTM absorbs players in with the first stage theme, “Moonlight Temptation,” whose composition is at least on par with a first stage theme from an old Castlevania game. It features the combination of a good beat and the right amount of creepiness to match its dark atmosphere and accompanying color palette:

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

The second stage theme, “Frigid Hell,” continues the theme of tracks having a good beat while drawing the player into the atmosphere. But it works better here thanks to this stage being noticeably more difficult. The track also has a unique classic Japanese tune to it, which wouldn’t sound out of place in a Ninja-themed game. This fits Zangetsu, a character from Japan that uses a samurai sword and Ofuda paper incantations with kanji written on them for his sub-weapon attacks. It doesn’t fit Miriam, though, despite her being first available for this stage and being necessary to obtain some items and reach alternate paths. That is, unless you skip her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjsCNh0jqMA

“Gebel’s Theme” is, well, Gebel’s theme, a slow and harrowing tune that befits a vampire. It’s similar to the other character themes in how it only plays when they’re recruited, but you’ll hear it more than once when you replay it, thanks to the game’s multiple endings. Of course, you can hear it all you want here:

The theme to stage 5, “Sunder the Moonlight,” sticks out more than others. The other tracks highlighted above contain a noteworthy creepiness factor, but it’s subtler in this track. In fact, it sounds like a chiptune version of a track from a Metroidvania Castlevania title:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9cI4zWDKAM

In fact, that’s pretty much exactly what it is. It’s a remixed version of the track that plays in the opening stage for the last two Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night demos, where it’s known as “Voyage of Promise.”

These samples should give you the impression of how good Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon’s soundtrack is, but it also begs the question of how long they’ll wait to release an official soundtrack. My guess is that its OST will be included with ROTN’s soundtrack release, which should come alongside that game when it arrives. But given that project’s recent delay, we could be waiting for a while.

If the game takes long enough, though, it would be nice if Inti Creates could make a successor for COTM. They could have time to release it before ROTN arrives, depending on how big its delay will be. The ending leaves the game open for a follow-up story, so this could be a case of “when” and not “if.” But even if they don’t make a sequel soon, I wouldn’t mind having chiptune versions of the main game’s tracks available as options or bonuses. Hopefully at least one of these scenarios comes to pass.