Released on June 18th, 2019, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a fantastic action-platformer that pays tribute to the classic Castlevania games that came before it. In fact, Koji Igarashi, who wrote and produced Bloodstained, worked on Castlevania for over a decade. Those missing the monster-filled franchise have loved playing it. And It’s clear Bloodstained is now one of the best titles in what is quickly becoming the oversaturated Metroidvania genre.
Unless, of course, you’re speaking of the Switch port. Released a week after all other versions, the Switch version has several problems. These issues include framerate issues and laggy controls. It’s also noticeably darker compared to others, but that’s the case with many Switch ports that haven’t had their gameplay affected.
Developer ArtPlay and publisher 505 Games have remained open with fans about wanting to fix these issues. The plan was initially several small updates. But they will now be one big one, according to a post on the game’s Kickstarter page.
Initially we had planned to release a number of small updates to give incremental improvements. After looking at what needs to be accomplished, our goal is to bundle performance improvements into (likely) one patch. Doing so eases the submission process and will result in an overall faster completion. Since this is still in development, we don’t have a firm ETA. We will update everyone when we have a more concrete release window.
So, there isn’t a set date as of right now. But the bulk of the development team is working on fixing Bloodstained on Switch. And they did release a Balance Update across all platforms to fix minor issues. The post also states DLC, as well as physical rewards for those who donated to the game’s development, is on the way.
The main allure for the Switch’s version of Bloodstained is the ability to take it anywhere. Hopefully, this patch will be complete soon, and fans will be slaying without problems.