Bloodstained E3 demo - speedrun tech notes

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night demo
Gameplay mechanics and speedrun tech notes
by romscout

Note that all of this information is based purely on the E3 2016 demo, and may not be accurate when later editions of the game are released. I have also tried to leave out information that would spoil major parts of experiencing the demo, such as how fighting the boss works. This document focuses only on describing how the game works and different ways you can use its mechanics.

MOST SIGNIFICANT EARLY FINDINGS:
1. Extremely high super jump glitch; possibly infinite jump? I would be surprised if this stays in the game. (see: BUGS/GLITCHES)
2. Most physics and high level tech remain equivalent to the DSvanias, such as the presence of weapon backdash cancels and jump cancels. (see: COMBAT)
3. Beneficial damage boosting must be done in the air (unless the enemy is positioned in the air so that it will knock you forward). Knockback mechanics are more similar to SotN than DSvanias. (see: KNOCKBACK AND INVINCIBILITY FRAMES)
4. All shards can be backdash cancelled, but there are unique limitations for each (see: SHARDS)

CONTROLS:
1. Game can be played with keyboard and mouse, controller, or a combination of the two.
2. In my personal experience with testing it, keyboard and mouse allowed for the most precise movement, but my muscle memory with attack cancels on a standard Xbox controller made that feel much more optimal for me. Arcade stick should be very comparable to controller, but ultimately playing with keyboard and mouse will probably be optimal.
3. There is a config menu in the game, so presumably controls can be changed. There is no sign yet of there being a config menu on the title screen, but hopefully there will be so that people can have custom control schemes without losing time.

HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT:
1. General movement is very fluid and a little faster paced than GBA or DS Castlevanias. Very close to SotN in comparison.
2. Backdash is significantly faster and smoother to chain than most IGAvania main characters. Only Juste and Alucard are comparable.
3. Backdash might be slightly faster with a timed duck cancel compared to straight chaining, but only with extremely optimal play that seems beyond human hands at the moment. Messing up an input even slightly will lose significant time compared to chaining backdashes. For most situations, I imagine normal backdash chaining to be faster for players.
4. Sliding is probably fastest form of immediate movement, but is only really applicable for sliding off ledges or going under the boss door since it cannot be cancelled or chained well with any of the initial equipment.
5. Chests can be opened while backdashing, so you can open them without losing time as long as they are directly in your path.

JUMPING:
1. Jumping is tighter than SotN and more closely mimics the DSvanias. However, minimum jump height is still higher than the DS games. It might be on par with CVHD.
2. Jumping out of a backdash resets the speed to neutral.
3. Ledges appear to be very lenient, just like SotN.
4. The forced cutscenes seem to reset inputs, which means that pushing A to skip them will end your jump immediately (possibly relevant on the cutscene that shows you the jump input).
5. The only way to cancel the landing animation of long falls is to jump out of it. There is no way to cancel it with backdash or attacks.

KNOCKBACK AND INVINCIBILITY FRAMES:
1. Unlike the DSvanias, being hit on the ground by any size enemy will knock you back.
2. Invincibility frames for being hit in any fashion appear to be on par with being hit out of the air in the DSvanias. Sliding into a Dullahammer gave me enough invincibility to be knocked back, slide twice through him, and then be knocked onto the other side.
3. Enemies appear to have about the same number of invincibility frames as in Dawn of Sorrow, if not a few more. If this is accurate, it would mean enemies have at least 10 frames of invincibility after being hit. This of course is somewhat mitigated by the mysterious "3 hit sword cancel" technique.

COMBAT:
1. Backdash cancelling works almost identically to DSvanias. Backdashing after an attack can give you one more attack naturally, but you can duck to reset entirely and move your position. Therefore, the ideal loop is to attack, backdash, duck while moving forward, and then attack again.
2. You can backdash cancel any type of attack present in the demo and then follow it up with a different type of attack.
3. You can jump cancel attacks as well, just like the DSvanias. Both of the attack types present in the demo can be jump cancelled. The cancellation to the attack happens by landing on the ground. Therefore, the ideal usage is to attack in the air, land when the attack animation finishes hitting the target, and then immediately jump attack again.
4. If a large enemy (or the boss in the case of this demo) has multiple hitboxes, sometimes slashing quickly can make it register hits on multiple parts. I have found it is much easier to accomplish this on the boss with short jump slashes. The standard backdash cancel does not seem to trigger this.
5. Both the kick and sword animations appear to be slow enough that backdash cancelling and jump cancelling should prove to be faster methods of attacking in any situation. Jump cancelling with kicks has been awkward and difficult to do optimally for me, so if anyone else suffers from similar problems, standing in place and kicking may prove slightly faster than that option.
6. Something that is unique to this game and could be explored more is the use of directional shards (right stick and RT) with different types of attack cancelling.
7. When pushing multiple types of attack buttons at once, priority is given to the regular attack first, then the Y button shard, then the RT button shard.
8. Item drops from enemies automatically go in your inventory. Coin drops from enemies must be collected. Shard drops can disappear if you go off screen. I perhaps did not perfectly test this, but going off screen during an item drop seems to still put the item in your inventory. I'm not sure if you can open a chest and go off screen fast enough to make it not give you the item.
9. Some enemies have multiple parts and may take different amounts of damage based on where you hit them. For instance, Dullahammer's head area takes more damage than the armor.
10. Experience points work like the DSvanias so far, using set experience amounts for enemy kills instead of SotN's curve that calculates by comparing your level to the enemy's level.

SHARDS:
1. Cerulean Splash - Short range shot. Seems to be no limit for them when backdash cancelling, but it's also a short animation.
2. Head Flail - Swings like a mace weapon and backdash cancels like you are holding a weapon. BDC kills the animation.
3. Cast Amy - Homing shot with ghosts. There is a limit of 2 on screen when backdash cancelling.
4. Fire Cannon: Only directional shard in demo, can aim with right stick. Seemingly no limit when backdash cancelling.
5. CON Booster - Passive, increases CON. Probably will have no purpose in a speedrun.

PAUSING/MENU:
1. The map function does not seem to interrupt inputs.
2. The map function can only be pulled up with Back/Select, but can be cancelled with that button or B. There is no way to 1 frame map buffer, though, as there is at least a few frame cooldown before you can pull up the map after cancelling it.
3. Items in the menu work the same way as the DSvanias, not like SotN. They are consumed and have the appropriate stat distributions while you are still on the menu screen. No item seems to grant magical invincibility frames.
4. You can press Start at any position in the menu to immediately exit to gameplay. After pausing again, the cursor saves your position on the initial submenu choice, but not on the options within that.
5. You can buffer inputs out of level up animations, but this probably won't be too useful outside of an occasional backdash. Level up animations and shard acquisition animations take a while, so they should probably be avoided unless necessary.

BUGS/GLITCHES:
1. Super Jump Glitch - This is a glitch that lets you jump much higher than normal, and could possibly be an infinite jump if you optimize the technique properly. I did not bother trying to optimize it long enough to be certain of that, but I was able to go high enough that it might beat having a double jump ability.

Within a few frames of starting a jump animation, pause with the main menu screen. Let go of all inputs, resume the game, and then hold jump after the screen fade disappears. If you pause again and repeat the process as you barely move up, you can extend the jump a little bit each time. When you are far enough into the jump animation, it seems to stop working. It seems to work even better when you are going in a horizontal direction as well. Repeating this process with a direction held on the d-pad makes the jump go much higher.

In most situations during the demo, this glitch serves no purpose and is merely a "party trick" of sorts. In a direct route to the boss, it may be faster to glitch jump over the tower of 3 Morte Cannons rather than kill any of them. Most areas in the demo that seem to require double jump for progress actually have no content at this time. The only room where something notable can happen as a result of sequence breaking with this glitch is the second room of the demo; if you jump onto the platform that seems to require double jump, and then jump high enough into the screen transition above it, you will fall out of bounds endlessly until the game crashes. I would advise against doing this.

In case you're curious, this glitch does not work with the map button. Only the main menu pause button will activate it. While this serves no major benefit in the demo, it may be of use for sequence breaking later in the game if the technique stays. However, I would be very surprised if they do not remove this glitch before the final release of the game.

2. Sometimes falling through a vertical screen transition will place you on the top platform, but sometimes you will spawn under it. I'm not sure of the cause, but this is not too surprising for an early demo and will probably be fixed easily.