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The Bloodstained Shardbinding Maiden- Miriam Support thread (WIP)

Megadoomer

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How's everyone enjoying the Zangetsu and randomizer update?
Zangetsu's fun, though I'm finding the twin dragon boss to be nearly impossible. I'm not sure if it's because I'm playing on hard mode, or if my level's too low, but one attack (where the dragons smash their heads together, filling up the entire screen) seems impossible to dodge and drains Zangetsu's health insanely quickly. (the initial hit deals 150 damage, roughly a quarter of my max health, and it deals additional collision damage on top of that for as long as they're in that position)

My randomizer run was cut short because I couldn't make any progress, but I'm willing to try it again later.

EDIT: Bloodstained: ROTN has a development roadmap for upcoming content - the next big update is on June 23rd for every console but the Switch. (the Switch gets it in July)

https://playbloodstained.com/one-million-milestone-and-development-roadmap/

Also, they said that the third playable character is not Dominique. Not sure if it's going to be Alfred, Gebel, O.D., or (if the picture on the bottom is supposed to mean anything) some kind of skeleton man (I don't think we've seen them before) or a Lili enemy.
 
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1 million units sold and more upgrades to come!
 

Guybrush20X6

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I think it's safe to call Bloodstained a franchise now


Interesting choice of companions for Zangestsu, I wonder what role Miriam will play.
 

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Dunno if a certain ending will be acknowledged in this, but I'm glad Curse of the Moon has a sequel!
I'm getting the vibe that this game won't care too much about the canon of the previous two games, given that Inti Create's 8-bit stuff is always meant to be side-stuff to their main projects.
 

Darkerik

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I can see the potential of Miriam, I mean she or shanoa can be the obscure girl representative of smash. Also Miriam and hollow knight represent the new Era of metrovenia games. The music it is pretty awesome too soo I'm in with Miriam in smash. The moveset could be awesome too
 

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Ah heck YEAH, Miriam, Alfred and Gebel are returning too!

 

Megadoomer

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I typed up a moveset for Miriam. Oddly enough, even though I made a moveset for Dante recently, this one felt like it was the toughest one to balance, particularly when it came to her special moves.



Miriam Blooms Into Battle!

Miriam already has several alternate palettes in-game thanks to Todd. The purple, green, red, black, and pink palettes for the main costume colour will be exactly as they are in the original game; I’d prefer it if the sub colour stayed the same. Seeing as the Ex Shovel Armour completely changes her moveset (and might be seen as a joke that’s in bad taste, like Bad Box Art Mega Man), that won’t be directly used here. However, the seventh palette for her normal outfit could reference that, being a lighter blue than normal, along with a darker blue sub colour and yellow belts. Miriam will also have the Valkyrie Dress, one of the few armours in the game (along with the Ex Shovel Armour) that changes her appearance, as a proper alternate costume.

For the series’ logo, I’ll go with the rose found in the letter B of the game’s title. It’s a small symbol that relates both to Miriam’s design and her main weapon (the Blue Rose), so it makes the most sense to me.

There are a lot of potential stages that could represent the game, given that it’s a Metroidvania. Arvantville might work, as it’s a location early on in the game. However, I’m concerned that it might be too bland. I think I’ll go with Livre Ex Machina, as it’s a location unlike any that we’ve seen in Smash – a mix between a library and a factory. Hazards could include spinning blades on the ground, as well as bookshelves that move in and out of the foreground. White ones are static, while red, yellow, and blue bookcases move out to form platforms (or in to make those platforms disappear) on regular intervals. If hazards are turned off, the blue bookcases stay out, while the spinning blades are removed. Orlok Dracule is sitting on a balcony, watching the fight, and for some mysterious reason, Alucard can’t be summoned as an assist trophy on this stage. Hm… I wonder why?

Miriam appears on-stage through a portal that reforms into a stained glass window, referencing the fast travel rooms from Bloodstained. The window/portal sinks into the ground as Miriam prepares to fight. Miriam’s idle animations include stretching her hands over her head or putting a fist on her hip while her other hand is at her side.

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Miriam’s main weapon will be the Blue Rose, one of the stronger swords (not counting Greatswords) in the game and the weapon that Miriam uses in promotional material.

A-->AA-->AAA: two horizontal swings (left to right and right to left), finishing with a stab.

Forward A: Miriam stabs forward with one of the game’s spear weapons. I’m tempted to have it be the shovel as a reference to Shovel Knight, though Gungnir could also work.

Up A: Miriam stabs Blue Rose into the air.

Down A: Miriam does a sliding kick along the ground – I know it’s been done before, but it’s a ducking attack move that lets her get through small spaces.

Forward Smash: Force Blast. Once she finishes charging, Miriam jumps up a little bit and slashes diagonally downwards with a yell. This is based on the special technique that can be used with Blue Rose, among other swords, and it has an ice effect.

Up Smash: Miriam uses a whip to attack directly above her, much like Simon’s up smash. She uses a whip as her default weapon in Curse of the Moon, so I thought I should reference it here. (plus I felt like I needed to include a Castlevania shout-out)

Down Smash: Miriam does a sweep kick to knock opponents off their feet.

Neutral Air: Miriam slashes with her blade, with the trail forming a crescent moon in a subtle nod to Zangetsu.

Forward Air: Miriam swings Eternal Blue, a greatsword that is the most powerful weapon in Bloodstained ROTN.

Back Air: Miriam kicks behind herself.

Up Air: Miriam summons a Bloodbringer familiar, which stays suspended in the air for a few seconds while spinning around. Miriam can only summon one at a time.

Down Air: Miriam fires an Acid Jet to slow her descent.

Dash Attack: Accelerator – Miriam moves faster, and she’s surrounded by a blue aura that does light damage and pushes enemies away.

Wake-Up Attack: a Silver Knight familiar stabs on both sides of Miriam as she gets to her feet.

Climb Attack: Miriam summons a pillar of flame on the ground in front of her, climbing up once it disappears.

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Grab: Miriam summons Craftwork, the giant hand made out of stained glass, to grab the opponent

Pummel: Craftwork squeezes the opponent

Forward Throw: Craftwork scrapes the opponent along the ground before tossing them away

Back Throw: Craftwork flings the opponent over Miriam’s shoulder

Up Throw: Craftwork rockets upward, letting go and letting the momentum carry the opponent higher into the air

Down Throw: Craftwork slams the opponent into the ground; this can bury the opponent

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Up Taunt: Miriam strikes one of the two JoJo poses that she goes into if you hold Up on the D-pad in Bloodstained. If possible, she alternates between the two of them, or it's random.

Side Taunt: Miriam pulls out a plate or bowl of food, makes a comment, and puts it back in her inventory. The food that she pulls out is random, with a few different remarks based on what she brings out. Beef Curry would get the best reaction (it has really high stat boosts, and its description seems the most positive), while Dark Matter would get the worst. (“Is… is this really edible?”)

Down Taunt: Miriam summons a chair and sits on it. This taunt can be held, and she stays sitting for as long as the taunt button is held for.

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B: Cerulean Splash – Miriam uses the first shard that you get in the game, shooting out a ball of water that bounces along the ground twice.

Up B: Invert – Miriam flips upside down for a short amount of time, reversing gravity on her. This is automatically undone after a certain amount of time, though unlike in Bloodstained, she can’t walk on ceilings. (that seems like it would become outright broken in custom stages if that was the case)

Side B: Reflector Ray – Miriam travels along a ray of light. Her destination is shown by a beam that shoots from her hand, and the distance that the beam travels will increase if it bounces off of a wall, floor, or ceiling. The only part that does damage is when she appears, with a flash of light surrounding herself, at the end.

Down B: Welcome Company – summons three Poltergeists (living paintings) to surround Miriam, acting as a protective barrier. Each Poltergeist can tank one projectile for her, and the paintings will deal light damage without causing flinching if they hit someone, though they’ll break on contact. (this encourages the enemy to use physical attacks while they’re up, discouraging a campy playstyle) Miriam can move while they’re active. She can’t summon more until they’ve all vanished, and there’s a cooldown after they’ve left – trying to summon them will get a similar reaction to Miriam being out of MP in the original game.

Final Smash: for Miriam’s Final Smash, I’m going to go with Insatiable. Not everyone would have seen this, since it’s a shard that you get by beating the boss from the Backer Pack DLC, so I’ll include a link to the shard in action. Miriam tosses a wine glass to the ground, shouting “Unacceptable!”, and pillars of purple flame burst from it, traveling along the floor (or up walls, if you're on a stage with walls). The flames are tall, thin, and cover a lot of ground. The speed will be closer to the version that the DLC boss uses in the fight against him where you earn the shard, though it won’t go nearly as far as it did in that case. (maybe half of that distance)

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Miriam’s first victory pose would be a shard appearing and getting absorbed into her body, like what happens after she beats most bosses. For her second victory pose, she plays the piano along with the victory theme, ending with a dramatic flourish. For her third victory pose, she brandishes her whip before turning with her back to the screen, like her animation after beating a boss in Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon.

For Miriam’s victory theme, I’m thinking of using the Game Over theme from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The level clear theme from Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon sounds similar to it, and it’s a short clip. (besides, Metal Gear also uses game over music for its victory theme in Smash) I guess it’s like Game Over for her opponents.

When Kirby copies Miriam, he gets her hair, complete with the horn-like headgear. Kirby uses Cerulean Splash, which works exactly the same as it does with Miriam.

Hopefully it's all right as a moveset; this was my first time writing a moveset for a Metroidvania character, and I found it tough to know what I should incorporate without making it feel cheap or giving her too many area-of-effect attacks. (I originally had Riga Storaema as her neutral special, but that seemed like it would be a souped up version of PK Fire, and some people already find PK Fire to be cheap as it is)
 

SharkLord

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If we're sharing movesets, I actually made an entire page for a hypothetical Miriam DLC, which you can see here. Probably a bit rough looking back on it, and I'll probably rewrite Miriam's moveset for my full Smash project. Still, it's a thing.
 

Megadoomer

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 comes out tomorrow, likely around noon. How was the first one in terms of difficulty? I found the NES/SNES style Castlevanias to be way too tough for my tastes, but I wasn't sure if these games kept the difficulty at that level or toned it down.
 

Cutie Gwen

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Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 comes out tomorrow, likely around noon. How was the first one in terms of difficulty? I found the NES/SNES style Castlevanias to be way too tough for my tastes, but I wasn't sure if these games kept the difficulty at that level or toned it down.
The first game has a difficulty option that gives you infinite lives and no knockback iirc, though the classic difficulty style only removes a life if all your characters die. It's challenging, especially the runs where you don't get all characters, but it's a lot more fair than you'd expect from CastleVania. The fact that the characters have their own health bars helps out a lot alongside QoL stuff like being able to know if lanterns have subweapons in them so you can't lose your subweapon of choice for something useless
 

Megadoomer

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The first game has a difficulty option that gives you infinite lives and no knockback iirc, though the classic difficulty style only removes a life if all your characters die. It's challenging, especially the runs where you don't get all characters, but it's a lot more fair than you'd expect from CastleVania. The fact that the characters have their own health bars helps out a lot alongside QoL stuff like being able to know if lanterns have subweapons in them so you can't lose your subweapon of choice for something useless
Thanks! I got the first Curse of the Moon game (though I'm playing on the casual mode), and if I like that, I'll give the sequel a shot. (so far, I'm enjoying it - I've got 3/4 of the characters, though they were all unlocked after boss fights so I'm not sure how you can miss them)
 
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Cutie Gwen

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Thanks! I got the first Curse of the Moon game (though I'm playing on the casual mode), and if I like that, I'll give the sequel a shot. (so far, I'm enjoying it - I've got 3/4 of the characters, though they were all unlocked after boss fights so I'm not sure how you can miss them)
Ohoho, you don't miss them on the next playthrough.




You kill them and take their power as Zangetsu's own. This is needed to unlock the difficulty mode that gets you the true final boss and ending.



Side note, only got to play 2 levels of COTM2 and I won't be able to play much tomorrow but so far so good
 

KirbyWorshipper2465

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Thanks! I got the first Curse of the Moon game (though I'm playing on the casual mode), and if I like that, I'll give the sequel a shot. (so far, I'm enjoying it - I've got 3/4 of the characters, though they were all unlocked after boss fights so I'm not sure how you can miss them)
Well, you can actually ignore them and go on your way. That's the key to unlocking a specific ending, no spoilers.
 

Cutie Gwen

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Ok so my thoughts on COTM2 after having done 4 playthroughs

The first thing I noticed is that lanterns containing hearts are now shaped differently like how purple lanterns are always subweapons. Nice QoL change

The level design has been improved as I can't just play my favourite for 90% of the game like COTM1, this time, I can find use for everyone. They're also just fun to play, Gebel and Alfred were mostly ignored by me in COTM1 due to them being rather boring to play unless they were needed for pathways or if I found a green lantern, but I found myself switching not just because I needed certain abilities, but because they're just fun to use in general.

The music's fantastic once again but goddamn that boss theme gets me pumped every time, music worthy of being called CastleVania music.


My absolute favourite thing about this game though? The campfire scenes at the start of every other stage, they're so rich with character and helps flesh out these characters out, especially Robert
 

Megadoomer

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I've beaten Curse of the Moon 1, and I'm roughly halfway through Curse of the Moon 2. I'm enjoying both so far, and I'm glad that they included a casual mode. While the last two stages of COTM1 were rough at first (especially the last one), I enjoyed the game enough to play through it three times. (once with every character, once on Nightmare mode, and once to kill all of the other playable characters so I can unlock Ultimate mode)

So far, they definitely seem to be getting more creative with boss designs now that they don't need to recreate the bosses of Ritual of the Night in sprite form. The story of Curse of the Moon 2 doesn't seem to mesh with Ritual of the Night or any of the endings of Curse of the Moon 1, though.
 
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KirbyWorshipper2465

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I finally cleared all the trophies in COTM1.

...And I have to question why there isn't a Platinum, or one for Ultimate Mode.

I've beaten Curse of the Moon 1, and I'm roughly halfway through Curse of the Moon 2. I'm enjoying both so far, and I'm glad that they included a casual mode. While the last two stages of COTM1 were rough at first (especially the last one), I enjoyed the game enough to play through it three times. (once with every character, once on Nightmare mode, and once to kill all of the other playable characters so I can unlock Ultimate mode)

So far, they definitely seem to be getting more creative with boss designs now that they don't need to recreate the bosses of Ritual of the Night in sprite form. The story of Curse of the Moon 2 doesn't seem to mesh with Ritual of the Night or any of the endings of Curse of the Moon 1, though.
That may be because Iga decided to get directly involved with COTM2, for better or worse. The most workable endings I can think of are the variation where two people join you on your quest.

At this rate, I wouldn't be shocked if Zangetsu randomly pops up in a future Gunvolt game, simply of how much the original plans got derailed.
 
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Cutie Gwen

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Bloodless is the third and final playable character, shame we won't get O.D, Robert or Hachi but this is still cool
 

Lamperouge

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Bloodless is the third and final playable character, shame we won't get O.D, Robert or Hachi but this is still cool
Kind of a strange character choice to end things on (I haven't played much of the new content released after the game's launch but wasn't she already playable in that Boss Revenge mode?) but her Princess Peach parasol looks like it'll be pretty fun.

I really wanted O.D. for maximum SotN parallels, though.
 
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Cutie Gwen

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How the hell do they have the money to just give us an extra DLC character? They only got the funding on the kickstarter for 2 extras
 

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Bloodstained deserves all our love, I have the game in PS4 I'm thinking to get it for switch..
BTW I just added Miriam and bloodless to the roster for the fun

 

Megadoomer

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How the hell do they have the money to just give us an extra DLC character? They only got the funding on the kickstarter for 2 extras
Maybe the sales of Ritual of the Night and the two Curse of the Moon games were high enough (or gave them enough of a profit) to justify it? Either way, glad to see the game's getting more support!
 

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Nice to see a company with a roadmap that's not collapsing into a burning heap for once.
 

Flik

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I modded Gears of Fortune and Silent Howling to my Smash Ultimate. No doubt both songs would be part of a hypothetical Miriam Fighter Pack.

Gears of Fortune
Silent Howling
(Recorded these two matches in different days so I didn't realized until after uploading on Youtube that I put Simon, Lucina and Meta Knight in both matches lol)
 

KirbyWorshipper2465

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Classic mode is coming some time next month.

 

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Michael the Spikester

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I know it's most likely late and unlikely for her to get in the game but add me to the support!

I'm loving her so much. One of my new waifus! So beautiful, charming, and gorgeous! What a beauty!
 
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Cutie Gwen

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I think I'm gonna make my new year vows to play Zangetsu and Bloodless, Trails SC's really long and I'm going to play Touhou Luna Nights right afterwards with Yono and the Celestial Elephants afterwards, 2 short games and no 2 MetroidVanias between each other
I know it's most likely late and unlikely for her to get in the game but add me to the support!

I'm loving her so much. One of my new waifus! So beautiful, charming, and gorgeous! What a beauty!
download.jpeg-1.jpg
 

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I know it's most likely late and unlikely for her to get in the game but add me to the support!

I'm loving her so much. One of my new waifus! So beautiful, charming, and gorgeous! What a beauty!
I love the little things they do to give her so much personality like having her strike JoJo poses when you hold up and playing the piano in the garden.
 

Megadoomer

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I'm not sure if it's because I'm playing the Switch version, or if it's an issue with all versions (the Switch version doesn't seem to take priority with the developers, though that might be due to updates requiring more work), but the randomizer and Bloodless modes seem buggier than the base game. In my original playthrough, the game crashed on me once (before the performance-improving patch) from what I recall.

However, the game's crashed on me twice while playing Randomizer (once when opening a treasure chest, and once while accepting a quest) and once while playing as Bloodless (I died to the boss on the ship - I figured I'd backtrack to see what was in the earlier areas since she starts in the church).
 
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Megadoomer

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Classic Mode is out for Bloodstained Ritual of the Night today.

For everyone who wanted a 2.5D Classic-vania game.
There's also a new area added to the game, right? I'm not sure if it's temporary or permanent (I think it's a tie-in for another game that Bloodstained crossed over with), but I think I recall reading something about that.

EDIT: There is a new area, though it's only one screen long. There's a boss and a shard, but neither one appears in the Demons list after you get them.

The steps seem to be as follows:

1. beat Bathin (the boss in the Underground Sorcery Lab that gives you Reflector Ray). If you've already beaten him in your save file, skip this step.

2. go back to Arvantville and buy the Crown of Creation for 1 G.

3. while wearing the Crown of Creation, take the train to the Underground Sorcery Lab. (one way to do this is to warp to the Underground Sorcery Lab, take the train to the main castle, and then go back the way you came)

It seems like having the Crown of Creation equipped will take you to the new area. The boss is a big, slow moving damage sponge, though I was going in with endgame equipment, so I was doing about 300-400 damage per hit. Even then, it took me a while.

I'm not sure if you're guaranteed to get the shard after beating the boss or not. (I got it on my first try, and if this area's temporary, then I'd assume it would be guaranteed, but I haven't tested it out)
 
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