Sorry for the bump, but I've got needs. I'm on a Castlevania tear. I've already burnt through everything I can on PC, and I just need more. Outside of Bloodstained, are there any games that just completely rip off the SotN formula? I'm tired of these half hearted attempts. There are some decent ones, Blasphemous (lack of weapons kill it), The Last Faith (pretty close, but it's got just enough jank to queer me out on it). Hollow Knight would be cool if it had more colors. Ori drifted into weird uncanny valley territory for me. I thin it was the art style. Too busy and depthy for that kind of gameplay. I just want a pure rip off of SotN
Does Ender Lillies have a large variety of weapons? Any turds in it's strew to be aware of?
That's a very specific request for SotN style games with weapon variety. I don't think developers have time and resources to add this type of variety.
Kungfuian already mentioned Lodoss War, it's the closest we have to a SotN ripoff. There's a polarity switch mechanic in it that I'm not very fond of, but it's fine. The developer, Team Ladybug loves having gimmicks in their games and they also made Touhou Luna Night which also shares some surface similarities to SotN and if you have *any* interest in Touhou, it's a must have.
One game that fits the bill with lots of weapons, magic and stats is UnEpic. It reviews pretty well on steam with a 91% user score, but it's inspired by Maze of Galious, a MSX single screen proto-metroidvania platformer by Konami (Galious also inspired the La-Mulana series). It's a guilty pleasure for me and not really recommended.
You make a huge mistake if you pass on Hollow Knight because of the art direction. It suits the dreary setting.
I would recommend Souldiers. I loved it to death, but it was savaged in Steam User Reviews because of launch problems and an insane difficulty level. Finest pixel art graphics since the Capcom's SNES era games. Here you get all the colors your heart desires.
(Screenshot with CRT-Royale Reshade)