Bloodborne takes the best of Dark Souls and builds the unrelenting gaming challenge on a prefect foundation - it will test your abilities to the max. The first true must-have exclusive for PS4 is here. [Issue#252]
Truly, Bloodborne is an indisputable masterpiece. An experience so memorable, unique and hauntingly beautiful that you'll often feel like replaying or revisiting the game. It excels in every aspect starting from the world, soundtrack, aesthetic, combat, bosses, atmosphere to the story & lore. It also has one of the best DLCs ever made! A shame playstation decided to forget all about the game and act like it never happened. The least they could've done is given it a 60 fps patch if not a full remaster. Regardless, its a game that every playstation owner and souls fan should play as Bloodborne is one of a kind.
With aggression as its invitation, Bloodborne invokes a calculated shift in Souls parlance. Its aim isn't necessarily a course correction, but rather a Y-axis slant into an alternative series of objectives. Sacrificed are a few degrees of personal customization, only to be replaced by a renewed sense of distress and wonder. Bloodborne’s demanding novelty, even with its unrepentant focus, feels built to last.
Bloodborne is an incredible game; tight in its mechanics, logical in its systems, rewarding, intense, gloriously frustrating and exciting in equal measure. The PS4 has its first absolutely essential game. As if there was ever any doubt.
Give it a chance – not just a couple of hours, mind, but five or ten; enough to let its claws sink in nice and deep – and you’ll probably find Bloodborne an intoxicating dose of pure masochistic pleasure.
In its current state, it feels like it caters too much to the twitch experts, and doesn't bend for the rest of us. A challenge that feels like a learning experience is welcome, but Bloodborne too often felt like it was kicking me in the balls and leaving me helpless to do anything about it.
Just for heads up, I finished all Dark Souls and Elden Ring.
That said, I want to talk about Bloodborne. Over the years the Souls franchise has grown on me with each of its main games having a different gameplay objective. In Dark Souls 1 you have the constant feeling of finally overcoming yourself playing a difficult game, exploring a scary world (after all, at any moment you can die and lose everything, scary in that sense). The exploration is immense, insane, farming in this game is just SOMETHING.
In Dark Souls 2, you take everything I've said, and put a melancholy setting à la Berserk, with incredible mechanics, weapons, builds, spells and everything else varied than in Dark Souls 1, there are indeed disadvantages such as movement, but that adjusts as you play.
In Dark Souls 3 they managed to reach the absolute level of all three games, perfection from start to finish, Hidetaka Miyazaki's magnum opus. Dark Souls 3 refuses to die, it has cutscenes, enemies, BOSSES, and an importance to the world of games that I can't imagine anything even like it; perhaps in terms of importance we can mention the Halo franchise.
In Elden Ring they managed to go above and beyond, everything from the voice acting to the open world, the first and the last boss, Elden Ring went beyond everyone's expectations, a singleplayer game whose fame is the envy of Western developers, who in their arrogance and idiocy cannot understand the magnitude of this masterpiece, a replay factor maybe as big as Dark Souls 1, I could spend hours talking about this game.
So, we go back to 2014 with Bloodborne, a game built on top of some bad choices that keep it stuck at 30 frames until today. Its style and setting, along with its sad story and depressing endings, have made Bloodborne the game for many. The question here is: Where exactly does it fit into Miyazaki's games? The answer is: Nowhere. Bloodborne is unique, it's visceral, yet... What I see in Bloodborne is that its bosses don't have much emotional appeal (you remember Artorias, right?). Its health item farming system is a bit degraded for those coming from other Miyazaki games, in addition to being extremely easy to break the game's difficulty (I didn't do that, but everyone knows c*mmmfpk-style dungeons).
Its parry system is insane but confusing, you don't know which enemies you can parry, but you know you can, which ends up causing most people to just fire a thousand times until the timing is right.
Bloodblorne's lore is as impeccable as ever, following a sad but engaging plot, although to know it you'll probably have to watch videos and thus better understand what you're doing in the next gameplay only. Gehrman is a great final boss, yet things like his theme music and steep setting make his level drop in comparison (Nashandra, Soul of Cinder, Radagon...)
In summary, I believe that Bloodborne is a solid 7, with its highs above its lows, but always a solid 7 that would certainly have been more successful if ported to other platforms like PC and Xbox (On Xbox it could be running at 60 Frames, as it happened with Dark Souls 3).
I seriously don't understand the high ratings for this game. To me it just feels like a lesser version of the Dark Souls series. Everything just feels bare bones. The gameplay feels off. The writing is just bad and leaves you with nothing to go on with.
You get thrown into the game with basically no real background information or general goal. You just see some creepy scenes and then your character will die on the first enemy to then go back and kill it easily a couple of minutes later.
You then kind of aimlessly roam around a city to find stuff and some kind of purpose of why you're even doing what you're doing. I managed to find two bosses in that city. That bird monster boss fell on first try and the human-werewolf mix boss fell on third try. Both of these bosses were not really exciting. Also even roaming around these city streets and hearing stuff about hunters and monster I still have no idea what I'm really doing there.
Also Bloodborne managed to annoy me with things like its confusing map layout and by making the use of the bonfire mechanic more annoying. You want to teleport to some other spot? Better return to the hub first and then teleport to the next location. Better be sure that it's the right location because each time you teleport to the wrong place you have to add two more loading screens to teleport to the next location.
I've heard a few times that Bloodborne supposedly took lessons from predecessor games like Dark Souls 2 and improved the formula. I'm not seeing it though...
SummaryBloodborne is an action RPG in which you hunt for answers in the ancient city of Yharnam, now cursed with a strange endemic illness spreading through the streets like a disease. Peril, death and madness infest this dark world, and you're tasked with uncovering its darkest secrets which will be necessary for you to survive. Armed with a s...