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]
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.
Replaying this game after becoming a souls veteran shows how truly magnificent this one is. This was my first souls like but i droped it after an hour of ranting like many people do. Currently only DS2 is left for me in my Soulsborne journey and i can see why this one is praised so much. Lore, Atmosphere, Sound Design, Weapons and Combat are all 10/10. If you use the mechanics this game gives you and you are not over or under leveled this game is a pretty challenging but never unfair greatness! Highly recommend it to anyone!
I had the misfortune of playing BB for the 1st time after playing ER and just before I beat Lies of P. I was severely dissapointed by this game. I believe a lot of the love for it is thoroughly coated in nostalgia and argue it's not nearly worth a perfect score in 2024.
I won't go through the positives but I'll note I liked the atmosphere, music, and some of the level designs.
Here are my negatives:
- 30fps. It's painful in 2024. I don't understand why they couldn't have at least made it run at 60 on PS5. After playing it too long it hurt my eyes.
-Darkness/obscurity - This goes along with the framerate. I had to max the brightness to be able to figure out what was going on in levels and not strain my eyes.
- Coldblood items don't tell you how much they give.
- Can't warp between lanters. This is huge. What an oversight in an otherwise detailed game.
- Elevators - between going back to the hunters dream just to warp somewhere else, and waiting for elevators, I think that was half my run. Zero fun.
- No respec. Wtf. I understand a game being challenging but locking a player into bad choices they had no idea they were making 50 hours ago is antiquated game design, even for 2015.
- Jumping. Terrible mechanic. Either remove it or make it easier. it's only required once or twice so why even have it?
- Farming. Elden Ring did it right with the flasks. Requiring players to farm healing items with the **** lantern system makes for a repetitive grind that isn't fun.
- The story was meh. I was spoiled by Lies of P in that it provided the player with a more robust story, as well as plenty of exploration and item descriptions for those who want to delve deeper. I did not enjoy playing for hours and hours to get an extremely vague 1 minute cutscene that provided no real info to a first time player. I have zero interest in ever playing this again so I'd prefer to get a relatively full story on first playthrough.
- Messy boss designs. Many bosses were too hard to read (BSB for example). I didn't struggle with most bosses, but I didn't have fun watching all their pieces flail around giving me no info on what attack was coming.
- Gestures. I don't know how many times I accidentally sat on the ground or gestured in the middle of a fight. Just like jumping, this crap system is unecessary and easy to accidentally trigger.
- Walking. I know I'm spoiled from ER crouching but having to manually slow walk to try to get a visceral was unecessarily difficult. Just make a crouch or toggle walk/run feature.
- Save system. I didn't take any points off from this but it felt like a 2005 game with regard to saving, loading, and having to return to the menu.
- Just like the story, the systems in the game are obtuse, hard to learn, and convoluted. Similar to a lot of my complaints, this is an artificial difficulty that isn't enjoyable. Just offer some optional tutorial reading. Don't even get me started on the Chalice dungeons.
- Color. I understand the use of color in this game but by the end it was all forgettable and blended together. Which gray level was the Chapel? Is that different than the gray ward one?
- Sound. Music is great. Enemy and combat sounds are WAY too loud. The entire sound balancing in this game is trash.
- Exploration. No map. Convoluted, confusing level design. This combined with the almost non-existent story makes it feel like a game where you just run gauntlets of enemies to farm for pots for boss fights so you can get one sentence of story.
I believe a quality remake could take this game to a 9 or so. But in it's current state, playing it in 2024, with the knowledge of how good games like ER and P are, it's difficult to give this anything near a 10.
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...