Having never played a FromSoftware game--and thanks to the massive hype around Elden Ring--I decided to download Bloodborne from the ps5 classics collection to see if I'd enjoy the vibe. Obviously, I'm years late to the party on this one and my 2-star rating is clearly outside the general critical reception, but here are my thoughts on this purported masterpiece.
The introduction
Bloodborne opens up with the player character in a mysterious clinic after having gone through some sort of blood transfusion. That's all we know as we're thrust into the grimdark game world with no weapon and the sneaking suspicion that things aren't going to go well for us at all. Sure enough, we meet a werewolf in the first room who unceremoniously wrecks us and sends us to the Hunter's Dream, the game's hub for buying items, upgrading and leveling up.
Now I'm all for games starting off and throwing you to the wolves, forcing you to figure it out as each new game mechanic slowly gets introduced, but in the case of Bloodborne (which literally throws you to a wolf), those game mechanics never really get introduced and things never really get explained.
The story
The grimdark world is painted very well, and you know from the very beginning that this won't be a cheery romp through the countryside. Horror is afoot and it's painted very well visually. But as for the narrative, it is, as far as I can decipher, an absolute cryptic mess. We don't know who we are (beyond being a "hunter"), why we're in Yharnam (beyond needing to hunt) and there is so little direction or impetus in terms of where to go and what to do that you are left to roam aimlessly as you try to survive the hordes of creatures wanting to end your very weak life.
This brings me to the only pleasurable part of the game.
The combat
Most negative reviews I've read revolve around the punishingly difficult combat which caused most people to rage quit before they even got to the first boss, or at least very quickly after running into that first boss. For me, this wasn't really the issue with the game. Is it difficult? It is! I died a handful of times within just the first couple alleyways of Yharnam, but once you realize what the game is trying to tell you, the combat becomes a fun dance--albeit a dance where your partner is trying to rend you limb from limb. You can't button mash, or your stamina will be depleted, and you'll be a corpse in seconds. So, each encounter is something you need to plan out.
Most games teach us to be wary of new enemies, to study them before approaching and stay at arm's length to learn their fight mechanics. Bloodborne says: to hell with that! and forces you to learn those mechanics on the fly and to learn them while you're hacking and slashing back, because most enemies can clear that safe distance in a flash and their reach is usually much longer than yours. The rally aspect is an interesting one, which rewards you with life gain if you strike back after being hit within a short window. The game teaches you that every enemy is going to be aggressive, unpredictable and usually much stronger than you. So, in other words, it's mayhem every time. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I can see why some people find it addictive enough to trudge on through the rest of the game's middling and disappointing mechanics.
The gameplay
I have this separate from the combat because so much of the game's frustration comes from the gameplay mechanics or rather lack thereof.
Character building is pretty poor. You can adjust your attributes as you level, but aside from giving you a larger health or stamina bar, there isn't much to it. Only a few weapons are "gated" behind stats, and none of the armor is gated. Further, most of the armor in the game have comparable stats and are interchangeable and only used for looks, while the weapons fall into two categories: quick and short or long and slow. In fact, you're given the option of choosing the (arguably) best weapon in the game (saw cleaver) from the very start, leaving you little incentive to branch out into other areas when the combat can be so punishing and you grow so familiar with your starting weapon. It's a shame, because these "trick" weapons look and seem fun with their two modes, and it's clear the devs wanted you to play with switching between the modes and the fly as you wade into groups of enemies, but I found that it was almost never worth it and I just stuck to the quick and short version.
Direction is nonexistent. I grew up in the era of low-graphic sidescrollers, where you had no option but to go forward, so to speak. It wasn't groundbreaking, but those games were limited to the technology of their time. Bloodborne came out in an era of revolutionary video gaming, where the games themselves were as much novels and cinematic experiences as they were video games. Do all games need to be like this? No! But Bloodborne pares the handholding down to such an insane level that each gated area is so frustratingly convoluted that I spent most of my time running in circles trying to figure out where I was meant to go next. With no overarching story that might give hints, and without a HUD or map, it became very tedious very quick.
The conclusion
I don't agree with the crowd who dismisses this game based on the difficulty alone. I'm not an eSports-level gamer, but I'm pretty capable of rounding the learning curve on most games. The enemies in this game are tough. The bosses are even tougher (at least the ones I faced, despite only dying to the Vicar lady). But I grew up in the era of Ghost N Goblins, Battletoads and Contra, so running into insurmountable obstacles at every turn is something I've dealt with before. It's when the obstacles aren't enemies, and they are born from the confusing level design and lack of interesting mechanics, that it makes the game very unfun. Pair that with a lack of interesting story, or even any interesting characters, and the engaging and challenging combat just wasn't enough to keep me around.
I finally uninstalled the game after about 15 hours, when my third merry-go-round through the Forbidden Woods left me still wondering what in the hell I was supposed to be doing, where I was supposed to be going, and how I was going to get there. I'll be honest that the only likely reason I made it that far was searching the internet for small hints and pointers.
The fanboys will scream at people who rage quit to just "git gud," and that's fair, to a degree: maybe some people do need to take more time to learn the combat mechanics. Or maybe this is just not the game for their skill level. But there are still plenty of detractors who think the game fails to live up in every other respect, making for a mostly confusing, frustration and disappointing hunt.
