Bloodborne (2015)

This was my first From Software souls/borne game and I was amazed at how fast it reeled me in. I can 100% see how some players might be very put off by Bloodborne and its Dark Souls counterparts but like many people have said before, overcoming the difficulty is insanely rewarding. The game is very very good at pacing and keeping it interesting. The level design, bosses and the score are insane. The weapons and their transformations are among some of the most inventive I've seen. Everything looks very masterfully created and handled with care. I was amazed at how quickly the game pulled me in and made me feel compelled to play. 2 months ago I had never played a Souls/borne game and now I feel like I could be a Bloodborne spokesperson. I have never played a game that made me all shaky and anxious during boss battles. During many of the later boss battles my heart was pounding for minutes after the boss fell and PREY SLAUGHTERED appeared on the screen. I found myself thinking of the game constantly and wanting to ditch all other responsibilities to sit down and play. Bloodborne is now easily in my top 5 games of all time.

I really am hoping for a Bloodborne 2 from the same team.

Bloodborne makes some changes to the Dark Souls gameplay which emphasize a style of play otherwise reserved for the more talented of Souls players.

You can play the Souls games with tons of different builds, mainly involving which attack methods you'll be using. One style focuses on timing a shield bash to parry the enemy, which I've never gotten around to mastering. Why? You can't easily practice them. The parry move in the Souls games requires you to be in melee range. In Bloodborne, you can do it at range. This lets you experiment and play around with timings with minimal risk, so you can actually get good while progressing normally (not having to dedicate separate time to practice it). Every(?) regular enemy can be parried, and many bosses can, too, so it's a worthwhile skill to learn.

Another not-so-fun element of the Souls games is resource (healing item) management. In Bloodborne, you have tons of healing (about 8 times your base health) and enemies will frequently drop more of them - I think they give them out at roughly the rate they think you'll use them, so if you're doing well you'll stay topped off. I never ran out of them during my playthroughs. They also give you another way to regain lost health. After you get hit, you can quickly attack the enemy and get a part or even all of your lost health back. So after being hit, you get two options: run away and heal, or stay in and get your health back. It's a nice way to remove the attrition that often comes up when traversing the map.

I think Dark Souls 3's a better game, but Bloodborne is different enough that it plays differently, much more aggressive than the others due to the above reasons.

There's something about horribly blobby surreal alien entities that just warms the cockles of my heart. At first glance Bloodborne was just about eerie ye olde london townships infested with deranged pitchfork-wielding villagers and the occasional spooky skeleton. But now we've entered bold new eldritch territory. Observe below the first picture: a strange squid-like being flopping around in the slimy waters. It's truly a wonder to behold; when it attacks, a weird flap opens up and you can see teeth and little strange dead babies inside it.. And below, yes indeed, a classic Victorian era alien autopsy. It doesn't get much better than that folks. Makes me really want to put down this game and do some oil paintings, I haven't been so pleased with game character design since Dead Space 1/2. Apparently for those games the artists used graphic photos of terrible car accident victims to help design the monsters.. I wonder where the From Software devs got their inspiration. Though there's definitely Lovecraft vibes going on in this late game phase, there's mythos nods all over the game. Lord Cthulhu will be pleased indeed.

(Words cannot describe the difficulty involved in getting images from my PS4 onto a computer. I have to upload them to twitter and then hack into twitter's html code to rip out the images. Cheers Sony, once again making things simple and practical for me).

I know I said I'd stop gushing over Bloodborne but I've gotten to a point in the game.. it's amazing! There was one final thing I wanted from this game, and they've definitely delivered! I wanted crazy surreal horrifying monsters and they've just appeared! I've encountered horrible weird mushroom men and completely bizarre insect thingies and cthulhu octopus creatures. And to make me gush even more, it seems like there's actual Lovecraft lore within the game.. all these little plot hints about "The Great Old Ones" and aliens n things. Cthulhu Lives! I've put in around 40 hours now, totally addicted. A bit sad tho, I looked at the wiki, seems like perhaps I'm nearing the end of the game? That would make me sad.. DS1 was like 100 hours at the very least. Perhaps Bloodborne is a shorter game compared to the other ones? I hope not! Although apparently an expansion is coming next month. The expansion for Dark Souls was huge and amazing so looks like perhaps I will become a semi-permanent member of the PSN+ subscription.

EDIT: Damn you Sony! Well, looks like I'll be signing up to PS+ semi-permanently due to the incoming Bloodborne DLC. I wish I hadn't missed out on the Grow Home. :( I already have super meat boy and broken age, grrrrr

Well I'm probably 20 hours deep in Bloodborne now, possibly deeper. I was sceptical about the "ye olde london" setting, especially from a Japanese studio but somehow they pulled it off. The souls games were like creepy medieval but this is like creepy gothic/victorian era and it fits perfectly. I'm really impressed with the enemy AI. The boss "The Bloodstarved Beast" absolutely dominated me, I think I managed to kill the damn thing on the 20th try or something. I've encountered some truly horrifying monsters, pretty surreal stuff. Beautiful rich detail in all the environments. Level design is on point with lots of rewards and little secret paths for brave explorers. Such a wonderful change compared to the nonsense of DS2. Originally I was unsure about my investment in a PS4 but I'm glad I made the plunge. I had a fool around with the random "chalice dungeon" thing which is an interesting feature. This game certainly has a lot of content to wade through.

I'm struggling to find any fault in this game. If I concenctrate intensely, I can admit I've had a tiny bit of frame-drop when loading in certain areas of the map. Also, I'm not terribly keen on the weird little ghost-baby-alien messenger things, they seem a little bit Tim Burton to me, they're probably my least favourite part of the game. Other than those miniscule gripes, the game is amazing thus far.

I've put in a handful of hours and I've beaten the first boss thing (werewolf man guy). So far I am really impressed. It's such a crazy juxtaposition, this game next to Dark Souls 2, which was an absolute trainwreck. I've felt such intense disappointment for years and now finally I feel the warm blood returning to my veins as I play some quality From Software content. Wonderful stuff.

I was still a bit sceptical, and the steampunk-london theme sounded a bit goofy to me, but thus far they've pulled it off. And, most impressively, it's not just "more of the same" (which would have been good nonetheless) but there's lots of subtle differences. It's the same goodness, new and challenging.

My one wish is for there to be some fucked up surreal shit later on in the game, stuff like from Demons Souls, then all my fantasies will be fulfilled.