Words like "hard" and "easy" are never any good at explaining the difficulty of a game because they tell you nothing of why it is or isn't challenging. If I were to describe the difficulty of Bloodborne, I would call it unaccommodating. The game doesn't go out of its way to ensure that the player knows what they should be doing, nor does it offer any options to modify the experience in a way that would be more welcoming to those who don't have a lot of experience with these types of games. The game expects you to learn its mechanics by using them, and you will be punished if you don't pick up on them quickly.
Jeff can say that the game isn't nearly as hard as people have told him, but he's been playing games for a long time. He's also played small amounts of the previous Souls games. So even if the game is obtuse in the way it presents information to the player, he will naturally pick up on the mechanics faster than someone less experienced might.
But there's another element to the Souls games that make them challenging to those who are familiar with them. Hubris. Most every enemy in Bloodborne can be defeated with ease if you play carefully and cautiously. There's also the option to farm weaker enemies in order to level up more and gain more items. But with experience in the Souls games comes impatience, and impatience is punishable. There are mechanics in the game, like the visceral attack, that can speed up the process of fighting enemies but at a higher risk. The game also presents the option of going to more challenging areas early to potentially reach the end game faster. Take the Vicar Amelia boss fight as an example. It's clearly meant to be the most challenging boss in the first area outside of the "tutorial", but it's not the first boss you have to face in that area. If you were to take your time and explore the area, you would find an item that would make the boss easier, and you would come back at a higher level. But the desire to jump any hurdle you encounter can lead to the game being more challenging then it needs to be.
Of course player skill will always vary and difficulty will always be subjective, but I don't think calling Bloodborne and the other Souls games "hard" is fair, nor do I think they are "easy". The series simply expect something different from the player compared to other contemporary video games, and blanket statements about their difficulty robs them of the work that goes into creating the experience they offer.
Log in to comment