It is pretty good IMHO.

http://kotaku.com/bloodborne-the-kotaku-review-1695227854

http://kotaku.com/bloodborne-the-kotaku-review-1695227854

Linky.

@fear_the_booboo: Thanks

Yes, it is a good review. There is a paragraph that especially caught my attention.

It’s not fun to stroll into a boss and walk all over them. On paper, that sounds great! “Ha ha, gotcha, game!” But that’s not what I’m here for. Those text messages I showed you only exist because we overcame a tremendous challenge, and there’s not much challenging about the game’s final hours, moments that should test everything players have learned up until that point. Instead, it gets kinda boring, and I got anxious to simply finish it. That’s not how I felt when I entered Bloodborne.

This explains why Patrick liked Bloodborne a whole lot more than I did. I never sent those messages to anyone, simply because I was never in a situation like that. The game felt easy for me from the start, not just the ending area's. There was only one boss that challenged me and it was the semi-final one. As he says, easy is not why I'm here. And the lack of diversity make new games (replayability) not any better.

That said, I still dig the game. There is more to a Souls game than just its challenge. But I do think it is the weakest one.

I like games just for the spectacle sometimes, but I also likes games that make me work at them. Depends on my mood. That is why I play more than one type of game.

@zevvion: Do you feel it is really easier or is it that you're now great at the Souls gameplay? Just curious.

It's my second Souls game (DSII being the first one, I'll play the first DS after Bloodborne) and it feels "right", but maybe that's just me. To be fair, no bosses except Amelia were problematic to me so far. If the game gets easier as I progress, I'll agree it's too easy.

great review, I pretty much agree with all of it.

Seems to fall in line with most of the reviews of the Souls games from people who have played them before and have already come to terms with their quirks. This is a review by a person who loves the Souls games for people who love the Souls games or are already super invested in playing video games. I think his review is solid, but kinda useless for anyone who doesn't already have an acceptance for the Souls brand of difficulty. It plays unlike most other action games, has different conventions, and intentionally obfuscates what you have to do at every turn. If you don't like that element of the game, it is not a matter of pressing forward until you like it. The Souls games aren't actually daunting because they're difficult; they are daunting because they're deliberately obtuse and unforgiving.

As discussion on here has made me realize: it is easy for me because I played Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II with a wide variety of builds, including fast, dodging, parrying ones. Bloodborne's dodges are a lot easier to pull of and especially the parrying windows are a lot wider. It allows you to get away with a lot more than previous games. Having played under those circumstances, Bloodborne is a lot easier by comparison. The people that played those games with slow, heavy, tanking, shield builds exclusively, therefor seem to have a hard time with Bloodborne. But they would have just as hard of a time, if not harder, playing the Bloodborne playstyle in the previous games.

This is very much the case. Even having played a ton of light builds, I would still get completely wrecked from time to time in Dark Souls 1 because of how much more exact the rolls had to be. In Bloodborne, you can kinda fudge it by dodging pretty early.

Patrick pretty much decided he was not gonna like Dark souls 2 before playing and pretty much decided he was gonna love Bloodborne months before playing it. His "journalistic" review of the game is well...what it is... irrelevant. I would read it more as a blog post.

@zevvion: Thank for the clarification. I killed the two last boss I've seen in one try too! We'll see how the rest goes.

I got that idea based on his arguments. Praising Bloodborne for features that were already in DSII (and better). However, his review seems pretty nuanced. He is admitting its shortcomings. He also appears to be at least open to replaying DSII and its DLC.

Kind of the impression I had too, but I'm not sure where he got the idea from. Maybe it's a question of authorship and seeing Miyazaki as the real creative drive of the whole franchise? Oh well, I liked DSII way more than this game.

@zevvion said:

It could be that all of the features and nuance that have been found in DSII by the people who played it multiple times (and are still playing it to this day) weren't readily apparent to him at the time. A lot of the features that are now common knowledge sure as heck weren't when he first played that game. You've pretty clearly played these games about as much as anyone on this site and I would wager that you know the subtleties of the systems of these games better than most. When you say that there were deeper systems in DSII I believe you, but they sure weren't apparent to me during my one playthrough in the early days.

That is true, but not completely. The underlying systems, sure. I can't fault anyone for not knowing them. But something like the 'Push 'X' button to show an explanation of all of the stats' has been implemented in the Souls games in the exact same manner. That button prompt to do that is below in the menu screen. In fact, I think it's even in the exact same place in Bloodborne as it always was, but he praised Bloodborne for doing that. When reminded that DSII did that (and better, because it showed which elements would be affected by each stat) he said: oh yeah... well but the first Dark Souls didn't. But it totally did. Exact same place.

I'm not trying to dismiss his opinion though. I totally understand why he likes the game as much as he does, but sometimes the arguments he uses aren't the best to describe the difference between his stance on loving Bloodborne and being disappointed by DSII.

But as I said, I think he wrote a fine review. It makes it clear why he liked the game so much.

@zevvion: Is the stat explanation tutorialized or more apparent in Bloodborne? Because it wasn't super clear to me in DSII at first. It doesn't help that knowing what numbers the different stat categories correspond to doesn't really help your decision making all that much if you don't know the game's systems inside and out.

This is where I have trouble with GB and Patrick's opinions of these games. What constitutes too easy? Are you using coop? How many tries did each boss take you?

I've played all of the souls games from the launch of Demons Souls and have hundreds of hours in each title and I still found them all challenging in their own ways. But all of them had bosses that varied from extremely challenging, such as the king in Demons Souls, some of the DLC bosses in Dark Souls 2 and Gravelord Nito for those of us who don't use Havel's armor and flash sweat or a holy weapon, to very easy like Nashandra in Dark Souls 2 or the Tower Knight in Demons Souls. And going through Bloodborne, I played the entire game solo and found some of the bosses immensely difficult, it took me 10-15 tries to kill Amelia, it took roughly 10 to kill Father Cascoigne, other bosses like the witches took a single attempt, I killed the blood starved beast on my first go, the final boss(not the true boss) was hard as shit and took a dozen or so attempts, it varies, some of the enemies are a cake walk and some of them can wreck you in a moment, and this is true to every iteration of the series.

But all this "oh it's too easy" is starting to annoy me, these games are all about timing and patterns, if you go into the game already knowing how to souls, then of course it will be easier for you, all of them are just about being patience and watching for patterns and if you know what to look for and you already have a strong understanding of what dodging is and when to dodge and when to let off on an attack then of course it will be easier. But people keep saying "it's easy!" without detailing how easy it was, so please oblige.

"This 'Souls' game is easy" is akin to "This horror game is not scary". It's not necessarily a wrong statement, but the definition of 'difficult' or 'scary' is so subjective that it depends entirely on the person playing it.

I'm no awesome gamer, so I've been finding the game challenging. However, the latter portions of the game have felt easier. Why? Probably because:

A) I leveled up a shit load

B) I became more proficient at the game's systems

And this is perfectly fine for me. I still love that the game throws surprises at me and I can still die at any time. I'm just a bit more prepared for it now.

Okay, I'll explain my stance. Short version: replaying DSII is harder for me than playing Bloodborne for the first time. How's that?

You say these games are all about timing and patterns, and you are correct. I agree with you on that. And it so happens that Bloodborne requires no timing whatsoever like the other Souls games do. Try parrying in Bloodborne compared to DSII or DS even. Try dodging in Bloodborne compared to DSII or DS even. It is literally night and day. Bloodborne allows you to get away with everything. Not just imperfect, forgiving timing; I straight up felt I should've been punished for my timing sometimes, but I got the parry, I got the dodge regardless.

As a result, Father Cascoigne was a hilarious fight for me, as he was on one knee for most of it. Nearly every time he charged in, I got the parry in. To the point where I was just starting to laugh. Shadow of Yarnham, a fight that should've been difficult as Ruin Sentinels were not that easy, was parry-heaven. I was parrying the sword guy, while the flamethrower and fireballs from the other two 'missed' me because, of course, you're immune while doing visceral attacks. I don't think I came close to death in that fight, other than the admittedly surprising massive snake summon near the end. I beat Amelia on my first try too, though I did think it was a good fight. The only real challenge a boss put up for me was Gehrman, and I really, really liked that fight. It was a 'nice, finally' moment for me, wondering where the typical challenging Souls bosses were at. And you know what the difference is between Gehrman and the other bosses? He actually does damage. He is actually fast and most important of all: you actually need timing for this fight. To know when to attack, to know when to parry (if you go that route) and you need to be on top of your game for the dodges. This is the reason why he is challenging and all the other bosses are push overs. You don't need timing for anything. Parrying all day, dodging all day, attacking away while they whiff their poorly aimed attacks.

The other Souls games require timing. In everything. Knowing when to attack, knowing when to dodge, knowing when to parry. I shouldn't be as dismissive of Bloodborne I guess, but it honestly makes the windows for getting away with that stuff enormous compared to previous games in the series. And I'm not saying easy is bad, I still really like the game, but it won't draw me in for the long haul. I'm already looking at Scholar of the First Sin and I'm more excited to try new builds in that game than I am to try the one build I haven't tried yet in Bloodborne.

@zevvion: That's the thing though, Cascoigne, Amelia, even the Vacuous Spider were not just some one shot dead boss for me. I agree with you, the timing in this game is very forgiving but I believe that's because all there is, is timing, there is no more shield and heavy armor in the way there was in Souls games.

But in terms of bosses, they were still relentless and fast and gave you very little time to drink but they weren't very different from every other boss in the Souls game, and judging by your comments in various other threads, you don't think DS1, DS2 or Bloodborne were all that challenging, save for one boss in the DS2 DLC. So is this actually a meaningful negative, or is this just you being very good at the series, because like I said I've played a lot of all of them and Bloodborne was still a satisfying challenge to me, all the bosses but a few had patterns I was forced to learn because they had moves that would kill me in a single combo, the crystal meteors on the vacuous spider killed me 4-5 times before I was able to figure out how to dodge them easily, Amelia has multiple combos that I had to get used to because if I got caught in one it was death. But then I'm not able to perfectly time all of my dodges, even though the dodge clearly has more invincibility frames than Souls, it's still fairly tight.

Patrick saying it's easy shocks me, because he played Dark Souls 1 the cheese way by using flash sweat and havels armor like a scrub.

@red_piano: Discussion on this board has made clear that those who played the previous games in the series with heavy armor and shields are having trouble with Bloodborne. I played them with a wide variety of builds including light armored, dodging and parrying builds, so Bloodborne felt instantly familiar to me. Coupled with the easier dodging and parrying, it felt less challenging as a result. It is a meaningful negative to me, because the previous games offered this playstyle, but offered more challenge in doing so. Which is kinda weird, because it is the only viable playstyle here. If this is the only playstyle possible, then shouldn't it at least be more challenging than before? Not less? That's how I feel anyway.

I think Patrick was saying the last hours of the game were easy. Not the first two thirds.

@zevvion: Fair point about Patrick.

I don't know, if you're forced to play through in a more skill requiring manner then I can see why they would want to make it easier. I tried to play through DS1 without a shield and there are areas in that game very clearly designed with shields in mind. I played through only DS2 entirely with dodging, so I didn't have a hard time adjusting to Bloodborne, but I still didn't find it as easy as you did.

No mechs no sale! Still boycotting From until they make a real game with damn giant robots!

(I'm not really serious though.... I just don't like souls games and do like Armored core games.)

Hah! You almost got me! Almost clicked on a Kotaku link.

I noticed that kotaku really specializes in making a NOTHING article sound interesting in the headline.

@devil240z: yeah Bloodborne: The Kotaku Review is sooo misleading...

Oh no that would have been terrible.

I don't see how that is a problem. Not every review can be for everyone. If this was a review by someone who never played a Souls game then there would be a ton of people in here bitching that the reviewer didn't "get" the game.

I wasn't talking about that just 90% of the other articles they have.

Bloodborne: The Kotaku Review

Generally I don't have any strong opinion on Kotaku either way but Jesus, they call it 'The Kotaku Review'? Seems incredibly hollow to me, trying to position it as some sort of Important Hot Take. All other reviews dont count for doohickey, this is the Kotaku review. Only review you need.

Solid review. Could do without the bits that re-explain all the familiar Souls stuff. We're four games in now, gotta stop kowtowing to new players at a certain point.

@euandewar: I very rarely go to Kotaku but I can't help but give them a little credit for not having numeric scores instead of complaining about how pesky mathematics misinterpreted the number they gave again :)

I think it's rewarding when an RPG gets easy near the end because unless the gameplay actually sucks, it just means YOU worked damn hard to raise those numbers and/or get good at the combat. Games like Demon's Souls and Shin Megami Tensei IV got easier as they went on because I worked hard to level up and exploit the systems. That's satisfying to me