people who finished, share your thoughts here (spoilers)

I just beat the game today and I gotta say man that was incredible. From Software hit it out of the park again, and I'm very much looking forward to starting a new character for the things I missed.

That said, a few things bugged me. I'm not sure how much I liked the Lovecraft stuff, I enjoyed its presence well enough but I also felt that it dominated too much of the later half of the game. I tend to like those concepts more in the background, rather than front and center. If I'm being honest, I started to miss the werewolf game I had thought I was initially playing, and the back half felt like a lot of re-purposed enemies with "scary" changes (pigs with a thousand eyeballs anyone?). I dunno, I guess it was too abrupt of a gear change for me. Overall though, I'm glad there's a twist out there that genuinely surprised me, and I'm sure it will grow on me with time.

I thought the progression of the bosses was a little strange too. Everything up to Rom is a super fast-paced fight, and then from Rom and onward the bosses get a little weak in my opinion. It's not until much later that things pick back up with Mergo's Wet Nurse and Gehrman (although he is too hard for me to really say I enjoyed fighting him). I also find it strange how many bosses in this game are actually optional. Blood-starved beast, Paarl, Amygdala, The Witches of Hemwick, Martyr Logarius, and the chalice dungeon bosses are all optional. It's pretty nuts, and original for a souls game. I'm kind of glad though, because I have even more reasons to play again now.

So, what did you guys think?

I truly think it is a great game. I also think it is one of the weaker Souls games to be honest. To sum my criticism up:

1. It's the shortest Souls game for sure. I have 23 hours and 5 minutes on the clock at the first Lamp in NG+. Add 3 hours to that to offset me having to play part of the game over and doing it 3 hours quicker. 26 hours, roughly, for a first blind run is much faster than the other Souls games. I believe Dark Souls took me 90 hours, though admittedly, that was my first Souls game and I didn't understand anything about it. DSII took me near 60 to finish though and at that point I played DS to death already.
2. There was only one boss in the game that killed me more than twice, and it was the semi-final boss. I beat 7 out of 11 bosses that I fought on the first try. There was no visual design for any boss that really spoke to me.
3. There is not much stuff in here in terms of character building. I have a neat idea for a Bloodtinge and Arcane build, but that's really about it. In previous games, you could easily get 3 different builds within each spell category, multiple ones across weapon types and so on.

This isn't necessarily a knock against the game, but that twist was not that impactful to me. Yeah, I guess you can now see the world for what it really is and that was definitely neat. But I wasn't blown away or anything.

I both love and hate the Lovecraft angle, but not for reasons anyone might think. For some reason Cosmic Horror is really the only kind of horror that scares me. Like it gives me this real sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I get this overwhelming sense of dread. I'm not sure if that's good or bad in Bloodborne's case, but I do love the game.

I did notice that Bloodborne is shorter than Dark Souls. Dark Souls took me around 45 hours, Dark Souls II took me around 55, and this game took me 30 hours and some change. It's a shorter game, but I'm not sure I mind that considering how utterly dense the level design is and how great it is to play, mechanically. Like I've said in other threads, I don't know if I can go back to the Souls game. Bloodborne's movement, hitboxes, and ancillary mechanics changed the formula in such a profound way that I can't help but think if I were to play the re-release of Dark Souls II, I'd find it far less enjoyable. Not because Dark Souls II is bad, but because it's not Bloodborne.

I really hope From gets some DLC out for this. I don't want it to be a decent add on like Artorias of the Abyss either, I want a full expansion. I want to dig deep into the lore of this world and explore it in a way that I haven't wanted to since Mass Effect. Even if there's no DLC, Miyazaki and company need to make another Blood game. Bloodborne II, Blood Souls, Blood Beasts, Melty Blood, whatever the hell they call it; I want more of this and I want it now.

I don't like the fact that my character turned into a slug type thing.

Frankly I loved the eldritch/cosmic horror angle the game took halfway through and how Insight was essentially madness/comprehension. I didn't like the Cosmic Emissary, that boss and that enemy type was kind of just...weak compared to more creative and interesting designs like Ebrietas. It's the first of these games where I'm actually interested in the lore because it's interesting and not just "Hey these selfish assholes fucked the world, it's still fucked, fuck you it's fucked and cyclical fuck you."

I think it's a fantastic game overall. Compared to the Souls games, it probably comes in third behind Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, but handily beating out Dark Souls 2. I love the bait and switch with the cosmic horror shit, which I have always been fond of. Sure, the game doesn't have the variety of armor, weapons, or levels that some of the other games have, but I never felt cheated or that the game lacked content. The fact that half the bosses (more, if you count the chalice bosses) are optional, I can see why the game seems to be much shorter than the others. Even a 100% playthrough might not equal a single playthrough of Dark Souls in terms of playing time. Nonetheless, I have thoroughly enjoy my time with the game thus far and eagerly await any DLC that may be on the horizon.

It has the best level design in the series, the most interesting lore, the most refined combat system, and the most polished start to finish experience. That said, the lack of content is sort of disheartening. It is way too short for a Souls game, it has nowhere near enough armor variety, the Covenants and PVP are super disappointing, and a lot of the RPG elements and systems are half-baked. Like, it's an incredible experience that doesn't have the legs of a Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, or Dark Souls 2.

The Lovecraft stuff was incredible, and I adore how it plays in with the Insight mechanic. Probably my favourite part of the game, barring the spectacular final boss (Gerhman).

I really, really like it. The key factor in my enjoyment of the Dark Souls games was the setting and the lore, and I find Bloodborne's lore way more interesting from a thematic sense. I'll need to playthrough the game a few more times before I can say for sure, but I may have enjoyed it more than Dark Souls. The whole experience just felt tighter, and the way the latter half of the game goes off the deep end in terms of both setting and story totally befits the Lovecraftian influence.

It's not perfect, though, as I am a little disappointed with the NPCs. Not to say all the NPC characters lack a story, but many of them feel very one-note. And the covenants don't offer much in terms of jolly co-operation. The first Chalice Dungeon didn't leave a great impression on me either, but it looks like some of the later bosses are more interesting.

I mostly enjoyed my time with it. Kind of weird that being turned into a slug was the super special secret ending, but I guess it makes sense that eating the umbilical cord of the old gods would do that to you.

The combat is more focused and fluid then previous souls games but at the expense of build/play style freedom, which doesn't really matter to me because I was always strictly and melee and bow guy anyway. Can't say I care for what they did with healing items, feels like always having 20 blood vials trivializes a lot of the fights later on and early on it means you have to grind them out. The estus flask model is just a lot better and I hope they never stray away from it again. Bosses were a mixed bag, as is always the case with Soul's games. Really enjoyed Gascogne, Gehrman and the Darkbeast quite a bit. Liked the idea behind many of the more gimmicky fights, but most of them ending up being a little too easy (witches and cage-head).

Biggest let down for me was probably the environments and exploration element of the game. I felt more exasperated then excited when I was met with the game's dozens of split paths, everything just looks so very brown and it makes wandering/navigating in this game hard and unfun. Although I did think the IDEA of the game being set almost entirely in a plague-ridden crazy Victorian city was super cool for the first few hours.

The chalice dungeons are theoretically cool, But I really don't like how they kind of force you to do them in a certain order by material-gating them. Makes the whole experiencing feel kind of grindy to me.

I feel like the game was much more focused, but has much less depth. Both good and bad in that. The level design was less varied, but it was all well-adapted to the theme and had a range from normal to fantastical. Finding equipment is much less of a big deal, especially on the armor front, and I largely ran through the game with the exact same weapons I started the game with. And the combat style is much more singularly focused on one style of dodging and swinging. I would be interested to see how well some of the STR weapons play, given that my cane felt almost overpowered at times with the ability to easily crowd control using the whip and easily stunlock with quick swipes using the cane. I feel like a weapon with longer windup would be much harder with this game's style. But overall the lack of variety makes it more difficult to see myself going back in. I might run through some chalice dungeons with my NG+ character, but that's it.

But overall I think the game suffered from the same problem as Dark Souls in that it never reaches the highs of the first areas and bosses. Learning Yarhnam Central with the tons of shortcuts and branching areas was a blast, and bosses 2-4 gave me a ton of challenge with how quick they were and learning the combat system. But the latter half of the game seemed a lot more linear or isolated in terms of the areas and once I got enough health/stamina/damage up and running with a bonus blood echo rune I pretty much romped through the latter half of the game. I think Rom's spiders and the NPC hunters were the last things that gave me real trouble and I needed a few tries on one of the optional bosses, but other than that most of the later bosses never came close to those quick early bosses.

Random other thoughts. I think the insight system was really cool in terms of the effect on the world and how it fit in with the lore. I think the blood vial system was really shitty - areas without drops or when you got stuck on a boss it forced you to farm, while areas with drops you could play taking a ton of hits and still come out with a surplus. It will be interesting to see what people discovered, but the world felt a lot more empty - I found the one music box quest that just kind of ended, brought a couple people to the church that felt like a weirdly low number for the size of that room, and ran into a couple NPC questlines, but that's it. The frenzy system fucking sucks - a line of sight-ish bleed effect that causes instant death or massive damage? The frenzy rune helped somewhat but even then it felt like there was no way to deal with the effect properly.

I've already beaten the game twice with 65 hours on the clock. I just love it to death. I never expected this to be the purest form of Lovecraft since In The Mouth of Madness, and I love it because of that.

so far of the two endings I have gotten and the third I know of, I think the two I've gotten are probably my favorite. The 'good' ending (18:22) was an oddly bittersweet happy note where it seems you're released from the dream to live a regular happy life. The 'true' ending (7:38) was a really curious sight. So, the trophy implies I became a new moon presence to start a new dream world? Well maybe not necessarily a moon presence but became a new great one. That and I get to start humanity's new childhood... Could this lead into a sequel Bloodborne 2: The Hunter's Dream or something? Or, is it implying that I can use my powers to craft the world in a way that I see fit, perhaps making it an idyllic paleblood safehaven or something weird like that? The bad ending is also pretty good from what I've read about it (post beating the game the first time, of course). It sets up a really nice feeling that you're going to be leading some hapless hunter in the future, or some kinda bullshit like that. All the endings are pretty great.

@oldirtybearon: I'm with you on Lovecraft style horror. I've always been fine with gore, but alien settings mixed with twisted mundane sounds (humming, baby crying, music-box chimes) makes me feel unsettled. The unseen village was tough for me in more ways.

That being said, I loved this game. I really went from a retarded lemming dying from small breezes to a blood-crazed killer by the end of the game. I accidentally had a friendly fire mishap in the cathedral and decided to let my character go insane like all the other people in the game. Killed every NPC outside of the doll, ate umbilical cords for the hell of it (and accidentally stumbled upon their secret as a result). I've never had more fun in From's games since this.

EDIT: As a side note, are people having a tough time with Mr. "The First Hunter"? I hear people saying he was a real ball-breaker, but I kind of just walked over him in one try. My Ludwig's +10 was doing 612 a swipe, and he was very parry-able.

The Lovecraft angle turned me off completely. Sadly, I traded this game in 12 hours ago. I finished the game once, played it all the way to Shadows of Yharnam on NG+, and completely lost interest in the game. Maybe I'll pick it up again some time in the future as a used game.

Did you marathon through the game up to that point? Apparently potential memory leaks causes boss AI to be very easy after about a dozen hours of play.

I thought it was a good game, but nothing to write home about. It's kind of in a weird spot where it's clearly trying to be a Souls game while inching it's way toward a more pure action game. It's one of those "master of none" situations where it's a decent hack-and-slash with questionable controls, but a shallow Souls experience that lacks much of the mystery and options that make that series special. And then there's the framerate and loading times, which are inexcusable...

I went through the game without looking at any wikis and avoiding spoilers as much as I could, checked out a walkthrough afterward to see what I had missed... and disappointingly not a whole lot. A few small secrets here and there, but nothing major to warrant a second playthrough. And I couldn't believe it ended when it did; that last boss just felt like a warmup. I was expecting some giant city or darkworld to open up... less than a week playing. Maybe I was just spoiled from previous Souls games, but the content felt a bit underwhelming. I made it to the first lamp on NG+ and just couldn't muster the interest to keep going.

But, yes, overall it was an enjoyable experience. I just don't see myself replaying or thinking about this game at any point in the future. If anything it just made me want to pull out Dark Souls.

I like/love a lot things about it. But not as much as past souls games. I won't be spending the hundreds of hours on this one like the others. I won't be making new characters for specific PVP builds, etc. I like it. But for it me its not as good as the others. Mainly because how broken online stuff is. I loved the mood/setting/story, everything about the game is pretty good. Loved the faster style, etc. But the online aspect makes it not as good. And makes me not want to play anymore than the one playthrough. I'll probably go through all the chalice dungeons to see if whats the full deal with that. But after that, I'm done.

Also the "true" ending is great. Two great fights back to back. But the best ending cut scene is when you submit.

I have a question for people that beat it.

I just defeated Margo's Wet Nurse, and the Hunters Dream is on fire and I assume the final confrontation is at hand. I have two bosses that I haven't beaten yet and this is my first playthrough - Daughter of Cosmos or whatever up in Upper Cathedral Ward and Castle Cainhurst. Am I already at a no-return point? To be honest I'm sort of tired of the game a little and I'm debating whether I really want to do these two optional areas or if I just want to finally finish it. My main issue with optional content in Bloodborne is that you get little out of it. In past games you would receive boss souls which not only could be crafted into unique weapons but they had interesting lore descriptions on them. In Bloodborne there are no boss souls and the items that most bosses drop are chalice dungeon related. For instance I honestly don't know what I got out of defeating Paarl apart from a chalice dungeon item - even those double doors you open up don't serve as a meaningful shortcut to anywhere.

I had a lot of fun but I've been pretty much using the same armor and same weapon I got in the very beginning of the game and I don't really see myself immediately jumping into another nearly identical playthrough on another character that would be using an axe the entire game. Should I just close things out or is there any real meaning to doing those last two bosses? Can I just travel straight to them in NG+ or are all lanterns and progress reset?

@humanity:

I was in a similar situation on Thursday night, I even took Gehrman on a few times and ignored the last two optional bosses but I gave myself a couple of hours of on Friday and came back to it fresh, I am glad now that I finished off the last two optional bosses, it makes thing more complete. You are not going to get anything unique form the last few bosses but for your own peace of mind and completeness sake I would take them on.

Also was very burnt out on the game by the state you are at now, but as soon as I beat the last boss I started a NG+ and got back up to the shadows boss that day.

Also before taking on Gehrman you should check a Wiki on the full ending to see if you can get it, I couldn't because of an NPC drops an item after you kill her, but I killed her at the wrong stage of the game and didn't get it. You might be able to get it.

Having just beaten the game a few days ago and getting this ending too I've been giving it a lot of thought. I think that ending is saying that you have turned into a Great One after eating the three umbilical cords. At least that's the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

I had the same interpretation as you. What that means, though, is entirely up for debate. Maybe it is still a cycle, and you have become the evil yourself now. You'd still need humans to reproduce, I'm assuming.

I think it is a cycle thing. We know based on item descriptions that Great Ones need humans in order to reproduce. We have also seen that in action if you followed Arianna's quest line. Also the description of the umbilical cord found in the abandoned workshop pretty much says that when a Great One is born hunters come. For whatever reason people eat them then become a great one them self and the cycle continues. That's what I believe anyway.

@turambar: No, I was on a fresh boot when I fought the last boss, unless "rest mode" counts as leaving the game running for 12 hours.

@humanity: Yes, that is the point of no return. You need to finish up anything on this cycle you want/need before talking to dude in the garden.

I guess I was sort of "ehhhh." It was good, not great. I probably spent just as much time with it as I did with the Souls games, but a ton of little things made the time with Bloodborne feel like so much more of a slog than the Dark Souls games. To wit:

1. Frequently needing to grind for vials and bullets after coming up against a tough boss disrupted the flow of the game.

2. Not being able to do anything at lamps and being forced to return to the hub to do anything useful.

3. Long load times.

4. The focus on "twitch" combat. This probably didn't bother some people as much, but I'm not very good at that style of gaming and not having any other options was really frustrating at points. What I liked about Dark Souls was that there were so many valid ways of approaching an encounter. I could almost always go on YouTube and see someone beat a boss in a way that I never would have thought of. I haven't had that same experience with Bloodborne.

5. Chalice dungeons were a major disappointment. I've done about 7 or 8, including a couple of Depth 4s, and have yet to find any loot that makes it worthwhile. It's all risk and no reward. The enemies are tougher but give less Echoes than comparative main line enemies, and I'm not finding any good weapons, gems, or unique items to keep me going. For something that's supposed to add replay value, I thought it was kind of a bust.

So yeah, I enjoyed most of my time with it, but it isn't something I think I'll go back to, unlike the Souls games.

Just finished getting my Platinum trophy in Bloodborne. I'll say a few things.

1) Game isn't the best souls game in my mind. I had more fun with Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 1 is still my favorite of the games (though I haven't played Demon Souls, never owned a PS3) The weapons and stuff were cool, since I hated inventory management in previous "souls" games, but everything else in the game was either good, not great, or just meh.

2) Story was neat until it wasn't. I think when they heavily start bringing in the Old Ones/Lovecraft angle, the story falls about. I had no idea why I was doing anything, or why I was in any of the locations I was at shortly after Rom. I enjoyed the beast hunt story more.

3) THAT CAMERA. This game was my worst experience with a camera in a "souls" game to date. Some of the bosses were too damn big for their arenas, and the camera did a horrible job keeping focus on your main character. The amount of times I ran away from a boss doing an attack, and instead of stay on me the camera just zoomed out to show the boss, was many. It was very, very frustrating.

4) Chalice dungeons are cool, and I hope they improve on them, but they feel somewhat dry. Something is missing in them. There is no reason to do them after you finish the one with the secret boss/trophy. I wish they hid some unique, more powerful weapons in those things, instead of the same ones with different rune types. Or a shield. Would have been great if a random drop from a depth 5 chalice dungeon could have been an actual shield. You see enemy types with good shields in there...why can't you get one?

5) New Game Plus is completely disappointing. With the lack of variation in builds due to the game's systems, I was expecting New Game Plus to have some secrets exclusive to that play through, or harder/different boss patters or set ups, similar to previous games. Instead I got a carbon copy of my first play through, and it was boring! Very boring. My NG+2 run for the 3rd ending I needed for the Platinum Trophy took me all of 2 hours, which just felt kinda sad.

All in all, Bloodborne was a fine game, but I don't think it's a great game, nor the best "souls" game. Unlike previous games of it's type, I have no desire to go back to it for any reason, and have already shelved it in it's case. Hopefully DLC looks interesting, but if early impressions of upcoming story DLC doesn't seem strong, I don't think I will even bother putting the game back in my PS4. Oh well, it was nice to have a reason to use the PS4, even if only for a week and a half.

@ragingflower: I've definitely read that rest mode has the same effect.

@takayamasama: Agreed. But this is the A-Team after all. They would never take a note from the B-Team and actually make proper arena's for their bosses. 'We're the team that made one of the easiest bosses in the game frustrating shit due to camera (Capra Demon), and damn it, we're going to do that again'!

@takayamasama: I finished it for the first time this morning after mopping up everything I wanted to get done as I suspected that because of the lack in build variety I won't be going through it again - and I had similar thoughts.

As per mechanics, they introduced a few new ones that featured a number of their own unique quirks and bugs, and they failed to solve literally any of the past Soul bugs. From broken NPC quests (which are esoteric enough as it is) to inconsistent backstabs etc etc. Nothing was fixed at all.

I agree the camera is the worst it has ever been. They made cool levels that just weren't meant to be played with this camera up against those bosses. Plenty of fights were exasperating because I couldn't see anything.

Lack of build and equipment variety is in fact a real problem. The entire game is skewed towards STR builds anyway so by the halfway point I had lost all hope of finding anything decent DEX based. I suppose the trade-off is that DEX weapons don't stunlock but you're able to get more hits in because they're quicker - only if you're not stunlocking you need to back off in order to not get hit in the middle of your assault, and a STR based weapon will stagger your enemy letting you get even more hits in. It's broken and it sucked that I picked the wrong stat for the game.

Story and progression wise the game falls apart in the latter half. At first you have this semi-clear goal of what you're out to do. Then around the time you finish fighting Rom and get to the "nightmare" worlds it's not only difficult to make sense of whats going on, but where to go or what to do. You're following this basic sense of "Well I need to go find a boss of this area and kill it" but it's not longer even clear where you are and why you need to kill it, or what you're killing.

I got the "true" ending of the game and it was fairly disappointing. I guess it wasn't as bad as Dark Souls light the first kiln ending, but it was still kind of a letdown. I'm sure the Souls PhD historians are going to be hard at work trying to come up with theories for it, but for me it was underwhelming. I'll look up the other endings on YouTube.

So yah, it was a fun ride while it lasted. It's the most imbalanced and mechanically wonky Souls game since Dark Souls, but stylistically (for the first half anyway) it's one of the best. In my mind nothing beats the Nexus to this day.

I had two playthroughs. The first was me trying to figure everything out myself, finished the game at 16 hours exactly. The second playthrough Ended at about 20 hours, having done litererally everything that I missed, which was four optional bosses, hunter weapons and tools. I now have all the trophies except for defeating the special boss in the chalice dungeon. I currently have two and a half dungeons to go through until I can fight her. Almost done. But I did really enjoy about 80% of this game. Parts got frustrating to the point where I couldn't say it was myself that was causing the problems. I felt some of the enemies would start doing cheap attacks or the camera wouldn't help in a situation.

Also. Fuck the Blood-Starved Beast.

I had no fun on some of the last bosses where the zone was so cheap that the legit tactic was to run past everything in the area to get to a lamp and the boss.

That was my strategy for headcage man and Mergo! By that point I just wanted to finish that playthrough so I kinda ran around looking for bosses and found them preeeeeetty fast...

@deathfromace: My NG+2 playthrough for the 3rd ending was exactly that. I B-lined it to every boss, and probably only killed 20 enemies outside of bosses, and that's not even an exaggeration. I don't know if it's sad I was able to do that or not, but at least it was fast to get that Platinum Trophy

Dark Souls is a more well rounded experience, but the gameplay changes in bloodborne are killer. I liked playing this game more than I did dark souls, which is huge.

Bloodborne was my first souls game. Must admit that I killed one boss in co-op since i got really frustrated with the boss (shadow of yarnham). Killed all the other bosses on my own though (also the optional ones).Though some of the optional bosses were hidden so well that I had to look up a guide on how to get to them.

Some bosses I managed to kill in a few tries (less than 5) but some bosses proved to be pretty hard. Think one mistake that I made in leveling up my stats was that I kept my hp stat pretty low. This resulted in me getting killed where a player with higher hp would have probably survived.

Though the final boss (moon presence) was much easier than Gehrman. Killed him on my second try. My final level was 109 which is pretty high but I am not that good in these kinds of games. Which is the reason that I have avoided souls games until now.

After playing some Scholar of the First Sin tonight, it really made me appreciate the way Bloodborne controls a lot more. It's just so much more fun to actually move your character around and engage with the combat than the past games, I never realized it until going back and playing DSII again. I feel like I'm in complete control in Bloodborne, it just feels so fluid and tight. The other games control(led) fine, but man, it's really hard to go back for me. I'm really just going to have to drop SotfS for now, switching back and forth between it and Bloodborne is just too jarring, I'll have to come back when I'm 100% finished with Bloodborne.

I'm not a big "souls" guy, but I platinum'd it in about 40 hours and I'd say around the 20 hour mark, it started tiring on me. Just not enough variation in the combat. The game funnels you down a much more strict combat path, which does feel good, but ultimately very one noted.

Not nearly enough weapons, even if they were just skin swaps of the previous or different combos.

Just wasn't as mysterious or foreboding as the previous games. Felt like an awful lot of the same old tricks, but much less reward and much less variety.

I don't know...I really enjoyed the first 20 or so, but can't say, even as a non-Dark Souls guy, that I am not a bit disappointed. Just feels small and linear compared the the past, both in exploration and in combat variation.

Interested in what is coming next for From Soft. Got to think its due time for a shake up of the mechanics and structure.

@zevvion@nux : So strangely I don't think this ending has any room for interpretation anymore. I didn't notice it right away when I did it, but the text for the trophy for that ending literally reads "You became an infant Great One, lifting humanity into its next childhood."

Personally i really don't like they put such a specific trophy text about that one..I think it would be more fun to leave it to some interpretation. Alas, tis what it is.

@takayamasama: I very much share this opinion and it's really disappointing. The more I think about it the more I realize almost everything Bloodborne adds is merely a placebo and not actually a new set of mechanics or ideas. Transforming weapons is a glorified 2h mode, guns are just bows that can parry from 1 hand and do barely any damage exept the Cannon and Evelyn and the Gem system does nothing but strip down build variety by limiting how weapons scale to the specific gems and slots you have on your weapon making it far worse than DaS2's infusing system.

I liked the game a lot but the only things it really improves upon the previous games is level design and boss design.

Now when you take online features into account that's the biggest disappointment of the whole game for me. I still can't beleive they came up with one of the coolest new ways for a game to have online implemented and then after DaS1 they just seemed to abandon building on it at all. What's worse is Bloodborne totally ditches a whole bunch of online features from both DaS2 and DaS1 and even in some areas DeS.

Overall it's a fantastic game because there's really nothing like it outside of the Souls franchise but taking that into account I think it suffers because it doesn't differentiate itself enough from that franchise.

I feel like this game was tailor-made for me. Just everything about it is so up my alley. Might be my favorite Souls game, but that could also be the recency effect. It's certainly my favorite first play through of a Souls games.

Every time I see someone's complaint I'm left wondering if we even played the same game. I guess this is how the DS2 evangelists feel.

Played it as my first souls game. Didn't set my world on fire but I really ended up enjoying the combat and all the little secrets. Also really enjoyed the boss battles

not true at all, it has some of the most varied possible character builds in any game they've had.

The interpretation is still there though. Is it a good thing you became a Great One? Are you able to combat the other Great Ones this way? Or have you just become the evil itself?

Did people miss a lot of the optional areas or am I just really bad at it? Because the game took me 56 hours to beat which was longer than DS 2 for me. Overall, I think it's my favourite game from Miyazaki (haven't played Demon's Souls though). Loved the atmosphere, level design, aesthetic and when the lovecraftian elements start coming into play (even though I kind of knew they were there because the Project Beast trailer straight up spoils Ebrietas). The boss designs were for the most part interesting and varied (even though Rom is by far the worst boss in the series) and while there wasn't really anything in the equivalent of O&S or Artorias and Kalameet in terms of peeks in difficulty and challenge, Gehrman and Logarius definitely came close to it. The less amount of weapons didn't really bother me, since I felt more variety between the trick weapons than I did with the over a hundred small variations of weapons thrown at me in DS and DS 2.

As for the Lore, I love the Lovecraftian angle, but I think the True Ending gave me more questions than answers. Did I turn into a Great One? Was I always a great one and did killing the Moon Presence reveal my true nature? Even DS had Kaathe and Frampt to dump exposition . This is some next level of obscurity XD

Loved the game, but I did have some issues with it (mostly technical):

1. Loading times. The most obvious, but the one that would probably most greatly impact a person's enjoyment of this game.
2. Lantern system. The inability to reset enemies in an area by sitting at a lantern and the inability to travel between different lanterns without going to the hunter's dream is frustrating. It's baffling why From decided to take such a massive step backwards.
3. Co-op and just the whole bell ringing mechanic may sound like a good idea on paper in this game, but ends up just being frustrating at how long it takes to summon a player. Leaving a summon sign just feels more reliable than hoping someone has rung a bell somewhere in the same area as you. At least the password system worked consistently, but the only time I think I've been invaded has been the Nightmare Frontier.
4. Frame rate has for the most part been pretty stable, UNTIL I arrived at the place where you get ganked by the three hunters in Unseen Village i.e. probably the worst possible moment the game's frame rate could've shat itself. Couple with the fact that the camera would get occasionally stuck in geometry, reducing the frame rate into single digits, as well as crossing certain fog doors (e.g. the One Reborn)
5. Nerf frenzy. Or at least those fucking Frenzy Maidens. Like Seriously.

Otherwise, easily a contender for one of my favourite games of the year (although admittedly there's still a lot to go and a lot of games to come out).

EDIT: I also feel like the people who feel that the latter half of the game is at odds with the tone of the first half have never been exposed to Lovecraft, because Lovecraft is not giant space aliens right from the get go. There's build up to it. Not only that, but the game foreshadows a lot of the Lovecraftian elements in the first half as well. As for your "aim" within the story, that always gets lost and confusing the further you get into these games. DS was like that as well.

That's probably something we can't answer until we get some DLC. For now I would say that you have just become another Great One and the cycle will continue.

I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Werewolves, crying babies and now I'm a slug.

It was a fun game, but I don't know if it quite scratched my Souls itch. I like the armor and playstyle options in the other Souls game. Bloodborne definitely felt restrictive in playstyle, which is fine. That was their vision, but I don't know if I want to go back to NG+ or start a new character. Don't know if I'd have a new experience like the other games.

Still gotta check out the dungeons though.

Uh I will write a real review eventually but long and short of it.

Good:

Controls were tight and very responsive.
Graphics are great and enemies look legit freaky and dangerous, your "armor" also looks really cool.
Sounds/music are very very well done and the ambiance in the game is pretty out there.
Good number of bosses and the Chalice dungeons offer some nice diversity.
All the weapons seem like legit choices if they fit your play style, none of them clearly suck.
Game world is extremely well put together and "fits" perfectly, the attention to detail and the world design is the best of any "souls" game so far.

Bad:

Loading screens. Seriously, at least give me something to look at other than a Bloodborne logo.
Front loaded to the extreme. The game is simply put too hard for too long and suddenly once you hit a certain level/upgrade point it loses most of it's challenge until fairly close to the end.
The game is heinously cheap in multiple ways. Bosses that can two shot you throughout, one late optional boss can even one shot you. "Hunter likes" that are stupidly OP with free gun spam, seemingly infinite endurance, HP bloat out the ass, did I mention they can also 2-3 shot you and later in the game you will fight 2 or even 3 at a time?
Possibly the worst camera/lock on of the entire Souls series. You are honestly better off not locking on 80+ % of the encounters in the game and I would never say that for any of the other Souls games. Meanwhile I literally could not tell you how many times I died because the camera made a pillar invisible or stuck itself inside my characters torso.
No build variety until half way through the game, at best.
Every weapon can be strong, there also isn't hardly any weapons and lots of them handle very similarly. Kirkhammer and Holy Sword anyone?
Decent amount of armor but still way less than the other games and all of it is very samey. I actually ended up beating the game wearing the same gear I found in the games first level. Depressing.
What happened to upgrading armor?
Why is there no respec option considering only +str + skill and +vit are valid until like 75% of the way through the game?

Truthfully the bad list goes on. I won't say it is a "bad" game. It isn't. But it is the worst of all the Souls games and I don't even like Dark Souls 1 all that much. It is a step backwards from Dark Souls 2 in almost every single respect except for controls which were improved and the world building which is no where near as huge to me as some Souls fans seem to think it should be.

@karkarov: I would say even movement is a step back. Dashing is neat but rolling still worked better in Dark Souls 2 and, maybe just for me, it gave off a better feeling of "evading" than the side step. Possibly it's three entire games of the exact same roll which has ingrained a strange feeling of safety when I see it, and a feeling that I never got out of the dash.

Speaking of animations, a huge negative for me was the use of the exact same weapon movesets. The new weapons really do look cool, but this is still the straight sword, the falchion, the spear etc.. with fancy new skins. To be honest I'm a little tired of the moveset and while the dash helped to bring something new to combat, the same ol' swings took it right back.

Maybe at this point taking some of those animations is changing the formula too much, who knows, I know I would like them to make all new animations for everything. Preferably a new engine as well. Imagine if a high STR stat meant you could pick up and throw enemies to knock over other mobs? Or if could target specific limbs on common mobs and cut off their sword hand or a leg? If high DEX builds could disarm? If different stats lent different opportunities for boss battles so that a high DEX character would have a completely unique way of beating a boss than a STR character and it isn't just a matter of bashing the hell out of a boss like a giant pinata.

@humanity I feel you. I know you are supposed to beat Amygdala for example by hitting his arms but why? His legs are totally open and almost all his attacks will miss if you stand under him or just behind his feet. Eventually you hit is foot enough he even staggers and you can go in for a visceral. They tried to make a boss that was sort of unique to fight because of how his weaknesses were, but I still fought him the same old same old way just because it was easier. That is one of BB's biggest problems, the bosses are samey and even the ones that are unique like Micolash you still just fight like a normal enemy. The lack of build diversity or valid tactics is sort of staggering to me.

@karkarov: Micolash is probably one of the worst boss fights in that game. On one hand I was happy to finally fight a boss where camera and lock-on wasn't a serious issue. On the other hand it's such a dumb "trick boss" with a lot of running around and a really easy fight at the end of it. Story wise he's an important character but it feels so inconsequential.