I've put around 3 hours into the game and it is fantastic. The only negative so far is the framerate, it drops to around 25 fps sometimes, reminds me of DS1 but nothing like Blighttown. There are also some very minor graphical glitches that I noticed.

Aesthetically the game looks amazing, I don't want to give too much away but I've been playing in the area that's been in all the early trailers and it's the same area that was in the alpha.

So the gameplay, it's great, reminds me of DS1 where my favorite build was dual katanas and just relying on parries and dodges. There are basically 3 attack buttons R1 and R2 for light and heavy attack on your main hand weapon, L2 is for your offhand weapon and L1 is for changing modes on your main weapon. So at the start you get a choice of 3 weapons and 2 guns, I went with the weapons that are on the cover, the sword and blunderbuss. There's no weight management as far as I can tell and there's no poise stat as well.

You can't just backstab in this game you have to stagger your enemy and there are couple of ways that I know of, one way is to parry using your gun during the attack wind up of the enemies this will get them to their knees and you'll have a short window to attack, the second is using a charged attack, hold R2, to stagger an enemy from behind and then attack. The charge attack has a long windup, so you can't simply circle strafe and just go for backstabs.

I only reached the first boss, the one that's in the early trailers and also the one in the alpha, the boss has a lot of health and his attacks take 25-60% of hp in one hit. Reminds me of the fight against Manus, I died twice against him and I had to stop for the day, unfortunately.

Dark Souls 1 is one of my favorite games of all time, and this has the potential to be on par if not better than that. In classic souls fashion I've found somethings that I have no idea what they are/do and can't wait to find out.

Pro tip: If you are carrying the max amount of an item and you find any more of that item, it will be sent to your storage box automatically.

@fire_of_the_wind How do's the summoning work in the game ? any humanity equivalent ?

@soulcake: There's a stat called Insight, the ingame description says "The Insight stat represents the depth of inhuman knowledge. Needed to ring special bell, but induces frenzy." I got a summoning bell that you ring to summon people, to be summoned you have to use a different type of bell. The game is offline now and the servers will be turned on release day.

How does co-op work?

@soulcake: All the information you could possibly want is available right here. Insight is your humanity equivalent; more info available right here.

Notable funstuffs:

• You can set a password to have the matchmaking direct your friends toward you.
• Summoning allies brings Chime Maidens into the world; Chime Maidens summon invaders to kill you and your compatriots.

My biggest concern when seeing the very first early footage of Bloodborne was the abysmal framerate. I was hopeful that they would have been able to at least maintain 30 FPS...that is really too bad. Maybe a patch can resolve some of those issues.

How are the load times for you after death and if traveling to a new area (I have no idea how fast travel works/if its in the fame from the get go)?

I really hope this gets a PC release, I loved Dark Souls 1&2, and I don't want to be left out on this one because I don't own the console.

Not for a while anyway, Sony is betting on this game bringing a lot of people around to the PS4 - especially after several of their other exclusives didn't pan out all that great. Second Son was actually really good.

awesome. I'd like to know what someone thinks who played Demon's Souls though

I don't expect Bloodborne to ever show up on PC. Have any Sony-published games ever gone to PC after a period of console exclusivity? It's really too bad too, imagine Bloodborne at 60 FPS.

@fire_of_the_wind: Day one patch will hopefully fix the FPS, and load times. Not surprised it's fantastic, but nice to hear a duder confirm it!

The framerate issue sounds pretty substantial to me because this game is indeed faster paced right?

@random45: Same but not holding my breath.

@mb said:

Yeah, there's basically no chance of Bloodborne making its way to PC. Sony owns the IP and assisted with development, so unless PlayStation crumbles in the next couple of years and they decide to start releasing their back catalogue on other platforms, your only option is a PS4.

Yah Sony tends to be a lot more selfish with their exclusives than Microsoft. I've never seen any of their big original IP's go anywhere - Journey for example seems like a perfect fit for Steam yet they keep it locked up on PSN. I didn't want to sound pessimistic but I'm not seeing Bloodborne on PC either, or as I said, not for a long long time.

Great to hear a positive early impression. Really hope they're able to patch it early on and fix some of those issues.

Did you download the patch? I heard there's a 3GB one, but it might only be available after the official release time.

a lot of shops here in germany broke street date so i got my copy yesterday.

been playing for like 15 hours. loving it so far. feels kinda like a mix of DeS and DS1. the changes they made makes it feel fresh and familiar at the same time.

it has the same framerate issues like all the souls games. not as bad as blight town though. getting out the torch and casting a lot of shadows seems to make it dip even more.

got 4 bosses down. the night seems to progress everytime you kill a boss. there are cool lighting changes in earlier areas.

I tried to stream some of it but apparently that is not allowed for games that aren't out yet.

@aegon: there was a 2,6 gb patch. servers are still offline though. the "play online" option didn't work.

I started watching a few streams today of the early areas and the frame rate looks good. I've heard it said that it drops some in areas with a lot of stuff going on, but I haven't seen anything like that in the streams I've seen.

what's the difficulty like?

Saw a guy fight a boss. He literally stood right up next to the big thing and swung nonstop until it died. Didn't move. Said it was the easiest boss he fought so far but still.

I don't have exact numbers but lets say they are noticeable.

It's a mix of Demon's and Dark Souls.

I think it's as fast as 0 weight DS1 maybe slightly faster. I don't think that framerate would affect the gameplay that much, I didn't have any problems with it so far.

@handlas: Poise doesn't seem to exist, so even the biggest foes can be stun locked by pressing r1, as long as you pay attention to your stamina. Health items abound, but are always the same amount healed throughout the game, but they are almost instant use. Regain is tough to get used to right away, but when you get hit, your health doesn't immediately disappear, if you can hit an enemy in that time frame(a second bar on your health ticks down) you can regain some, never all of that health back. Lots of enemies, so make sure you don't get surrounded. None of the bosses are cheap, but can take you by surprise by how fast they can be (or by how many there are...)

Also Aliens

I played the game for a little less than two hours; I spent the first hour exploring and then I decided to restart and mess around with the other two starting weapons. I didn't play much, but I didn't notice any significant frame rate drops -- certainly nothing like the first Dark Souls. The game left me with a very good first impression. Also, thanks @fire_of_the_wind for the pro tip.

@jiggajoe14 said:

It takes about 30 to 40 seconds to load the game when you die, and about 10 seconds to load when you travel to the Hunter's Dream (the Nexus equivalent).

From what little I've played, I think the game is, at the very least, challenging. I wasn't playing super cautious but not recklessly either, and I died 4 times within an hour. You don't have much health, and normal enemies can kill you relatively quickly.

Perhaps a spoiler tag in the thread title might be apt for those that want to go in totally blind?

@theblue: har har

If you want to go in totally blind then you shouldn't be reading threads about the game

@ssully: @ripelivejam: Just thought I'd say something, whatever.

How often does the framerate drop? Or is it constantly below 30FPS? That's disappointing to hear, I had hoped that being on a new hardware they would aim for a more stable frame rate.

So what can you start with class/weapon wise?

Also those load times sound super lame. :-/

There's a day one patch that hasn't been released yet that will improve a lot of technical stuff. From what I've heard, improved graphics/frame rate/load times is included in that.

Not really surprised that it can't hold a measly 30fps in some spots, it's still From Software after all.

@theblue: i was hoping you were joking as the title says "Got the game early"; thought you were being sarcastic about people considering any talk about a game to be a spoiler. Though now i guess i ruined it by explaining it. Yaay.

@rongalaxy: I just finished downloading a patch that was a bit more than 2.6 GB, which supposedly enables me to play online. Was that it or is there yet another patch coming on release day?

http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/79021/20150323/bloodborne-pc-release.htm

Huh......take that with a grain of salt but......huh

@militantfreudian: I guess they released it? Was it something that you just got a prompt for?

@rongalaxy: It seems like it. I looked up the day-one patch notes and they're the same as the patch I downloaded today. I haven't noticed any changes in the frame rate, but then again, I haven't had any significant issues so far. The loading times are the same; it still takes roughly 38 seconds to load me back to the first lamp in Yharnam.

@militantfreudian: I had read that the release day patch is 2.6GB so that sounds about right.

How is talking about frame rate, load times or day one patches supposed to spoil anyone? If people really want to avoid info they have a brain of their own. I'm probably one of the craziest guys on this site when it comes to staying away from info concerning this game, I haven't allowed myself any footage or info beyond the E3 announcement trailer, I just couldn't resist taking a peek here and was prepared to back out of this thread if I saw any pictures or game footage. I think @fire_of_the_wind has done a good job of keeping stuff vague and describing stuff by refferencing other trailers, if you haven't seen those (like me) you won't know what he's talking about.

Anyway thanks OP for giving some starting impressions and alleviating some of my concrns about maybe going in a little too blind, sounds like it should be a good time.

I also got the game early (on Friday), & have been doing nothing but playing it every chance I get to. The combat is really engaging, making you think on your toes rather than holding your ground, & then attacking. Not to say that Dark/Demon Souls wasn't, but for most of the time I was heavy armor, shield & sword all the way through those games. From what I've played so far, there are little to no shields to use, so if you were the dodging type in ether game, you'll feel right at home. The new checkpoint system is great idea, kind of hybrid of both Nexis & Bonfires where you can walk around, level up stats/weapons, store items, buy stuff, & you can fast travel from the beginning.

I'd say my only nitpick so far are load times, but that's really it.

@the_big_rough: Interesting. Thanks for that info. I still am not holding my breath.

Nothing on kdramastars should ever be taken the least bit seriously. In fact, they are so sketchy that I almost want to ban any mention of them on the forums. These are the same people that announced a "confirmed" version of Red Dead Redemption for PC based on no evidence whatsoever. Their articles typically go something like this:

"Based on sources, it is now confirmed that Half-Life 3 is 90% through development. An interview with Gabe Newell posted yesterday by CyberHalfLife3FanSiteLand confirms it!" - With no mention of the "sources" or a link to the alleged article. They also love to link back to their own articles as a source, or will even link to the very article you are reading as a source for the same. Kdramastars will even make up websites and fake links to use as confirmations for their garbage articles.

Kdramastars is pure click bait nonsense and nothing more.

good to see based off early impressions this one's living up to the hype, was a bit concerned after the order if this was gonna pan out.

Early word seems to say it's a game with fast paced combat and frame rate issues. Not sure that counts as living up to the hype, but fingers crossed that the content makes up for the technical shortcomings.

yea i dont really care about technical issues once the core game's great, and early word is that its legit great,

we'ill see soon enough, review embargo is up at 10pm eastern.