*Big rant incoming* (went back up and typed this disclaimer afterwards , thank you if you're going to stick with it, just have to get things off my chest!)

So the credits just rolled, I did the 'Refuse' option and killed Gehrman, even though at the point I was at I considered just submitting for the sake of not having yet another randomly arduous boss fight to plod through.

I really, really don't think this is anywhere near as good as Dark Souls, maybe even Dark Souls 2. There was a thing mentioned I think on IGN's Beyond podcast about how whichever Souls game you play first - THAT's the one that'll always be dearest to your heart, and I'd second that (mine was Dark Souls).

For Bloodborne maybe it was just the case of playing all of DS' 1 and 2, then almost all of Lords of the Fallen and finally this - alongside Axiom Verge and Titan Souls - that just wore me out, but I think there are other factors as to why BB just isn't going to stand the test of time alongside its Soulsian brethren.

Firstly the bosses; there's three 'types' here; humans (always crazy), giant werewolves that you do the Souls butt-poke dance with and the almost parodic 'giant body made of other bodies' look. Neither are fun to fight whatsoever (the humans have infinite stamina it seems and the bigger guys make you battle the camera more than anything) and ultimately I just don't think there's anything approaching enjoyability to how you take them down.

Second, the colour palette. I'm sick to death of people saying this is a 'gorgeous game' - how is it gorgeous? Some cool material effects don't make up for a SEA of grey that otherwise takes up 99% of your vision when there's not a randomly orange moon kicking about.

Third, and most importantly, the weapons and classes. Nearly all the weapons in this feel lacklustre or gimicky. Ludwig's blade and the Kirkhammer are useless unless you really want to devote the time to hitting once every 3-5 seconds, and aside from the axe that actually has a useful second function (the R2 sweep allows for some variation) it's dodge-'n-attack city all over again.

Class-wise have you seen any playthrough of this where anyone's playing any differently? Even though DS 2 was a bit of a letdown level-wise it still made you wonder about the many different ways you could tackle a scenario if you were specced differently. Bloodborne really just has one class, because the ranged weapons don't come into their own, and the paltry selection of spells/abilities aren't accessible/fleshed out enough to justify a different method of playing.

Having played the other Souls games I steamrolled through this within the first week or so of playing, then just kind of... stopped. Nothing made me want to explore or check out another grey slab of Victorian-style cathedral fare, so it's been an off/on feeling of "well I guess I should finish this" until just now when I fired it back up, killed the Wet Nurse or whatever she's called, then Gehrman.

I don't know about you guys, but I never had any real fun with this like the others. I think FromSoft haven't advanced the formula enough to let you get into any sense of flow or engagement before wrenching you back out again, and for the sake of maintaining their reputation for difficulty they had to force a combat system utterly unwieldy for group encounters into some truly horrific scenarios.

How've you found it? Do you have the strongest affinity towards your first Souls game, or has this or another surpassed that?

I think it's half the game most of the other entries in the series are but it's still fun in it's own way. Then again I think Dark Souls is the worst out of all of them so take that as you will - personal taste etc etc..

I don't understand why Bloodborne's getting so much disapproval. I enjoyed it far, far more than either of the Dark Souls games.
The combat felt far more active than before since you couldn't just spec to sit behind a shield. Invincible dodge moves are among my favorite mechanics in games though, so I guess you could say it just catered toward my tastes.
The visuals were fantastic, too. I was compelled to move forward just to see what sorts of creative new environments or enemies lay ahead.
It's easily the most enjoyment I've gotten out of the series so far, and possibly the most enjoyment I've gotten out of a current gen game.

I've played them all in order during their respective release windows. I'd rank Bloodborne 2nd after Dark Souls, then it's a tie between DS2 and Demon's Souls. I found Bloodborne to be fun throughout, with very few disappointing enemies, bosses or areas. Sure, by now I have the Souls formula down so much that it wasn't as challenging as Demon's and Dark Souls the first time through, but I found quite a couple of the bosses fairly tough - mainly Logarius, Ebrietas, Gehrman and Gascoigne. The artstyle was, yet again, a thing of absolute beauty. The world felt and looked coherent throughout, a true successor to DkS1 in that regard. I "marked out" (to make at least one wrestling reference a day) a couple of times unlocking eye-opening shortcuts - showing just how well the world was designed and the different areas interconnected. Can't wait for DLC!

I like the pace of the combat a lot more in this game than in the souls games. I also feel like a badass sidestepping enemy attacks or parrying them with the gun, even though the timing windows are so generous that I could parry most things the first time I tried. I played through DS1 and 2 with a heavy melee build, so I don't mind that there's only one "class" because that's how I would have played this game anyway had there been more magic and whatnot. But I definitely agree with you on your other points. I pretty much feel absolutely no motivation to get through the rest of the game (I just got to the Unseen Village) besides the feeling of "Well, I started this so I guess I need to see it through." I also got really sick of the design of this game really quickly. As numerous people have said, a lot of it looks really cool, but it's so dull and gray almost all the time. The Forbidden Woods stands out especially in my mind as being bland and nondescript. Don't get me wrong. Bloodborne is a really solid game, but it just hasn't and from what I've seen won't grab me anywhere near as much as the previous Souls games.

@shalashaskauk666: There's a lot in your post that I disagree with.

BUT.

THAT SAID.

I echo the big-picture sentiment almost 100%. I haven't finished the game (I'm tangoing with Ebreitas, when last I played). But, yeah. I'm just exhausted at this point. I'm not not having fun. But I'm not really having fun, either. Without even having played things like Axiom Verge or Titan Souls, or even Lords of the Fallen, I think I'm ready for an extended sabbatical from Souls games.

And that's the thing, more than anything inherent to the game. I could probably sit here and list a dozen things to complain about. The camera. The bosses. The hunter NPCs. Some of the complete horseshit that goes on in the last third of the game (like, whatever. Dark Souls featured a mandatory area with invisible floors, so this isn't new). But globally, I'm just not excited by this formula. Dark Souls--the first one; and even then, only the first time I played it--felt like a kind of monumental experience. It was so different from what I'd grown accustomed to playing. It challenged me to provide a different frame of thought. And that was so novel.

It was less novel in Dark Souls 2. And, despite Bloodborne probably being better than Dark Souls 2 in a slew of ways, it's become even less novel here. I am 100% going through the motions playing Bloodborne. Because this is just the same game. Not from an artistic standpoint. Or even a completely mechanical one. But philosophically. It's the same thing. And it's an oppressive, consuming thing. The Souls experiences tire me. I'm always happy to have played them in retrospect, but the in-the-moment journey wears on me and wears on me and wears on me.

Bloodborne, in my mind, is a pretty great game. The game offers so much.

But the love has died. And that's where I'm at with it.

I thought it was pretty good :/ very close to DS1 for me and DS2 a close third.

I do feel like lack of respec really makes some builds boring, I maxed out strength first and by the end I was only doing the Kirkhammer charge attack over and over and over again since it was one hit kill on most enemies and just wrecked bosses. I blasted through the game, but I really enjoyed the sense of unkown it gave me and I think it played the best out of the other souls games. I was pretty burned out by it by the end, gave it a few weeks and made a skill/blodotinge charecter (complete opposite of what I was playing) and did way more challice dungeon. Now I am really enjoying it with fast weapons and a right build for them.

Bloodborne has problems, probably needs 3-5 more weapons, but overall I really enjoyed it; it was a huge upgrade on how it played and run from DS1&2 for me. I tried playing DS2 again, but couldn't get into it. Movement was just wack for me after bloodborne.

Pretty much the more Souls game turn into Ninja Gaiden, the more I like them..... so yeah bloodborne pretty good!

@historyinrust I actually find myself agreeing with you on this some nights, but not others. It's weird, I think I'm still in an in-between period with Bloodborne and I'm not sure how I'll end up feeling about it.

Yeah, I beat it about 2-3 weeks ago, so I've had some time to gather my thoughts on it, and ultimately it is my least favorite souls game by a wide margin.

I think where I found myself by the end was that, while a lot of the underlying gameplay was fun, there was too much getting in the way of that gameplay. For example, needing to farm vials or souls echoes to buy vials was a major bummer, especially when you came up against a boss you just couldn't beat. I had several instances of just putting the game down when it became apparent that I was running low. That, combined with long load times and the inability to so anything without going back to the Hunter's Dream just killed any sense of forward momentum for me.

I was also really bummed by the lack of gameplay choices and gear variety. I'm sure that the streamlining is a plus in some people's books, but I miss being able to look at how other people are beating a boss and being able to say, "wow, I never would have thought of that strategy." In Bloodborne it felt like there was only one standard way to beat everything and it got sort of tedious after awhile.

I think what you and most people fail to understand is Bloodborne is not Dark Souls. It supposed to be more condensed, its supposed to be a different experience. When I hear a complaint like, "there's no magic builds, Dark Souls had magic builds" I think, where in the title do you see Dark Souls? Symphony of The Night doesn't have a wide variety of weapons compared to DS2 as well. To me it's false logic.

Bloodborne is a near masterpiece.

That's my personal opinion.

I just about disagree with everything you've said. Every weapon is worth trying out, every boss is different (without using annoying gimmicks), and the graphics represent the first fully formed technical realization of From's excellent art design.

I thought I was done with these kinds of games after playing (and pretty much hating) Dark Souls 2 and Lords of the Fallen. But I loved loved loved Bloodborne. Is my second favorite of them all right now.

My list goes: Dark Souls > Bloodborne> Demon's Souls > a few light years > Dark Souls 2

I loved it. I'm not playing it anymore ( Wanted to try the DS 2 re-release ), but I played it obsessively for a long time.

I disagree with most of your points.

Most of your statements come to a matter of taste, while some of the others seem to be unfair notions. There is certainly more boss variety that 3 types and all weapons are valid. Gun and magic builds are possible, but I'd agree that they could use some expanding. Farming for bloodvials is a non-issue as you move forward ( I always had them maxed out, you just need to remember to spend your blood echos surplus)

I'll say this tho, it sure does play a LOT better than DS2. Content-wise I'm still unsure. I think I'd like to say I definitely want more content for BB and i could qualify it as a negative; but I have some faith that they will expand on it and revitalize it with future DLC. Tho the possibility that they miss the mark on the things they need to expand upon exists.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

It may be a Miyazaki game, it may be a fromsoft game, it may have the Souls formula grafted onto it, but it's actually not a Souls game. It's Bloodborne. If he wanted to make another Souls game, he could have. He didn't want to. This is the experience he wanted to make.

Bloodborne is a shadow of a Souls game. It's pretty good for what it is, but it doesn't compare to the other games, which offer everything Bloodborne does and more.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is the best, Demon's Souls is my favorite, Dark Souls is mostly a rehash of Demon's, and Bloodborne is a fairly fruitless deconstruction of the formula.

I was with you until the Ludwig comments. Ludwig's is easily the highest damage weapon in the game with the right stats and gems, in fact, it isn't even close. Also you can use ludwigs or kirk in the one hand version and it is very fast and not slow at all.

Bloodborne was a pretty sweet game. I don't think I'd put it above DS1, but I'd definitely put it over DS2 just in sheer memorability. I liked DS2 at the time but so little of it actually stuck with me since release.

I view Bloodborne as being a spin off of the Souls series and not an actual main line sequel. That is how it feels to me, at least. Similar to how Persona is a spin off of Megaten. They share a lot in common, but Persona has a different focus and appeals to a wider audience. That last part may not be true, just how it appears to me. Shin Megami Tensei and Souls are deeper in the RPG pool and not as many people are into them once you go that far.

I'm fully expecting there to be a Dark Souls III. (Probably made by the "B team" like DaSII.) Dark Souls is a name that people know or know of. Dark Souls is a name that means something and I don't see them throwing that away. Dark Souls III will be the more dense and complex RPG that I want. I will play it and love, and then realize how overwhelmed with disappointment I am because it wasn't as good as Dark Souls. I also want to say that no matter what any of us think about Bloodborne, one thing it did do right is getting new people into these kinds of games. I have heard countless stories of people who have never played Souls before getting this game and loving it. You can bet a lot of those people will be interested in giving the new Dark Souls a try when it comes out.

With all that being said, if we don't ever get a more traditional Souls sequel and the entire series starts to become more and more pure action focused then I...I can't do it again, guys. I watched it happen to Resident Evil. I don't want it to happen here.

Loved the hell out of Bloodborne. It's nowhere near the game Dark Souls 1 is (but really, almost nothing is). Bloodborne is still dramatically better than Dark Souls II (which I still consider to be an excellent game), and I'm pretty sure I like it better than Demon's Souls.

It's easily the best game of the year so far for me, and right now I only really see it being dethroned by Witcher 3.

I really appreciate Bloodborne for being true to itself and it's own unique vision. While it would be disingenuous to suggest it doesn't try to drawn upon the Souls experience when it comes to gameplay I also think it does everything necessary to say it has its own thing going on.

I feel like these games are like four brothers with a shared parentage. Bloodborne is the youngest brother who has learned a lot from his older siblings and values those lessons but wants to breakout and be his own person. He's of a different generation and is processing his parental lessons in a way that resembles that of his older siblings but ultimately belongs to him. People will ask him why he can't be more like his brothers and sisters but it's a problematic expectation at best.

I thought it was a very good game in its own right, I just didn't think it was that great of a Souls game. It is my least favorite Souls game if I'm not counting Demon's Souls which I only played twice. I wrote a review about it on this site a while back.

I know you didn't make this statement yourself, but just to set it straight: this is just an enormous misconception and pretty much a fallacy, if I'm using that word correctly here. It's just the guys at IGN asking around their table of 4 people which one they liked best and which one they played first. Out of those 4 it appeared all of them liked the one they played first most, so obviously that is the reason they like it most and it is the same for everyone else?

That's a relation that proves nothing whatsoever. From forums and wiki comments, it is obvious that the core playerbase that plays these games 'infinitely' sort of speak, heavily prefer Dark Souls II. The other group that plays (nearly) every one of these games at least to completion once-three times, seems to prefer Dark Souls somewhat. There are also respectable amounts of people who prefer Demon's Souls or even Bloodborne, though in smaller groups.

If anything, this thread proved that, at least for the users on this site, it isn't even close to true. I didn't count them all, but a quick count gave me 5 out of 17 replies stating they liked the first game they played best.

I don't know, I enjoyed it more than Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 2. It doesn't top Dark Souls 1, but not many games will do that for me. Though I consider all 4 to be in my top 25 games so ranking them isn't all that important.

I loved Bloodborne. It made me want to play the other Souls games now that I see what I was missing. Sadly the combat in Dark Souls 2 isn't as good as Bloodborne. Yes there are more weapons but, like Borderlands compared to Destiny, a lot of them are shit. Plus man is the combat slow compared to Bloodborne.

I only played a few hours of DkS2 prior to Bloodborne. So with that in mind I'm finding BB much more enjoyable. I like the faster combat.

I'm not very good at it, but I'm hooked.

If IGN says something it's probably incorrect

I think Bloodborne has something the other games don't, I just find the feel of the combat better in every single way. Combat in the souls games became kind of rote after a while because all you did was bait attacks behind a shield and then strike.

That said though, I think I might agree with DkS2: SFS being the best of them all. Just the scope of the game with the dlc is huge, and the difficulty level is superb playing a dual wield spec.

Bloodborne was fun while it lasted, but I can't see myself going back to it anytime soon.

Demon's Souls is still the title which all the other souls games are judged by.

Well, that's how opinions work I guess, because I don't think I agree with any of your points.

I think it's better than Dark Souls or any other game released the last 10 years or so. I probably have to go back to Silent Hill 2 before I find a game that can even touch Bloodborne.

I felt there was an actual theme in this game, instead of just some random environments in Dark Souls. The gameplay is much more spectaculair and I found the weapons more interesting (especially since all of them are basically 2 weapons in 1). There's more ambience and a feeling of mystery. The enemy designs are also better and some of them are pretty scary.
It might be due to my preference of horror games that I liked it that much more.

The first thing I did when credits rolled was starting another playthrough; I've never done that with any other game.

You're a bit in the minority there. Most people wanted to start another playthrough with all previous Souls games, but didn't after Bloodborne. Simply because there is barely anything new to discover and there is almost no other way to play then the one they intended.

We're different in what we want from this game though. Opinions indeed.

I agree with a lot of the opinions stated here, still on the grand scheme of things Bloodborne is my favorite game out of all the Souls games.

Is that weird?

I would have probably done another playthough if I could have respecced. I accidently decided to go with the Blade of Mercy as my weapon. It completely broke the game for me. My strategy for every boss was sprint at it's back and then mash R1 with the occasional roll if it looked like it was going to oneshot me. Having really only 2 choices to switch to for NG+ kind of killed it for me since I didn't really like either one and they both did so much less damage and were slower.

I'd say this is a return to form after Dark Souls II, which had rather flat level design and lore that relied far too much on Dark Souls 1 to become anything of interest itself.

The lore was far better and more lovingly crafted. The level design was mind blowingly intricate, with many areas that put interesting conflicting pressures on you, offered one-way or unusual paths forward (thinking of cainhurst castle and all the window ledge and roof stuff in particular), and forced you to actually spot shortcuts and learn how to run through the level rather than placing a bonfire so frequently that you felt like a baby being coddled. Those lanterns have goddamn significance and weight that bonfires just didn't have, because there are fewer of them, and you come back to them as you open up shortcuts.

And when people talk, or at least I talk, about this game being gorgeous, it's because of the detail. Every single goddamn nook and cranny of this game is filled with detail. The streets are filled with stuff. The interiors are filled with stuff. There are intricate carvings everywhere that actually have lore significance. At the risk of sounding cliche, the world feels lived in like no other game world has to me. People be living terrible lives, sure, but they're living. There's so much evidence of it everywhere. From the day to day, to their most important histories. It's all splayed out for the player to see. And honestly I had no problem with the color palette. When people complain about shooters being brown, I get it, because it's an uninspired brown. Bloodborne is anything but uninspired.

I love Dark Souls 1 a lot and I got into the lore of that game, but this game shits all the fuck over it. I didn't care about DS1's "story" until I'd already finished the game once. I wanted to progress because I wanted to see more game. In Bloodborne I wanted to progress to see what the everloving fuck was going on with this world, and I was not disappointed.

@zevvion: I could see that. I just wanted to experience it again, though. Plus that I missed some area's on the first playthrough.

I also played the entire game with the same weapon basically, because that one was the most upgraded (Dark Souls had the same problem). That's the one big flaw of NG+ I found; they should've upgraded the item drops as well (finding materials to further upgrade your weapons).

@shalashaskauk666 said:

People say they prefer the combat in this, but its basically the same every time, work out the animation for the visceral attack and boom boom boom oh look boss is dead and that's only hard because the load times where a pain in the ass so half the time I just couldn't be arsed waiting again and again I'd do a boss 2 times then just went fuck it I'll play the Prince of Persia collection on the PS3 instead (Id advice against this as well that second game really hasn't held up well....the first one has surprisingly and is better than the second one).

To sum up I found it boring! (and I went to at least NG++ on all the previous games I think I went crazy in DS2 and went to something like NG7+, might only have been 6+ its the point where things stop levelling but each time I went though with a different approach although I loved my DW Blacksteel Katanas and no proper DW in Bloodbourne either!)

@shalashaskauk666: I think a lot of it comes down to taste, especially when you started complaining about Ludwig's and the Kirkhammer being mostly 'useless' (thousands of people would swear by those weapons and for good reason). And as others have said, the game is fundamentally not just another Souls game, so complaining about stuff like 'no good magic builds'--while valid if you're just disappointed you couldn't play the way you were used to--does come down to taste. I can't say Jak & Daxter is flawed because it didn't have as many weapons as Ratchet & Clank.

Not sure about the "Boss made of multiple bodies" complaint. Not only is there only one boss in the entire game that fits that description (The One Reborn), but the last two games have also had bosses made of multiple bodies (Nito, The Rotten). Also, even ignoring that "crazy humans" is a ridiculously broad way to categorise bosses (Martyr Logarius, Gasoigne and the Shadow of Yharnam are all completely different "crazy human" fights), there are plenty of bosses that aren't humans, beasts or 'giant piles of bodies'; Rom, Moon Presence, Amygdala, Mergo's Wet Nurse and Ebrietas off the top of my head.

Wow, really? I've been invested in the community since just after Dark Souls came out, and at least two thirds of the people i've spoken to think Dark Souls 2 is the worst of the series.

@lackingsaint: Yes. People that are still discussing new builds and whatnot are playing Dark Souls II right now. The player base for Dark Souls is tremendously small in comparison to DSII. The people you are referring to aren't people who still play the game. They played them a couple of times and moved on. I made this distinction in my prior post.

Generally when I rank games in the Souls series, I feel like I am picking nits to distinguish a bunch of great games. But that's not the case with Bloodborne. I think it's the worst game in the series by a good deal, and it's honestly been such a slog that I haven't been able to get myself to go back to it to finish beating Gehrman.

Why is it that people use the term 'good graphics' to mean more colourful than the teletubbies on acid? Bloodborne goes for an early victorian urban style stuck in endless night, in cinema this style is represented as very grey and drab. The lack of care bear rainbows is an artistic choice in this case although I would have liked to see the blood be a little bit brighter in colour, it would have contrasted well.

@lackingsaint: @zevvion Gotta agree that from I can tell the general consensus is that Dark Souls is everyones favorite. I didn't conduct an official poll or anything but the way I see these threads usually go: the majority of people say Dark Souls is their favorite, hardly anyone ever claims Demons for their number one spot, then it's a split for second place between DS2 and Demons with most favoring DS2, and now people will hesitantly place Bloodborne somewhere in the tail end of their list. MOSTLY, this isn't the case every time but that is mostly what I see happen. Which is crazy to me personally because Dark Souls was such a poorly constructed game and DS2 fixed almost everything that was wrong with it. I'm going to stick with the theory that this is because Dark Souls was the first one a lot of people played and I largely attribute it's high rise in popularity to the YouTube community that went with it.

In 2009 when Demon's came out there wasn't nearly as many prominent YouTubers and personalities that combed the game fields for anything that might give them views. Mostly it was Call of Duty guys and a slowly rising Minecraft community. By the time Dark Souls came out at the end of 2011 things had flourished and there were a great many more personalities that saw the benefit of playing games that got a lot of buzz. At that time the Dark Souls stuff exploded in a way that I never saw for Demon's, which had wiki's and message boards full of earnest fans but not in the way that YouTube launched Dark Souls forward.

Thats my take on it anyway. I've beaten Bloodborne a few times now and there is something to the simplicity of it all. Plenty of quirks and annoyances for sure, but I still enjoy the base formula even if it's a lot more stripped down than usual - maybe even because of it? The way I've come to look at it is that Bloodborne is like if they took a single build out of Dark Souls 2 and made an entire game out of it. They expanded it here and there, gave some more options obviously, but in the end it's this very streamlined, very specific Souls experience that doesn't allow for much deviation. In a way that's nice because it is a palate cleanser of sorts. When Bloodborne 2 eventually comes out and it's going to be bigger and more robust, as surely it will have to be, it will be refreshing after the lighter experience that the first game was.

I've played and enjoyed all the Souls games but Bloodborne is by far my favorite. The movement is vastly superior to awkwardly rolling around, the environments are just more what I want and the level design is the best work from soft have done. If you didn't have to go back to the dream all the time and they shortened the loading times this may be my favorite game of all time. It's close anyways though.

@spitznock said:

All the souls games have a invincibility frames on the rolling.

I share the same sentiment as OP, Bloodborne didn't leave me with the same tangible disappointment DkSII did. By the end everything just felt completely uninteresting, from the bosses, the levels, the story, the characters, the gameplay just felt so samey. First off, the game is straight up ugly. It is a massive improvement over previous Souls games in terms of tech, but the art is a major step back from even DkSII. When the sun sets and the sky is a bright orange it looks terrible, the game only begins to look good when the moon shows up, but then it gets ugly again when you kill Rom. The only variety in the world was the color of the sky, everything else was a grey/black mishmash of victorian brickwork or boring forests. When you combine this with the lack of NPCs and items to find the world feels like the smallest and blandest in any Souls game to date. Where previous Souls games had me creeping through every inch of the world in fear trying to avoid surprise enemy encounters and looking for unique weapons/armor sets, Bloodborne only has Madman's Knowledge or Blood Vials hidden in the corners of its world.

The best Souls bosses are ones that feel like a dance, when you truly have to understand the boss and weave in and out of attacks, knowing when and when not to hit or heal. Bloodborne has absolutely none of these bosses.

Dark Souls II was at least memorable for being bad, Bloodborne is just completely forgettable.

I'm glad there is somebody else out there who feels the same way I did/do about this game. The first half was pretty cool. Then the Sci-fi Fantasy setting didn't make any fucking sense. It was a huge fucking turnoff to me. The boss fights became more ridiculous, the covenants were pretty useless, and every "class" in the game plays out the same. In the end, just to get done with it, I submitted my life to him. To this day, it's still a gold trophy on PSN. I couldn't bring myself to play it again. It has since then been traded in. I don't regret getting rid of Bloodborne.

Bloodborne is the worst Souls game. I'll agree to that. The build variety is a real bummer. By far the most disappointing aspect of the game, and is the game's key flaw. There's no point having archaic, deep RPG systems if they do not enable the build variety that the series is known for. What Bloodborne is, from an RPG standpoint, is an overly complicated mess of terminologies, stats and mechanics that amounts to absolutely nothing. It just adds complication for complication's sake.

I do not agree with the rest of your complaints. The only time that the art direction missteps is moving from Central Yharnam to the Cathedral Ward. There just isn't enough aesthetic variety between the two areas. I also do not agree with your weapon criticism. See, the advantage of using heavy weapons like Ludwig is the stagger. They have the most reliable stagger in the game. They attack frequently enough that you can basically stunlock most mobs in the game. Ludwig's can even stunlock the massive pigs and most small bosses. By contrast, the only reliable stagger that the axe has is it's R2; the extended form increases stagger chance, but is so unreliable that you should never gamble with it.

Even 'okay' Souls is still some of the best gaming out there. Honestly, I think the general feeling that I got from your post is that Miyazaki has spoiled you with his previous games (and Dark Souls 2).

Sci-Fi Fantasy? I think you mean Cosmic/Lovecraftian Horror.

The item descriptions in this game provide much more clarity in regard to the story than the previous souls games. Also while the "classes" are the same the weapons are very different and scale on different stats.

@tuxfool: Yeah, that's what I meant. I enjoyed the first half. The second half, not so much. The One Reborn looks a lot like the sky is taking a huge shit on the ground.

It isn't meant to look pleasant. It is designed to look like an inherent mistake. Either way, I thought that the pivot was fantastic and had a theme that is seldom done in videogames and when it is done, it is seldom executed well.

Although I had a great time with Bloodborne, I mostly agree with your post except for the bolded part. It made complete sense. You'll have to watch some lore video's if you didn't understand it. I thought this was a good one: