Bloodborne

Bloodborne is a game that has carried a lot of expectations with it. Although its not technically a souls game, it is heavily inspired by that series, taking many of its mechanics forward to Hidetaka Miyazaki's latest creation and for all intents and purposes functions basically in the same genre that Dark souls and Demons souls occupied. But its the changes, not the holdovers, that make Bloodborne a fantastic game. After Dark souls II, I personally felt like another game in that exact same mold would start to feel slightly old. However, Bloodborne alters the formula in numerous significant ways that do a good job of having the gameplay feel familiar, yet way more exciting than previous souls games. The excellent changes that were made, coupled with a more insane, more up front story make Bloodborne an incredibly easy game to recommend.

So what exactly has changed in Bloodborne? For starters, right up front you'll notice that the game operates at a quicker pace than previous games in the series. Many encounters encourage you to take a more offensive style of approach to combat, instead of the shielding focused style of play that many people adopted in the previous games. Shields are essentially nowhere to be found and instead in your offhand you will be wielding some sort of firearm, such as a pistol or a blunderbuss. On its own the guns don't do much damage but often times your pistol can serve as a type of shield by being able to perform a gun-parry. If you time your shot just as the enemy is about to attack, you will stun it, creating an opportunity for you to run up and perform a 'visceral attack', a very powerful attack that can often kill your target. This makes the inclusion of guns a very smart idea that changes the way you have to approach combat, and although its not essential, its very important to learn the timing of the parries because its a good way of killing your enemies quickly and without taking damage.

In addition to the faster pace, the way health and health items function has also been changed. Instead of having estus flasks that can be refilled, you now have a finite amount of health vials at your disposal. Although it sometimes creates the frustration of having to farm enemies for materials, it also makes you want to play better, knowing that once you use a health vial, you're not getting it back. Furthermore, Bloodborne also introduces a great new mechanic in which after you are hit, you have a small window to attack an enemy to regain some of your lost health. Once again, this encourages a more aggressive style of play in which you want to attack the enemy after he hits you, instead of backing off and waiting for another opening. On top of that, the regain system is a great way to conserve health vials, now that they are in limited supply.

It also creates a fantastic risk-reward dynamic where often times you move in to regain your health, but sometimes end up losing more health in the process. It's always harrowing to have to make a split second decision of how aggressive you want to be in combat. This dynamic was not really present in previous games, where it was almost always easier to just be passive and wait for your enemy to make the first move. Having more encounters with multiple enemies also increases the tension of combat, where you have to be wary of many possible attackers, rather than just one. All of these mechanics come together in a way that is incredibly exciting and has not been present in any of the previous souls games. I had an absolutely amazing time with the first section of the game, where I had to rethink all of my strategies in order to be in line with the way Bloodborne operates.

Now there are some problems with Bloodborne, although none of them have much to do with how it plays. The biggest issue with Bloodborne is its lengthy load times, which can be about 40 seconds loading into the large areas and it can sometimes really kill the mood. Normally after you die it takes you a good 20 or so seconds to recover from what just happened to you, but having to wait another 10-20 seconds after that can really put a damper on your enthusiasm. Loading into the hub world, the hunter's dream, takes significantly less than that, but the fact that leveling up, warping to someplace else and buying items is locked away in that area often makes you wait around quite a bit. It can be very frustrating at times. Every once in a while the framerate of Bloodborne can be sub-optimal, mostly when there are numerous enemies on screen. However, most of the time Bloodborne is a gorgeous game than runs very nicely. There's no blighttown of this game where one entire area suffers from a bad framerate. Many of the weapons have great animations that are always a joy to execute against enemies and a ridiculous yet very fitting blood effect showers the screen in blood with each hit, eventually reaching the point where most of your character is covered in blood. Its actually fits very nicely in the game, even though its a bit much at times.

The other part of Bloodborne, which I found to be somewhat surprising was that I was able to beat most of the bosses and complete it in just under 30 hours, which is a little bit shorter than what I was expecting. Now of course I didn't beat every single boss there was to beat and there may have been an area or two that I didn't fully explore, but 30 hours was a fair amount lower than I expected it to be. However, I do feel like all of the hours I spent playing the game were packed to the brim with exciting moments so it was something I was more easily able to overlook. Personally I didn't mind the lower emphasis placed on magic and PvP in Bloodborne but as a person who never really got too deep into either of those, it didn't affect me all that much.

Chalice dungeons are also present in Bloodborne and in my experience, they were pretty hit-or-miss. They basically function as side-dungeons to the main game that you collect by finding them in the world or beating certain bosses. Some of them have a set layout and some of them are randomly generated, so there is the possibility to get tons of extra value out of them. One of the problems with that is that it is quite easy to outlevel a lot of the chalice dungeons. If you are not playing them right when you get them, chances are that once you do get around to playing them, they will be really easy and not worth your time. But if you do manage to find the sweet spot of difficulty, they can absolutely be very enjoyable. They do contain unique bosses so at the very least you should check out one or two of them in order to see the bosses as well as get useful items that you can take back into the main game.

There's also one more thing that needs to be talked about, and its Bloodborne's story. Ordinarily when talking about a souls game, there wouldn't be a whole lot to say in this regard, other than it has a nebulous story that eventually reveals itself after a LOT of digging. While Bloodborne's story is still quite nebulous, let's just say its pretty hard to miss. Obviously I won't give anything important away but things get pretty nuts towards the end. As you play through the game, the world of Yharnam will undergo some major transformations that are pretty cool and if you are willing to explore the optional areas, you can expect to be very suprised with what you find. Many people have brought up the name H.P. Lovecraft and his work and without giving anything away, I'll just say its a pretty apt comparison. Its crazy and that's the exact reason why I love it.

To wrap it all up, its very hard to envision a reason as to why you shouldn't play Bloodborne. I'd generally agree with the statement that if these games haven't hooked you before there isn't a whole lot that will draw you in with this one. And if you don't own a Playstation 4 its always really tough to recommend picking one up just for the sake of one game. However, if you've been wondering what these games are about or you've enjoyed souls games in the past and you happen to own a PS4, BUY THIS GAME! The very small amount of problems do very little to get in the way of what I feel is the strongest and well rounded entry in the souls series to date. Basically all of the changes made to this game were for the better, and in the end, Bloodborne is a game I had an absolute blast with from start to finish. What a fantastic game that gave me absolutely everything that I could've asked of it.