Never played Souls... Bloodborne ahoy!

Bloodborne will be my first game in the vein of the Souls series. I would be interested to see how many of you are in the same boat as me. Or if you aren't, how does your excitement for Bloodborne stack up against your excitement of Dark or Demon's Souls.

Bloodborne may be my most anticipated game this year.

I completed Demon's Souls and Dark Souls but not Dark Souls 2. I felt that last game lost something but can't quite put my finger on what that is, so hoping this is a return to form. ( I still think DS 2 is a great game).

I'm slightly envious of your position, I'd love to play Bloodborne with no previous knowledge of the series. If I were you I'd make all efforts to avoid spoilers and guides to get the most out of it.

I played through Demon's Souls and Dark Souls well after the initial wave of hype for each. My plan was for Dark Souls 2 to be my first day 1 Souls game, but in the time between the console release and the PC release (which I was waiting for), the public opinion on that game from hardcore Souls fans turned quite a corner so I decided to pass on it and hold off for Bloodborne.

Needless to say, I can't way to finally be part of the day 1 zeitgeist for one of these games when Bloodborne finally comes out.

They've done exactly what I wanted them to do, they've made a similar game, but faster and more aggressive, and no/minimal shields. Between that and the whole Gothic London look, it's probably my most anticipated game in the last 6 years. If this thing comes out and it's really disappointing, fuck all video games forever, wrap it up, it's done.

ive played all of the games and ide say im about equally as excited as i was for the others,although im not expecting it to be as good as dark souls 2 was.

All it takes is for someone to say the name to elicit a anticipatory groan from me. March 24 can't come fast enough.

Played Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 for hundreds of hours collectively and loved them both.

But I don't have a ps4 and never plan to get one so Bloodbourne might as well not exist to me. Oddly freeing feeling. At this point I would be more interested to see this game completely flop. Strange I know. The community has shown that it thinks Dark Souls 2 is the scum of the earth and Bloodbourne is the new hope for them. So we have an extremely purist/elitist community that has extremely high hopes for a new IP. The stage is set for it to be a disaster if it is anything but spectacular. The reaction is what I'll be interested in.

I was very excited for Dark Souls II but ended up not finishing it. I haven't looked at any promotional stuff for this game after the first trailer, and I really am trying to temper my expectations this time around but it's difficult.

It's funny... I never got very far in the Souls games, but I'm super excited about Bloodborne. Maybe the more interesting setting will help me stick with it this time?

I'm a big fan of the Souls games so I am very much looking forward to it. Sadly Bloodborne alone is not enough for me to buy a PS4 so I will have to wait until the value proposition becomes acceptable.

Come to think of it there is actually a lot riding on this game in my opinion. Dark Souls took a lot of elements from Demon's and was similar in many ways, DSII was pretty disappointing overall and couldn't hold my interested for nearly as long as DeS and DaS did. But that game wasn't helmed by the same people who helmed DeS and DaS. So in a way Bloodborne is where Miyazaki and co. will have to prove that DeS/DaS wasn't a fluke.

Why not?

I've been a huge fan since Demon's Souls, but I'm pretty skeptical of Bloodborne. I'm not sure it's still going to be the same kind of game.

Haven't been this fucking excited for a game since i was a kid man.

I've completed Dark Souls 1 and 2 and really like them both, I want to play Bloodborne but I'm not buying a console for 1 game (2 if you count Uncharted).

@sethphotopoulos: well dark souls 2 is my favorite game in the series and one of the best games ever imo,so that already kinda makes it hard on bloodborne to be as good.the combat system is different from dark souls 2,and i dont like all the changes.im not a big fan of the no blocking change.i dont really like the hitting or killing enemies restores your health mechanic either.i will say that the atmosphere and art design is way better imo,but the gameplay while good,doesnt look as good as dark souls 2 was.

Brings me back to the hype that i felt for Dark Soul's. The wait is unbearable and it feels far even when it's close =P

Miyazaki-san "If you remember the Tower of Latria level in Demon's Souls, that's the kind of atmosphere we want to create with Bloodborne."

Never got the chance to play demons souls since it was ps3 exclusive but dark souls is one of my favorite games of all time. I also played the hell out of dark souls 2 even though in the end it retread alot of old ground and overall wasn't as good as the original. With a new setting, new combat mechanics, and more opportunity to play with friends to try to ease them into it, Bloodborne is easily my most anticipated game in years. The funnest way to experience these games is diving in with everyone on day 1 and playing while secrets are still being uncovered. I can't wait.

I played a little Dark Souls a few years back, but went through and played the whole thing myself (including all achievements) after watching Load Our Last Souls. Watched a bunch of all games since, as well as playing Dark Souls II and I'm currently working through Demon's Souls for myself. I'm very much looking forward to Bloodborne, because I love the feel of the combat more than anything else about that game (it's what got me interested in the first place) so having that in a completely fresh setting with some key changes and tweaks really excites me.

That said going in completely new should be great fun for you too! My advice would be to go whichever way feels best with regards to information - try to discover things for yourself at first, but if you have to look stuff up to keep invested then do so because the games prior were still good enough outside of the discovery so I imagine things will be similar here.

awesome.

i've been day one for all of them, dark souls 2 is my fav of the series, although the above-mentioned level from demon's is my fav level probably from any game, so i guess i'm as psyched for Bloodborne as i can be.

if it has a cohesive map this time i expect to hear the internet yell all sorts of nonsense along the lines of 'this is the sequel that dark souls 2 should have been!!!!'

I haven't played any of the Souls games, so Bloodborne will be taking my Souls-like virginity. I've been working through Lords of the Fallen and it's alright. I'm not sure how close it is to Souls, but I hear the comparison a lot.

Confirmed to be cohesive :) This is what fans have been waiting for since Dark Soul's 1.... the greatness is too much

I'm excited for bloodborne and I have never played a souls game. I have not seen a lot of gameplay but everything I have heard about it sounds great. I was scared away from the souls series because of the reputation it had, and I fell like even though Bloodborne will probably be very similar I'm less intimidated because it's a new game. I will be getting it on day one.

These are pretty good games, but i wouldn't mind if i never heard about them again. Seems like the internet's goodwill for games has run out for anything but this series, even with its obvious problems and issues; everything else is disgusting or an atrocity and this is the only series that gets a free pass. Mostly tired that this is the only thing in gaming worth a damn mentality. Get obsessed with something new and different for a change, without willfully obtuse mechanics and a poisonous community backing it.

I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of Bloodborne, but I'm not as excited as I was for Dark Souls 2. I've simply reached a point where I'm more interested in the world of Dark Souls than playing another Souls-like game.

Lords of the Fallen is to the Souls series as a middling college football team is to, say, the Green Bay Packers. They technically play the same sport, but one plays the game at so much a higher level that it isn't really a competition.

Regardless, I'm looking really forward to Bloodborne. From what I've seen, the enemy design is substantially more interesting than DS2 (which was mostly big armored dudes), and the de-emphasis on blocking is going to force me to learn some new strategies. The new universe will be nice too. DS2 stretched the Souls lore a little thin in my opinion.

I have DS1 and DS2 on PC. Never played them. I can't get DS1 to even load up after installing DSFix. I want to play through both before Bloodborne, but I'm not trippin if I can't.

Played Demon Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, but never managed to finish any of them. Those games rewarded persistence and a more methodical approach to combat, which evidently I do not have much of. However Bloodborne seems to be somewhat more aggressive and faster paced, which rather appeals to me. So I'm definitely more excited for Bloodborne compared to the other Souls games.

I love all the Souls games so of course I want this game , but the downside is that I cant afford a PS4 this year at all and i have managed to not get too exicited to get one as the wait for both Dark Souls 1 and 2 was kind of unberable. And yeah the so called "hardcore fans" can go to hell they just ruins good stuff and think they are the owners of the franchise ... just ugh!!!!

So, like the games you like, or shut up about it already...

You could get everyone started on that and instead of crapping on others' enthusiasm perhaps start a thread about a game you're passionate about.

I agree the blind Souls love is a bit hard to take sometimes, but they are pretty awesome games and not entirely undeserving of all the praise they get.

This one will have to be something pretty special to get me to finally buy a PS4 though. Especially since I'm still working through a stack of PS3 games.

Even as a Souls fan, I struggle a lot with the shitty fanboys who are too rabid to engage in a civil conversation about their favorite series. That said, it's a little petty to wish the games would just disappear entirely because you don't like hearing about it. Whenever something unique appears, there's bound to be a few shitheads who think they discovered it and are the only ones that understand it. If you let the community of a game define the game itself, you can really start to cast aspersions on a game that otherwise doesn't deserve it. From Software isn't some douchebag hipster dev team like their fans, they're just trying to make fun videogames.

Personally I really dig the souls games. Demon's Souls was my GOTY when it released, Dark 1 and 2 were both top 5 for me and 2 was almost #1. I will admit the games have issues though and will gladly point them out where I see them. What bothers me though is mostly the blind Dark Souls 1 love and insane concept that Dark Souls 2 is somehow insanely worse when in actuality it is an improvement on just about every single front. Listening to a DS1 fan just trash DS2 for the most petty nonsense like the map not making sense just blows my mind every time I see it.

To answer OP I am more excited for Bloodbourne than I am for any of the other Souls games except Demon's the original. I am hoping that they bring back the much more versatile and easier to control multiplayer quite a bit, also I am excited to try these new "random" dungeon areas.

At this point I've dumped several hundred hours into the souls franchise, so yeah, I'm pretty excited to play Bloodborne. That being said the lack of shields, and the huge wind up on back stabs make me a little nervous. Still, this and the remixed Dark Souls 2 have me willing to finally buy a PS4.

IGN has some great preview videos, in case you didn't know. The "first 18 minutes" one is particularly informative, you will instantly see the Demon's Souls style of the game here. No real spoilers unless you are a die-hard purist. They also have some other interviews and such, good stuff.

So you guys who are excited but haven't played any of the other games(!)... You have a month to kill, why not play those? Can't think of a better way to pass the time.

I'd imagine many people are in the same boat. Mostly because theres nothing else to play on PS4 rather than they really want to finally try a first souls-esque game.

Why would it blow your mind? It's the truth. Dark Souls 2's world design is severe downgrade from Dark Souls. Locals are only related to one another by terrible looking sky boxes that don't make any kind of sense most of the time. After playing Dark souls and Dark souls 2 it's clear one was built with a grand vision in mind and one was badly stitched together from a bunch of discreet unrelated levels.

The story is also much worst and doesn't resonate with the same thematic consistancy.

Sure, there were a few fun core gameplay improvments in 2 but they don't have time to shine outside of PvP because of bad enemy, level and boss design compared to Dark Souls.

Dark souls 2 is not bad, it's just not good enough.

Whoa whoa whoa. That might be because people haven't had much time to decipher its story like DS1. The stories in the Souls games are all fairly obtuse.

It is a video game taking place in a dark fantasy world that you entered by jumping in a massive black pit inside a lake. Think about that for a minute. So you expected the geographical layout to make perfect logical sense? Of all the chintzy low ball complaints Dark Souls 2 gets this is A number 1 the biggest. If the "world design" really makes the game that much lesser for you I cant imagine how you play any video games at all. Demon's Souls is still my favorite game in the series and it doesn't even attempt to connect any of the maps.

The story is also much worst and doesn't resonate with the same thematic consistancy.

What? There is no "story" in Dark Souls 1. Your motivation for the game when it comes down to it is "I got thrown in prison if I want to really ever escape I gotta link these fires and fulfill this prophecy (or do I?)." Gwyn doesn't have a heart to heart with you before you fight to the death. No ones motivations are ever explained in any meaningful way other than a couple side characters. You don't even know why you are doing what you are doing other than a couple people basically told you to go do XYZ for no real defined reason. At least in Dark Souls 2 the game makes some attempts to explain why you even went there in the first place and why you have to do what you are doing. Dark Souls 1 has a lot of backstory and lore.... but it has no actual narrative. Dark Souls 2 isn't a ton better but it does actually have a narrative of some kind, you can actually talk to Vendrick at one point, the final boss has an actual motivation beyond "Don't let this f'er light that fire!" If anyone tries to attribute any motivation beyond that to Gwyn, they are just making it up cause the game certainly never gives him one and he fights you just because he has got to not because he or you even really have any motivation to do so.

Sure, there were a few fun core gameplay improvments in 2 but they don't have time to shine outside of PvP because of bad enemy, level and boss design compared to Dark Souls.

Uh the level and boss design is no worse in DS2 than in DS1. In fact it may be the best any of the games ever had overall. There was no "puzzle boss", there were far fewer bosses you could just pure cheese or trick into suicide, I don't recall any archers who were so far away they wouldn't even spawn on my screen shooting arrows at me, can't say I remember any horrible near game killing lag or frame loss in DS2 that needed patching out either, now that I am thinking about it I don't remember a huge reliance on paper thin instant death drop platforms in DS2 either, or invisible walk ways that were a bitch and a half if you didn't play online. Maybe the "boss + adds" got a little over used, I know DS1 never did tha.... oh well there was 4 kings, the gargoyles, Nito, Capra Demon, technically O&S, oh and pinwheel.

No I think DS2 was pretty much a step up in all respects.

Considering the Souls series does a lot to establish atmosphere the subpar (the par being Dark Souls) way DS2 handles world building is not an underserved criticism. Demon's Souls has an edge on the two considering it was the first and that they didn't even try to form a cohesive world the was the Dark Souls games did. If you're gonna do it make sure you can stand up to what you did before.

The lack of a "puzzle boss" is a weird thing to gloat about. Puzzle bosses require you to use your head which seems to be the Souls motto. To be fair, I don't remember them in any of the Souls games. There were also too many bosses in Dark Souls 2. Every time you came upon a fog door it was almost guaranteed that there would be a boss waiting for you. It lessened the impact of actually fighting a boss. Especially since most of them seemed easier, probably due to the fact that there were soooooo fucking many of them.

I actually preferred Dark Souls 2 to 1's world a lot. The looping back around thing was not at all impressive or really that "useful" and just kind of made everything feel homogeneous and repetitive and felt like I was going around in circles at early stages of the game when I couldn't find whatever random path in whatever dark-ass forest I was in. Where as Dark Souls 2 felt like I could always be on the brink of stumbling down into some new cave to some big underground area that had some weird shit going on in it that led out into some other strange awful (in a good Souls kind of way) environment. That and I kind of don't care about the story of those games long after I have completed them and just care about the gameplay/combat and playing around and building that stuff. Except maybe Demon's Souls' world is still pretty cool to me.

Well by that standard all the souls games world building are pretty average to poor because they don't measure up the King's Field 4: The Ancient City. Of course most Souls fans don't actually know anything about the series the souls games are spiritual successor to in the first place, or that From Software was making first person RPG's before they ever made the first Armored Core. So I don't really hold that against anyone.

I will say this, Dark Souls 1 world is well put together and is contiguous in that nothing overlaps. That is pretty much the only compliment I will give it. Well I do really like Sen's Fortress actually so there is that. DS1 world is not "well designed" or laid out in any sort of logical way. It is actually kind of all over the place for the most part, but everything "fits". Much of the level design was extremely annoying though, required too much back tracking, it was far to easy to miss certain paths, and many areas were laid out to be ninja gaiden level cheap.

As for puzzle bosses I am not "gloating" I am just pointing out a fact. I admit calling them puzzle bosses is probably the wrong word though, really I should have said Gimmick Bosses. Because once you learn their "trick" you have basically won the fight. In DS1 case it is Bed of Chaos who is not a fight at all unless you count chopping down tree limbs and overgrown roots.

I agree, especially on the boss design point, except that I would argue that Mytha was a puzzle boss. Took me forever to beat her the first time through because I didn't discover the windmill. People talk about a lot about pushover bosses in DS2. Umm, hello Pinwheel? Watch Load Our Last Souls and you can see Vinny pretty much solo destroying every late game DS1 boss simply by wearing heavy armor, standing right in front of them, going to blow for blow with them, and chugging 10 estus consecutively to completely negate their attacks. If you did that in DS2, you would get your ass handed to you.

Also:

- Multiplayer lag in DS1 is unbearable to this day

- The fact that there is no penalty for dying once you are already hollowed in DS1 completely breaks the "death has consequences" immersion. Ditto the fact that you can play the entire game hollowed and never worry about being invaded. In fact, the advantage of being human in DS1 is rarely worth the cost, which makes no sense.

- DS2 makes more classes viable (e.g. duel-wielding, faith only builds) by giving you greater customization options -- e.g., the ability to effect the number of i-frames and the ability to affect cast time.

- Despite the hate it gets, soul memory is a HUGE PvP improvement over the Soul Level crap from DS1. Sorry, but I don't enjoy getting ganked by some "Soul Level 1" guy with Havel's set. It's garbage that you can artificially rig the PvP matchmaking system into matching you against people who have literally no chance in hell against you.

At least that boss had you do something different. Every boss in DS2 was basically like fighting a strong enemy. Bosses eventually became boring because of that.

If this ends up being what I want it to be, then that is probably telling how important Miyazaki is to my enjoyment of the games. All the preview footage and converstion makes it look fantastic. But I'll remain cautiously optimistic.

The first paragraph is exactly why the the DS1 world is good. It fits. Everything fits, it's just right.

The second paragraph are all complaints I would leverage more heavily against the sequel.

@karkarov: @bceagles128:

You can also break DS2 in some pretty severe ways. But sure, the PvP is better although it's not without problems.

Anyway, if we're talking about single player experience DS is just a better game. DS didn't use constant fast travel as a crutch to hide bad world design. The strategy to kill bosses wasn't strafe to the left 80% of the time. Every characters had cool storylines that actually went somewhere instead of the boring DS2 NPCs. The story was about a dying world without hope resonating really well with the gameplay instead of the muddied mess that is DS2's narrative. Just look at the old DS2 lore thread. Even when people figured out what was going on in the game it became clear there was no satisfying explanation for half the stuff in the game. Because DS2's lore has the same issu as the world design: it's an incoherent mess.

Don't believe me? Ok then, just answer these questions:

Why is there a pirate cove under the tower of flames and what does it have to do with anything?

What's up the giant dudes in the tower of flames and what is even the point of that place?

How is that pirate cove not underwater? The location doesn't make any sense.

Why does the ship take you to the Bastille?

What's up with the elevator after the serpent boss taking you to the iron castle? If you look from the outside of the building that doesn't make any sense.

Why is there a cursed jungle than weird dwarven ruins than a village full of undead peasants than crystal ruins with mages and spiders?

Why is the king's brother living next to an elevator to mountains full of dragons? Why is that elevator past a cage with a dragon in it?

Why is that guy's head able to sell me items and why is his body past a giant spider nest and a crazy undead duke guy?

Maybe you think I'm nitpicking but in DS you can ask questions about any of the locations and any enemy and get a full fledged answer about their origin and their reason to be there. This is the difference between 1 and 2. Like I said before: one was built with a grand vision in mind and one was badly stitched together from a bunch of discreet unrelated levels.

If you're still not convinced you can watch this guy explain in greater detail all the problematic stuff in DS2:

Watching it again I remember a bunch of dumb stuff I had forgotten about in DS2: Why is the emerald herald saying her whole shpeel BEFORE you get into the level up screen? They did that exact thing infinitely better in Demon's Souls, what the fuck?

Why is there a stupid strawberry jam overlay on the boss cutscenes?

Lovely how this thread quickly devolved into a DaS vs DSII argument.

well, why not...

DS1 had the more compelling map no doubt, but it's just the map, it's a peripheral concern really considering all the areas in 2 play just fine individually. same goes for narrative and lore, that stuff I can take or leave, it doesn't affect my game, but i don't doubt that DS1 was richer in that sense.

that's reaching a bit, it wasn't hiding anything, it was a spread out map, that doesn't automatically make it bad world design, the logic of how some of it joined up is shakey sure, but fast travel would have been essential even if all that was solid. i don't hold that a souls game has to have a map you can only get around on foot, considering demon's used fast travel.

i've got to agree with @karkarovon a few of his points comparing 1 & 2, and I'll emphasize a couple of aspects that take the foreground in 2 and make it the better game for me: it's level of character customization - the game goes further down the path of being one big detailed character creator, which for me, rather than story, is what makes an rpg -, and it's co-op support, which is a consistently rewarding experience, with plenty of mid level bosses present that even relatively inexperienced players can help out with.

i remember reading on release a lot of complaints about some bosses being too hard, and the shrine of amana being too hard, from players who refused to summon help because they wanted to solo everything. Summoning help is half of the game, 2 focuses on that very successfully, and at the same time rightfully denies all those those pvp griefers with the soul memory mechanic.

this 'hardcore community' that's been talked about wasn't really around during demon's souls, they cropped up during the time Dark Souls became mainstream popular, which occurred a year or so after it was released, and I imagine the game was used a lot as a social strata in schoolyards and the like. Any camp that used DS1 as a proving ground was never going to warm to some of the changes in 2, and was even destined to miss out on the fun of co-op, so listen to their advice at your peril. as ever, make your own mind up.

The crux of your complaints seems to be that the level design in DS > DS2 because you can construct narratives about why things are placed where they are in Dark Souls. I personally don't disagree that the level design in DS1 is more logical, but frankly, I just don't care. I don't care about the lore in either game, and even if I did, I wouldn't expect a weird undead fantasy world to be constructed in a manner that was consistent with my understanding of our planet. I think of the DS2 setting as a dream world, where things probably shouldn't be logically arranged.

At the end of the day, I love the Souls series for its gameplay, and I just think that the gameplay in Dark Souls 2 -- whether it be PvE, PvP, or Co-op -- is uniformly better than it is in Dark Souls. And none of this is to say that Dark Souls is a bad game. I think Dark Souls is a great game, and that Dark Souls 2 is a better game, at least in terms of the aspects of the game that are important to me. My point is more that I think Dark Souls 2 gets an unfairly bad rap when compared to Dark Souls, especially on this site. The fact that it wasn't in the 2014 GB top 10 is egregious, IMO. Both games are great and you can make a pretty convincing argument that either is better (depending on what you are looking for), so it is silly to me that people act like DS is a huge step backwards for the series while ignoring the many flaws of DS and the massive improvements that DS2 made to many of them.

Your first Soul's game will be your favourite Soul's game, but not in the same way that your first Mario Kart is the best Mario Kart.