Is there a Part 4? The "last time on the Bloodborne Identity" at the start sounds like the stuff that happened during Part 3.
EDIT: @janman I don't know if anyone pointed this out, but Trails of Cold Steel 3 is actually the 8th game in a very story heavy series. I'm still working my way through the series, but from what I've heard, Cold Steel 3 very much relies on knowledge from all the prior games. But if you play with your buddy guiding you along, he might be able to clear up some confusion.
On a related note, if you want to get into the series at the start, the first game is Trails in the Sky, playable on PC. The series is great. The games tend to be quite slow paced and focus a lot on world building and dialogue. The actual combat and gameplay is fairly mediocre, but fortunately the game has a "fast forward" than greatly speeds up everything. You can be in and out of normal encounters in <10 seconds.
All the menus and fiddling around with quests and equipment in the first bit made my head hurt. It reminds me of when I recently tried to pick up FF11 and had a good "what the fuck is going on" moment.
Is the framerate really low? Is that just the stream or is that Bloodborne in general?
Either way, I'm happy to have the souls games return to Giant Bomb.
I'm pretty sure it's just the game; Bloodborne has always run pretty poorly. Whenever I go back to it I'm always taken aback at how questionable the FPS is for such a demanding game.
I wasn't able to click with the first Nioh, I think I made it to halfway the second map. The combat was fun and the stances were interesting, but the enemy variety was not there and I really wasn't into the loot, seemed to me like an unnecesary layer.
I'm still curious about the sequel, because even if I wasn't engaged enough to finish it, it still was a great game. Seems like the combat is essentially the same, so maybe they had more time to flesh out the enemy and level design. So if this released on PC I may check it out eventually.
I got roughly halfway through the first game before quitting for all of the reasons you quit.
In Nioh 2, I'm halfway through the second map, and so far the enemy variety has been better. They've done a good job of adding new enemies. Pretty much every main mission will introduce a new type of yokai. And all of them feel pretty different in terms of move set, which is cool. The exception is the normal human enemies, because you can just stunlock them to death so I never really get a sense for their attacks.
In terms of level design, it feels about the same. I haven't been super impressed. There's only really been 1 level that I felt was pretty cool. Everything else has been caves, forests, and burned down towns that all feel pretty similar.
God this game looks so fun. I've already preordered. Taken together, last week and this week are absolutely amazing for games. Ori, Nioh 2, Doom Eternal, and Animal Crossing. Hot damn!
And then we've got FF7 Remake, Persona 5 Royale, Half Life, and The Last of Us 2 all coming out in the next couple of weeks/months.
The first couple of months this year have been pretty weak in terms of games IMO, but Spring is looking insane.
I'm 5 hours in at 33%. This game is absolutely incredible, and I'm already feeling sad that if this pace keeps up I'll be done w/ it at 15 hours because I feel like I could play this for much longer.
It feels so good to just explore because you get some super powerful traversal abilities very early, including a triple jump that lets you cheese some traversal puzzles in fun ways. I've gotten some upgrades and finagled my way into some areas that really feel like I wasn't supposed to get to yet.
I do agree that the visuals are gorgeous, but can also become a bit too much during combat. Brad said it was an unforgiving game, and I'm kind of mixed on my feelings there. I found it harder in the first hour or so than anything since. I have so much health and mana that the enemies are trivial at this point. I just did a combat shrine and easily cleared it without any issue. If anyone is looking for difficulty similar to Hollow Knight, I'd recommend playing it on Hard. I started on normal, and I wish it was a bit tougher.
I'm fortunate enough that I've had absolutely no issues on my PC via GamePass on my SSD. It's running perfectly and I've only experienced one bug. The map said an NPC would be in a spot he wasn't.
Not counting the loot overhaul, which affects the base game as well, this looks like more of the same. Which is perfectly fine by me. Like Rorie said, the core combat in this game is super satisfying, so I'm fine with exploring a new area, playing with a few new skills, and checking out the new dungeons.
Also, this was a really good QL. Lots of great info condensed into a pretty short time.
I do find it hilarious that Brad misunderstood the very first tutorial in the game that says "press square for single attacks, hold square for AoE attacks."
I just finished the demo and combat was alright. It was more fun than I thought it'd be. The highlight was going into Punisher Mode and getting those sweet melee counters off.
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