Bloodborne (Video Game)
Developed by From Software
Published by Sony Computer Entertainment
Rated M for mature
Exclusive to the PS4
There are two kinds of people that have opinions on the Souls franchise. The first look at the game as some kind of odd meta-nerd exercise in masochism, shown off like a self-inflicted scar to express just how deeply you love to be hurt and how little your parents understand you. The other side looks at the first side as poor delusional fools, blinded by their own laziness and cowardice to one of the most satisfying video game experiences of all time. I know about the first group because they never fail to say the same bewildered bullshit when the Souls games come up with conversation, and us members of the second group silently shake our heads with chiding pitty.
I’m not saying that the Souls games don’t offer some initial frustration. I myself was at one point a sad member of the first group. My deep dark secret is that I never even played Demon’s Souls until a few years after I played Dark Souls, even though I bought the game at launch. I similarly bought Dark Souls at launch, and after spending 8 hours making to the second boss and being repeatedly stomped, I put down the game and did not pick it up again until the PC release the following year. A bit more grizzled, experienced, and in the midst of a relationship I could not help but try to spend time away from, the gripping combat, isolated atmosphere, and sizeable time commitment struck a perfect chord. I have now put a combined 371 hours into both Dark Souls titles, with the lion’s share in the second.
Bloodborne is the most recent game in the Souls series, and probably the most challenging. To those of you worried about the game being too difficult, sack up. Souls games aren’t hard, they are challenging. There’s a difference. It is hard to sit through your wife taking you shopping for new linens, not challenging. At the same time, it is challenging for you to come to terms with your sad existence and accept you will never find happiness outside of the sham of voluntary bondage you call a marriage, but not hard. In the Souls games, most enemies die in a range of 2-5 hits depending on your weapon. You similarly die in a few hits, but have the added bonus of being a human being with a functional brain. As long as you make use of it, you will be just fine.
I spend time talking about this because barrier of entry is one of the few things that will turn people off to this game, and it will do so to a woefully numerous amount. We have gotten so used to instant checkpoint respawns and appearing right on the edge of a platform you fall off of that we have forgotten that after losing your 5 lives, you used to have to start the game over. I’m not saying we should go back to the style of games that existed before we figured out how to create save files, but good god is it stupid to complain about loss of progression in the Souls games. When you die in a Souls game, you lose all of your unspent experience. Experience can be spent both on items and stat-points, and you cannot lose levels. Depending on which Souls game you are playing, you might also lose some percentage of your max life. If you die, you can go back to the place where you died and reclaim your lost experience. If you die again, you lose any experience not yet reclaimed. That’s it, that is all you lose. Sure, it can be shitty to lose your first 10k exp bank, but holy shit it only takes one zone to get double that in the next area. I have lost upwards of a million souls at higher levels and made it back just fine. Compared to, say, starting the game over, it’s not like they are asking you to cut your pinky off to continue.
So sack up and try the game, because Bloodborne is fucking great. I know I give a lot of games good reviews, but that is because I tend not to waste a lot of time on the games I hate. If I were to scale the games I review based on love and time I’m willing to sink into them, everything else would be a two out of five and under, and Bloodborne would be a seven. As an ultra-fan of the series, I could easily just endlessly extol the game’s virtues. So, I will.
Forgoing the gothic medieval setting of the previous titles, Bloodborne takes place in a gothic victorian setting. The atmosphere has changed significantly, favoring chaotic liveliness for the still and lonely feeling of the previous games. In the previous titles, locations and enemies seemed stuck in time, awakened only by your presence. Skeletons would stand in place and zombified corpses rise from heaps on the floor, while giant statues would spring to life only to halt your progress. Foes in Bloodborne are much more animated, following patrols and taking part in activities prior to noticing you. A group of cackling witches can be seen dancing around a campfire, and while still similarly triggered by proximity, it gives the world a living quality that was deliberately absent in the previous titles.
While NPCs have always been a part of the series, they are much more sparse in this installment, save for some interactions you can have with people behind doors. Light doorways indicate you can knock and talk to the inhabitant, but generally all you get is a deeper sense that the world has gone mad. Even the NPCs that you save and interact with slowly succumb to the world’s progressive insanity, which while not at all new for the Souls series, is unique enough to fit the new setting.
This sense of madness and insanity is key to understanding the world of Bloodborne. Replacing the “Humanity” stat of previous installments is “Insight,” which works as a dual currency for cooperative play and a difficulty scaler. As you gain insight, the enemies get harder, and in a very Lovecraftian sense you begin to see the world beyond the visible. At certain intervals, enemies gain new attacks, usually due to some mad new deformity like eyeballs sprouting out of a lantern. At even higher insight, you begin to see great spider demons hanging off of buildings, always present but previously invisible. Similarly, certain bosses lead to cutscenes that give backstory, and after each the world is changed in a significant way. While enemies rarely change positioning, night will fall and a paleblood moon will rise, and the dream you retreat to will become corrupted and dark. The game sells the idea that with the knowledge of evil comes the burden of it.
Enemies are similarly mad compared to previous souls games. Silent skeletons and knights are replaced by mad gibbering townsfolk and werewolves. Great stone sentinels are replaced by masses of twisted corpses or pale faced behemoths. Bosses are twisted masses of flesh and fur, and even the most normal of foes bears some kind of corruption. The high fantasy is gone, and replaced by a Cronenberg dream.
It should be noted that the narrative is very minimal. It is difficult to figure out just what the fuck is going on just from the cutscenes, so don’t expect to have the story spoonfed to you on your first playthrough. It is more straightforward than previous installments, but expect to have questions that are only ever answered through speculative YouTube videos.
But that’s the whole point of these games, right? This is a Souls game, where figuring out shit is 90% of what you do. Paths aren’t laid out straight, enemies don’t tell you exactly what they do, bosses are unexpectedly encountered, shortcuts rooted out, hidden areas discovered, and secrets Googled. This is a series that asks you to take note of every time a railing has a gap in it. Sure, it might just lead to your death, but it also might lead to a secret ring. Only your keen senses and determination will figure it out. If you aren’t swinging at every barrel and panning your camera over every cliff, you are doing it wrong.
Combat is similarly exploratory. Aside from a health bar, there is nothing to tell you what attacks your enemies have in their arsenal, what they are weak to, how many or what types of hits it takes to stagger them, or if they have a grenade up their ass that they can bust out when shit gets tits up. Bosses all have three phases, so be prepared to die to a hitherto unknown laser explosion at least a few times. Go out, fight things, get killed, learn why, get good. That’s the Souls formula, and the satisfaction of figuring out a dodge pattern to beat a chain attack is why people spend the lifetimes of lesser mammals playing this series.
For those of you who have really delved into the series before, you might be disappointed to find that the play-style options have been significantly reduced. Gone are weight classes and combat preferences in favor of a faster melee focus. No more archer spam or spell bullshit here, no more shield turtling or lag backstabbing, just good old fashion hacky-n-slashy goodness. There is a single shield, but it’s a joke weapon meant to insult people that want shields. Guns exist, but function as a means to parry or stagger. You do get a cannon that can hit pretty hard, but it takes 10 bullets to fire every time, which is half of your arsenal.
The combat, though at its core the same “learn to attack at the right time and kill the badguy” formula that has always been what makes a Souls game, is significantly faster and more focused on the offensive. There is no blocking anymore, requiring you to rely on dodges and counters to defend yourself. Every time you are hit, you have a few seconds to attack the enemy and recover the health you just lost. A subsequent hit will make you lose that health permanently, making escaping from chained combo attacks particularly important. If not locked onto an enemy, you will do the classic dodge roll while evading, but locking onto a target turns it into a quick dodge slide that functions faster but with fewer dodge frames. The trade off is that you can evade and counter more quickly, better for 1v1 fights, while rolling away can evade more attacks, better for evading groups.
As I said before, armor classes are out, so say goodbye to your fatty rolls and cartwheels. Varying armor still exists, but functions more as style and specific stat protections. Each set is better at specific things, and there is rarely a strict upgrade. This goes the same for the weaponry. At the onset, the player can chose between one of three main armaments, called “Trick Weapons,” that goes in your right hand, and one of two firearms, called “firearms,” that goes in your left hand. Each Trick Weapon has two forms, which vary from being a sword/whip combo to being a one-handed and two-handed axe combo. Each weapon is very creative, offering different play-styles for each, but more importantly are all viable throughout the game. You unlock new weapons through beating certain bosses that drop “Badges,” which allows you to purchase the weapon for “Blood” (the new exp, replacing souls) at the “Messanger Bath,” which functions as you hub-world shop. Excuse the prolific quotes, but it wasn’t my decision to use silly phrase to name simple concept like “unlock” or “experience” or “shop.”
What’s more important is that no weapon is a strict upgrade over another. I started the game with the two-handed axe, and I beat the game with it. I have yet to find a weapon that I prefer the heavy attack for. Yet, for certain elemental fights that require quicker attacks, I switch to my staple secondary arm, the Tonitrus, a lightning mace. If I require a series of fast attacks to stagger a light enemy, the Blade of Mercy is a solid option, but unfortunately my Skill stat (read dexterity) is too low to make it a staple option. This is the arsenal that I chose because that is how I want to play, not because it hit harder and better than everything else. If I wanted to play the game with a faster hitting and more versatile weapon, I’d have chosen the Whip Cane, which switches between a sword and whip mode. If I wanted more middle of the road solid damaging attacks with some quick options, I would have gone with the Saw Clever, switching on the fly between a sword and axe mode. Every new weapon brings with it a new style, not an entirely upgraded better option.
Also gone are a lot of the mechanics that previously defined the series. The parry/riposte is still there, but is replaced by an offensive option. Shooting an enemy before they hit you or hitting them with a damaging enough string of attacks will stagger them, allowing you to perform a “Visceral” attack, where you character places your hand in their chest and blends their innards into a fine liquid critical strike. While incredibly damaging, it is uniform, removing the parry-swap-twohand-oneshot of Dark Souls 2. Similarly, back striking still exists, but rather doubles damage and increases stagger chance instead of dealing half of my life and making me call you a cheater. With only a single combat static animation being for Visceral attacks and no blocking, the game speeds up considerably in both PvE and PvP, favoring frantic back and forths and skillful counters over spam and cheese sandwiches.
Altogether, it makes the combat feel much more varied, despite the arsenal being significantly smaller than previous installments. There isn’t anymore “get higher strength to wield the better weapon” barriers, with stats barriers being mostly to serve as indicators of what style you should be playing to use the weapon. Sure, it can be hard to reach 30 strength to use the cannon, but it’s rewarding to finally be able to fire your first massive shot at a poor unexpecting villager, even if it isn’t at all efficient. Sure, I can’t dual wield ultra-greatswords and shoot my enemy’s teeth straight out of their anus, but at least im not getting spinning banana spammed into a two-handed malformed skull oneshot by some asshole in full jester’s. How’s that for meta-cred, you filthy scrubs?
Magic is also significantly scaled back, so don’t expect to missile spam your way through the first boss. I didn’t find my first spell till about 25% into the game, and I couldn’t equip it until far later. Leveling arcane is the only way to use magic, and other than raising your item discovery, the stat does not significantly help you. It is well worth the asking price once you unlock spells but don’t expect for it to be part of your arsenal until at least late your first playthrough. Spells are no longer just straight damage for the most part, offering more utility than spam lasers. Spells also take bullets to cast, so use is very limited. Similar to the weapons, spells each do something unique, so you won’t find just a strictly better weapon enchant 70% into the game.
Gameplay is further lengthened by the inclusion of “chalice dungeons,” a variety of semi-randomly generated gauntlets that test your combat mettle. Each starts easily enough, but will get significantly more challenging as you tackle higher level dungeons. There are four varieties of dungeons, and around the third level of each things start getting really hard. The chalice dungeons each provide a gauntlet of unique bosses that aren’t present in the main game, giving you significant reason to keep exploring them. While mostly straightforward, keep eyes out for golden doors between zones that lead to bonus loot areas. These dungeons also bring back the illusory walls, so be prepared to look like an idiot as you smack every dead end.
So bosses are varied, zones unique, gameplay balanced, and obstacles challenging. Game is perfect, right? Well, this is where love hurts, because the game has some pretty obvious flaws. First off, the load times. I didn’t read any of the reviews for this game, so I was not prepared for this. The first few times I died, I had flashbacks to when my Xbox 360 bricked, where I got stuck on a load screen for Gears of War 2 and never returned. I had a friend come over one time while I played, and I actually had him sit there between loads and tell me when it came back so I could make us lunch. The loads are easily 50 seconds plus, and happen every time you teleport. If it takes you maybe a minute and a half to run to a boss, and three minutes per boss attempt, if it takes you 8 tries to kill a boss (pretty common), you have spent roughly 45 minutes on that boss fight, over 7 minutes of which were on a load screen. On the plus side, at least this won’t make you drop out of school, as you can easily do your homework and finish your thesis between deaths.
Similarly, the summon system has been changed in ways I do not really agree with. Previously, players would places marks on the ground which other players could use to summon them. It was easy to find a companion for bossfights, as the marks clearly designated where people were looking to pair up with you. Now, you spend an insight and ring a bell, which tries to match you with other player ringing a similar “summon me” bell nearby. There’s no real way to tell if people are looking to join up near you, and in a game with such a wide level disparity between zones and so many secrets, you could spend a considerable amount of time just sitting there and waiting.
While the comparatively limited options, I can certainly see how returning fans would be turned off. My favorite build in Dark Souls 2 was playing naked with dual Smelter Swords (one of each color, of course) and heavy attacking for the ultimate disco light show. Yeah, i’m sad I can’t do that anymore, but the combat is far more refined and balanced. There isn’t an easy and cheap way to beat each boss aside from taking the time to learn how to counter their attacks. Sure, the exploitability and and variety was part of the charm of Dark Souls, and it can keep it. This is a new branch, and it evolves past what is expected of the game, and holds its own while still maintaining the feel of the predecessors.
The zones are also a little less varied than previous titles. While all beautifully realized and with their own personality, it all takes place in the same general victorian style city. Theres the town proper and a castle and a temple district, and it does branch out to a forest and eventually a “nightmare” zone. Still, it doesn’t reach the diversity that the Forest of Fallen Giants and the Gulch offered in Dark Souls 2. Enemies are largely just modified versions of previous enemies, and while a great deal of variety is present when compared to other action titles, it still doesn’t match the variety of previous titles.
It’s hard to say whether or not this is a good intro to the series. I think it is, but seeing as how Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin is coming out soon, I will say that game is slightly more forgiving. As a Souls fan, I absolutely adore this game. Even with all the shortcomings, it’s a new and challenging take on the series that creates its own identity and holds strong. There are arguments that can be made about how you prefer this or the fantasy titles, but the technical and design quality of the game is second to none. If you can muster the courage to tackle the horrors of Yharnam, you will find yourself readied for a whole series of games where effort and time actually mean something. Do not do yourself the disservice of missing this game.
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Game
Categorized:Horror Gaming Reviews
