Bloodborne

Bloodborne takes the best of Dark Souls and builds the unrelenting gaming challenge on a prefect foundation - it will test your abilities to the max. The first true must-have exclusive for PS4 is here. [Issue#252]

A new masterpiece on PlayStation 4.

With aggression as its invitation, Bloodborne invokes a calculated shift in Souls parlance. Its aim isn't necessarily a course correction, but rather a Y-axis slant into an alternative series of objectives. Sacrificed are a few degrees of personal customization, only to be replaced by a renewed sense of distress and wonder. Bloodborne’s demanding novelty, even with its unrepentant focus, feels built to last.

Bloodborne is an incredible game; tight in its mechanics, logical in its systems, rewarding, intense, gloriously frustrating and exciting in equal measure. The PS4 has its first absolutely essential game. As if there was ever any doubt.

Bloodborne is some of the best work From Software's ever done, a remarkable achievement and a shrewd turn from its Souls lineage.

Give it a chance – not just a couple of hours, mind, but five or ten; enough to let its claws sink in nice and deep – and you’ll probably find Bloodborne an intoxicating dose of pure masochistic pleasure.

In its current state, it feels like it caters too much to the twitch experts, and doesn't bend for the rest of us. A challenge that feels like a learning experience is welcome, but Bloodborne too often felt like it was kicking me in the balls and leaving me helpless to do anything about it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

It’s a pretty good game but I was not a fan of the weapons or the lore/story. The combat was typically good for a FromSoftWare game and I adored the Lovecraftion art style/atomsphere but after about 30 hours, I had no idea what in the world was going on, story wise and the last 15 hours made no sense. I did like the final boss battle but hated the ending. It was very anticlimactic. Pretty fun game but ultimately ends up boring and a chore to get through.

As a fan of Soulslike games, I might be controversial but I have never understood why it is so universally acclaimed. Incredible and fascinating environments, but very repetitive and similar to each other. Few weapons and armor compared to other soulslike games and limited customization options. I have not played the DLC, but I do not consider most of the bosses in the base game to be memorable. I finished it a couple of times and it left me with nothing except confusion about why it is so loved

Bloodborne is the definition of something incredibly overrated. There are many flaws to this game such as blood vial farming, the main game being too easy from 1 or 2 bosses in general and generally too short. The rewarding feel doesn't exist in this game, because most of the bosses are too easy and one of them is insanely hard for no reason.

Easy but unfair. The exact opposition of why everyone loved and praised it's predecessors. There is simply no better way of describing bloodborne as a whole. The game is easy enough for most to get through and the skeleton of souls games is there. But the unfair and anti player behavior of dark souls 2 is all over this game as well but just in a different way. Gone are bad hit boxes and nerfed iframes, but instead we get unfair enemy behavior, unresponsive controls and a new dash system that makes every situation more dangerous and unfair then it has to be. The high risk, low reward parry makes things even worse as a lot of enemies require shooting before they even begin attacking in order to parry. And with twitch attacks mixed with delayed baiting attacks, it leaves behind a game designed around canceling player behavior rather than making a believable breathing world. Instead we get a jigsaw of mashed ideas desperately trying to make sense and force player behavior! That is again the opposite of what made demon souls and dark souls great. The only positive is that this unfair system does induce a sense of dread, panic and pure frustrating madness that the setting wants you to feel, and it's understandable why each npc in the game has been driven past the brink of sanity. Sadly the setting and game design is trying to be a bunch of different games all at once. We have 3 story genres fighting each other and two game design philosophies vying for your attention. All of which drains and ruin the premise and flow of the game, which was promising and quite amazing at first. It's baffling how people praise this game, but I suppose it's blind loyalty to the brand or simply ignorance of what came before. Demons souls was broken but amazing and dark souls was the culmination of its potential. But after that From seems to have lost their way. I believe, like many creators, they might not know what they've created and struggle in desperation to recreate it. At least they're trying something new with bloodborne and I respect that, but I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone. Even though updates and DLC have made the experience slightly better. The journey toward madness simply isn't worth it. If the game had stopped in the first third and focused solely on Yarnam and it's beast problems, it would've been a much better game. And maybe that is why so many praise it, they don't get further into the game but won't admit it for fear of lowering their gamer cred..