Bloodborne

Bloodborne... if there ever was a game that made me bittersweet, this is the one I would name. Bloodborne bears nothing in name with Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls II, but everything in spirit. Nothing is named 'souls', instead everything is named 'blood'. Make no mistake, the set up, structure, design philosophy, gameplay mechanics... it is all identical to previous games in the series.

Bloodborne does make some changes to its formula, but they all - at least they seem to at first - are somewhat minor. The game is a tad faster in play than previous games in the series. There are some more aggressive enemies, your roll has been replaced with a quicker side-step while locked onto an enemy, and equip load has been taken out of the equation so your character moves fast all the time regardless of current equipped gear. Bloodborne seems more streamlined this way, which initially feels like a good thing.

Bloodborne has a fantastic artdesign and core aesthetic throughout.

The game's structure is most similar to Dark Souls II. There is a hub world, like in Demon's Souls, but there is mostly one interconnected world to explore like in Dark Souls. Unlike Dark Souls and more like Dark Souls II, the world branches off in several directions. Not everything is interconnected. It is worth mentioning that Bloodborne's world feels more interconnected than DSII did, but less so than Dark Souls. It found a healthy medium between the two. Nevertheless, Bloodborne soon starts feeling very linear. Even moreso than Dark Souls II, where there was always another path to explore. Another path to follow when you got stuck. Bloodborne seems to just push you in the right direction, because there aren't many directions to choose from. The world is incredibly detailed to great effect. It feels genuinely haunting and creepy. As such, the atmosphere is outstanding in the game. As a counter to that, the environments are mostly monotonous. If you've seen any footage of Bloodborne, that will be the environment you look at for 70% of the game. There are some area's that change up the tone with grasslands, a very short but good snowy world, and some nightmarish looking environments. All these area's look pretty decent, but nothing looks as good as its core aesthetic and nothing feels particularly distinctive aside from that core. Every Souls game thusfar has had area's that were so memorable, for one reason or another. Bloodborne falls short on this side. As said, it's main world where you are dropped into is very unique looking, but aside from that it misses its Anor Londo. Its Kiln of the First Flame. Its Shaded Woods. Its Shrine of Amana. There is a rather sweet twist to the world design about 60-70ish% through the game that holds narrative significance that is pretty clever and eye opening. It changes the look of the game subtly in a way I appreciated. But I would've rather taken a very diverse world, over a monotonous one that changes the lighting three quarters through, essentially.

Bloodborne has a very detailed and genuinely haunting, atmospheric world.

That is basically the story of Bloodborne throughout; it has some very interesting ideas, but it does so little with it, that you'd rather have them go all out on old ideas, than halfway on new ones. Take the weapons for example. Bloodborne has interesting looking weapons that can swap attack modes. These trick weapons can be anything from a straight sword, that can be altered on the fly to a greatsword. A spear that can be altered to fit a pistol on it, or two daggers that can be altered into a larger sword. These weapons have a premium feel because of this trickstyle. You can also combo the weapon's form with it's attacks, swapping from one mode to another mid-combo. With some exceptions like the mentioned spear, there isn't really any reason to do this though. You often prefer one mode over the other for certain enemies. Unlike other Souls games, you can no longer two-hand a weapon. It is all trick based. You also can't even equip the weapon in the hand of your choice. Right is for melee, left is for guns and torches. On the outset, these trick weapons seem more complex than the weapons from previous games, but after playing for a decent period of time, you'll figure out that this is not the case. The transformations are so unique and often cool looking, that they add the illusion of complexity to these weapons, that are otherwise rather simplistic. In Dark Souls II, one could have a different moveset based on which hand you'd equip the weapon, if only slightly. You could two-hand weapons, potentially changing the entire moveset of the weapon to almost a different style of combat. Then, there was dual wielding, which had its own unique moveset and changed based on which type of weapon you main-handed. When doing the math, it actually shows that Bloodborne's weapons have far fewer attack possibilities than possible before. The exception here is that they just look more different than they actually are do to the awesome visual transformation animations.

Trick weapons seem very diverse, but mostly just have cool transforming animations.

This seems to be a main theme in Bloodborne; it's style over substance. While initially extremely cool, it wears off before you even hit the endgame. Every step forward in presentation and aesthetic, is two steps back in terms of gameplay and options therefor. We can all acknowledge that there were 'duplicate' weapons in previous Souls games; weapons that had a different move or two and looked slightly different, but were otherwise nearly identical to another weapon in the game. While these weapons certainly existed, we must also acknowledge that just by sheer numbers, there was still tons and tons more options in Dark Souls II for instance. With 223 weapons (and even more added in Scholar of the First Sin) and over 150 spells across 4 different categories, it offered the most diversity for builds out of any Souls game. Perhaps it is not fair to directly compare these two games, but with the bare 15 trick weapons that Bloodborne provides and somewhat of 6 or 7 spells period, it feels like a skeleton compared to what you might expect. In addition, these spells are all hidden behind the final 60-70% of the game, so anything other than the build that is intended for you to play, is basically off limits until NG+. Besides that, I was able to come up with 3 actually different builds for Bloodborne, whereas I managed to finish Dark Souls with 16 different ones and DSII with 31 and counting. The options available are just very low. Another such issue is armor. There are no unique stats, no internal abilities, barely that much difference at all except for visual design.

Even yet, after finishing the game twice, I have no desire to play that final build, which is possibly the worst thing I can say about a game like this: it doesn't have a lot of replayability. What seems like streamlining at first, reveals itself to be actively stripping the game of what made the series great. Just to cover all bases: it is clear that people who are used to playing Souls games exclusively in heavy armor and shields are genuinely having a tough time with Bloodborne, so if you played these games like this before the following may not apply to you; Bloodborne is too easy. Timing dodges used to be strict and tight. The timing on parry's used to be even tighter and held great risk-reward dynamics. Here, everything goes. The windows on dodges and parry's are so large, that they seem designed to have you succeed, rather than designed to make you learn patterns and anticipate attacks. I've beaten the majority of Bloodborne bosses on the first try, and I was getting frustrating by the parry's it gave me on a platter. That moment when you know you messed up, but the boss didn't hit you yet; you know this moment as I describe it. You committed to an attack, rather than a dodge. The boss was attacking at this very moment and you can almost count the frames of how late you were, knowing the inevitable blow will connect and you will die. It is a great moment to learn a boss' patterns and what not to do. This simply doesn't exist in Bloodborne. When I thought this happened, I got the parry anyway. I got the dodge. I felt like I was getting away with poor performance because the game was designed to be finished, rather than to be conquered.

The bosses are generally the easy and don't require a lot to figure out.

Speaking of finishing the game, it took me 26 hours to complete the game for the first time blind. I skipped two optional bosses while doing this. As such, it is the shortest Souls game I've played to date. Not necessarily a bad thing, as I felt it shouldn't have been any longer because I had long seen all its tricks. The Chalice Dungeons in the game are very neat, but not my main draw to the game. I had fun doing them for a bit, but ultimately felt like I wasn't doing it in service of anything.

That's all not to say Bloodborne is a bad game. Far from it. It is probably the most refined Souls game to date. Most of what I've written thus far probably reads fairly negative. The reason for this is my deep passion for this series. I want more from this series than what Bloodborne offers. I want to be engrossed in the world for more than one playthrough. I want to be challenged for more than one playthrough. I want to play the game in different ways from the get go, not having to wait until halfway through the game before I can use what I need. The problem with Bloodborne isn't so much that it is a bad game, it's in fact a great game. The first time I played through it, I liked it a lot for most of the way to the end. The problem is that all my worries came to be true. It may be a great game, but it's not a great Souls game.

I had to think really hard about the score I wanted to give to this game. If I were to recommend this game to people, I'd tell them this was a 4-star game, yet I couldn't get myself to give it as much. My reasoning here being that I came to this game in the hopes of having a game that had my attention all year, but that's just not what it did. If you are going to play this game once, or perhaps twice, then feel free to add a star to the score I gave it, because that is honestly what it deserves in that scenario. But since I play these games a certain way, over and over and over, I felt the score should reflect that to others who might be the same.