LogFAQs > #940064362

6.5/10

This is the first FromSoft game I've played, and I gotta say, I'm pretty disappointed. The game's biggest strengths seem to be the combat and the world. I think both are done well, but neither wowed me. Here's some of my biggest grievances with the game:

I've always heard that FromSoft games are, "difficult but fair," and Bloodborne seems inconsistent at actually applying that idea. I remember one room had 3 enemy hunters in it that you had to fight at once. Only way I can even imagine getting through that room is by cheesing it. Can't forget the spider room near the end too - that was total bullshit. There's also situations where an enemy is just waiting to ambush you and take half your health off instantly unless you're already aware the ambush is ahead. None of these things felt fair to me. A majority of the time, I enjoyed playing Bloodborne, but these were some poor moments.

I wish the RPG elements were done differently. The level up and weapon upgrading systems are designed so that you are somewhat stuck playing with a certain weapon. The lack of a re-spec option means your build can't be changed, and the scarcity of blood stone chunks meant I could only upgrade one or two weapons to use against the tougher enemies. I barely even touched any weapons other than the Saw Cleaver and Hunter's Axe, even though I really wanted to try out the Chikage and Ludwig's Holy Blade, because nothing else was going to do enough damage without upgrades.

While the world was well made, I think the storytelling was criminally underdone. Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation described this as "subtle storytelling", but for me, it felt like there was almost no storytelling at all. I've looked up what the story was and who all the characters were, but I would've never known any of that from just playing the game. By the end of the game, I had an idea of only a few important things, and the endings were not satisfying (despite an awesome "final" boss) because I had nothing invested in the story up to that point. The game didn't seem like it cared to tell me anything, so I didn't care to be interested.

I almost feel like this is the kind of game that would benefit from a boss rush mode. Many of the bosses were the most fun aspects of the game with the greatest feeling of reward. I don't have any care to replay the game, but I do kinda want to go fight some of those bosses again, maybe with a different weapon this time around.

It's a good game, but I don't think it's great, and I'm surprised this got 9s and 10s on release.

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Got a brand new blues that I can't explain