LogFAQs > #948476441

#7: Bloodborne

If I'm being honest, Bloodborne is a heavily overrated game. It's the first FromSoft game I've played, so after all the acclaim that's been levied on those games, I was a little disappointed with what I got.

Let's start with the storytelling, or rather the absolute lack of it. I've seen FromSoft games get praised for having subtle storytelling, but that's being too generous with what Bloodborne does. The game explains nearly nothing, instead opting to hide its shoestring story out of any reasonable gameplay path. There's a fine line between not hand-feeding the player every nuance and leaving them to starve. This is easily my biggest gripe about the game. I had no narrative motivation to keep playing. Instead, this game decides to live and die by its combat and atmosphere.

Atmosphere can do a lot for a game, and Bloodborne has it in spades. It's genuinely creepy. A few sections really rack up the tension, primarily those near the end of the game with the enemies that induce Frenzy. Those sections were also some of the least enjoyable to play through but that's beside the point. It succeeds on defining its tone early on and never deviating from it.

On the side of combat, I think it's well made but not amazing. Another common FromSoft praise I've heard is that it's usually tough but fair. From my experience, this is only true about half the time. Who in the world could take on all those spiders at once? 3 hunters at once? 5 werewolves at once? When the game makes an attempt to stack the odds against you in a battle, it often goes overboard. The difficulty as a result can feel cheap in some encounters. I also wish that the game explained its systems a bit better, as I would have never figured out some enemies/bosses were weak to "serrated" weapons without googling it. Honestly, I never would have found out some weapons were classified as serrated in the first place.

Don't let that make you think I hated Bloodborne's gameplay though. There are moments that it really shines, such as one boss fight near the very end of the game that for spoiler purposes I'll avoid mentioning by name, as well as the Father Gascoigne battle near the beginning. At times, the sheer spectacle of an enemy makes it enjoyable. When it clicks, it clicks, and you feel like a true hunter when you finally make through one of those tough-but-fair sections.

Overall, I did enjoy playing Bloodborne, but I would rate this as a simply good game instead of one of the best PS4 titles.

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Got a brand new blues that I can't explain