Welcome to Bloodborne…
…and that’s about as much of a story as you can expect from this game. Not that anyone cares about the story in these games. You play these From Software games for the soul-killing, yet so, so satisfying combat.
Bloodborne really is basically just Dark Souls except with a bit of Castlevania and/or Devil May Cry mashed into it and a bit of extra horror thrown on top for extra measure. Actually that’s a bit of an understatement. This game actually had better horror-themed environments, monsters, and generally disturbing moments than most horror games of the past ever did. It’s not just a little horror, it is full on super-survival-horror.
As usual there are tons of crazy bosses. This one here, while cool and intimidating looking, was actually super easy and an incredibly misleading preview of things to come.
In reality, bosses would be more like this one, requiring a crazy amount of dodging and slow chipping away of their huge health bars in some truly fierce battles that you’ll be lucky to escape from alive even with 20 health potions and other piles of items at your disposal.
Vicious, and it gets so much worse. Yeah, the biggest difference between Bloodborne and Dark Souls is how much more fast paced the combat is. You’re even rewarded for aggression by gaining some of your lost health back if you retaliate quickly enough. On the other hand, as you just saw, this means the bosses are generally much more quick and aggressive too.
Good news though, there are way fewer super-cheap environment related insta-deaths than there were in Dark Souls (but…still 1 or 2…)
Anyway though, even though this game was filled with moments that will surely cause my neighbors to remember the sounds of screamed profanity and think that I am some kind of insane wife-beater, overall, I loved it. I mean this game just consumed me. I never wanted to stop and when I wasn’t playing I was usually thinking about what I would do next when I got to play again.
Exploring this beautifully deadly and disgusting world was just so much fun. Every area was so intricate and detailed in its own unique way. You never finished an area and then moved on to the next one to find that it was basically just the same area, but a different color, with the same enemies, except a little stronger and also a different color. No, every area was filled with brand new imagery and surprises and almost completely new enemies every time. Likewise with the bosses, they were all so bizarrely unique and memorable. Especially this guy, who I will never, ever forget…
That is the Orphan of Kos, final boss of the Old Hunters expansion and despite his small size, the toughest bastard in the whole game. It took a ridiculous amount of retrying, powering up further, and researching strategies to finally get rid of this fucker, but I did it. Killed you AND ALL YOUR FISH-FUCK FRIENDS!!!
Ahem. Yes. Anyway, this game was amazing and I hope they do some sequels to these as well as the Dark Souls games (Man, I really need to get around to Dark Souls 2 soon too…). Plenty more excellent PS4 games to come after this, but first I think it’s time to take a break to bust out a retro game or two…
On that note, I leave you with this final Bloodborne-epitomizing moment:
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