| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | 9.30 |
| Overall | 9.30 |
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Another year, another journey for masochists into a new dark hellhole where every thing can and probably will kill you. Bloodborne is a differently titled game but is actually the fourth sequel to the Souls franchise, the second one in as many years. Franchise fatigue is sinking in slightly but there are no other games quite like the Souls games out there so I say keep making them. Bloodborne retains the series brutal yet rewarding combat within a superbly designed macabre world and changes the focus of the action to create a more fast paced battle experience. Along with the changes to the combat comes some trimming of some of the more role playing elements the series is known for, the result is a souls game that controls better than ever but also feels simple in comparison to past games. Immediately after starting up the game I noticed the change in the movement of my character. My hunter felt faster and more agile than ever before.Tthe dodges were super responsive, my character could dash in and out of a spot with ease. The mechanics felt so good that I almost defeated on my first try the de facto super first enemy that is supposed to kill you unless you are a master at playing the game. As a big fan of the stylish DMC like action games I felt this was a great improvement; in the past two games I also build dexterity builds because I have always been a fan of dodging more than blocking, now there is no choice as blocking is out. Maybe there are those that loved doing their best turtle impersonation and hid behind a shield all the time, well too bad no more shields for you. Get in there and fight; that is Bloodborne’s motto and to further push that point home there is now a grace period after the player gets hit where you can recover some lost damage if you attack back. One major addition is the inclusion of a ranged weapon, mostly guns, which serve as a way to stun or parry an enemy. It works like the shield parry except since there is some range involved now it increases the functionality of the parry, it is a great addition. Bloodborne rewards aggressive play, but don’t be fooled, it will also kill you quickly if you come at some of the larger enemies head strong. The cast of enemies is quite diverse making sure that no one strategy works all the time. Dashing full speed at one enemy and unleashing a seven hit combo may quickly kill one creature and may get you a face full of giant sword on the next. Pattern recognition feels more important than ever before because the shield safety blanket is now gone. I loved the first few moments of meeting a new enemy, that trepidation of whether to initiate the first attack or wait and see what kind of moves they unleash. The large lumbering giant enemies play out mostly the same as they have in past souls games, you can easily get around their slow attacks and get some attacks in before backing away quickly. It is the battles against the more human shaped, nible enemies, where the combat really shines. Battles against other hunters who have the same moveset as the player turn into these dances of dashes, slashes, and gun shots that are almost as exciting as some of the best fights in a series like DMC. The boss battles excel at creating battles where quick reflexes and smart fighting are rewarded. All in all Bloodborne has the most consistently great collection of bosses in the series, rarely a stinker in the bunch. The weapon system has been tweaked quite a bit so that there are no higher leveled weapons. Basically every weapon begins and ends with the same relative usefulness. The saw spear I started the game with could have been the same weapon I used for the entirety of the game if I so chose to do so, there was not a new better saw weapon to find later in the game. The diversity in weapons is great, there are still a wide selection of quick hitting blades and large lumbering swords or hammers but there is only one of each and that one weapon will never be outclassed. Each weapon has two shapes which can easily be switched between on the fly with a push of a button, even mid combo. My favorite is a basic small sword which attaches to it’s gigantic sheath to create a giant sword. This allows the player to have multiple attack options with the same weapon on the fly and you still can switch to a whole different weapon with the push of a button for two more modes of attack. This all ties into the motto of pushing the player into combat, I never felt more empowered in any souls game like I did in Bloodborne. Where in other games stats felt like they played a larger role, here the skill of the player feels like the determining factor. Combat is a huge part of the series but I would say exploring these amazingly intricate game worlds is the best part of a Souls game. There is nothing like arriving at the precipice of a new location, inching forward worried about what kind of collection of monstrosities await, what kind of traps may kill you in the next turn. Bloodborne excels in creating very well designed areas that are perfectly balanced to create the right amount of push for exploration, with the right amount of punishment while never becoming frustrating. I can think back to Dark Souls 2 and instantly recall four or five areas I never wanted to replay, they were a pain in the ass. I can’t think of one area I wouldn’t want to play again in Bloodborne, it was consistently great from start to finish. There are some standout locations like the Chainhurst Castle which is completely optional but provides one of the best locations in the series. Every new area tries to have some new theme or element,for instance one entire city block has the player running from cover to cover as an insane hunter shoots at you with a chaingun in a scene that feels right out of Call of Duty but somehow fits right in. There is of course the disgusting poison section, always a Souls fan favorite. This games forest area is the largest most complex game area of any Souls game to date. The setting is quite a departure for a Souls game as this one is set in a more modern 1800s victorian English city. Werewolves and Lovecraftian creatures fill the game world rather than dragons and knights. Personally I prefer the fantasy setting of past Souls games but I can’t deny how beautiful and interesting some of this games areas were. In many ways I feel this is the best designed Souls game but with every good change there seemed to be some element of the series cut out as well. This is felt mostly with the online component which feels like an afterthought. Discovering covenants and engaging in player versus player gang wars is one of my favorite parts of a Souls game. I felt like Dark Souls 2 pushed the online component in many interesting ways, creating entire sections of the world built solely on PvP combat. Bloodborne is a massive step back, I rarely encountered an invading enemy (when I did it was magical), I rarely engaged in coop which I loved to do in Dark Souls, it just feels like this game does not care for it. Yes the option is there to sit around and wait for some bell to connect you to others, but when there is no in game incentive to participate in online play it feels like a wasteful exercise. The amount of others participating is limited as well because the game makes the online experience a hassle rather than a joy. It is not just about playing with others, having a whole different avenue to reward players with new items through covenants makes the game world deeper and more enjoyable. Uncovering how a covenant worked in past Souls games was one of the great joys of exploring. Remember finding a giant dragon who speaks to you and gives you a dragon head down at the bottom of this huge tree in Dark Souls, that was a wow moment for me, Bloodborne has nothing like that. In fact Bloodborne is severely lacking in wow moments. Yes it is consistently great without any of the lows but it also misses a lot of the highs. The level design seems to sacrifice the element of surprise and wonder to make sure each area does not get too frustrating. Well you know what, as much as those arrow through assholes in Anor Londo almost forced me to throw my controller into the TV, I remember that area as if I played it yesterday. The moment a giant dragon swooped down and burned an entire bridge out of nowhere is something I fondly remember cause it is so unexpected. Part of why I love this series so much is because things happen in these games that never happen in other games, who puts an optional super boss down a random alley in the first four hours of the game, Souls games do. Not Bloodborne though, it maybe well designed but it is the most plain and boring of the Souls game from the surprise perspective. It also feels very linear, while the world is interconnected it is done in a way that is all progression based. In Dark Souls you have the option to enter one of the later areas right away. There is no choice in Bloodborne, you follow a set progression and every once in a while two paths present themselves but one is optional and it never leads to a future area in the game. Major cuts happened with the RPG elements of the series as well. I prefer less stat based more player skill focused games so I was pleased with the simplification of the stat system. Encumberance is removed, there are now no worries about having armor slow your hunter down, again part of the focus to encourage fast play. This comes at the cost of making armor mostly an afterthought, much like the weapons there are no higher level forms of armor in the game, each set of clothes simply organizes the defense of stats in different ways to protect against certain elements better than others. Unlike the weapons though there is no way to augment the armor in any way, no leveling system of any kind. There is a rune system which acts like this games version of rings, which adds general buffs like physical defense or better healing but that feels like poor substitute for removing a whole avenue of customization. The weapon upgrade system was butchered as well, there aren’t any multiple upgrade paths as every weapon has only one upgrade tree. There is a blood gem system where you attach gems found throughout the world to add some elemental or strength buffs which I feel is a poor substitute for the old multi tiered upgrading trees. For me personally it is not even about the actual upgrading, it is about what the player had to do within the game to be able to upgrade. By removing entire player customization systems it creates less interesting items to be found in the game world. Discovering where the blacksmith who makes your weapons into dark energy was a thrill. Needing to find a special item that allows for advanced level upgrades creates a drive for exploration Bloodborne was lacking. Being rewarded with a fire ore which opens access to entire fire tree of upgrades is far more exciting than finding another crappy blood gem that is dropped by nearly every enemy that adds 5% fire damage, who gives a crap. Creating meaningful rewards for exploration is an important part of game world design, past Souls games excelled at this. The lack of more powerful weapons or armor in the game world means there will never be that thrill of entering a much more dangerous location that your character’s current level allows so that you may try to reach that powerful sword, like the Drake Sword for instance. There is no Drake Sword moment in Bloodborne, there is no empowerment coming from exploring, and I greatly miss that aspect while playing Bloodborne. The health system was needlessly tinkered with as well. Flasks are gone, now there are consumable blood vials which you can carry 20 of, sounds like a large amount but believe me you will eat through them like cake. The problem is once you run out of vials they do not get refilled when you die requiring some farming instead. So now after you die to a huge boss to add insult to injury you need to travel to a previous location where you know enemies drop vials and waste your time killing these bums just to have enough health items to fight the boss again. It would be great if traveling around the world was quick but to teleport from one location to another requires returning to a main hub then teleporting from there to another location. This means there are multiple load screens between locations and these loading screens take forever, thirty seconds each. The poor loading times and this odd need to farm sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise well designed game. Bloodborne also feels like the shortest Souls game to me. I normally take 80 hours or more to explore the game world fully and engage in the various side quests. I was done with nearly every optional boss and quest around the 45 hour mark in this one. That is still a sizeable game but in contrast to the other games it feels small. Once again I feel like that drive for the designers to make every moment be great lead to a smaller but more focused game. The chalice dungeons basically fill in the missing hours from the main campaign. These dungeons are simple in design and almost all look the same but they do include new enemies and a ton of great new boss battles. Certain locations are very well designed and call back to a trap filled dungeon like Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls. Sadly after a few dungeon runs you will notice the same pattern of rooms repeat constantly. These can be randomly generated but picture me giving you a collection of blocks with set designed rooms inside them and I tell you to rearrange the order of those blocks; that changes the order of the rooms but not how those rooms are designed. So you see the same rooms all the time and yes the enemy layout may change and occasionally a new element of danger is added in like fire or poison. There is a ton of content inside these chalice dungeons and some of the best combat challenges are located within them yet the dungeons by their very design lack the most important element of the Souls game; that amazingly interesting world. I rather wish they had created four or five new areas in the main campaign than have this chalice dungeon system. Graphically Bloodborne is stunning and it is by a mile the best running game in the series. Every location is drenched in amazing detail. Clothes and fur blow in the wind, the lighting is superb, and frame rate is fast and fluid. The stunning environments made me want to explore every inch of the world just to make sure I am not missing anything visually amazing. Bloodborne retains the minimalistic approach to music the past games do, most of the time there is no background music playing but when it does start up it has the usual collection of haunting sounds and bombastic tunes for boss battles. Apparently there is a story somewhere in Bloodborne but FROM software clearly didn’t care to focus on it so neither will I. Not that any Souls game has a stand out story but this one is vague even for a Souls game. Overall Bloodborne is a fantastic game, easily the best exclusive on the PS4 and for certain one of the best games of this year. The debate of where it fits in the hierarchy of souls games will mostly come down to preference. I ended up missing many of the exploration and online elements that were removed. I realized while I do love the combat I appreciate the sense of discovery in these games more. I am not playing a straight up action game, that is not why I play these games. It does provide the best combat, the best controls and some of the best designed areas of any Souls games and that alone made the experience one hell of a ride. In many ways Bloodborne feels like the first game in a new series with how simplified certain elements were made. Perhaps the new name was not done out of a need to preserve the third party name, but it was an actual attempt at a new kind of Souls game. Maybe one day there is a Bloodborne sequel that feels as complex and rewarding as Dark Souls felt. If that is so then Bloodborne is one hell of a start. |
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Posted by Dvader Fri, 10 Apr 2015 00:16:45
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