So I ended up getting Bloodborne as my very first PlayStation 4 game in 2019, and at that time, I nearly gave up on it after my first boss encounter. But after having come back to it just now, what I once thought would be wholly unrelenting became one of the most immersive and astonishing gaming experiences that I've ever had.

Everything about this game's difficulty has already been said, it may not always be very forgiving but there's a nice challenge that comes forth because Bloodborne gives you a chance to figure out a fighting style that works for you - and as you keep playing with that style, the once-challenging boss fights are more than manageable.

But one's also got to love how much effort has been put into establishing this lore too. Above everything else, it always gives you a reason to want to come back, even with the increasing difficulty.

I love From Software games. I love how they're not afraid to explore awkward, potentially frustrating mechanics and create believable, atmospheric environments. I love their approach to difficulty and the way they seamlessly merge modern and retro gaming sensibilities without being too obvious. I love how their games never feel too "videogame-y" and yet, are the most "videogame-y" AAA games I can think of. I got hooked on Dark Souls due to its compelling mechanics, but I fell in love with it due to the world building, characters and narrative.

Bloodborne does both parts better.

The seminal 21st century horror masterwork. An utterly consuming post-modern translation of Victorian anxieties; the dangers of industrial progress being married to church doctrine as told with both gothic and celestial aesthetics. However it doesn't stop there. That's nothing to say on how the game further goes on to explore the terrifying Eldritch possibilities of unspeakable extraterrestrial beings beyond comprehension lying dormant within labyrinths and our attempts to understand and exploit these cosmic powers. How the result of humanity's endless search for more knowledge is ultimately rendered as capital once it breaches the surface. Just an unimaginably dense work capable of being terrifying, moving, sexy, and amusing in equal measures and completely goes all in on these facets; never shortchanging. My mind spins on the many narrative tangents this game takes you on, its profound sense of empathy for the cursed victims of exploitation, and beyond that it's also just a really fun and addictive gameplay loop with gorgeously designed areas and haunting bosses/enemies that ring in the head long after the television powers off. So stimulating exploring different weapons and builds and seeing what works and what doesn't. Perhaps some of the areas are more annoying than others (Nightmare Frontier, Upper Cathedral Ward, and Yahar'gul can fuck right off) but for something I deeply loved the first time I'm just shocked how much better this feels now. The m-word gets thrown around a lot nowadays but this work of art truly deserves the plaudit of being labelled a masterpiece. A sweeping culmination of everything FromSoftware has been striving to achieve. Everybody else should just stop trying.

When I first played Bloodborne, I appreciated it for what it was (an eldritch entanglement of orgasmic despair) while also quietly thinking that this was not a game I was likely to replay. I'd seen the sights and fought the fights, and while there were a few great bosses there were many more hulking beasts whose battles I didn't particularly care for.

My first playthrough was hot off Dark Souls 3 and still chasing the high of Sekiro the year before. All I wanted were those rhythm-game deflects, memorizing movesets and executing perfect counters, a clockwork dance of nerve and sword. With a few exceptions that wasn't what Bloodborne was about, and while I made my peace with that I couldn't bring myself to love it.

Flash forward a year and a half. By this point, I'd played my way backwards through the Soulslike oeuvre and beaten Sekiro two more times. As I watched over a friend's virtual shoulder during his first Bloodborne playthrough, and I felt the bloodlust rise within me. I wanted to sink my teeth in once again. And more than that, I wanted to do it differently: eschewing the parry-and-blade build I'd made a tradition of playing across all these games for my first go at a real heavy weapon.

So began my NG+ playthrough, not with a bang but with the buzz of my Whirligig Saw. It turned out that the beast bosses I'd dismissed in 2020 were a delight in 2022 with a deeper understanding of the form and the devil-may-care attitude of a player whose beaten them before and knows she will again. And as the sun rose for a third time over Yharnam, it was all I could do to keep myself from diving straight back in to NG++.

It's absolutely incredible how drastically a game's mechanical philosophy changes just by slightly readjusting the speed and intensity of a combat system. In Dark Souls you felt like a thing to burned, gnashed, stabbed and pounded until made ash, and thus the combat reflected this by incentivizing the player to tackle it in a ponderous and surgical manner. Bloodborne doesn't just ask you, but demands that you partake in violence in a much more bestial manner, where you have to throw yourself at your enemies, again and again and again, because blood is not just a consequence or need of your journey, but a blissful pleasure in of itself. Even when hunted, you're always the Hunter.

What a game, what a setting, what a feast for the eyes and ears. I do have to give it another go before pitting it against the other Soulsborne games (and Sekiro, of course), but it's just as masterful as I anticipated it being.

EDIT: currently tied with DS1 as my favorite of the series.

What if a game was... like a movie? That's not what this is.

What if a game was... 6 hours of stiff, prestige television inspired by the Underworld franchise of all things (but instead of being about cool monsters, human characters are at the forefront 90% of the time) that mayyyyybe will get good in the 2nd season but the 1st season was so reserved and boring it didn't get renewed? That's it. So it's just this overwrought prologue condemned to never continue.

Also, like Underworld, it's politically rancid. Somehow it's even worse tho. Like... it's an althistory setting where an empire has advanced tech and magic and you play as the bad guys. And they aren't bad cuz they're imperialists. They're portrayed as... misguided at best? Cuz they've been infiltrated by evil, monstrous "half breed" races who are steering the empire. It's very gross (hearing "half breed" uttered over and over again was the worst). It awkwardly sidesteps a critique of empire and white supremacy by pointing the finger at fantasy monsters. It's also super uncompelling.

I only played this cuz it has werewolves and it was extremely disappointing on that front, they're barely in it lol

Do you like survival mechanics that only exist to keep players from exploring the empty world map?
Fond of nonsense prestige tv bravado about complex anti-heroes with loose moral codes?
Assassin's Creed games too stimulating for you?
Are you the proud owner of a novelty Sons of Anarchy hoodie with your hometown written on it?
This might be the game for you.