What if Dark Souls was more aggressive, darker, and dripping in flesh. A napkin pitch spun into an Odyssey scale epic of body horror and gothic architecture.
Bloodborne, baby.
The idea is simple: the world is being overrun by nightmarish stuff, and hunters are let loose into the real world to keep the nightmares tamed. It’s up to you to leave the hunter’s realm and her into Yarnham to cut off every single piece of flesh in front of you.
Bloodborne emphasizes speed and brutality as it provides you with a fresh slate of weapons that all have multiple forms to dispatch enemies with, and a gun to keep your enemies at bay as you seek the best approach. There is no means to block attacks this time around; you must duck, dodge, flank, and charge at your enemies to take as much of their blood as possible. They’ll do the same, but in larger numbers with worse appearances to ensure that they do the same. In the course of attempting to clear out the nightmares, you’ll encounter many bosses of varying degrees of grotesque-ness, each with their own horrible arena to do business in. Pop items, collect blood vials, dial in insight and blood echoes (souls by any other name) and climb your way through the halls of Bloodborne’s urban design in order to find success.
I found Bloodborne to be tighter in execution, but thoroughly less pleasant to vault through with my hammer in toe than Dark Souls, my previous soulsborne game. I got stuck quite a bit less, and experienced way less friction progressing in this far more linear game. In that sense it feels like a lesser experience - there’s less puzzles to solve, and most of the game’s large areas serve as means to lead you to shortcuts that streamline the experience even further. It’s a phenomenal game on its foundation, but it feels like less of a mountain one climbs and more a hill you jog up.
It also runs poorly and gets real murky during daytime sessions! Oh well. Such is life.
Bloodborne, baby.
The idea is simple: the world is being overrun by nightmarish stuff, and hunters are let loose into the real world to keep the nightmares tamed. It’s up to you to leave the hunter’s realm and her into Yarnham to cut off every single piece of flesh in front of you.
Bloodborne emphasizes speed and brutality as it provides you with a fresh slate of weapons that all have multiple forms to dispatch enemies with, and a gun to keep your enemies at bay as you seek the best approach. There is no means to block attacks this time around; you must duck, dodge, flank, and charge at your enemies to take as much of their blood as possible. They’ll do the same, but in larger numbers with worse appearances to ensure that they do the same. In the course of attempting to clear out the nightmares, you’ll encounter many bosses of varying degrees of grotesque-ness, each with their own horrible arena to do business in. Pop items, collect blood vials, dial in insight and blood echoes (souls by any other name) and climb your way through the halls of Bloodborne’s urban design in order to find success.
I found Bloodborne to be tighter in execution, but thoroughly less pleasant to vault through with my hammer in toe than Dark Souls, my previous soulsborne game. I got stuck quite a bit less, and experienced way less friction progressing in this far more linear game. In that sense it feels like a lesser experience - there’s less puzzles to solve, and most of the game’s large areas serve as means to lead you to shortcuts that streamline the experience even further. It’s a phenomenal game on its foundation, but it feels like less of a mountain one climbs and more a hill you jog up.
It also runs poorly and gets real murky during daytime sessions! Oh well. Such is life.