Bloodborne: An Incredibly Late Review

So, I just finished Bloodborne for the first time and yes, I know the game came out 5 years ago, so I am very late to the party. However, I feel this game is so good that it deserves attention and praise, even now 5 years down the line. I will admit I started my first playthrough in august 2019 after a few years of getting really into the Dark Souls series, and it still took me several months to finish as I didn’t beat the game until the beginning on March 2020. This is simply a mixture of Bloodborne being very difficult in true Dark Souls fashion, and myself being rather bad at video games.

To begin I will give a quick rundown of what Bloodborne is. It is an action RPG developed by From Software, the developers of Demons Souls and Dark Souls, set in the gothic Lovecraftian town of Yarhnam. In this town an organisation called the Healing Church basically runs the place and uses something called The Old Blood to heal and make people stronger, however some people may have too much blood and turn into beasts. Therefore, the church hires hunters to go out each night and hunt down the beasts, which is where your character comes in and the game begins. This is all I am going to say about the plot as it goes in some crazy directions that are honestly a real surprise and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who may have not played this game yet. When it comes gameplay its very similar to Dark Souls,therefore lots of skill and learning is involved, so if you have any experience with the Souls games, you’ll have an easier time starting it than most.

So, at the start of my journey I know a little of what to expect from my experience with past Souls’ games, but the subtle changes in gameplay in Bloodbornereally took me by surprise. For example, in Dark Souls you heal with an Estus Flask which you only have about 5-10 uses of depending on upgrades and then you run out, whereas in Bloodborne you can have up to at least 20 Blood Vials (healing items) at a time. There’s also a system called ‘Hunters Rally’ where you if you hit an enemy immediately after they have hit you, you can regain some of the health you lost from them. The lore of the game explains this as using their blood to heal yourself, after all you are injecting yourself with blood throughout the whole game with Blood Vials so why wouldn’t other enemies blood do the same?

At first these seem like small changes, but then I realised these mechanics allow you to play much more aggressively and fast paced, putting some of the action back into this action rpg series as previous Souls’ games rely more on patience and timing. This alone is enough for this to be my favourite From Software game, but there’s still more to talk about gameplay wise.

This game also introduces a new type of weapon to create more variety in the gameplay. You see, in the Dark Souls games all weapons tend to use a certain stat which you level to use the weapons and do more damage, a simple example is that fast weapons such as katanas scale with dexterity and slower weapons such as great swords scale with strength, they are both good types of weapons to use but don’t really offer variety unless you level your character to use multiple weapons, which most new players won’t think to do on a first playthrough. This is where Bloodbornes trick weapons come into play.

The trick weapons of Bloodborne are weapons which have two different modes that can be switched between any time during gameplay, for example at the start of the game you can either choose from a saw cleaver or axe, both of which transform into a double handed longer version of themselves, and another weapon called Ludwig’s Holy Blade is a small and quick straight sword that can be transformed into a slower but higher damage great sword. Both modes of each weapon will use different stats, for example the Holy Blade scales with strength in the great sword mode, but also skill (this is just what they call dexterity in Bloodborne) for the smaller straight sword mode. This encourages players to level more than one type of stat which even encourages using more than one weapon for the whole game, which in the long run means there’s much more variety in the combat which just makes the game even more fun.

The gameplay isn’t the only thing that makes Bloodborne so memorable, in true From Software fashion the world of Bloodborne is not only immersive, but the atmosphere makes you feel as if you’re truly in a horrifying and depressing nightmare. The blood-soaked alleyways of the games opening area to the nightmare frontiers you’ll have to slash your way through later in the game all look like nothing you will have ever seen before, even the standard enemies look absolutely terrifying and the excellent sound design keeps you on the edge of your seat. Pair that with some of the best designed boss fights both visually and gameplay wise and you have a nightmarishly beautiful game that despite looking horrifying, will have you wanting to push further ahead just to see what will happen next. Plus, the game as an amazing fully orchestrated soundtrack which perfectly sets the mood for every boss fight and keeps your blood pumping, no pun intended.

The only negative I can think about for this game is its PlayStation 4 exclusivity. Because of this the game isn’t perfectly optimised and is unfortunately locked to 30 frames per second with some occasional frame drops. However, despite this I would highly recommend buying a PlayStation 4 just for this game alone as I believe it’s a must have experience. The very high difficulty may put some players off as well, but this is part of the intended experience of Bloodborne and the Dark Souls franchise. If you just keep trying whenever you get to a difficult fight, you’ll soon realise that you are learning something with each death. Every time you come back you will be slightly better until you eventually defeat the boss or area that was giving trouble. Once you beat a boss after several failed attempts it feels empowering, and once you’ve done it once or twice, you’ll most likely have the will to get beat the entire game.

Overall, I believe that Bloodbornedeserves to go down as not only one of the best games of the last decade, but one of the greatest games ever made. It’s From Software taking their incredibly successful Dark Souls formula, and making something truly unique with it, and I for one wish I had purchased a PlayStation 4 and played the game sooner.