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Bloodborne (PS4)

Fray Bentos

Fray Bentos

Banned
24 November 2014
No Bloodborne thread?! Why?

It's getting 9s and 10s across the board. It's going to be a system seller this - looks amazing.

If you liked the Demon Souls/Dark Souls games this is a MUST!
 
I'm intrigued by all the positivity around this but I've never played Dark Souls, it doesn't look like my kind of game at all.

I'd be interested to get the opinions of people who've never played the previous games (when it's released obviously)!
 
I briefly touched the first one, I think I fought through the first area that felt like a maze and then got to a long bridge that had a dragon flying overhead and you had to time your run between cover. After that I seem to recall defeating some blob boss and then getting stuck and never going back to it. I think there was a huge armour plated knight or something that just seemed to kill me with 1 hit and the other path had 2 sleeping dragons on a hill that burnt me if I tried to sneak past.

The constant dying and re dying really dragged my mood down and I never felt like the game was being 100% fair despite reviewers telling me that every death is my own fault. It's mostly true but the lack of recoil on enemies as you hit them during their attack animations meant that I felt like it was a game of taking turns to hit each other rather than me getting to them first, the fastest draw.
I've heard this one has a similar trait in that enemies who are getting up off the floor are immune to your attacks, which is really piss poor.


I want to try this at least but I might wait a few weeks and pick it up 2nd hand as no doubt people will buy it, hate it and trade.
 
Chris Davies said:
I'm intrigued by all the positivity around this but I've never played Dark Souls, it doesn't look like my kind of game at all.

I'd be interested to get the opinions of people who've never played the previous games (when it's released obviously)!
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I hate RPGs and old world kind of games with swords etc.

But Dark Souls 2 is the best game I have ever played. Try it, it's incredibly addictive.
 
I adore RPGs, particularly Skyrim types, and was always loathe to try Dark Souls as it felt a bit 'hard for the sake of being hard'. But picked up the PC version of II and finished it, must have sunk 60 hours into the beast. As they say, it's always 'fair' - when you die it's almost always easy to see what you could have done differently.

That said, if I'm honest the game put me into a serious funk, and I won't be playing another one. The atmosphere is so absorbing it leaked out into real life for me, kind of the opposite of the jumped up feeling you get from spots games. It's despairing.

Watched the IGN footage of Bloodborne, looks exactly like Dark Souls. So if you're willing to give 50+ hours of your life to feeling alone, dying and redoing til you get it right and so forth, it's probably the best way to do that :)
 
I checked in on a couple of Bloodborne vids and as much as I wish I was interested, I'm just not.

For reference, I played Dark Souls for 15-20 hours or so and was bored. I didn't find the game particularly hard (although certainly not too easy) but I just didn't enjoy any of the game mechanics or controls. I really liked some of the concepts put forward by the game (the way the game handled death/consequences, the open world, the attempt at "fair" combat) but ultimately felt the game lacked all charm and atmosphere.

Combat in Dark Souls is verrrrry limited, which for many is it's charm. From the 2 hours or so of gameplay I've seen of Bloodborne, it seems more of the same. Rolling, stabbing, rolling, stabbing, run-away-heal-repeat, still seems to be the typical style of combat. It's just not for me. Combat feels like a zombie-survival game... not a lot of combos, or flair, just swing whatever ridiculous looking weapon you've gotten your hands on and roll around a whole bunch. Yes there are new parry/riposte abilities but the don't look wonderfully implemented to me, at least early on in the game.

The story is presented similarly as it was in Dark Souls... it is up to the player to seek out very small bits and pieces of information to try and figure out what's going on.... the problem being (for me) that none of it is very interesting. None of the player actions seem to have any impact on any characters in the game or the game environment and (by design) the game is extremely sparse of anything other than charmless undead enemies.

It's a zombie game where you traverse a maze from points A-Z with no interaction with any real story/charm along the way. If you don't enjoy the gameplay/combat as you go, prepare to be bored. But if you love zombies and the same combat from Dark Souls than Bloodborne is about the best game you could ever have, so to each their own.
 
EatonTJ said:
I checked in on a couple of Bloodborne vids and as much as I wish I was interested, I'm just not.
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That's precisely how I feel about it.

I watched it being played on Twitch for an hour last night, and I saw no hint of story or plot, just a guy chopping up monsters over and over again, and (my favourite) a huge boss character, about 50ft tall with 4ft wide fists, who kept smashing his fists into the street and into some brick walls without a single cobble or brick being so much as cracked. Talk about breaking the illusion.

I imagine it's fun to play if you can say to yourself "it's an old-school gamer's game" or something like that, but all the rolling around in a ball and combat repetition... I don't think it's for me.

Isn't Dark Souls II out on next-gen consoles shortly? If it's less than full price I'd be tempted to see what I'm missing out on gameplay-wise, but I wouldn't pay £50 for either game because I really don't see a huge amount of appeal (but then it's getting labelled as a "cult classic" already, which seems right).
 
This doesn't really seem like my kind of game, but I really like what I see, it just looks so phenomenal and atmospheric. I don't really like super-hard games though, but I have finished Spelunky a couple of times (going through hell as well) So I'm pretty hardcore I guess :p

I'll probably need to actually buy a PS4 first, though.
 
Isslander said:
This doesn't really seem like my kind of game, but I really like what I see, it just looks so phenomenal and atmospheric. I don't really like super-hard games though, but I have finished Spelunky a couple of times (going through hell as well) So I'm pretty hardcore I guess :p

I'll probably need to actually buy a PS4 first, though.
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The difficulty of the Souls games (and I assume Bloodborne) is mostly due to the complete lack of information as the how the game works, or what direction you should go... there is a lot of trial and error. If you walk down the "wrong" path, suddenly you are facing enemies that you are going to have tremendous trouble with ONLY because you haven't leveled up your character or equipment yet to attack/defend at those enemies level.

If you consistently go the "right" direction, and you "correctly" level your character (it's possible to waste leveling points and make your character underpowered) most enemies you face will die in 3-4 hits of your weapon, excluding bosses and sub-bosses. The difficulty is mostly in the lack of communication from the game to the player about which direction is "right" and how to "correctly" distribute leveling points.

When people play through Souls games for the 2nd time, they seem to beat the game in 10-20% of the initial playthrough. Once you know what to do, the game is pretty easy.

My point is, I'm turned off by the gameplay itself... I just don't find it rewarding, which is too bad since I love to play games on the most difficult setting. However, if you think you'd enjoy the gameplay, don't be scared by the difficulty. It's really not that difficult, and if you find yourself getting frustrated, just consult a guide telling you where to go next.
 
Play Dark Souls 2 before Bloodborne - you'll either be hooked from the off OR you'll hate it.

EatonTJ couldn't be further from the truth with the 'limited combat' by the way. That's so not true.
 
Fray Bentos said:
Play Dark Souls 2 before Bloodborne - you'll either be hooked from the off OR you'll hate it.

EatonTJ couldn't be further from the truth with the 'limited combat' by the way. That's so not true.
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I've only played a few hours of Demon Souls and about 2/3rds of Dark Souls. Never played Dark Souls 2. If the combat in Dark Souls 2 or Bloodborne is better than this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sQQDtZDC9g

... then let me know. But that type of combat I call limited. It's good combat in comparison to a typical zombie survival game, but limited combat compared to a typical action/RPG type game... in my opinion.

I can certainly see the appeal of the game for others, I wish I enjoyed it.
 
Isslander said:
This doesn't really seem like my kind of game, but I really like what I see, it just looks so phenomenal and atmospheric. I don't really like super-hard games though, but I have finished Spelunky a couple of times (going through hell as well) So I'm pretty hardcore I guess :p

I'll probably need to actually buy a PS4 first, though.
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Not my type of game either but like you said it looks great -- very atmospheric and deep. Good to see the PS4 getting the first "system seller" this generation though.:SMUG:
 
I might pick this up tomorrow but want to try Dark Souls 2 on PS4 first as never finished it on the Xbox.

Can't wait.
 
I think I'm about 30-40% of the game so far, at the beginning it was difficult to adjust the fight style from the Souls series to Bloodborne, but now that I'm used to be more aggressive and have understood all the mechanics, the game is great and the boss fights are amazing.

That said, the game has lost a lot of the depth of the original Souls series due to the lack of variety in weapons and apparel. I'm enjoying the game a lot but I don't think it's as high in my list as Demon Souls and Dark souls, at least to me.

The world is very big and the level of detail and visuals are splendid. The jump from PS3 to PS4 is very obvious. The difficulty level seems to be a bit under the original series.

As others have said in the thread, the storytelling is too cryptic. I like things being insinuated and letting the user put things back together, but they have pushed it too far and now I just can't understand a thing of what's happening. At all. If the story and characters were a bit more explained and tied together, it would definitely benefit the game.

What can make it great is the multiplayer, which I have barely scratched, but being able to create procedural levels and play them co-op with EXACTLY the friend I want is something long expected and welcomed.
 
Yes, I also think it is amazing, just I'm still unsure if it's as amazing as the first Souls games, a bit less amazing or a lot more amazing. Probably I won''t be able to judge this until I finish the game. I'm being very picky, I know.
 
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