Just finished it. Finally. Gehrman was a real pain in the ass, but after I levelled up a bunch and kicked his teeth in, it was so satisfying. The real final boss after him wasn't too tough, thankfully. Dunno if you guys knew about the boss after Gehrman or not, but it's only acquired through getting 3 Umbilical Cords and using them all before beating Gehrman. The ending was so short and strange.
without further ado, I'll break down your thoughts, Orange.
OL wrote: 1.) The function of the lampposts has been changed from the bonfires for no reason whatsoever.
Dark Souls utilized bonfires as basic checkpoints, warps points, places to level up in one case, and places to heal and reset enemy positions. They became practically iconic because they were so important to the overall functions of the games they were in. If a player wanted to grind for experience, all they had to do was find an area with appropriately powerful enemies, kill as many as they could, return to a bonfire to reset their positions, and repeat. It had a great flow to it, and had a nice enough level of challenge. Later in the games, the bonfires could also be used to warp to other bonfires.
For no reason at all, Bloodborne did away with all of this. Instead, the lampposts only serve to transport you to the game's hub world, the Hunter's Dream. The player can level up, modify equipment, utilize the shops, and warp to other lampposts.
That's all fine and dandy, but the truth is that there's no reason for this much to have been changed. It's fine that the hub area is in place (it's a convenient one-stop for a number of different functions), but forcing the player to stop off here every single time they want to reset enemy positions is just silly. It forces you to sit through one long load screen to get to the hub, then another long load screen to get back to where you were grinding for experience. It's dumb that this is the case, when in previous games all one had to do was activate the bonfire, and instantaneously the enemies would all be back in position. Also, having to go to the hub to warp to another area is unnecessary as well. There should have just been a menu at every lamppost letting you directly warp wherever you want.
I didn't agree with this when it first came out and read this post, but now I agree so,
so much with this. There wasn't anything more annoying than having to wait through loads of (long) loading screens to get where you wanted to unnecessarily when the Bonfire system in Dark Souls 1 was just...perfect, in every way. You could do basically everything at a Bonfire. A central hub isn't important enough at all to fuck with the design so much. Heck, I preferred Demon's Souls system to this, since at least there each areas was independent of each other and didn't require waiting through as long a loading time to get where you wanted. Really weird how much they went ass backwards here.
OL wrote: 2.) The load times are painfully long.
No big explanation here, it's just the truth. Apparently they're working on patching this up, so that should be fine in the long run, but for a game that had so much time in development, there's really no reason the loading ought to be this long. It's at least a good 30-40 seconds every time you go to a major area, which means that simply resetting enemy positions forces you into these one to two-minute chunks of time where you're just sitting there doing nothing, which breaks up the flow of the game greatly. And in a game where you're expected to die over and over, this is a bit inexcusable.
They're
still working on this. Either they're working away on the inevitable DLC or they're really struggling to get this patch done, since the load times are crazy long. I thought with Sony Japan's development assistance this would be sorted rather quickly, but apparently not. It is a knock against them.
OL wrote: 3.) The healing system is unnecessary game-padding.
The Souls games had what was called the Estus Flask. It was your basic healing item, with the interesting point that it was refilled every time you stopped at a bonfire and reset enemy positions. It could be used about 10 times initially, and could eventually be upgraded for more uses upon each reset (or each time you die).
Bloodborne, however, switches this out in favor of blood vials, which are finite and can be found every now and then on downed enemies. Basically, this change makes it so you actually can run out of healing items. And when that happens, it forces you to go on a little side-excursion just to restock those items.
The reason for this change was likely the thought that "Oh, it adds extra challenge!"
But it really doesn't.
I found no challenge whatsoever in heading back to the same area I always did, killing the same weak enemies over and over, and restocking my supply of healing items. It made it so that if, say, I had been trying to overcome a boss, retrying and retrying, I'd eventually have to stop fighting the boss so that I could spend another ten to fifteen minutes farming blood vials.
There's no reason for that. It's not particularly fun. And again, it breaks up the near-perfect flow that the Souls games had already established. They really should have just utilized another Estus-style healing system in this one. There was no reason to change it.
This was another one I disagreed with initially, but now I'm put in well over 50 hours into this game, I'm inclined to agree. At first I enjoyed the "risk and reward" system they put into place with taking damage and healing yourself through attacking, but certain enemies have ridiculously long attack patterns that by the time they're done attacking, you've lost your chance to attack and heal yourself. That, and constantly having to practically farm blood vials throughout the game is a real pain and another "why did they do that?" It's so strange since the Estus Flask system is waaaaaay better, since you can refill by returning to the Bonfire and that's that. In Demon's Souls, they didn't have a cap on the healing leaves (and multiple types of healing items), so it was better there too. No idea why they backtracked here so badly.
The next one is a biggie:
OL wrote: 4.) Bloodborne is less of an RPG than Demon's/Dark Souls was.
This might seem a bit controversial, but it really is true. In Demon's Souls and both Dark Souls games, there was a huge plethora of options when it came to customizing your character. There are a bunch of points to this, so I'll break it up:
Agree and disagree here.
OL wrote: -----a.) There are far fewer weapons in Bloodborne than in any of the Souls games.
There are only about 15 or 20, while the Souls games seemed to have dozens, if not hundreds. Granted, the weapons in Bloodborne have multiple functions and a greater amount of moves/combos, but that ultimately feels a bit needless. I found a weapon I liked near the beginning and used that for the entire game. There was no reason to switch it out for about 60 hours, really. And there may be more combos, but I found myself primarily using the most basic attack possible for the grand majority of situations, because it was fastest. So things are a bit underwhelming in the weapons department.
Disagree so much here. They concentrated more on adding unique movesets to each weapon which all had two forms as opposed to dumping 50+ weapons that the vast majority feel the same with only ten weapon types each with their own moveset. If you do the math, it's really quite the same as before. I was constantly switching between weapon forms depending on the scenario - for example the hooded samurai guys I would use the long form axe and charge up with R2 to spin to win basically, since they would come within a certain distance of me and begin attack animations, on the other hand, certain fast enemy types that can get stun locked by my small form weapons would mean I could R1 spam to victory. Each weapon type also levels up differently from each other - Ludwig's Holy Sword would scale better than some of the other weapons like the Scythe etc. I definitely didn't feel disappointed here since the weapons were more "unique" than all of the knight swords found in Dark Souls. I really got to master each weapon's moveset better here than I did in previous Souls games.
OL wrote: -----b.) There is no speed stat, and different types of armor don't affect speed at all.
In the Souls games, you could choose to be a speedy, lightly-armored type, you could go with mid-weight equipment, or you could have high strength and become a heavy tank, wearing metal armor which offers more protection but slows you down considerably.
Bloodborne has none of this. There is no weight limit for the equipment you carry, the various types of armor make no difference to your speed at all, and there's no way to make yourself even speedier. This means that the game is basically the exact same speed the entire way through, and there are no options to change that. You can't choose to be stronger but slower, and you can't choose to be weaker but faster.
and on that note:
-----c.) Armor barely seems to make any difference.
Sure, if you're hoping to resist poison or frenzy effects a little better, wearing a different armor set might help you out, but when it comes to basic combat, it barely seems to matter what armor you're wearing. They all have different stats, but if a sword swing is going to hit you for a lot of damage, the sword swing will hit you for a lot of damage. The armor seems more aesthetic than anything else.
Yeah, I concede with this here, but I don't feel negative towards it - it's basically what game type they were going for - a faster, more frenetic action game with emphasis on dodging attacks and being light on your feet. Fans have just found out that there is item burden in this game, actually, if you carry four weapons on your person at one time, supposedly that does have an effect on movement speed! I didn't know this until I already beat the game. I like the look of the costumes in this game a lot though.
OL wrote: -----d.) There is no actual magic system in place.
Aside from specializing in various speeds, the Souls games also allowed you to choose what kind of attacks you would specialize it; you could swing a heavy sword or launch fireballs at your enemies, and it changed the gameplay considerably.
In Bloodborne however, the choice is already made for you: you're going to be swinging a weapon, and you'd better get good at it. There are "magic" items late in the game which allow different kinds of attacks, but they're extremely limited, and very weak unless you've been powering up your arcane stat... which is unlikely, because these items come along so late in the game, and you would have been focusing on strength and endurance up to that point.
Sure, you might also choose to power up your ability with firing guns, but it's nowhere near as effective as melee weapons.
Basically, aside from weapon choice, you have almost no options as to what kind of character you want to be.
Yeah, I felt that too. However, I personally don't care about this at all since I never played as a magic user, but I can see how that would annoy people who enjoyed spamming magic over and over (zzzzz...boring) but still, I was pleasantly surprised to see them in the end game, since they were obviously doing that for replay value. I find it refreshing to see more melee focus. Maybe with the next Souls game they go the other way and go all in on magic focus and piss me off that I have to learn that combat style instead, since going melee in Souls is like 100x more fun for me.
OL wrote: -----e.) Weapon advancement has been dumbed down.
Don't get me wrong, the weapon advancement works in Bloodborne, but it isn't as varied as in previous games. Before, you'd collect souls from the bosses along with various types of forging materials, and as you leveled up a weapon, you'd eventually come to a point where you could turn it into a sort of ultimate weapon by using specific items which have multiple uses. It created a great sense of variety and choice in the weapons you're using.
In Bloodborne, you simply level up the weapons as you get the materials... and that's it. You can also apply "bloodstones" to give them different effect (mostly just extra attack power), sort of like materia in FFVII, but it's nothing complex
Talked about this a bit already, however I feel being able to still add fire effect, arcane effect etc to weapons was nice enough. I guess they streamlined it or ran out of time here.
OL wrote: -----f.) Armor can't be leveled up.
Simple. Just like it says. You could do it in earlier games, but for some reason can't do it here. I think this partially contributes to my thoughts that armor makes little difference.
Basically, Bloodborne is less of an RPG, and almost more of a straight action game with some leveling up. It's like playing through Devil May Cry, but having to pump points into Dante's "strength" stat as you go. There are few options about how to develop the character, aside from just getting stronger.
Either way, it didn't bother me too much, but I'd like it to come back, sure. It did make the game tougher in a way by doing this, that's for sure!
OL wrote: 5.) The ending creeps up on you with little warning.
In the Souls games, it was always pretty clear when you were nearing the end of the game, either because the area you were heading through was just that epic and grand, or because you knew you were close to completing the goals set out for you. In Bloodborne... not so much.
I actually thought I was heading through an optional area just before the final boss hit. There was nothing about it that uniquely made it feel like "this is the end." It was just... another area.
I don't get what happened for you here. Did you accept Gehrman's proposal at the end game? Since the real two final bosses are
So, this experience never happened to me and I was very satisfied with the final stretch of the game.
OL wrote: 6.) Some of the bosses are just a bit uninspired.
Like I keep saying, don't get me wrong about this, because there are some really great bosses in here. Father Gascoigne was great, with his multiple forms; the Cleric Beast was excellent and terrifying as a first boss; Amygdala is probably the most Lovecraftian of them all, is intimidating as hell, and has some cool visual elements; Vicar Amelia is a bit like Sif in that her screams and whatnot kind of make you feel sorry for her. Logarius is a toughie, and has a great backstory.
But then there are bosses like Mergo's Wet Nurse, who just kind of... swings swords at you. Or the Witch of Hemwick, who I'm assuming was supposed to be kind of like the Pinwheel boss from Dark Souls, but turns out nowhere near as challenging or interesting. Then there's the Blood-Starved Beast, who's challenging, but isn't honestly all that different; it swings at you, it poisons you, and that's all it has going for it. Same for the Celestial Entity, Ebrietas, and Darkbeast Paarl. Micolash is sort of interesting in that his fight takes place over multiple rooms/areas, but he's super easy and not intimidating in the slightest. Rom is a little bit different, but more annoying than challenging. The One Reborn seems interesting at first, until you take out its "companions"; then it's easy peasy. And I'd pretty much forgotten the Shadow of Yharnam until I just looked up to see what I was forgetting.
So there are some good ones, but I'm still waiting for a boss that intimidates me as much as Ceaseless Discharge or the motherfucking Gaping Dragon did in Dark Souls. Or the goddamn Dragon God in Demon's Souls. I think I was expecting a few more wildly-inspired bosses here, but eh.
Wouldn't have hurt to have a literal Cthulhu in there somewhere. 
Disagree with this a lot. I thought all of the bosses were really well designed and never came across any that felt ho hum aside from Celestial Entity. I felt they wer emore varied than Dark Souls 2 which featured far too many giant humanoid bosses. I definitely found Amygadala intimidating as hell, same goes for Ebrietas and Darkbeast Paarl. Rom. the Vacuous Spider was an annoying bastard, but wow at that art design for that boss. Definitely different from everything else so far in the series (going from such bleakness and darkness to a really light ethereal world like that was so beautiful, especially memorable because of the events immediately after you beat it). I find it likely we'll get DLC and get more bosses, hopefully of the caliber of Artorias of the Abyss DLC from Dark Souls 1 and the Dark Souls 2 DLC bosses. Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree here.
OL wrote: 7.) (purely subjective) I'm just not as much a fan of the lore in this than I was in Demon's/Dark Souls.
Don't get me wrong, the aesthetics are amazing in Bloodborne all the same, and I do really like a lot of the story and lore choices in it; the HP Lovecraft references and influences are an absolute joy to come across. But something about the whole thing just doesn't feel quite as concretely-interconnected and grounded as the Souls games. And it's weird that I feel this way, because I'm usually not even into medieval fantasy stuff otherwise.
Earlier games made it clear that you had traveled from afar, that you were on a grand quest and all that. They made it clear that the areas you're exploring are just one small part of a much larger world which exists outside of your little quest. They made reference to foreign countries, historical events, and important figures who helped shape these worlds.
Bloodborne, however... is much more dreamlike. Yharnam is an intriguing area, but it never feels like it's a part of a larger place; it feels like it's the only place that exists in this odd nightmare world. No reference ever seems to be made of anywhere outside of Yharnam. And, judging by the intro, it could actually be that it really is all just a nightmare; the character in the intro makes specific mention that whatever happens may just feel like a dream, just before you black out.
But if that's the case, then you really aren't exploring a genuine part of a larger world. It's one single self-contained place, which doesn't help to make it feel anywhere near as epic and grand as anything in the Souls games. It actually just makes it feel a little more... hollow.
It is an interesting concept all the same, but it just doesn't have the sense of grandeur that earlier games had, which is a little disappointing. Personally, I was a big fan of the pre-release idea that Bloodborne might actually take place in the same world as Demon's Souls, but it doesn't seem like that's the case at all, now that I've played it.
Disagree again here, I found the world in this game relentlessly dark and brooding and gave me feelings of anxiety in parts due to the insane atmosphere of the world.
OL wrote: 8.) (purely subjective) The music ain't anywhere near as good as in the Souls games.
Maybe it's because they moved over to hiring a western composer for it, but the music just isn't as enjoyable or individually-listenable as it was in earlier games. Don't get me wrong, it's fine music; it fits the scene whenever it comes up. But that's just the thing; it's almost more atmospheric, rather than standing as great pieces of music in their own right. It's nice if music punctuates a scene properly, but it's even better if that same music can be listened to later, out of context, and still be just as good. I don't personally think that's the case here.
I wish they would have gotten Motoi Sakuraba back for this one.
I'll agree here, since I think Dark Souls is Sakuraba's best work outside his Tri-Ace soundtracks (Valkyrie Profile series, Star Ocean series). I do miss those crazy, weird tunes he composed.
OL wrote: Like I said, I absolutely adore the game, or else I wouldn't have all these complaints. I think it's fantastic; there are just certain places where I feel like it could have been even more fantastic.
Yeah, here's some of my cons with the game:
Not as much variety in areas.
Something I felt that both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls did better was the uniqueness of each area, whereas in Bloodborne, all of the areas just feel...the same. It's strange, since I was expecting more areas like where we fight Rom, something out of the ordinary like that. It was definitely a step back from the grandeur of most of the areas in Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. I enjoyed looking back on areas passed in Bloodborne again, but the only really unique area outside the main ones that all connect to each other was Cainhurst Castle, which was probably my favourite area in the game. Byrgenwerth was also incredibly small considering so much lore was pointing there.
Covenants feel really watered down and like an afterthought.
In previous Souls titles there was numerous Covenants to choose from. Here, there is just...3! Such a disappointment, since each Covenant was unique in prior games and would effect different things from world tendency to how characters reacted to you, to gaining new weapons, to making enemies of certain NPCs - it was always a fun choice to make who you sided with out of the various factions. It also made the world feel like it was working outside of just what you were doing. By just having 3 covenants it really makes the world feel smaller and leaves me scratching my head what they were thinking here. It's like they just...gave up on it, or something.
Severe lack of invasions/multiplayer co-op summons
The game's online is easily the weakest in the series. I know it won't mean much to people who play offline, but those of us who enjoy the extra challenge of sometimes coming across a hostile player character is a fun extra challenge in itself. Never knowing when they would turn up and wreck your shit or you gain a nice bonus collection of souls for kicking their teeth in. Plus the summoning system is shit now, since nobody seems to ever turn up hardly.
Overall, I think it's a great game but not a masterpiece like Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1. It's definitely better to me than Dark Souls 2 was, which is in itself a great game too and doesn't deserve the wave of hate it gets. Here's hoping we get DLC for Bloodborne that matches Artorias of the Abyss! Maybe get that literal Cthulhu boss, which would be cool.
not that big of a deal but still. The trend of US digital only releases seems to be increasing.