Finished Bloodborne for the first time. All bosses including DLC and all fixed Chalice Dungeons.
Awesome game. Gotta admit that it took me a while to lose myself in it, probably a combo of series fatigue + still feeling cautious about using my hand for twitchy gameplay. I end up playing in shorter bursts and taking lots of breaks to be safe. Bleh. =\
Things I like better in Souls
[spoiler]- This game feels restrained coming from Dark Souls 1 and 2 IMO. There aren't many build options or weapons, and the path is super linear and samey. I mean, Bloodborne has a different style of replay incentive with the combat being more technical and all, but limiting the stat builds and routing choices makes the game less interesting to me. Especially thinking about future playthroughs... when DS2 came out I had tons of complaints about it, but I was already planning my next run before the first one was over. In Bloodborne I'm pretty excited about learning parries and other combat intricacies, but not so much about planning where to go and what to grab on the way.
- I miss simple backstabs and shields. Oh, and rings! I need my fast stamina regen and hypermode (is there a rune for those, Beasthood aside?).
- Kinda ties with the first thing, but the loot in this game is so predictable. 90% of the time you just find redundant blood stuff or bullets. Souls games have a bigger/better variety of items, enemy drops, boss souls, etc. Plus with the repetitive layout of certain areas, after a while I wasn't hardcore exploring them anymore, just charging forward.[/spoiler]
Things I like better in Bloodborne
[spoiler]- This game is surprisingly... not trolly... not saying there weren't traps, but sometimes I'm 40+ minutes into a new area and somehow it's still quiet and safe. Except for Chalice Dungeons and maybe a couple parts of the DLC, enemy placement is never too suffocating and even the bosses were pretty straight forward. There just aren't many BS parts in this. Not a lot of cryptic moments either.
- Items sent to storage when you're full! Now that's nice.
- Gameplay is smooth, like the real evolution of DS1. If only DS2 played like this instead of tweaking every little thing to be more of an obstacle. Visceral attacks are really cool too. I also enjoy exploring with the torch in the dark/at night. Seems like that's what they truly wanted DS2 to feel like.[/spoiler]
Other stuff
[spoiler]- I found the Chalice Dungeons very tedious, at least the fixed ones (only played offline). It doesn't help that the loot is mostly ritual materials, so you end up exploring a dungeon with the sole purpose of opening the next one. Would be nice to enter a depth 4 chalice during a main game run and grab some OP gear there, but the way they're structured you can't do deeper areas before you slog through a bunch of others, and by then you'll be so advanced that there's no point anymore. The maze layouts weren't exactly a delight either. Some of the bosses were neat, though, when they weren't literally just regular enemies with an HP bar. I do like how the altars carry over to NG+ so you can enter Lv.4-5 dungeons whenever and farm XP like crazy.
- My current series rank: Dark Souls > Demon's Souls > Bloodborne = Dark Souls 2 (they're all at least 9/10 games IMO)[/spoiler]
Next up... maybe RE7 Madhouse.