Bloodborne is horrible. Decaying bodies in rotten sacks litter its streets, pieces of bone and smeared blood are their set dressings. Parents need to know that Bloodborne is a wildly difficult and extremely violent role-playing game.Players control a hunter of monsters who uses a variety of bladed weapons and guns to brutally kill vicious creatures, some of which are humanoid in appearance.
Most games these days are desperate to show you what to do, where to go, how to enjoy what they have to offer. They’re so keen to please it’s almost a turn-off.Well, Bloodborne’s not like that. Not only does it not spoon feed, you get the impression that the game doesn’t even like you. Heck, Bloodborne probably hates you.It's terribly hard and more obscure than a bad Russian translation of a James Joyce novel, it also takes place in one of the least inviting settings you can imagine.
It’s set in a grim old world, is Bloodborne. However, if you can embrace the gloom and hold on tight through its many hard-as-nails sections, you’re rewarded with one of the most involving and rewarding games of the current generation.It’s a big win for the PS4, which gets a console exclusive on this slab of bloodied meat. While Bloodborne isn’t officially part of an ongoing series, it’s a close relative of From Software’s Souls games, the most recent being 2014’s Dark Souls II. Like those titles, Bloodborne is a rock-hard third-person action RPG that punishes, punishes and then punishes you again so that when you do finally succeed the victory tastes sweeter than a sundae topped with chocolate sauce and sugary sprinkles.Let’s not conjure too many Candy Crush Saga-like images, though.
Bloodborne is one of the grimmest PS4 releases yet. You wake up in a ruined, gothic city on the verge of collapse. It has been ravaged by a terrible disease that’s turning people into werewolf-like monsters, but even this you have to discover yourself. Bloodborne doesn’t so much tell you a story as mumble some nonsense in your ear that’ll only actually mean anything about 10 hours of play time later.Nothing comes easy, but stick with Bloodborne and you’ll almost certainly get sucked into its deep dark abyss.
Well, first off it’s incredibly atmospheric. It chucks away your standard musical score and replaces it, for the most part, with menacing ambient sound effects. They’re there to remind you that you’re out here alone, and that if you die, no-one really cares.This all slots in perfectly with the gothic scenery. Bloodborne is the horror take on Dark Souls II’s fantasy world, and it’s a grimy, eerie place to be. That’s not to say there aren’t some pretty sights: for every dungeon with dripping moss-clad walls and rat-piss stink in every pixel, there’s a grand vista that shows you not just the wider environment, but actual areas you have been, or will go to.
Each part of the Bloodborne world fits together perfectly, as if game director Hidetaka Miyazaki told the level designers they’d have to make the whole thing out of Lego to get any level signed-off. The atmosphere-drenched sound and visuals, and this sense of being in a near-real (if nightmarish) place really ground you in Bloodborne.It’s not a happy place, but it’s strangely moreish and offers the thrill of discovering new areas more than virtually any other PS4 game. More often than not you’re desperately searching for a safe place.
You see, whenever you kill enemies you gain Blood Echoes, the Bloodborne currency used to level-up and buy new equipment.If you die, you lose all of them until you track back and either pick them up, or kill whatever nasty has nicked your hard-won echoes. Die again in the process and they’re gone forever. Much of Bloodborne is spent either racking-up Blood Echoes in areas you know like the back of your hand or tip-toeing around new places, terrified with every step. Now that might not sound like much fun, but the sense of risk makes every upgrade mean more. Every new weapon is a chance to grapple that bit more control, every level-up gets you that bit more mastery of your character. It’s a delicious struggle.These upgrades only go so far, though. The real The Matrix moment happens when you start to figure out the behaviour of your enemies, and learn the world around you, wall-by-wall.
One area that might cause your death a half-dozen times soon enough becomes a zone where you can get rid of all enemies without being hit once. Suddenly you’re the chosen one, and it has nothing to do with your Strength stat (for the most part).It’s this sort of sense of gaining power that makes Bloodborne’s repetition enjoyable rather than only bearable. And there will be a lot of treading through the same areas, because it’s very tough and there are only a few continue points, known as lamps. Bloodborne is incredibly frugal with them, more often leading you back to the one you’ve already visited, through another until-then blocked route.Any air-punching victory is splattered with “oh, really, back here?” disappointment at that moment. But it’s just a reminder that while you may have spent £40 on Bloodborne, it’s the game that makes the rules. As with the Souls games, the points where your patience will really be tested are where the bosses land.
These punctuate the game’s main areas, and are at times very difficult indeed. While Bloodborne doesn’t obviously limit grinding of areas you know and love/hate, allowing you to level-up as you like, just powering-up your character isn’t enough to succeed. In each case you need to learn how a boss moves and reacts to have a hope.There is no out-powering a boss in Bloodborne. Even some of the ‘normal’ enemies are far, far stronger and more powerful than you are. It’s a rare thing: a game of real, honest skill.
Not just collecting power-ups until you’re basically a demi-god. It’s different from Dark Souls II as well. Bloodborne does away with shields, forcing you to get down and dirty with hack and slashing combat.It goes as far as to let you regain health lost from an attack by fighting back just after being thwacked.
Still, you absolutely need to master the timing of combat to avoid just getting hit again. Now, you don’t need to put in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to master Bloodborne, but you do need patience, perseverance and at least a few dozen hours to make it all the way through.It’s a real investment, but aside from those road-block moments when you end up well and truly stuck, there’s plenty of variation. Bloodborne uses a hub world called Hunter’s Dream from which you can transport to different areas you’ve unlocked, and they are quite discrete entities.
The benefit of having a carefully-constructed small world rather than a giant one like, for example, Skyrim is that each part can be carefully crafted to feel unique and different.It telegraphs plenty of the things you’ll unlock later on too. You can barely use any of the crafting tables any messenger (the little monsters that sell you stuff) fountains in Hunter’s Dream to start with.
So while you may not know exactly what’s coming later, you do always know there’s plenty to look forwards to in Bloodborne.That sense of discovery is one of the game’s greatest assets. The environment, the abilities your character will at some point have and simply what Bloodborne is are all up for grabs.
But nothing comes for free here. Bloodborne is a tricky beast. It’s not for everyone. But if you’re looking for something a little different, something that’ll really challenge and involve you a bit more than your average eight-hour shoot-a-thon, you need to check it out.You may not make it to the end. You may not even make it half-way.
But this isn’t really a game you need to finish in order to come away with some great memories. The same rules just don’t apply here.Feeling brave enough to give it a go? Just keep your gamepad-throwing arm in check - you don’t want a smashed TV.
Powered by Trusted Reviews Available exclusively on PS4Purgatory. Getting the chance to re-live every painful moment, every mistake you ever made, a thousand of times. The time your first pet died, that day you realised Santa Claus wasn’t real, the first time you got dumped: every classic stomach-sinking moment on a constant loop.
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Bloodborne’s world is a bit like a skewed version of that particular hell.Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well From Software has once again proved there’s a masochist in us all, because Bloodborne is one of the most compelling PS4 exclusives of this generation so far.See also:Bloodborne already has a guaranteed audience, being a sequel to in all but name, but for the sake of argument we’re going to assume you’re not yet convinced.So exactly how hellish is Bloodborne? You’re a lone warrior, a hunter who wakes up in a town where everyone not shuttered away has been infected by a lycanthropic disease. Not a member of the Twilight fans’ support group? This means werewolves. The first enemies you’ll meet are the townsfolk in the early stages of the transformation.You’re on your own. People are either out to kill you or will only speak to you through closed doors.
It’s a lonely, doom-laden world whose soundtrack is inhuman groans and ominous drones rather than rousing strings. This is not, and the Bloodborne leans more towards horror than From Software’s previous games.Grim? Playing Bloodborne while knee-deep in a regretful weekend hangover isn’t the best idea, but there’s something intoxicating about the atmosphere. It’s quite unlike anything available for the current consoles, its approach quite different.See also:The lack of a traditional score is part of it, but the whole setup is unusual: if extremely similar in style to that of and the other Souls games. Bloodborne doesn’t so much have story as a mythos. You’re not given a plot or quest to follow, but a rich world starts forming if you pay attention to your surroundings and the snippets of dialogue you get from the few characters who don’t want to tear your throat out.None of it makes any sense on its own, but try to decode it within Bloodborne’s wider world and you can’t fail to get sucked in.
Bloodborne’s swimming pool may be filled with blood, but it sure is warm.This deep-diving doesn’t only apply nerd-out obsessives either. It’s not hard to end up uncovering much of what is there to find in Bloodborne’s environments, because you’ll meet them again and again. And again.See also:Its difficulty level is much closer to a classic game like Megaman rather than the more recent third-person action games it may at first appear to have more in common with. Dying a dozen times an hour is not uncommon, after which you’ll reawaken at the last continue point you visited, with all enemies fully stocked-up again.Watch a few minutes of Bloodborne gameplay and you’ll see our hero running around slashing at enemies in a manner that may appear brainless and button mash-y. That approach will get you nowhere, though. While some conventions of the third-person action RPG genre apply: you have multiple attack strengths and can roll out of the way of enemies, giving you the dexterity edge over most, you need to study Bloodborne in quite an active way.Enter a new area and an enemy will, often as not, ambush you from the side and promptly lop off half your health. Next time, you’ll know the location of that enemy.
Perhaps there’s a new kind of enemy is in this area too, and its attack pattern outfoxes you. Again: dead.But then next time you’ll know to try to study its moves to avoid ending up with a spear up your backside.See also:This same pattern of gradual learning amid plenty of failed attempts may be too much for some to stomach, but is what has become the key draw of From Software’s games. It has nothing of the handholding style of most modern games. It demands effort and attention.For those whose bedrooms aren’t pasted with Dark Souls posters, From Software’s previous titles in this series are Demon’s Souls (2009), Dark Souls (2011) and Dark Souls 2 (2014).See also:Arriving just a year after the much-praised Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne was always at risk of being accused of simply being “more of the same”.
And to a great extent it is. If you’ve tried and hated the previous games in this sort-of series, Bloodborne is unlikely to turn you around. It’s still wilfully obscure and unendingly frustrating.However, there are some new twists for the fans. Bloodborne removes the safety net of a shield.
You can carry a weapon in each hand, a gun/firearm in one and an and axe, sword or hammer and so on in the other, but the kind of active defence you may have relied on in Dark Souls 2 is absent. While there are different character classes, all have to deal with close-up combat.
A lot.This forces you to take an aggressive combat style, especially as most of any health lost from attack can be regained by fighting back within a short window. Ranged weapons are for the most part not strong enough to be relied on either. You have to get stuck in, or run.As ever, evasion is usually an option too. You can run through groups of enemies in most cases, and leaping out of the way of attacks plays just as important a role as attacking in combat. Its style is slightly different to the previous Souls games, but the feel is similar.See also:However, Bloodborne’s action-heavy approach puts even more of a focus on technique and timing. This is as important for game balancing as giving the fighting a distinct character. Unlike Dark Souls 2, enemies do not start to disappear after you’ve mined an area so many times.
This was used as a way to deter players from simply levelling-up their characters to minimise the difficultly of what was to come ahead in Dark Souls 2.As you can’t really take on enemies from a distance, and are more-or-less always vulnerable, this isn’t so much of a problem in Bloodborne. You still level-up stats, using a currency called Blood Echoes, retrieved from enemies, but the process of learning and studying environments and enemies is mandatory.The only times this gets truly testing is when up against boss enemies.
You’ll encounter one of these in every area, and need to take them on to progress to new areas. They’re not optional, and are often nightmarish giants that can take you up to 15-20 minutes to kill.See also:Boss battles often see the generally-high frustration level of Bloodborne reach new heights, especially as the failure to land that critical hit can come down to the crude way your character interacts with the environment.Take the second boss battle as an example (minor spoilers): it takes place in a graveyard and is extremely reliant on you dodging attacks. However, the collision detection is so simple that you need to be doubly careful about your surroundings.
The rules Bloodborne lives by are consistent, but rarely forgiving.A few times we wondered whether From Software was taking a little too much glee in those repeated deaths – Bloodborne: Schadenfreude edition, anyone?However, these little slips are rare. And otherwise, the world of Bloodborne has an unusual consistency. It’s a puzzle cube that fits together perfectly. Take a lift up a floor and you’re not simply whisked away to another area, with the lift acting as a hidden loading screen.
You’ll actually be taken up a floor, and what is there will be structurally linked to where you were before.This attention to detail and an above-and-beyond architect-like approach to world-building is another important part of the game, though, not just the level designers showing off. Continue points are scarce, and Bloodborne often routes you back to one unlocked previously. They’re called Lamps here, a slightly more modern take on the bonfires of Dark Souls 2. That feeling of being ‘back at square one’ is a deliberate oppressive move, but every unlocked door is progress.By routing you around the same alleys, Bloodborne also makes you as familiar with its world as its creators are. Rarely does a game make you have such an intimate a relationship with environments this awful.There’s beauty in them too, of course. This is far from one of the PS4’s best-looking games, but there are plenty of grand vistas that act both as eye candy and a way to stop Bloodborne’s oppression from weighing too heavily. It’s a dungeon crawler in some respects, but its environments are as often epic as claustrophobic.
Picross e7. From Software has been very careful about that particular balancing act.And while parts of Bloodborne’s levels link back to each other, there are also very clear wider zones. You do get to close the book on each tormented chapter in the end. There’s not much chance of you having a neutral response to any of them, either. Even if there are points when you breathe a sigh of relief and think (or scream) “thank god that’s over”, they do at least challenge, and satisfy.The worst points have the most satisfying resolutions too, as you’ve inevitably win out using a specific technique rather than pure luck.
Whether that’s of your own devising or something you looked up on YouTube hardly matters.One gives you all the glory, the other hooks you into a sort of collective struggle against Bloodborne. For a game that’s stylistically a very lonely experience, there’s a strong community element to it too. You can watch spectres of other players throughout with hotspots that appear on the ground, and read notes they’ve left giving clues about what traps or goodies are ahead. You can leave your own notes too.While we couldn’t get this feature to work pre-release (perhaps the world wasn’t populated enough), you can also summon other players to help you out in Bloodborne’s trickier battles. Again, as in previous Souls games.
If that sounds like diluting the despair a bit too much, you can also play offline, leaving you well and truly on your own.VerdictAsking whether someone should buy Bloodborne or not should be countered with “do you think you can hack it?” Contrary to what some insufferable self-identifying ‘hardcore’ gamers may think, it doesn’t require masses of experience and being willing to sit down for six-hour sessions.However, you do need patience and have to be willing to work out Bloodborne’s.