Fans of the Souls series, what do you think of Bloodborne?

Bloodborne is getting a lot of praise right now because it's one of the first decent console exclusives this generation, and because people mistake the difficulty for quality.

I beat the game 3 days ago (yes, got the good ending as well) and I think it's easily the weakest of the four Souls-style games FROM has published. NG+ has no rewards, so I'll probably limit myself to chalice dungeons until I get bored of it. Overall, the game is inferior to previous installments in terms of hitbox accuracy, dodge effectiveness, build diversity, and smart enemy placement. It advances the series slightly in terms of world design, animation, and (for the weapons) art design.

They made a lot of questionable decisions when making this game, and I really get the feeling they felt like they had to differentiate this game strongly from Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, so they fell in a few pitfalls trying to fix things that weren't broken or even deficient. Most of the bosses were easily zergable once you passed the 35-45% mark, and many of them were forgettable. Father Gascoigne, the first and probably best boss of the game, is a fun and interesting fight. But even he falls into the difficulty trap with his transformation halfway through the battle.

A lot of the game feels designed with the same mindset Dark Souls 2 was, which is to say, to be intentionally difficult. This wasn't what the design team was thinking when they created the much-beloved Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, but the formula still manages to work well in Dark Souls 2 because your character is highly customizable and the world is extremely vast and varied. In Bloodborne, they went in trying to make it hard, but forgot to make sure it was fun. I enjoyed beating it for the challenge regardless, but it was not nearly as memorable an experience/adventure as the other games.

I strongly believe that the game's community will deteriorate due to the lack of staying power it has. Running through multiple times offers nothing but even bigger hitsponge enemies, and PvP invasions don't even seem to happen. Throw in load times exceeding 30 and 40 seconds for some areas regardless of where you died, and you've got a game that just isn't that great, when all's said and done.

Still, most Souls fans will enjoy it even for all its flaws, and the game is still worth playing if you already own a PS4. Just don't expect it to justify the system purchase like I did.

/r/Games Thread