Blood/Dark/Demon Souls

[asdfen]

Bloodborn is the first game that looks intersing to me on PS4 which I do not own atm. So I am making this post to ask opinions of those who own bloodborne and have played previous titles. More specificly how is the gameplay holding up comparing it to prvious games and would you still recomend it.

I have a strong dislike of DS2 and equaly love demons/dark which are flawless classics in my eyes. The concerns I have are that I will finish it quickly do NG+ and find myself quiting halfway through and go back to playing demons/dark souls as I did with DS2.
The game actually looks easier with quick/abundant healing, easier reposte, more stamina, crazy weapon reach plus no encumbarance. Others have said that there is little build variety due to removal of magic and specialized weapons avaialable only at end game and to me this is huge. There is now need for farming for healing items after death is that true?! Can I still run to boss skipping all the trash and have at least some default healing avaiable or do I always have to farm?

What do you escapists think?

 

[Casual Shinji]

The game is easier yet harder.

It's easier to dodge due to better controls. If you lock on to an enemy you won't have to tap the run button twice in order to dodge, you'll just do a quickstep. Dodging on a whole feels way better and less cumbersome. Enemies however are way faster and of course you don't have a shield. The only shield the game presents you is only there as sort of an inside joke and is completely useless. You also don't have any significant variables in different armour sets except for status effects; physical damage reduction is negligible. And you can't upgrade you "armour". If you want to survive you need to know how to dodge, and some Bosses are super fast, not to mention some of the other Hunters.

The way healing works is through the use of blood vials which enemies will drop regularly, but the drop rate will deminish the more you replay through an area. The first 10 or 20 times traversing the same area you'll probably not notice it though. You can only hold 20 vials on you at a time with subsequent pick-ups transferring to your storage box at your hub where you can store 99. Same goes for your ammo. You can also just buy them at the merchant. Health also has a dedicated button this time, so no need to cycle through your hot keyed items. And whenever you die whatever amount of vials and ammo you lack will get topped off by your storage box should they be in supply. So say you died and only had 10 blood vials left on you and your storage box houses 40, you will respawn at the last bonfire you interacted with with 20 vials on you and 30 in your storage box.

Ripostes are easier, but seeing as you need a gun to perform them you have limited oppertunities. You can actually transfer health into bullets, but obviously this costs health. Even without the use of your gun you can perform a riposte by backstabbing, but you need to fully charge a heavy attack to do so and this takes time, so you need to time it well. You can't just clip through an enemy and quickly backstab them like you could in previous Souls games.

There is little build variety, but the versatility of the trick weapons more than makes up for this.

You can still make a dash for the Boss, don't worry. And the short cuts are the best they've ever been.

On a whole I'd say Bloodborne feels like a perfect amalgamation of Demon's and Dark Souls. The only slight against it is the load times. If you love Miyazaki's previous Souls games, you'll love this one just as much if not more.

 

[Casual Shinji]

About the load times, they aren't ridiculous (about one minute to load an area, less for the hub) but on a hard game like this you'll see the load screen A LOT so it can be grating but not impossible.

It's when you're trying to get to a tricky area resulting in falling to your death numerous times when it gets particularly grating. I think the load times are something along 40 seconds per area/death and 11 seconds when you go to your hub.

 

[Fox12]

The game is well balanced, but it's different.

You have more healing items, for instance, but you use them far more often. You don't have a shield to block attacks, and the game moves at a fever pitch, so healing is important. You can always buy more if you need to, but there's a cap in the number you're allowed to carry. Personally, I had no problem with it. As for stamina, there's more of it, but that's a necessary feature. You'll be using more of it, trust me, especially since there's no chilling out with your shield raised. Thankfully it's easier to stagger an opponent, so you encouraged to expose your opponents weaknesses.

The gun has replaced the shield, but while it can be a good weapon, it has limited ammo and range. You'll be using it for either crowd control or to open up an enemy for an attack. Of course, some enemies have guns of their own, and others shrug off your bullets, so you have to use the weapon is a tactical manner.

There are fewer play styles then before, it's true. Since I prefer fast characters I didn't mind the changes. That said, the game does provide options. There are fewer weapons, but they have more versatile playing styles, and most weapons actually serves as two weapons that cover each others weaknesses.

The environments are so far much better then Dark Souls, though I can't say much about the quality of the plot. Of course, Dark Souls barely had a plot until the end of the game, so I thing Bloodborne picks up the pace for once. This is a nice change of pace.

Bloodborne will probably be a controversial title, and fans of DS may be disappointed by the alterations. However, the game is incredibly well designed in its own right. I, for one, am glad that Miyazaki is experimenting with new play styles, and not just banking on Dark Souls ad nauseum. Also, DS2 wasn't made by Miyazaki. Bloodborne was. The level of quality is much higher.

 

[Spacewolf]

Yea it's pretty good, not as good as DS1 I'd say(Never played two) but still good. The weapons are all fun to use if admittedly lacking anything that made me sit up and go wow, the enemies are mostly interesting and well designed. Some points I'd hold against it are that the bosses seem abit cheaper than DS1 sometimes to the point of being unfair which makes fights against them seem more like luck than they used to, and that they went for looking nice and trying to seem deep over actually being deep. This is mainly down to the lack of drops from bosses so the whole backstory of the world is kind of lacking, I mean it's there and is interesting it's just not to the same scale as Dark Souls.

You can still make a dash for the Boss, don't worry. And the short cuts are the best they've ever been.

Short cuts? I haven't seen any really, a better term would be optional Bosses, you don't even have to fight half of them.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I only ever played Dark Souls and I didn't much care for it because it was really easy, the combat was very simplistic, and it had some really horrible RPG mechanics. With that said, I'm really digging Bloodborne because the combat while not too different is much better. You can't hide behind shields or spam cheap magic anymore so I don't understand how DS can be considered harder because BB actually forces you to be somewhat skillful. The core playstyle of BB is better than any of the playstyles in DS as the controls are better and fit the "hunter" playstyle more than any playstyle of DS. There wasn't that many playstyles in DS anyways as STR and DEX characters both played the same, you block and then hit slow or fast (same with BB as well, you pick slow or quick weapons). I can't see how magic in DS was satisfying, not that it wasn't good damage-wise. Since From removed a lot of RPG mechanics, they fucked it up less as well. DS had a stat not doing anything, a type of magic not tied to a stat, and DEX and STR characters playing the same. So BB has less RPG mechanics but at least the ones that are there are more solid. Plus, BB has a much more interesting world to me as DS was just a dark version of standard medieval fantasy (which I'm so tired of.

 

[asdfen]

I buyed a PS4 just for Bloodborne and I can tell you it's the shit (in a good way, it's not shit).

lol

There is little build variety, but the versatility of the trick weapons more than makes up for this.
You can still make a dash for the Boss, don't worry. And the short cuts are the best they've ever been.

Yea it's pretty good, not as good as DS1 I'd say(Never played two) but still good.

There are fewer play styles then before, it's true. Since I prefer fast characters I didn't mind the changes. That said, the game does provide options. There are fewer weapons, but they have more versatile playing styles, and most weapons actually serves as two weapons that cover each others weaknesses.

With that said, I'm really digging Bloodborne because the combat while not too different is much better.
Plus, BB has a much more interesting world to me as DS was just a dark version of standard medieval fantasy (which I'm so tired of.

thanks guys sounds like you are all enjoying it! Are you guys replaying the game wih new builds after you beat it or NG+ holding your interest? Maybe even screwing around somewher else entierly?

 

[Casual Shinji]

thanks guys sounds like you are all enjoying it! Are you guys replaying the game wih new builds after you beat it or NG+ holding your interest? Maybe even screwing around somewher else entierly?

I tried to go for a strength build, but I don't really care for the heavier weapons in the game. I'm just not very good with them.

I am replaying the game, but from scratch -- What little I've played of NG+ looks to be brutal. At the end of my first playthrough I could more or less kill everything in the first Boss area with one regular attack. At the start of NG+ the normal mooks took five hits to go down. So yeah...

There's still loads of secrets I overlooked the first time through though, so there's still plenty for me yet to discover.

 

[Spacewolf]

I'm still screwing around in the Labyrinths on my first playthrough so I cant really speak for NG+

 

[Danny Dowling]

Demon's Souls a flawless classic?

who is this guy?

 

[Skops]

Demon's Souls a flawless classic?

who is this guy?

Even though Demon's is my favorite of the three, even I can admit, it has some serious issues when it comes to Class balancing and the upgrading system being retarded. Each of the Souls games have a major flaws that sequels don't really repeat. Dark Souls 1 probably being the most refined experienced despite performance issues.

 

[loa]

If you were into the scenery porn dark souls offers but dark souls 2 severely lacked, bloodborne got you covered cause the enemy and leveldesigns are amazing.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I just beat it for the first time this morning. Beating the final/second-to-last boss (it depends on certain actions you take in the game) was a pain for me. Ended up throwing all my knives, mollies, and then shooting him dead. The boss after him was a cakewalk by comparison.

Anyway, I jumped into NG+ almost right away, and...I hate to say it, but I'm rather unimpressed. Enemies are all the same, items are all the same. They hit harder for sure, but I was kind of hoping there would be new ones, or different ones, or even new items to pick up. I think Dark Souls II spoiled me on this, because Dark Souls didn't do this either if I remember right.
But! There are different ways of doing things for certain. Different ways the story can play out in regards to NPCs, which I am looking forward to. Also, there are still two other endings I need to see. However, I fear that the second playthrough won't have the same appeal as the first, unless things change drastically after I open up more of Yharnam.

Of course, I still haven't even touched the Chalice Dungeons, so there's that to look forward to.

 

[asdfen]

cool thank you for feedback guys