Haza!
This was a game I was pretty excited to try out again after only dabbling in it a little while years ago when it was previously free with PS Plus. it was a mostly good experience but feel like there some rough patches in the game, particularly towards the halfway point and beyond with a lack of expanded on content and ideas. Sometimes the game tries a little bit too hard to be punishing and difficult, that's typical of from soft games but to me doubly true here.
I feel like this would have been a bit of a stronger game if they gave a little more care and love to the atmospheric portions of the game instead of making oh ooaa hard game. Blood vials and quicksilver bullets (the healing and ammunition in bloodborne) are a little annoying to farm for though they can create a nice feeling if you gravitate towards the same early spot as I did and wreck and appreciate the layout of the areas even more.
Speaking of the areas, Central Yharnam, my preferred farming spot for consumables most of the playthrough. Is possibly one of the best opening sections of any game I've ever played and my absolute favorite in the "soulsbornekiroring" series. The length, difficulty, shortcuts, secrets, and general vibe are immaculate. The roaring of a beast in the distance as you make your way up a long winding ladder, followed by a raving crowd of town denizens patrolling the streets en route to a wolf-beast burned at the stake, It's great stuff. Some more exploration, and a couple finely crafted encounters later, you come across your first boss, a hunter or a beast. I thought was a nice decision to make as it provides you with the two most numerous types of boss's encounters, you'll face throughout the game, the fact both are very memorable/neither is particularly worse is great but a bit misleading to me since a lot of encounters especially on the beast side take a bit of a turn for the worse here by not being quite as good in terms of mechanics and fairness. Some poor execution afterwards but so much of the game enemies included looks beautiful I'm willing to almost ignore it, but I can't.
Ideas not being expanded on was something I didn't expand upon myself funnily enough, yeah. There is something called insight in this game which functions a bit similarly to humanity from dark souls' series in terms of gameplay, multiplayer especially. you summon players with insight and can gain insight by being summoned to help clear an area boss among other methods. The thing is though, insight has vast lore implications, and it has few uses beyond purchasing some weapon buffs and summoning, and the developers not giving more attention and variety to its uses is a bit saddening.
This game has a lot of really annoying enemies and that's all I'm going to say, alonne knights, basilisks, the latria jailers I can't remember the name of. Any single potentially annoying souls enemy you can name and even enemies from other games like novistadors or poison headcrabs or mirelurks, bloodborne has an equally annoying or even more annoying answer for them.
There are three potential final bosses and I think all of them hold great value but the one that you can fight if you make a certain decision (minus the accumulation of celestial items) is one of the best in the series, A beautiful arena, great music, a killer motif that caps off the game and fits the series well, it's all there.
Some areas could have been expanded (and a little easier to find ngl), there could have been more weapons, the bosses could have met the quality of their higher peers so I could brag about this game with the same confidence I did before actually playing it, the eldritch insane asylum shit could have become even more relevant earlier somehow (idk), all that said
This game FUCKS
All the scary wary berserker monster that either dies too easily or takes too many trips to central yharnam or the selling off of all your ritual bloods for consumables because your lazy is worth it. Because you get to experience a great atmospherically rich game with a solid lineup of high-class enemy's that have their name on the bottom of the screen and a big health bar and a story and accompanying lore that makes Elden Wing and Dark Souls 3 look lame as hell and childish with how non-unnerving and non-confusing it is in comparison. Can't wait to play Old Hunters DLC
This was a game I was pretty excited to try out again after only dabbling in it a little while years ago when it was previously free with PS Plus. it was a mostly good experience but feel like there some rough patches in the game, particularly towards the halfway point and beyond with a lack of expanded on content and ideas. Sometimes the game tries a little bit too hard to be punishing and difficult, that's typical of from soft games but to me doubly true here.
I feel like this would have been a bit of a stronger game if they gave a little more care and love to the atmospheric portions of the game instead of making oh ooaa hard game. Blood vials and quicksilver bullets (the healing and ammunition in bloodborne) are a little annoying to farm for though they can create a nice feeling if you gravitate towards the same early spot as I did and wreck and appreciate the layout of the areas even more.
Speaking of the areas, Central Yharnam, my preferred farming spot for consumables most of the playthrough. Is possibly one of the best opening sections of any game I've ever played and my absolute favorite in the "soulsbornekiroring" series. The length, difficulty, shortcuts, secrets, and general vibe are immaculate. The roaring of a beast in the distance as you make your way up a long winding ladder, followed by a raving crowd of town denizens patrolling the streets en route to a wolf-beast burned at the stake, It's great stuff. Some more exploration, and a couple finely crafted encounters later, you come across your first boss, a hunter or a beast. I thought was a nice decision to make as it provides you with the two most numerous types of boss's encounters, you'll face throughout the game, the fact both are very memorable/neither is particularly worse is great but a bit misleading to me since a lot of encounters especially on the beast side take a bit of a turn for the worse here by not being quite as good in terms of mechanics and fairness. Some poor execution afterwards but so much of the game enemies included looks beautiful I'm willing to almost ignore it, but I can't.
Ideas not being expanded on was something I didn't expand upon myself funnily enough, yeah. There is something called insight in this game which functions a bit similarly to humanity from dark souls' series in terms of gameplay, multiplayer especially. you summon players with insight and can gain insight by being summoned to help clear an area boss among other methods. The thing is though, insight has vast lore implications, and it has few uses beyond purchasing some weapon buffs and summoning, and the developers not giving more attention and variety to its uses is a bit saddening.
This game has a lot of really annoying enemies and that's all I'm going to say, alonne knights, basilisks, the latria jailers I can't remember the name of. Any single potentially annoying souls enemy you can name and even enemies from other games like novistadors or poison headcrabs or mirelurks, bloodborne has an equally annoying or even more annoying answer for them.
There are three potential final bosses and I think all of them hold great value but the one that you can fight if you make a certain decision (minus the accumulation of celestial items) is one of the best in the series, A beautiful arena, great music, a killer motif that caps off the game and fits the series well, it's all there.
Some areas could have been expanded (and a little easier to find ngl), there could have been more weapons, the bosses could have met the quality of their higher peers so I could brag about this game with the same confidence I did before actually playing it, the eldritch insane asylum shit could have become even more relevant earlier somehow (idk), all that said
This game FUCKS
All the scary wary berserker monster that either dies too easily or takes too many trips to central yharnam or the selling off of all your ritual bloods for consumables because your lazy is worth it. Because you get to experience a great atmospherically rich game with a solid lineup of high-class enemy's that have their name on the bottom of the screen and a big health bar and a story and accompanying lore that makes Elden Wing and Dark Souls 3 look lame as hell and childish with how non-unnerving and non-confusing it is in comparison. Can't wait to play Old Hunters DLC
2 Comments
Ah yeah I forgot to bring up some of that stuff especially the lesser amygdala’s appearing, I think just a bit more of things in the same vein as things like that and the rare encounters with gehrman would have gone a long way. Decent otherwise.
chainy
1 year ago
I think you might not know about this from what you said about insight but it actually has some effects outside of those that are just more subtle. There's a bunch of creepy sound effects added (faint baby cries) and it causes lesser amygdala to spawn and makes you more prone to frenzy (because your character is basically going more insane with more insight into the eldritch horrors). It's definitely a cooler mechanic than most people realize, but it still has a lot of potential for expansion so I really want to see that as well.