"Bloodborne at Home:"
Alright, so, at the core of this game, or should I say most of it is a good-ass soulslike. Its areas might be a bit too derivative of Bloodborne in a few areas but the puppet/carnival theme and the creative enemy designs are good enough for it to get away with that. It also looks, graphically, very great considering the size of the dev team and it has a pretty good PC port. So far, so good.
The combat and general gameplay loop is VERY Dark Souls, but not like post Bloodborne Soulslike, more like Dark Souls 2 Soulslike. That's not to say this game's design is bad, but there are aspects of this game like its hit detection, movement, and level design that feels straight out of old-school Fromsoft. Which are good games, but it didn't exactly age super well. Most of the enemies and bosses are great, the game looks and sounds amazing, and the world felt properly paced and dense, so I mostly had a good time while playing.
Then the characters started talking. This game has a lot more of a straightforward narrative focus than any Souls game apart from possibly Bloodborne and Sekiro. And while that's not inherently a problem, it is when you have a story that's akin to a Pinocchio movie made by the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey director. It's QUITE BAD. The acting and animation for the characters is the only thing keeping this afloat, but when it's not being incredibly ridiculous in its premise or boring in its character dialogue, it has some beats in the story that are paced and executed as well as Edgy Deviantart Pinocchio fanfiction.
So yeah, the story knocks down an already pretty okay game by a point or two because if it's putting this much of a focus on it, I'm expecting something out of it. This is not a bad game, and am excited to see what these guys do next, but let's just say that after Fromsoft released Armored Core this year, this game scratched this souls-like itch for me for a little bit and now I have no intention of ever playing it again.
Alright, so, at the core of this game, or should I say most of it is a good-ass soulslike. Its areas might be a bit too derivative of Bloodborne in a few areas but the puppet/carnival theme and the creative enemy designs are good enough for it to get away with that. It also looks, graphically, very great considering the size of the dev team and it has a pretty good PC port. So far, so good.
The combat and general gameplay loop is VERY Dark Souls, but not like post Bloodborne Soulslike, more like Dark Souls 2 Soulslike. That's not to say this game's design is bad, but there are aspects of this game like its hit detection, movement, and level design that feels straight out of old-school Fromsoft. Which are good games, but it didn't exactly age super well. Most of the enemies and bosses are great, the game looks and sounds amazing, and the world felt properly paced and dense, so I mostly had a good time while playing.
Then the characters started talking. This game has a lot more of a straightforward narrative focus than any Souls game apart from possibly Bloodborne and Sekiro. And while that's not inherently a problem, it is when you have a story that's akin to a Pinocchio movie made by the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey director. It's QUITE BAD. The acting and animation for the characters is the only thing keeping this afloat, but when it's not being incredibly ridiculous in its premise or boring in its character dialogue, it has some beats in the story that are paced and executed as well as Edgy Deviantart Pinocchio fanfiction.
So yeah, the story knocks down an already pretty okay game by a point or two because if it's putting this much of a focus on it, I'm expecting something out of it. This is not a bad game, and am excited to see what these guys do next, but let's just say that after Fromsoft released Armored Core this year, this game scratched this souls-like itch for me for a little bit and now I have no intention of ever playing it again.