To begin, I mostly stumbled across Bloodborne because of its high rating and under that premise assumed that it has to be somewhat decent, which it is. On the whole though, it didn't strike me as spectacular as some people made it out to be for reasons I shall explain below.
The game handles woefully poorly, with often unresponsive controls particularly if you need to use a potion to heal yourself. It feels sluggish to play, which in a game that requires you to have fast reflexes just doesn't work well at all. This could be exacerbated by the awful framerate, which often can dip below the game's 30fps cap. 60fps would have been a much better framerate to aim for.
Bloodborne removes all magic/miracles and replaces them with hunter tools. These uninspired tools are completely useless. Instead of a mana bar or a usage amount, Bloodborne's hunter tools utilize your quicksilver (QS) bullet stock . The problem is, you also use your QS bullets to parry enemies. So you are faced with the choice of using either a completely weak and utterly useless tool, or use your bullets for parrying... I'll use them for parrying.
Instead of having dozens of weapons to choose from, From Software decided to go with a more stream-lined approach and decided to include 15 "trick" weapons. These trick weapons are pretty much just 2 weapon categories from the Souls series made into one weapon. For example, Bloodborne features the Hunter's Axe which is just a 1-hand axe and when transformed, is essentially a great axe (It's pretty overpowered). Some trick weapons don't even feature a transformation like the Tonitrus and the Chikage, they feature a buff making them nothing more than a mace and a katana (respectively) from Demon's Souls/Dark Souls. These weapons can be modified with blood gems which are dropped by enemies or found in chalice dungeons (more on that later). The effects of these gems vary from adding fire damage to your weapon, adding poison damage, increasing physical damage, etc. At the end of the day you'll end up using whichever gem you have in your inventory is the best, making this game mechanic essentially useless.
Chalice Dungeons are randomized dungeons that supposedly offer replayability... I found them to be a complete drag (Not to mention the framerate is consistently lower in chalice dungeons than it is during the course of the main game). You will receive a chalice from defeating a main game boss which you can then place on an altar in the hub world (Hunter's Dream). Your first set of chalice dungeons will not be procedurally generated, you can only access those through the use of what is called a root chalice. The dungeons will vary with different handicaps and difficulties, but ultimately they all look the same and play the same. I slogged my way through them to earn the platinum trophy.
Bloodborne's boss design is atrocious. The majority of the bosses are giants that have sweeping attacks, and there is 2 optional bosses that are nearly identical, on top of that adding the awful camera.
Writing, its the same type of story telling like other from software games - there is an absolute lack of it, its minimal lore, lack of interesting characters and development, NPCs are as shallow as they were in Dark Souls 2, they literally have no stories at all.
Such an overrated game, Bloodborne was a huge disappointment.
The game handles woefully poorly, with often unresponsive controls particularly if you need to use a potion to heal yourself. It feels sluggish to play, which in a game that requires you to have fast reflexes just doesn't work well at all. This could be exacerbated by the awful framerate, which often can dip below the game's 30fps cap. 60fps would have been a much better framerate to aim for.
Bloodborne removes all magic/miracles and replaces them with hunter tools. These uninspired tools are completely useless. Instead of a mana bar or a usage amount, Bloodborne's hunter tools utilize your quicksilver (QS) bullet stock . The problem is, you also use your QS bullets to parry enemies. So you are faced with the choice of using either a completely weak and utterly useless tool, or use your bullets for parrying... I'll use them for parrying.
Instead of having dozens of weapons to choose from, From Software decided to go with a more stream-lined approach and decided to include 15 "trick" weapons. These trick weapons are pretty much just 2 weapon categories from the Souls series made into one weapon. For example, Bloodborne features the Hunter's Axe which is just a 1-hand axe and when transformed, is essentially a great axe (It's pretty overpowered). Some trick weapons don't even feature a transformation like the Tonitrus and the Chikage, they feature a buff making them nothing more than a mace and a katana (respectively) from Demon's Souls/Dark Souls. These weapons can be modified with blood gems which are dropped by enemies or found in chalice dungeons (more on that later). The effects of these gems vary from adding fire damage to your weapon, adding poison damage, increasing physical damage, etc. At the end of the day you'll end up using whichever gem you have in your inventory is the best, making this game mechanic essentially useless.
Chalice Dungeons are randomized dungeons that supposedly offer replayability... I found them to be a complete drag (Not to mention the framerate is consistently lower in chalice dungeons than it is during the course of the main game). You will receive a chalice from defeating a main game boss which you can then place on an altar in the hub world (Hunter's Dream). Your first set of chalice dungeons will not be procedurally generated, you can only access those through the use of what is called a root chalice. The dungeons will vary with different handicaps and difficulties, but ultimately they all look the same and play the same. I slogged my way through them to earn the platinum trophy.
Bloodborne's boss design is atrocious. The majority of the bosses are giants that have sweeping attacks, and there is 2 optional bosses that are nearly identical, on top of that adding the awful camera.
Writing, its the same type of story telling like other from software games - there is an absolute lack of it, its minimal lore, lack of interesting characters and development, NPCs are as shallow as they were in Dark Souls 2, they literally have no stories at all.
Such an overrated game, Bloodborne was a huge disappointment.