When I first played Bloodborne, I appreciated it for what it was (an eldritch entanglement of orgasmic despair) while also quietly thinking that this was not a game I was likely to replay. I'd seen the sights and fought the fights, and while there were a few great bosses there were many more hulking beasts whose battles I didn't particularly care for.
My first playthrough was hot off Dark Souls 3 and still chasing the high of Sekiro the year before. All I wanted were those rhythm-game deflects, memorizing movesets and executing perfect counters, a clockwork dance of nerve and sword. With a few exceptions that wasn't what Bloodborne was about, and while I made my peace with that I couldn't bring myself to love it.
Flash forward a year and a half. By this point, I'd played my way backwards through the Soulslike oeuvre and beaten Sekiro two more times. As I watched over a friend's virtual shoulder during his first Bloodborne playthrough, and I felt the bloodlust rise within me. I wanted to sink my teeth in once again. And more than that, I wanted to do it differently: eschewing the parry-and-blade build I'd made a tradition of playing across all these games for my first go at a real heavy weapon.
So began my NG+ playthrough, not with a bang but with the buzz of my Whirligig Saw. It turned out that the beast bosses I'd dismissed in 2020 were a delight in 2022 with a deeper understanding of the form and the devil-may-care attitude of a player whose beaten them before and knows she will again. And as the sun rose for a third time over Yharnam, it was all I could do to keep myself from diving straight back in to NG++.
My first playthrough was hot off Dark Souls 3 and still chasing the high of Sekiro the year before. All I wanted were those rhythm-game deflects, memorizing movesets and executing perfect counters, a clockwork dance of nerve and sword. With a few exceptions that wasn't what Bloodborne was about, and while I made my peace with that I couldn't bring myself to love it.
Flash forward a year and a half. By this point, I'd played my way backwards through the Soulslike oeuvre and beaten Sekiro two more times. As I watched over a friend's virtual shoulder during his first Bloodborne playthrough, and I felt the bloodlust rise within me. I wanted to sink my teeth in once again. And more than that, I wanted to do it differently: eschewing the parry-and-blade build I'd made a tradition of playing across all these games for my first go at a real heavy weapon.
So began my NG+ playthrough, not with a bang but with the buzz of my Whirligig Saw. It turned out that the beast bosses I'd dismissed in 2020 were a delight in 2022 with a deeper understanding of the form and the devil-may-care attitude of a player whose beaten them before and knows she will again. And as the sun rose for a third time over Yharnam, it was all I could do to keep myself from diving straight back in to NG++.