As someone who considers himself a Souls fan, but skipped 2 due to it being misrepresented prior to launch, I'm following the development of Bloodborne with a cautious eye. Early signs are good.
As a longtime fan of Dark Souls 1&2, i was excited about this. However since i do not own a PS4, i was not going to buy a new console before it was released, in order to have all the info i need to decide if i will spend so much in order to play basicaly one game. Now, i think i will pass due to various reasons:
1) This was known from day 1, but still it was one of the things i disliked. It seems to me like Miyazaki and his team lack creativity. It is the fourth game, spreading over 3 franchises(demon's souls, dark souls, bloodborne), where the games are practically identical. You have a curse upon you, no saves but checkpoints. Enemies respawn on death. You loose XP upon death and you regain it at the point of death. Combat is also almost identical on all games.
2) That was a big downer for me. The game has moved into being even more action and less RPG than previous titles. THe thing about Dark Souls was that despite being very much about player skill, and had a very complex combat system, it also had very deep RPG elements as well. On bloodborne, you have far less weapons and equiopment, far less varied movesets, only ONE playstyle -melee with no shield, fewer stats to raise while leveling and no big variation of armours. No magic builds, no ranged builds, no tanks. Strategy on fighting monsters also seems to be only on the action side of things, like big enemy -> try to stun him with your pistol since he is slow etc. Dark Souls had this as well, but you could build your strategy upon RPG aspects as well. EG. if you had problems with Darklurker you could tweak your character to push magic resists really high. Also the one thing disliked about Dark Souls, was that leveling was abit boring, cause you could only raise stats, and it had no skill tree. I mean it is more interesting to unlock a skill of a cool new move, rather than raising strength by 1. Bloodborne fails to improve upon this as well. It seems like FROM soft took one playstyle and focused on making this as good as possible, which can be a good thing for action fans, but not RPG fans who liked variations.
3) Very hack 'n slash gameplay. It encourages spamming, rather than patience and taking it slow like dark souls. This is not nesceserily bad, but i disliked spammers on DS. I have to play it to really see if this is good or bad.
4) Severe technical issues. Frame rates locked to 30 was already a big downer, but recent framerate tests also reveal big frame rate drops as well. Huge loading times, sometimes excceding 40 seconds. No beast form available yet.
1) This was known from day 1, but still it was one of the things i disliked. It seems to me like Miyazaki and his team lack creativity. It is the fourth game, spreading over 3 franchises(demon's souls, dark souls, bloodborne), where the games are practically identical. You have a curse upon you, no saves but checkpoints. Enemies respawn on death. You loose XP upon death and you regain it at the point of death. Combat is also almost identical on all games.
2) That was a big downer for me. The game has moved into being even more action and less RPG than previous titles. THe thing about Dark Souls was that despite being very much about player skill, and had a very complex combat system, it also had very deep RPG elements as well. On bloodborne, you have far less weapons and equiopment, far less varied movesets, only ONE playstyle -melee with no shield, fewer stats to raise while leveling and no big variation of armours. No magic builds, no ranged builds, no tanks. Strategy on fighting monsters also seems to be only on the action side of things, like big enemy -> try to stun him with your pistol since he is slow etc. Dark Souls had this as well, but you could build your strategy upon RPG aspects as well. EG. if you had problems with Darklurker you could tweak your character to push magic resists really high. Also the one thing disliked about Dark Souls, was that leveling was abit boring, cause you could only raise stats, and it had no skill tree. I mean it is more interesting to unlock a skill of a cool new move, rather than raising strength by 1. Bloodborne fails to improve upon this as well. It seems like FROM soft took one playstyle and focused on making this as good as possible, which can be a good thing for action fans, but not RPG fans who liked variations.
3) Very hack 'n slash gameplay. It encourages spamming, rather than patience and taking it slow like dark souls. This is not nesceserily bad, but i disliked spammers on DS. I have to play it to really see if this is good or bad.
4) Severe technical issues. Frame rates locked to 30 was already a big downer, but recent framerate tests also reveal big frame rate drops as well. Huge loading times, sometimes excceding 40 seconds. No beast form available yet.
@TouPoutsou with DS2 though I kinda felt like a coward baiting enemies with the bow and running away to heal, from what I've seen Bloodborne fixed this.
I can't really have a strong opinion without playing the game.
but fuck I wanna play it!! trying to just borrow a PS4 rather than buying one. There are plenty of PS4 owners who just want to play movies instead of actual games anyway.
I can't really have a strong opinion without playing the game.
but fuck I wanna play it!! trying to just borrow a PS4 rather than buying one. There are plenty of PS4 owners who just want to play movies instead of actual games anyway.
I don't have a Playstation sadly so I'm watching Christopher Odd's Let's Play of it. Third episode in, around 2 hours of game. It looks really fun, enemies are varied and have a surprising amount of attacks and animations. I'm wondering about the combat - going by the videos alone, what are the main differences you guys think separate this from TW3? Because they look pretty similar to me, in a good way. A lot of caution, slow strafing, waiting for the opportune moment, no more than a few enemies at time, heavy damage on both ends and a lot of agility. Maybe they'll play very differently, and I understand that there are combos in From's games? As in, press this and that different keys together to get a special action? I guess in TW2+3 variety is difficult because CDPR is sticking to just light and heavy attacks, with the variety coming in the form of Signs.
Is the melee itself in Souls\Bloodborne significantly more complex than in TW2+3? (Again, from what we've seen) Maybe Odd just isn't utilizing the combat to its maximum potential, but so far I don't see him playing it any differently than how TW3 was demonstrated.
(Hope mods don't mind - this isn't about a franchise war, I'm peacefully interested in the comparison, and since this is TW forums and a Bloodborne thread, I figured it's alright)
Is the melee itself in Souls\Bloodborne significantly more complex than in TW2+3? (Again, from what we've seen) Maybe Odd just isn't utilizing the combat to its maximum potential, but so far I don't see him playing it any differently than how TW3 was demonstrated.
(Hope mods don't mind - this isn't about a franchise war, I'm peacefully interested in the comparison, and since this is TW forums and a Bloodborne thread, I figured it's alright)
Melee in Souls was far more complex than Witcher 2(and so is bloodborne's). You have much more cotrol over your character, and combat is far more responsive. You also could do about 10 different attacks with weapons(which you had complete control over the animation, no automatic animations). And each weapon class, sometimes several weapons withnin the same weapon class, had different moveset. As for TW3, nobody really knows. My bet though is that DS/bloodborne will still be more complex and overall superior combat wise.
My guess is we don't know yet. You can't put all those things in Witcher because it's mostly about group combat, and groups need to be managed differently. The depth of it lies in different areas. At any rate, Blood Borne looks like Dark Souls 2.0, with less interesting environments.
Melee is more complex in Dark Souls 2 than The Witcher 2, but I wasn't as much of a fan of Dark Souls 1's combat. Majority of weapons had really shit movesets, like holy shit what were they thinking for the Great Lord Greatsword R2? The poise system wasn't that great and the entire PvP scene really relied on poise stacking and exploiting a glitch in the game to break stunlocks. And the backstab cheesing. THE BASCKSTAB CHEESING. It was legit horrifying when I experienced a stunstab. Besides PvP though, I felt that the game really just shined at bosses and normal enemies were really lacking.
Bloodborne looks a lot better than both Dark Souls 1+2 combat wise and I'm cool with that. I still have no urge to buy the game or get a PS4 though. The new setting looks ok, the story doesn't interest me at all, and I can't handle 30 fps anymore.
Been playing a bit more. I´ve already died more times than I care to count, but since I didn´t play the Souls games I´m still learning. The good thing is: I´m actually learning... combat is not random at all, it´s quite polished and precise (but that´s not a surprise for those of you who did play the Souls game, I guess).
I haven´t passed the initial area yet, but for now it´s all quite atmospheric and creepy, and that´s great. Once you know where the enemies will come from it loses a bit of shine, but there´s always a corner left to explore apparently.
For now I´m finding it very enjoyable, although I realise there´s a lot to see still.
I haven´t passed the initial area yet, but for now it´s all quite atmospheric and creepy, and that´s great. Once you know where the enemies will come from it loses a bit of shine, but there´s always a corner left to explore apparently.
For now I´m finding it very enjoyable, although I realise there´s a lot to see still.
OK, i 've played for a few now. A friend of mine has a PS4 and he purchased it. I had not played with a controler since forever, but it was surprisingly easy to get confortable with it. I stand by my former comment. The combat is great, but there is only one playstyle. There is no carry load, so aparently no choice on armours as well. You just equip the best. Overall i would say it is a great action game, and a very poor RPG. It is like they took Dark Souls, they stripped it down of it's options, and they polished and made one fighting style much more detailed. The atmosphere is great, and the level design is very much like dark souls, were everything is interconnected. This is nice. However there is far less variation between locations, which makes it abit boring to me. Again, if you are more of an action game player you are going to love this, but if you are an RPG fan, you might be abit disapointed.
On another note, if you liked this playstyle on DS and DS2, melee with no shields, relying on dodging, you will find this game surprisingly easy.Your attacks stun almost all enemies, you attack much faster, and the weapons have huge AoE. You also regain HP as you hit. Plus you find shitloads of blood vials(health potions).
On another note, if you liked this playstyle on DS and DS2, melee with no shields, relying on dodging, you will find this game surprisingly easy.Your attacks stun almost all enemies, you attack much faster, and the weapons have huge AoE. You also regain HP as you hit. Plus you find shitloads of blood vials(health potions).
Vicar Amelia or Blood-Starved Beast? If the latter, I recommend getting your hands on some Pungent Blood Cocktail vials. Simply throw them in some corner during the fight and wait. The Beast will get preoccupied with the stench and you can exploit this to whip his ass. (I wish I had known this on my first playthrough, would have saved me a lot of nerves
) Otherwise try to provoke him into launching his close range melee sweep by cautiously advancing and then countering (Blunderbuss is your friend). The last part of the fight is admittedly the hardest due to the high risk of poisening (just staying too long in the vicinity of the BSB can fill your toxicity meter to the brim). However, it's important not to get too defensive since you might get cornered by the increasingly more aggresive and wide-ranging attack pattern. Try to evade his strikes by dodging, get a couple of hits in from behind, retreat. Rinse and repeat.Vicar Amelia is, imho, comparatively easy. Just try to stay behind her and be wary of her arm swings. Also, she seems vulnerable to fire. I cut her health down by a large margin with a couple of Molotov cocktails. Additionally, you can injure her left arm which gives you a bit of breathing room.