I finished my first walkthrough of Bloodborne. I know that I am late to the party. I recently got back into playing games after convincing myself that I didn't enjoy it as much as before; felt I grew out of that phase. The only kind of games I enjoyed playing then were strategy games. The reason being most of the games in the market were very shallow, linear story-driven. Whereas a game like Dota had infinite possibilities.
But thankfully, FromSoft revived my love for gaming. I started to give some of my time for Dark Souls 3 given all the hype and how it was difficult and so on. I was thrown a challenge in the very first minutes of the game. It took me several tries to even kill the "allegedly" tutorial boss. I was hooked and the rest is history.
FromSoft defined the benchmark for games. I am very confident to say there are only a handful of studios present now to utilize the medium to the fullest. Finishing Dark Souls, I wanted more of it. So I jumped to the obvious selection, Sekiro. Another amazing game. I cannot write about Sekiro or Dark Souls with the same emotion as Bloodborne because this is a game I finished just hours ago and I haven't stopped thinking about it although, most of the games share a similar FromSoft formula. You know you can expect good lore, characters, and mysteries.
Most of what I have to say about Bloodborne is emotions and it is very hard for me to put that into words.
Bloodborne is one of the best games I have ever played and my favorite FromSoft game. I understand why it has such an awesome fanbase. Let's talk about lore. The team created something surreal, simply epic. How everything is connected. Of course, not everything is engraved in stone and almost everything is open for interpretation. Note when I point out all FromSoft games, I mean the games after Demons' Souls; the game which put FromSoft as a unique and inspiring game studio. Thanks to Miyazaki, his vision and the team for defining a genre and a generation.
Bloodborne starts very vaguely just like most of all FromSoft games. I just started playing knowing that something greater was definitely in store. That's the From factor and From always delivers.
Bloodborne is one of a kind and I don't know where to start honestly. Everything about this game is creepy. I felt like a hunter. The world was so immersive and scary that I was cautious almost all the time. I knew there was a bird with a dog's head or a dog with a bird's head around the corner. Some parts were so creepy that I had to run to the next lamp. The serpent forest always gets me. I am pretty sure that there must be at least one aspect of Bloodborne which gives you the chills.
The gameplay mechanics and world design are spectacular and well-thought just like the other games. Everything felt like it had a purpose. The characters and RPG aspects were compelling. The cutscenes although very little were spot on and added to the creepiness of the gameplay. Really good game design and writing.
I felt a sense of duty and responsibility. Most of the conversations with my friends end with "I must save Yharnam now". That's how invested I was in this game. I love Micolash. His dialogues are super cool and creepy. I used to utter the cutscene dialogues just to weird out my parents. I was living and breathing this game for a while. It's true when people say games are an escape. You get to be someone you cannot. Only games can do that in its fullest sense.
After watching Vaati's videos, I was even more intrigued about all the stuff I missed and which made no sense at the time of playing. Everything was slowly coming together. I mean the people at FromSoft had to smoke some weird stuff to come up with this. It is that good. Bloodborne's details and lore is insane and beyond decipherable for a casual player like me. You have to go through wikis, speculations, and Vaati's video to get a sense of what is happening and why it is happening.
Games like these teach you to keep trying in life, no matter what and in the end, it would be well worth it. I also read a lot of articles on Sekiro and why it should have an easy mode / make it more accessible. This would go against the creator's vision and if something is easy, it would not be worth it. It's meant to be played the way it was made to be played. When I am talking about the way to be played, I am not talking about the gameplay or the routes they have to take but the vision on how the game should feel like. Only if these people who write these articles tried. Life is not easy. Nothing comes easy. You have to fight and earn.
When the First Hunter started playing, I was getting goosebumps. I really felt proud to be a hunter. Even if you haven't played, you can get a good sense of the whole picture just from this soundtrack; the raw emotion behind it.
The bosses are amazing. The soundtracks are spot on. I took my time with this game realizing this was the only remaining FromSoftware game I wanted to play apart from Elden Ring, Demon's Souls Remake whose release date is still not officially announced (and also Dark Souls Remastered). Hoping Elden Ring to be showcased in Gamescon considering that Bandai Namco (Elden Rings publisher) is going to be there. Playing Bloodborne pushed me to start reading Lovecraft. It's amazing how people can even come up with stuff like this. This is way beyond something I can ever imagine. Thank you for the unforgettable experience.
So in short words, Bloodborne is a masterpiece.
