~ Estimated Reading Time: 12 min ~

So, this was my first Soulsborne experience...ever. Prefacing that I am completely foreign to the culture - I don't even know if people hate that term yet. I challenged myself to write notes for the entirety of my playthrough - it's resulted in an unprecedented amount of text for a game I felt oddly out of touch with the surroundings of. I guess this is even less of a review than usual for me. The result is this strange thing I am leaving in front of your doorstep, like a cat with a dead rat. Feel free to tear apart my brain and my taste, project onto me and tell me that I'd be a Dark Souls II fan or whatever.

I was hypnotized by the looping of Old Yharnam. Reminiscent of the Trial And Error of routing a path in something like Resident Evil, but endlessly curious of what happens after the error. Error as Death and the next Trial as Rebirth - the consequence of excessive error becoming decay. Blood Vials - your antidote to decay - introduce a necessity to refill resources, most likely in response to the playstyle of dodging past enemies in a Dark Souls run-back. When I initially confronted Father Gascoigne, there was tension to spending them - that if I failed, I would've spent what would've helped me in my next life. Every use inspired a mixture of fear and confidence in me. And if those feelings failed to drive me, needing to kill again forced me to engage with the level design further. It was an especially good feeling - the first time I had played so good, I had a stock built up of them that perfectly refilled me when I respawned.

In a sense, it's like the set-back of a game over: fighting the same battles over and over gated my progress, until I had become accustomed enough to handle moving on. "I wouldn't design a game like this", I said aloud regardless; there's too much room to grind in the spots you've become familiar with, and then bash your head against a wall you're not prepared for. But as a player, I liked the process.
And in retrospect, the loop doesn't last. That limit of 600 vials is set too high, so you'll snowball between filled pockets when you're passing its tests, and draining you of everything when a gimmick is out of your forte. It'd sit better in something less volatile than Bloodborne, where the things it tests of you in boss fights are often something you're intentionally unprepared for.

But From's boss fight structure - or, lack of - is a bit of a power move. How "Good game design" as I've known, is for basic enemy combat to be the vertical slice - boss fights in-turn as a culmination of your prior developed skills. Bloodborne chooses not to adhere to this to an extreme degree! The whims of what's around a corner can be so random, far removed, and eccentric as to derail the game from even having a structure. You thought fighting for your life through narrow alleyways was what you'll award you a checkpoint? Nahhhh, it's killing the invisible witch that teleports around and summons like 2 guys. Even the far-and-between traditional bosses have parry windows that are wholly unique to their own animations, meaning you can't carry that memorization elsewhere. I never learned the game, but instead each piece of it, one by one.

I hold a level of aspiration, awe, and pained sympathy towards the way Fromsoft have built out their style - in that it requires its designers to have their hand on the wheel constantly. Where in one game, there might be more inherent quality in creating something out of its building blocks, Bloodborne thrives on the hand-made quality of each piece. I could compare it to a random game I played recently, like uhhhhhh...Mario Odyssey - a game with movement so liquid smooth, that its fans are satisfied kicking rocks around. That doesn't pass here - and I often found that Bloodborne came off as mediocre when its cogs weren't cooperating in perfect tandem. When I popped my Pthumeru Chalice, nothing was clicking - like they took their foot off the gas for one second and blew the fuck up. My skepticism towards its quality came alive when enemies are placed flatly and far apart each other. And then you die, and I don't even know what I'm supposed to be routing to get more blood vials - there isn't a flow to its dungeon crawling. And these bosses are still 'dodge and hit their back and back off' sessions. It also does a great job of contextualizing Soulsborne discourse; everyone seemed to love some sections, and hate others in the same game. I could rattle off a dozen differing takes, because it is a game made of idiosyncratic, unstandardized moments that never inherently correlate in quality simply by Being In Bloodborne. I gotta hold compassion for that - when it's good, it has to work harder to be good than most video games!!!

Like, The Forgotten Woods are probably my favourite chunk so far; the fleeting spaciousness after hours of running through tunnels, yet paradoxically claustrophobic as branches cut it into scattered pathways. The shortcuts keep coming, but the routing to and from have never been so unclear. Bloodborne's finally upping its trap game, and it was already at its visually noisiest without them. Those unmoving Snakes you can one-shot with a charged hit, the giant ones that shoot poison at you, and the hyper-aggressive snake-headed men chasing you into the other's range... The enemy pattern layering, so sharp! And the trio boss I thought was rather cathartic - the nature of me kiting three guys at once rewarded how I had learned to flank groups of basic enemies. I mean, I praised their freedom of choice earlier in that it isn't always like that, but...sometimes the usual can be good.

AND they have a swordie, a fire mage, and a guy with both a sword and mage fire?? they're saying dragon quest 2 is in vogue

But shortly after that sequence, I was reminded of my frequent indifference towards Bloodborne's raw combat. Sometimes it feels like the playerbase had taken it too seriously, but sometimes it feels like the developers do as well. The punishment forces me to engage with the game, to take it seriously, in a game that is often simply about mashing quickstep until huddling behind a giant enemy's back. I wouldn't consider a game in which you can duck back and drink 20 healing potions every time you get hit "aggressive", but I don't know what Dark Souls unaggressive looks like. Sometimes it feels like I'm missing something, unable to see what others do, but it makes sense that'd be true for a game that is a response to its predecessors. I'm new here!

Despite taking place in a world of metaphors, the way it rationalizes its gameplay loop is almost literal to its world's rules. Your run-backs are the dead clinging to life. Progress made in-between attempts = the state between Living and Dying, the decaying and rotting but never fully-gone. Miyazaki writes like it's simple math. Albeit filled with Dark Souls holdovers, there is a fine logic to what our journey through its mechanics represents. So, I tried to think about what was new; Bloodborne's Blood = History analogies, and eventually I ended up tying it into how time has changed Playing Fromsoft. As I got my ass handed to me in PvP and carried in PvE by players I can only assume have been here for eons, and it reaffirmed its narrative of history flowing around me. You can tell that Fromsoft had absolutely become familiar with that playerbase since its larval stages a half-decade prior. Bloodborne is intentionally appealing to their playstyle sensibilities, and their continued presence into their future. Drunken with blood, the hunting as a cyclical process of killing those who have killed, and eventually raiding that last fermented wine cellar that is the Hunter's Nightmare. Those are the mechanical consequences of a diehard playerbase who have already mastered Dark Souls' world, co-existing in the ecosystem of Bloodborne's new players. And if becoming history is our aspiration, then the future will become the vulnerable organs we gorge from. Is our defiance of the 'nightmare newborn' linked with how anyone who reaches the end-game will become another soulsborne sweat?

IDK!! 😋🍽️🍖 it sure is fun to have no clue if any interpretations of the narrative i formed in my head are popular or not

Randomly learnt today that the Doll only starts talking to you if you have a slight amount of insight. Without knowledge of the universe's vastness, one cannot imagine life in what there isn't.....kinda Umineko 😳😳😳😳
As I breach the second half, I've had to brace myself for how I'll feel as a Big Lovecraft Hater: and I guess I'm cool with this. Gaining information about the world's vastness around you, conquering its world until its secrets run dry - that isn't just a power, but the power fantasy. Where Lovecraft was about fear of indomitable unknowables, From is all about learning about the big evil squid, knowing it is real with time, and developing the intimate awareness to move past it. I like it despite its inspirations, rather than in spite - this naturally makes its aesthetic appeal to me less than the average person, but...I think I found my joy in it.

the little cthulhu guys that give you frenzy and look like tonberry are the second cutest thing in bloodborne behind vicar amelia

Part of me feels guilty I can't deliver you a full verdict on Bloodborne's narrative, but I don't know if I want to know its total scale. Throwing around conjecture as I glimpsed item descriptions on loading screens is exactly why I never got bored of dying. At first, I thought my total refusal to look at summaries might've been a me thing, but an oomf informed me that Miyazaki has straight-up said his games were influenced by being unable to finish novels. And I think right now, I'm reveling in the lack of detail to my interpretation. It's that joy that there's still things out there left to discover, that runs in direct conflict with the Lovecraftian fear of the unknown. I'll find catharsis in new mystery next playthrough, I ain't clicking your video essay!

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Old Hunters opened my mind to how extreme these systems can collide. I could lose after a long, focused run, with just a mistake or two, and be left afterwards unable to think about anything but Blood Echoes. It'd hijack my thought process, until I'm losing to the enemies I memorized hours ago. Aaaaaand boom, echoes gone. When I vocalized that I needed to adjust my mindset, my girlfriend said it sounded like I was talking about giving up on my mortal possessions. Game made me more Buddhist than ZeroRanger
Can't help but put aside all my "i've seen better combat in my fav niche hardcore action game" predispositions, when the patience Bloodborne demands is so unique. I don't need it to be anything else.
So it's shocking to me that something with such emotional ups and downs can feel so...average. That second half of Old Hunters lost me. It ups the ante tenfold, setting the stage to inscrutable labyrinths. But it also wants to push bosses to a new level; each would necessitate dozens of retries. And that balance of deliberate systems tilts when put under pressure from all angles. Suddenly, sections that should be the most threatening yet has been filled with unguarded checkpoints placed before major boss fights - now I'm running past enemies and being rewarded for it. Is a fight like Lady Maria reaaallly worth throwing away structure for? She's cool and all, but...ok fine i've seen combat done better in my niche hardcore action games >:(((((((

On the bright side, Orphan of Kos is an excellent fight. Many issues with the Post-Souls school of action come from lenience of the invincible dodge-roll - they challenge perfect timing over everything, meaning you don't have to think about which direction you're even rolling towards. In a fight like Lady Maria, you'll dodge towards or through her every time. If fighting her is a dance, it's a dance in 90 degrees - a tango compatible with a gamecube c-stick. What I'm saying is, the Orphan's weapon being a constantly active hitbox means there is a demanding particularity to dodging around him, but without hugging onto him. If you perfectly land behind him, the swing will reach behind his back and hit you. And while I'm admittedly kicking artistic appreciation to the side with dismissing Maria, I couldn't ignore how cool this guy doing Axl Low normals with a placenta is.

But it's also a damper on a great closing moment that once again, these systems aren't coming together. What is the point of Ammo and Vials, if I've cleared the level design behind the finale sufficiently enough to earn a Lamp? It doesn't feel good to have to grab refills every few attempts, especially when they've conveniently placed one of the most mindless yet efficient grind-spots. It's a choice made for people who like the part of Megaman X where you grind on the worms before fighting Sigma.
It's worth mentioning this structural critique will lessen in value on a replay, simply because I'll be better. When I'm skipping over these mechanics more, it'll be a better game. It's tuning into the same reward "unfair" harder games do - satisfaction not just from clearing challenges that are well-designed, but also the ones that we thought were bad, or stupid, or cheap. And I believe that is genuine satisfaction, not something to turn an eye to.

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Writing this weeks after finishing Bloodborne and its DLC, and my thoughts still haven't come together neatly. Part of me still needs more perspective on what came before; I can't imagine I'd be as wide-eyed if everything I liked still applied to Dark Souls. But I think I liked it a bit more than I let on! For a game entirely made of Moments, there are scenes that have already became brainworms for me. But equally do the lesser moments hold weight as a sort of communal trauma. This game, more than many others, understands that the point of Moments is to give us something to connect to others with. It makes it very hard to hold much against Bloodborne critically; good or bad, it's still rope. But I do wonder if these games are almost...over-appreciated compared to other difficult games, just because they're so good at encouraging you to chase that feeling of overcoming adversity. It's hard to put to words, but it does put into perspective how powerful the series' social ties are. Its mainstream classic status being earnt, but almost a necessity. Guess I just appreciate the new conversation material; it's got me chatting with friends who have been obsessed for years. Felt like I was there for something.

It's been fun, hasn't it?

Becoming a part of history?