Hiku said:
I started playing Bloodborne last month, but I found that I'm not enjoying myself while playing it. So I'm basically wondering "does Bloodborne get better?"
I've gotten as far as shortly after the Father Gascoigne fight. I'm supposed to tell NPC survivors to gather at a chapel.
My issues with the game so far are the following:
- Because of the way the story and NPC interaction is presented, I have little to no personal attachment to anything or anyone in the game. I also have no idea what's going on. That's how most Soulsborne titles are, but Bloodborne is exceptionally moreso due to its genre, Cosmic Horror. Much of the themes surrounding cosmic horror titles is the disconcerting disconnect with the rest of the world while being confronted with things beyond your understanding. It only makes sense under intense scrutiny, all the way down to a gameplay standpoint. Take, for example, Insight; when you see or defeat a boss, you gain Insight, which can be used to summon allies or purchase items from the Bath Messengers. This is the cosmic knowledge you have by peering into the Eldritch truth. It allows you to see things that are normally unseen, such as the Amygdala Great Ones throughout the game. The downside to having more Insight is it lowers your Frenzy resistance- a very important stat to have in defense of a very dangerous status effect. The more you know, the more maddening the truth becomes.
- The combat seems rather simple. I find the impact of attacks to feel satisfying, but I don't feel any particular satisfaction in beating enemies or bosses. Perhaps because I fight the same way, and only use one weapon, the Saw Cleaver, so far? But it seems like you don't ever learn new attack skills? I've practiced doing counters and Visceral attacks. And while those do feel satisfying, it still feels like something is missing. Aside from meta builds, that's about it, but nearly every weapon has a drastically different play style. And simplicity breeds complexity; you've only fight a maximum of three bosses by now, and that's only if you've entered a Chalice Dungeon after defeating the Cleric Beast (who, by the way, has a really important identity). Enemies got increasingly nightmarish and monstrous as the game goes on, and require different strategies to tackle. Be patient on that front- you've only fought the most basic of enemies so far.
- I don't like that if you use all your Blood Vials and die, you start off with 0 (unless you have some saved up in the chest). This happened while I fought the first boss, and instead of running back to the boss to learn its patterns and 'git gud', I instead had to farm up more Blood Vials, which ruins the flow. I honestly don't see the point of this.
In Nioh, when you die you start off with a minimum of healing items, if you had none left at the moment of death. That minimum starts at 3, but can be upgraded to higher numbers later on. It's difficult to beat some bosses with just 3 or so health items, but at least you get a decent amount of time with the boss. No two ways about this one; it's the leasing criticism of the game. It becomes less if an issue as time goes on, though. I recommend dropping into other peoples' games and helping them so you can farm blood vials more easily.
- I didn't particularly enjoy the fight against the Clerical Beast or Father Gascoigne. It was at this point where I thought to myself "why don't I play a game that does these things, but better?" So I started up Nier: Automata instead. Aside from the fact that combat isn't nearly as difficult in Nier (unless you play on Very Hard), I did enjoy the combat, music, world and story a lot more here. So I played the game through to the end. But now that I'm done and only have some side missions left, I'm thinking if I should go back to Bloodborne, or continue Persona 5 instead and give Bloodborne a pass? Two bosses? And the introductory ones, at that. Cleric Beast is there to teach you spacing (hence the wolves and ogrish man prior to the fight), and Gascoigne is there to force you to learn Riposting. The game doesn't start until you fight either Vicar Amelia or the Bloodstarved Beast.
For reference, in terms of similar (Souls type) games, I've played and finished the main story of Nioh. (I have not yet played the DLC, although I have it installed.) So I get the whole feeling of satisfaction after beating a really difficult fight. But I think the novelty of that has worn off a bit for me. I thought Nioh was a pretty good game, and I enjoyed it.
I don't know if Nioh is a more difficult game, but I will say that for the first few hours I found Nioh a lot more difficult than Bloodborne almost entirely because in Nioh if your stamina depletes to 0, you get stunned for a few seconds. That means you can't dodge or attack when your stamina is low in Nioh without taking huge risks. The fact that you can do that in Bloodborne has made it feel less punishing for me at least, so far.
But a lot of people speak very highly of Bloodborne. But so far I'm not seeing any of that. The setting is nice in some portions of the game, but because of the lack of a concrete story, the world is feeling a bit dull and empty to me. Maybe the game isn't for me? It all depends. Bloodborne isn't a game that tells you a story. It's a game that drops you into a story that is only hours away from its climax. And like the character dropped in, you have no knowledge of what's going on. I like that style, but if you don't, that's fine.
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