Late to this, but the blood vial thing always annoyed me. I agree with the argument I see from some here that blood vials ARE scattered around the level so you don't lose that many while progressing through a level, but if you're stuck on a fight, there is nothing worse than having to break the flow of it just to go get blood vials. I had to do this for the bastard that is the Crow of Cainhurst because his gun takes like half your health
That’s interesting. When I first played Bloodborne I never thought about blood vials as inventory for a while because I played conservatively. If I couldn’t make it past a segment or boss under 5 vials I would just die and restart so I never ran out of vials on my first playthrough. Then on a second playthrough I wanted to rush through the game so I was a lot more liberal with using them and I found out “oh shit yeah you can run out of these”. I always preferred the vial system over any other health system in souls-likes because you weren’t limited to a set number on a single life since you could always get more during.
@@SLRsquared The bloodvial farming & having to go back to the hunter's dream to travel to anywhere else are my only complaints. I still think it's amazing & it's my favorite game & what got me into Fromsoft games this past winter. I'm actually on my 2nd playthrough of it, rn & I wanna platinum it.
I wouldn't mind it, were they affordable at the store. Was so annoyed when i realised the price of vials & quicksilver bullets increases as you progress
@@SLRsquared I think the issues can be easily solved by having you always respawn with 20 but still being able to get extras as loot drops if you don’t have the max amount
I like how this video isn't just a hating video, you clearly enjoy the game, you aren't one of those salty people that just spouts insults, you recognize the game is good but you recognize it has flaws as well.
Rare video thats neither mindless glazing or mindless hating. My take is that this game came out before its time. With more knowledge and better technology, this game could be nigh perfect. With bosses like Elden Rings remembrance line-up, smooth 60 fps minor quality of life stuff and probably better chalice dungeons.
and its shitty bosses, and its shitt dungeons, and its shitty rpg design, and its shitty weapon balance, and its shitty parry strength, and its shitty stat distribution, and its shitty 2nd half, and its shitty recycled atmosphere, hot take i know, but frankly bbs regurgitated and copy pasted brown and black castles, cobblestone roads, coffins, gravestones and carriages got very old and repetitive 10 hours in.
@@flamingmanure thank you. I thought I was the only one. Funny to find another survivor. The only time the Dork Souls Fandom takes Miyazakis dick out of their mouths to go outside was to come attack me because I criticized this game.
my main problem is how items get more expensive the more you progress, just removing that essentially fixes the issues i have with the game it literally only exists to make you waste time grinding for consumables
I got through the entire game using only the Saw Cleaver and Ludwig's Holy Blade. I didn't even have to buy upgrade materials, I just used the ones I found in the environment.
The biggest problems in fromsoft games is the community won’t let you criticize the current game until it’s replaced. Even clear issues are just justified with “skill issue” then years later it’s admission
That's because the games are just trash for normies, I have a sneaking suspicion that the get good crowd never played ninja gaiden, and at this point the company and its shills lie right to your face, my favorite one being "Armored Core Six is not a souls game." That one costed them a die hard fan since the PS2 era.
@@SoftBoiledArtyeah i remember when i first played souls acting like it was a challenge to play it but i realized that none of the games are hard they create artificial difficulty most of the time once you can role properly and know when to attack its easy only exception is elden ring but thats only because its so insanely fast
Other way around. When a game comes out fans criticise it, then when the next one comes out ppl criticise it and put the older titles on a pedestal. Same for DLC's. People loved Bloodborne at release, but not to the feverish level they do now.
@@TRSOEThey also never played Nioh 1 & 2, which improved upon the “Soulslike” design in two games what FromSoftware hasn’t been able to do in over a decade.
Like you, I'm someone else who loves Bloodborne, but also has a LOT of problems with it, mostly gameplay oriented. Problems which I'm going to list now; it'll be LOOOOONG, so whoever decides to read through this, I'm honored. While your video focused almost exclusively on the player's end, I will be adding a bit more on what the player faces and things that are a mix of both: 1. WAAAY too many options and upgrade materials after Central Yharnam. I'm not talking about difficulty in exploring and the potential of getting lost - those are actually positives for me - but that this design choice brings such incredible potential for gameplay imbalance, all of it to the player's immense favor. Despite the 'potential', this is not entirely hypothetical, as it happened to me on my first playthrough without me intending it to. Do you know how stupidly easy it is to upgrade your weapon to +6 before facing Vicar Amelia? To upgrade a weapon 2 thirds of the way before facing the boss that marks the end of only the first third of main story progression? Just explore a little and you'll be there, because there are 23 (if not more, wikis are iffy about counting Wandering Nightmare drops) scattered Twin Blood Stone Shards between Cathedral Ward, Hemwick, and Yahar'gul, not counting enemy drops and Chalice Dungeons. Oh right, on top of the insanely easy way to upgrade your weapon to over halfway, it's insanely easy to overlevel yourself between all of these options as well. Beyond the overworld locations, the game encourages you to interact with the chalice dungeons, which means more levels, but also more blood gems to REALLY break the game without you realizing it. In my opinion, it's more egregious here than in Elden Ring because apart from Bloodborne being a smaller, tighter, and more linear game, ER has more stats to put points into and reasons to do so, and the amount of runes the enemies drop is much better tweaked to take its open-ended nature into account. To add to this, late game upgrade materials are excessively scarce. Unless you want to grind for hours or go to NG+, you'll be getting only 2 or 3 weapons to a somewhat appropriate level. You can't even buy Chunks with Blood Echoes. Why? Not to mention that they cost 20 Insight per piece, despite Twins costing only 2. 2. The stats are utterly imbalanced in their effectiveness. Skill is almost inherently superior to Strength due to visceral damage; stamina is SLOW to upgrade, especially harmful in a game like BB, and there is only one - pretty weak - option to boost stamina recovery; Arcane is just plain weak, and while fun is valid subjective reason, objectively you're better off doing anything else. 3. Everything regarding viscerals is thematically cool and mechanically BUSTED. Parrying is easier than ever, a singular stat and several Caryll Runes can further boost it to insane degrees, and between the game's unbalanced design and all the options it provides you (like Beast Blood Pellets), limb breaks and chain staggers via limb breaks are easy to achieve. Again, personal experience from my first playthrough; Amelia and Paarl were an absolute joke. 4. Enemy design and encounters overall get progressively more boring as you go further in. Again, thematically cool. Mechanically? Not so much. Imo, the best enemies in the game are found in the early areas, like Executioners, Werewolves, Chapel Giants, Mad Ones, and Snatchers. What interesting enemies do the mid and late game offer? Mergo's Chief Attendants? You mean, 60% discount Executioners. Large Viper Pits? Time to play Strafe Simulator or get stun-bitten (and poisoned) to death.The DLC falls into the same trap, unfortunately. Old Hunters and Nightmare Executioners are amazing, but the Patients and Fishmen are far too basic to be as prevalent as they are. Even the more fun enemies get fumbled in some way. Shark Giants are appropriately challenging, but just one of them is actually fight-able one vs one. Brador's invasions are cool, but he uses Lead Elixir, forcing you to either parry him to death when he's erect, or R1 spam him to death when he's not. Indirectly, this hurts the trick weapons as well. I would love to use more of the weapons that fit my build, but since most of the enemies are so ineffectual and easy from the halfway point of the game, then there's really no point to it. The base game boss roster post-Forbidden Woods is also one of the weakest in the series, so they don't offer much reprieve. On top of this, the level design in both the base game's second half and in the DLC is notably weaker than in the first, except for Research Hall. Nightmare Frontier is VERY linear, despite how it may appear upon first impression, and both Byrgenwerth and Upper Cathedral Ward, two of the most narratively significant areas in the game, feel quite unfinished. Hunter's Nightmare and Fishing Hamlet lack both the scale and complexity of the likes of Central Yharnam and Forbidden Woods, even if they're still well-designed as a whole. In general, I feel Bloodborne's gameplay quality is more severely compromised by narrative needs than in any other Soulsborne game. 5. Insight feels underdeveloped, and it's been proven that Blood Moon would have changed the enemies in the previous areas. Obviously, it never happened. I'll lump chalice dungeons here too, cus why not. They're an interesting concept executed to mixed results. While offering some new enemies and bosses, they're also highly repetitive, bloated, and undercooked. 6. Which blood gems to use? Adept? Elemental? Heavy? The right answer is (almost) always Tempering; everything else is pointless. 7. The game is just plain janky. Unstable framerates, inconsistent AI, bad hitboxes, and the worst camera against large bosses in the entire series. Instability damage during non-invincible dodging frames is beyond infuriating, as is jumping being tied to the circle button. Sorry. I know that was a lot of shit-talking towards a game I supposedly love. Like in the video, the shortcomings are not made equal and they don't all bother me to the same degree. Admittedly, they all bother me enough that none of these are really just nitpicks either. I still do love Bloodborne, but unlike with Egotistical, I don't think it's a masterpiece. It's so very close, but it doesn't quite make it. Nonetheless, it still tried and I hugely respect that.
Man you took the words out of my mouth, couldn't agree more. I loved this game, but the things you mentioned just stick out like a sore thumb. I like to do things semi blind and explore every nook and cranny, so maintaining a balanced playthrough was hard, leading to many unfulfilling boss encounters. Eventually what I resorted to was spreading the stats to get a bit of a taste of everything, but even then very easy to accidentally over-level. Didnt help that I actually enjoyed Chalice dungeons. Add to that the fact that the healing system is ridiculously overpowered, you can't help but facetank without much consequence, which takes away some of the thrill and tension that the game otherwise builds so well. Nerfing yourself is not as fun as having pre-designed bars to surpass. Enemies got progressively worse, completely agreed. They could've sprinkled in some of the chalice enemies like the watchers, greatsword mummies, snatchers, madmen, but no, take some celestial emissaries and snake-balls. The reliance on bumping the number of scrubs instead of focusing on fulfilling encounters also leaves the experience feeling more tedious than challenging. Cainhurst, mega cool premise, vampire snowy castle - nope, screaming bitches and blowdarts. Admitedly, the rapier dudes are fun to fight but feel thematicaly uninteresting. Something is missing. Byrgenwerth and Upper Cathedral was a huge dissapointment. Mega relevance, mega undercooked. So the big college is just a lakeside mansion? Oh nevermind, It WaS tAkEn By ThE nIgHtMaRe... SURE. In upper ward i craved more creepy badass threats, and what i got was goofy mobs. Frame rate drops borderlining on powerpoint slides on every limb break make it frustrating to try to capitalize on the opportunity. Thankfully, the satisfaction of the combat, coupled with the feeling of the atmosphere, art direction and lore vastly outweigh these complaints for me.
I agree with the visceral and level design points so much. I played bloodborne at release, but playing it again after playing Elden Ring I realised not only were central yharnam and cainhurst the only areas that were similar in quality to legacy dungeons, but that I disagreed with my older thoughts on the game. When BB came out I always preferred cainhurst and central yharnam to the rest of the game, but I just thought that the other areas were still good, just not as good as them. Now I more believe that later areas are pretty mediocre for the same reasons you mentioned.
While I appreciate the video's attempts at bringing conversation towards the gameplay of Bloodborne, an aspect that is very rarely discussed in depth, I think it assumes too many aspects of the "intended player experience", and judging every aspect of the game by that lens detracts from the points made, not to mention that said points often ignore aspects of its gameplay. For example, assuming that the RPG progression in BB is intended to give players a wider array of player choice like in DS. Why can't it be the opposite, and the system be intended for the character to become proficient in one playstyle per playthrough? It's not uncommon to have stats have this effect, Atlus' RPGs like Persona and SMT all work that way for example, why can't BB be the same? You also disregard that the difference in weapon styles is just as important in both games, DS and BB both divide Str and Dex weapons in the same way, slow and strong vs fast and weak, with each weapon bringing a different moveset inside those two archetypes. If you think the distinction is not as important is one thing, but this point still deserves to be mentioned. The level design point is one I don't get at all. Yes the exploration can be dealt with more carefully, but once you enter combat, you're still heavily icentivized to be extremely agressive in your playstyle. This is not a contradiction, both aspects of gameplay complement each other to create the experience of what it is to be a hunter, analyzing your surroundings and then attacking, fighting for your life, dealing with enemies in a visceral way. Not to mention how the game still somewhat retains the "learn something in the level and bring it to the boss" design of DS1, it's just been moved to item placement. Oil Urns and Firebombs before Cleric Beast, the Music Box before Gascoine, Fire Paper and Cocktails on the path to BSB, Bolt Paper when the aliens start appearing, you can probably name other examples. While I agree that BB's grinding is extremely boring and badly implemented, you treat BB as a pure action game in that section of the video, which it isn't. BB is an ARPG, and the RPG Progression naturally allows for grinding and number crunching to be used as a difficulty modulator. Its inclusion makes sense, the issue moreso lies in how the grinding is executed. Case in point, punishing players who are not that good at the game forcing grinding so they can refill their Blood Vials. That is a complete pace breaker and too heavy of a punishment for newcomers and less skilled players and we're in complete agreement there. However, asking if the game wants the player to rely on Blood Vials or Rally for healing makes no sense when the game wants you to interact with both in tandem. The enemies and overall encounters put you in situations where both methods of healing are useful without breaking the game's combat rhythm. The moment to moment choice of what to use adds to the game's dynamics, it doesn't detract from them. Finishing this comment like it started, I want to reiterate that the "intent" (haha pun laugh) of the video is admirable, Souls games definetly lack this sort of deeper mechanical discussion. However, ignoring so many parts of its gameplay to make your points work makes a lot of points faulty. This is a somewhat new channel, so I hope your next analyses become better and better as they go on
I just wanna say I really appreciate this comment and you engaging with the analysis on a level deeper than "intended experience is a stupid premise", so thank you. I agree with you in that sticking to my lens for this analysis does mean that I didn't do certain mechanics justice or acknowledge that some are flexible and provide multiple functions to the player. Example, maybe the intent in the level design was to inspire a change in player responses or maybe the healing system is working is exactly as intended to provide a rhythm in combat of balancing aggression with safety. While these are nuances that I should have discussed, I also think this reasoning starts to down a road that ends in justifying any mechanic in the game because it's in the game. For example, if we ask: is Micolash is a mechanically shallow encounter? In attempting to analyze objectively, we might say something like "yes, Micolash requires less memorization of attack patterns and asks less of the player in combat compared to other boss fights making it comparatively simple to the boss average". Your reasoning would say "(all that same stuff), but it's supposed to be that way, the fight is operating as intended and is therefor it's not a problem." Is this true? Yeah, it is true - FS designed Micolash that way on purpose - but it's worth asking, is the encounter in harmony with BB's other mechanics or is it in contrast to them? I'm not saying you're wrong, your gripes with my premise is one of the main complaints I've seen in the comments here. I went back and forth on calling anything a "problem" in this game (and using that word in the title of the video) because "problem" implies a preference or an objective standard of game design that obviously doesn't exist and I put myself in a position to prove a point instead of speaking about mechanics in their totality. It would be far more accurate to call my video "The Incongruous Mechanics in Bloodborne" but that doesn't have the same ring to it. Again, thanks for engaging with me so thoughtfully and for the encouragement!
@@Egotesticals "Why can't it be the opposite, and the system be intended for the character to become proficient in one playstyle per playthrough? It's not uncommon to have stats have this effect, Atlus' RPGs like Persona and SMT all work that way for example, why can't BB be the same?".............what? you realize how silly this comparison is yes?
@@flamingmanure Why is it silly? Many games throughout the years have limited you to specialize in one stat or specialty. Bloodborne has much less build variety than other FromSoft games, it completely makes sense.
I feel like items are the weakest part of this entire franchise. How is it supposed to be fulfilling to use some random item to skip a phase of the fight completely? The game rewards you by skipping itself? It's the same in other souls games, especially ER with it's hundreds upon hundreds of absolutely useless consumables. In regards to BB wanting people to play aggressively, I never felt that because I was always punished way more for playing like that rather than playing cautiously and carefully like the previous games want.
Imagine if all the bosses and enemies from the chalice dungeons were in the main game. I will never understand why they hide half of the enemies in the most underwhelming part of the game.
I worked on Bloodborne (marketing department). Very interesting video and thoughts. I will look at some notes based on design documents and come back to you.
@@ennayanne You understand devs don’t work in isolation and that the game direction changes based on marketing and audience feedback right? The game was very different to begin with. Had a different name, story and fight mechanics among other things which changed based on audience research, testing previously unreleased versions of the game and much much more. So yeah, marketing department.
The healing system Bloodborne was going for was perfected by Lies of P. You have a finite, refillable amount, but being aggressive can give you extra ones during a fight if you run out
My thoughts, loved this in LoP, although the system is a bit strange at start of the game where you have like 3 heals total, you just end up refilling the last flask all the time, but thats a nitpick. Also love the LoP grindstones.
Lies of P is a little rough in some parts but it's an amazing game. Like what you said with it improving blood vials, it also legitimately iterates on and improves a few other key fromsoft systems such as the weapons instead of just using them as is. The bonfire list with the npcs indicating that you should talk is also a great addition. I am very hyped for the dlc and sequel.
I don't think Lies of P's system is at all close to what Bloodborne was going for, actually? In Bloodborne, they quite purposefully made choices to give you a limit of 20 from the very beginning of the game. It also heals for a lot less health than the heals from Lies of P do. In Bloodborne's levels, you also collect a bunch of vials from corpses, unlike Lies of P. If Bloodborne was trying to do a similar thing to Lies of P in regards to the healing system, they failed in almost every single way. I don't think they were trying to do a similar thing, and the only big fail is that it's too common to run out of vials completely at a tough boss.
Although some argumentens does not fit for me in a sense I would be a little more critical about other aspects of a game, thank you for a video. I am always fond of criticisms of beloved and popular games, but they’re absolutely hard to find. Despite looking for Bloodborne critiques really deep i found only like three videos counting yours, and this game is obviously flawed, in my humble opinion much more than you’ve presented it. The person who’s critical on something most of the time saying most interested thing about media and art, especially in cases when object of a crtiticism is canon or critically and/or publicly acclaimed thing. So again, many thanks!
I was halfway through the video when I realized that this isn't a 250k+ subscriber channel. How do you not have more subs. I enjoyed this video so much, seriously, good job. Have my sub
Parrying is only a passive play style if you back away from the enemy and use it at a distance. If you instead use it close up in the middle of your combo then it turns into an active and aggressive option. Same with Arcane magic. Beast Roar for example is an excellent mid combo option to see taggen and knock back your enemy so you can continue hitting them, since it interupts all non hyper armor attacks. Which is the same thing a parry does.
I would like to throw in the fact you take double damage if hit out of your dodge. In a game where shields are a non-option and not every enemy is parryable (I also think determining which enemies are parryable or what moves are unparryable on usually parryable enemies is too vague) creates a disconnect with games' goal of aggression and it "engenders passivity"
On the contrary, Bloodborne is the clearest game (except Sekiro) in communicating to the player what enemies are and are not parriable. Is it a huge enemy that towers above the hunter several times his height? Is it a very small enemy that is about waist level of the hunter? You can't parry them. Anyone else? You can. There's no confusing choices like, for example in DS3 - You can parry Pontiff's UGS but you can't parry Dancer's Curved sword. You can parry Crystal Sage's Farron Flashsword attack but you can't parry Nameless King's Swordspear at all. Bloodborne does a way better job at this.
@@Akaarei you can parry the fishing hamlet sharks, living failures, and maneater boar. you cannot parry some smaller enemies like the abhorrent beast. FromSoft has always been inconsistent with what's parryable.
The "fast/slow" dichotomy thing isn't really an issue to me - Bloodborne is a game about being a hunter. Hunting requires both methodical stalking/scouting as well as (when dealing with the types of fights present in Bloodborne) high aggression and speed/violence/momentum pretty much. Dark Souls is more like a dark adventure whereas Bloodborne is more like a desperate hunt? I dunno - I enjoyed the dichotomy of methodical exploration and ungabunga combat.
True. I like levels that are intracite and make you check every corner for traps or secrets. I also like big, fast and spectacular bosses that challenge my skills of reading attack patterns and managing my resources. If a game has both (bloodborne admittedly lacking a bit in the second) has both, i couldn't care less if they "conflict" or some bs like that.
He didn’t say that it’s inherently a problem, he’s saying that bloodbornes build mechanics (strength/dex) don’t correlate with the system, because weapons are so similar in moveset and playstyle. Thus the only impact of asking the player to choose a build type is limiting what weapons they can use, which isn’t fun. Personally I don’t fully agree with the take because strength weapons are still definitely slower than dex, but there is still less of a dichotomy when compared to dark souls.
@@Timebomb_19 I don't even agree with that because the stagger potential on ultra-heavy weapons outweighs something like the cane-whip's speed/AoE, right? I played BB with an Arcane build (useless until I got the Cyclops spell which then melted everything after I got it) my first time, then played a Bloodtinge, then finally a Strength build. They were all pretty different, from what I can remember.
As a person that has never felt as fond about Bloodborne like everyone else seems to be (even despite the fact that it has grown on me), it's always interesting to see a bit of light thrown to some of the actual issues that the game has. That being said, I also would like to show some of my thoughts about larger and minor points across the video. RPG Mechanics I think It is undeniable that the build variety found in Bloodborne is a lot more limited, and yet, I find that the way you describe the role of the level up system suffers of similar limitations. I can't really blame you, after all, a big part of the choice and decision making plays around the investment over sources of damage, but I think it's a big mistake to forgot the importance of the management of progression as a whole. It's not only about granting the player a way to decide the ways they are dealing damage, but also to give agency in the growth and progression of their characters. Choosing how many actions they can do, how much attacks they can suffer and how much damage they can deal. Prioritize the aspects that each player believes are most important or necessary in relation to their way of playing, or even their chosen weapons; level by level at each moment of the adventure. Additionally, I took a look into the weapon Rooster and I will say; I don't believe that the idea of almost every weapon working in between a fast and heavy mode is actually true. It is a common staple between them, and surely some of the ones I dont really count could be open to some kind of discussion, but theres plenty of examples that simply disrupt that idea. And going further, I think it's another mistake to take the lesser gap of speed that exist between light and heavy weapons at face value, without taking into account nuance like recovery time, level of stun and stamina consumption. Or even the unique properties of some weapons, because it should be clear for everyone that the Whirligig Saw isn't the same as other Heavy Weapons. It's because all of this why the comparison with Sekiro doesn't work for me, because while there you are just choosing ways to complement the fixed playstyle, in Bloodborne, even if in a less flexible way than the other souls games, is still choosing how you play at it's core. Levels Not much to say here, not because I agree or disagree but rather than I find a bit difficult to relate to the sentiment. I think it's an interesting exercise to view the difference in between what the levels and what the bosses encourage, but I find myself wondering to what extent you couldn't simply say that the rally, as a ever present mechanic, is still the link between the two. Or even, I don't fully view how you couldn't say the same about the change between the levels and bosses in the other games, even with your examples that, I personally feel like are stretchs and not fully representative of the actual experience between the two. Misc notes: 7:17 You actually took the path without the shortcut behind the werewolf that breaks the door, so that actually isn't the legit runback. 10:38 It is indeed carried from Demon's Souls, just like the way the lanterns work as opposite to the bonfires. As DS2 and BB were developed at the same time, theres not a lot that the later could learn and implement, and it shows in several QoL options missing that had no problem to appear right after in DS3. One of them, sadly, being the respec mechanics. 27:07 Bullets are always a finite resource, but as long as you have vials, you always have bullets, so is easy to say that you always have the chance of using parries. PD: It's a shame that this video doesn't feature a talk about how underwhelming can be a lot of the bosses on this game, wich is probably one of my biggest gripes with the game besides how much it likes to waste your time.
As much as I love this game, the grinding for blood echoes is HELL if you don't have ps+/play offline. There aren't any good places that give you a large amount of blood echoes. You have to keep grinding for hours.
Why would you need to grind for blood echoes? Other FromSoft games (especially Elden Ring) I get, but Bloodborne gives you more than enough in normal playthrough, and it's not like you need a ton of them for multiple purposes like you do in other FS games.
@@fjkebhnfdnsjkb7762 i personally like to be OP as early as possible. Makes it more fun for me. Or sometimes I wanna try a new weapon but I don't have the stats for it. Plus, sometimes I run out of blood vials/bullets and I have no echoes because I just died to the boss or something.
@@Proto-MartyrThe closest thing we have to a farming spot is the way up to Mergo's Wet Nurse, using the Heir runes and going visceral on the three boars. A shame it's in the end-game, but at least Bloodborne requires the least amount of levels to be OP/at max.
@@marioburgos712with the 3 blood echo runes, in the lecture hall after unlocking the locked room with a ton of those white slimy guys sitting at desks, it's right next to the lantern and can be gotten to after the one reborn. 20k blood echoes every 1 minute, since the room is right next to the floor 1 lecture hall lamp.
In complete honesty I held off on watching this video due to the low view and subscriber count, unfairly assuming it wouldn't be of good quality. My line of thinking was, "If the video was good, it would surely have higher views and the account would have more subscribers." This was wrong. The video is very well made and I realize after watching the entire thing that I have somehow stumbled upon a massive popular account, before the community was able to properly acknowledge its' deserved success. I've tried 4 times to play BB and every single time I found myself with the same problems, granted I was slightly crueler with my judgement with the latter 3 attempts due to an issue with Sony deleting about 40 hours of play time on my first file, leading me to not particularly care about the following 3 files. However, almost a year has passed since my original attempt and I felt like playing while listening to this in the background, I'm on my 5th-ish attempt and honestly I could narror my gripes down to 2 factors; vial and bullet grinding, and the lanterns being a bad form of transportation around the world. I could ignore almost any other problem with the game except those. I value the ability to quickly travel and I have a very rough style of play, leading me to always be spending what BE I have, as well as playing very fast and loose with vials and bullets. In nearly every other Fromsoft game I've touched this has been okay, I plat Sekiro and ER, and came close to plat on DS3 with this play style. But BB is has the two features that slam my style on its' head, a (personally speaking in comparison to games like Sekiro and ER) piss poor way of moving about the different levels via lanters and the hub world, and vial/bullets being consumables. I enjoy parrying in these games, Sekiro is my personal favorite FS game, so you would think ranged parry is perfect, but when I run out of bullets I'm left with half of my controller being basically worthless now. I'm also remembering that I meant to leave a small comment about how good the video was and my appreciation for the way in which the faults are being talked about, and I scammed myself into explaining my own gripes. TL;DR Fantastic video and I can't wait to see what kind of content this channel makes from here on, I was wrong in my judgement that low views meant low quality, this guy is only going to get better from this point on
@@Egotesticals I ended up finally beating the game earlier today, if I had not watched this video I would still be sulking about issues I had almost a year ago instead of actually trying to have fun with it. I did end up shilling out 10 dubloons for the cummmfpk dungeon, though this was primarily for bullets and vials. With no fear of running out of those I was able to play without worrying about being "punished" for using the mechanics. I like parrying in BB a lot but I always ran out of bullet in my previous forays in the game, with hundreds waiting in my storage I found myself playing from 10PM to 4AM the last 2 days lol. Thank you for making this video, and thank you for making it in the way that you did. I doubt I would've given it another shot if it had been an whiny echo chamber of everything negative I wanted to hear. This video was everything I *needed* to hear, the game isn't perfect but neither is Sekiro, which is arguably my favorite FS game I've ever touched. But even with the flaws, I spent a year just perpetually making them bigger and bigger in my head until I actually picked it back up and gave it a genuine chance. It's not my favorite, but I'm glad I finally beat it, thank you again!
It almost feels like you take everyone’s positivity to it personally. I’ve seen people who praise the game as the best game ever bring up the problems you are, but because the positives outweigh the negatives so heavily, it’s frankly quite easy to overlook them
That's the thing though, the "weight" of a positive aspect or a negative aspect is entirely personal. For example, I played Gris and didn't enjoy the game at all, because the lack of engaging gameplay made it so that it was incredibly hard for me to appreciate the gorgeous art direction and the beautiful soundtrack since I was quite literally bored to tears while playing it. My brother, on the other hand, absolutely loved the game because he got so into the art and the OST that he didn't mind the simplistic gameplay. The problem with Bloodborne - or more precisely with the Fromsoft community and gaming discourse in general - is that there is no nuance to the discussion around the game. Either you praise Bloodborne to the highest heavens and only recognize its flaws as the most miniscule of footnotes, or you get crucified by its rabid fanbase. For fuck's sake, look at the top comment in this very video: here's an in depth 50 minute piece discussing the game's flaws, and the most liked comment is of someone deliberately choosing not to engage with the discussion at all. That is textbook toxic positivity. As we have discussed earlier, Bloodborne's flaws will weigh differently according to each and every person's perspective. The one who made this video evidently had his experience much more impacted by the flaws being discussed than someone who gives the game nothing but the highest praise, and that's entirely okay. The problem arises when the discussion around flaws and qualities are supressed in favor of a dominant narrative. If you can't talk about Bloodborne's flaws without someone accusing you of taking people's love of the game as a personal offense, then there is extreme levels of toxicity floating around. There is a cycle that comes with the discourse around Fromsoft titles. The games are widely praised, then the honeymoon phase wears off and people start tearing the new title apart for all its flaws big and small, then discussion dies down until years later the title is considered a "flawed masterpiece". Same thing happened with Bloodborne, Sekiro, DS3, DS2 and is now happening with Elden Ring. The problem is, those games don't change much in that meantime, so there are always people engaging with them as pieces of art and consequently acquiring their own assessment of a specific title's qualities and flaws, yet if those people go against the current established narrative - be it of unfathomable praise or unreleting criticism - they are viciously shunned. I have experience this myself. I despise Dark Souls 3 with every fiber of my being for hundreds of reasons and I really like DS2, yet discussion around DS3's flaws and DS2's qualities are always met with someone trying to swerve the discussion in the direction of the established narrative, much like the most liked comment in this video that says, in reponse to criticism: "The only flaw Bloodborne has is that it ends". Currently Shadow of The Erdtree is in the negative phase of the discourse loop, so if you try and say that you like its narrative you won't be met with people discussing its positive aspects with you, you will be met with people desperately reiterating its negatives in order to regain control. All that said, Bloodborne IS overrated. Why? Because if you were to believe the dominant narrative around it, it would be a perfect game. It isn't perfect, far from it. Each and every day I am more thankful that I decided to almost completely cut contact with this community, it is one of the most toxic I've ever seen, to the point where I would say Bloodborne's most glaring flaw is the toxic positivity surrounding it. I believe everyone would be much happier if they just decided to engage with Bloodborne on its own terms, without the revolting narrative of the Fromsoft community tainting their impressions of it. This fandom is genuinely one of the worst there is.
16:14 so refreshing to hear from a nuanced perspective. i'd always been of the opinion that the paper-thin rpg mechanics present in bloodborne have only served to constrict the scope of build expression in fromsoft's subsequent games, given the critical success of a more """action""" oriented gameplay loop
@@flamingmanure versatility doesn't always equate to committal build expression; rather, some weapons in each class are objectively better than others for the sole reason that they infuse better, meaning that you'd always be better off choosing the best in class regardless of your stat spread. i wouldn't exactly consider that 'complex.' prior to bloodborne this issue was largely only relegated to certain specialty weapons
@@flamingmanureIn terms of leveling, there is very little variety, every level 150 chatecter will have 60 vigor, 50 points in their damage stat, and everything else will be split between mind and endurance
For the bloodvials I've seen the argument that it complements the rally mechanic because you'll need to lose less consumables if you attack fast enough. I get the idea behind it and it does make sense if that was the intention of these mechanics. However, what it ends up doing is making the game more difficult for people who are already struggling with it. I quit when I ran out of healing against Gascoigne. I decided I wasn't going to let the game beat me, so picked it up again. Farmed for 15 minutes and got back to 40 vials in storage. On my rematch I ended up needing only 3 heals, and never went without. I platinumed the game and had 500+ still in storage. You find so many vials in the levels that you can get more than you eventually use. I'm not particularly great at souls games, so if I can do it anyone can. Since it doesn't really work as intended I think it would've been better if the game had a similar system as the estus, and have less than 20 available on you. It would also increase the challenge since you cannot just keep refilling your healing with items you find in the wild. Don't know if that would be more punishing to new players. Lanterns should've just worked like regular bonfires. These are probably the biggest issues of the game for me.
@@patchwilliamson it's not necessarily difficult, but as I've stated. It's a mechanic that's more punishing to players already struggling with the game. You don't want to grind for more healing when you're learning the boss. I had no more issues after my initial hump, but the game would be better without it. Since it adds nothing to experienced players and makes the game more difficult for newer players.
Yea, I almost dropped the game because of the vials. I don't mind being stuck on a boss if the boss is fun. I'm ok with trying and learning the best strategy to beat the boss. But I hate that I have to stop because I cannot heal suddenly. First I ran out of bullets (I was trying to learn the parry mechanics on this boss and it seamed like one of the best strategies for me) and shortly after I ran out of vials. The worst thing about this is, that the boss that most players will get stuck on is at the beginning, which gives you smaller area to farm - either echoes or vials. Not to mention that apparently enemies will drop less items the more you die in the area. It would be so much better if I could just go on and come back later, or if I could always start with, let's say 5 vials and I could buy more. I somehow pushed through with a big annoyance, the funny thing is that the next bosses are much easier, so the need to farm is smaller, even though now you have better places to farm. I would give up, but my husband played it before me and told me about the chalice farm. I strictly use the echoes from that to buy vials and bullets, so I don't have to care about this annoying aspect of the game. I only level up with echoes that I got from exploration, so I don't loose the motivation and I'm not over leveled. But overall this game is a disappointment. This is often presented as the best FS game and I don't sadly see it. It has amazing atmosphere, enemy design is great but the fight itself? Boring or annoying most of the time. The same strategy over and over - run behind them and hit the legs, no need to look for an opening really, no need to study their movement. I am now at the DLC (I haven't finished the main game yet, wet nurse is next there) and Maria is finally a fun dynamic fight after a looooong time. My 4th FS game and it sits at the bottom for me.
@@Deni-mt9bj I get what you mean. For me after the initial hump I had no issues. But I really can't think of a defence of this mechanic, for the reason that it's really punishing for players that struggle more with some things. Overall I also agree the bosses are underwhelming. First time that I finished the game I was so disappointed with the last boss. I was convinced there was a phase 2, I didn't want to finish the game. I just wanted to see phase 2 and let myself get killed. I empty the health bar and no phase 2, the credits rolled and I was like "wtf". I did really enjoy the game, and I love it for the aesthetic and world design more than anything else. Combat itself was nice and engaging, but aside from Gascoigne I didn't really struggle with any other bosses. Because the game wanted me to be aggressive I was just spamming attacks and dodging and I melted every boss. I was about level 70-80 when I finished the game, don't know if I was overleveled but yeah. Tried the DLC in NG+ and once I got past Ludwig it was a cake-walk. I beat the orphan on my first attempt, if you can parry the boss it's really easy. I liked Maria as well, I thought it was a really cool fight, but the parry does trivialize a lot of fights. You'd have to handicap yourself to get a decent challenge.
I love Bloodborne, it's one of my favorite games of all time... My biggest complaint the motion sensor emotes, specifically that you have no option to turn them off and the button to activate them is the same as the interact button. Meaning if you try to frantically pick up an item during combat, but don't keep the controller perfectly still you might just have your character sit down or start waving at the enemy in the middle of a fight.... And yes, I have died because of this XD
Great work ! I would look out for the sound balance (quiet voice cuts to another loud video). For The Healing ! I got tired of it so I looked up and did this : Upload my save before a Boss Fight, and if I end up running out of Vials, I Reload the save !
Actual good discussion, especially about the critiques and reviews of people that like something and simply neglect every bad decision, as a choice intended by the dev therefore is not wrong. I think this a much bigger problem that people dont see, there is a double standard in a relation to alot of developers, companies, creators and even franchises, is something that would like to be discussed more, because i feel like alot of people get influenced and dont even realize why. I've see so many people parroting the "these devs should be more like these, or they game should be like elden ring design because ubisoft design = bad", not every dev or company can get away with what Nintendo or From does, because there is a double standard by gamers, influencers and games media, i see too much reviews these years from indie games that are too harsh and give minus points for reasons that other devs wouldn't, is insane, i still remember when SIFU came out, and reviewers were giving a low score because it was hard, like wtf, same people go and say "more games should be more difficult like from games" and then give low scores to games that are difficult and go "yeah but From knows how to do it in a challenge way and this devs doesnt therefore bad" when in fact there is a lot of bullshit and from games but people excuse it because "oh is a from game, silly miyazaki once again, GOTY for sure". anyway, small rant, could go on for a while, great video, my only problem was the music in transitions were too loud, and even the OST from games were a bit loud and too good so it distracted me from the video
I do appreciate this video; I felt like somewhat of an outsider for feeling like the game had some pretty glaring mechanical flaws that impacted the pacing. However I'm surprised you didn't mention how bullets and blood vials are the ONLY consumables that actually replenish from your stock. Any other consumables, such as Hunter Marks or Molotov Cocktails, must be manually refilled from the Hunter's Dream even if you have a surplus in storage. This adds to the timesink aspect as if you died during a boss and used up consumables you need for the fight, you can't just reattempt the boss but rather have to go back after every failed attempt in which you use items.
I will say grinding sucks, and I had to do a lot more than I wanted on my first play through due to refusing to level higher for the DLC. For anyone looking for the best mid/late game vial grind, I would recommend equipping the echo runes and going to the lecture hall. Grind the room with all of the students, rinse and repeat. No matter what area drops more vials off enemies, the overall time to clear the room and make it back to the lamp makes grinding for echos to spend in the dream on vials more efficient than grinding for vials themselves. You also get the bonus of receiving quicksilver drops at the same time, making it a two for one route.
Good video, thought provoking one. I will type a long comment addressing some of the usual misconceptions whenever they discuss about Elden Ring's bosses you'll see some of them mention Bloodborne's quicksteps, Gun parrying & its Rally mechanic as the main mechanics that somehow make it more geared towards aggression compared to Elden Ring, I'm here to disprove all these nonsensical talking points as they couldn't be further from the truth, I hope people read this comment: - Elden Ring player movement is as fast if not potentially faster than Bloodborne, your rolls are as fast as BB's dashes, the amount of time it takes from executing your rolls in ER to walking after it is less than that of BB, you have much more base stamina & much faster regeneration (not counting the crapton of talismans/flask tears that can massively increase those), you can jump & do jump-attacks, which massively increase aggression & pace of any fight while also ducking upcoming follow-up attacks that bosses usually do, you can sprint in any direction while locking-on, this is a massive speed increase which bodes extremely well with ER's bosses since they require strafing & finding out positioning openings & that's what makes them change their combos based on where you are relative to them, you have posture breaks which literally incentivize aggression, you also have crouching which can also be an evasion tactic while delivering a poke attack after it (Messmer's spinny attacks anyone?). If you don't like med-rolls as much, well then you have light-rolls, Quickstep or Bloodhound Step Ashes of War (all of which have more s than your basic dash in Bloodborne), Backhand Blades' Blind Spot Ash of War, etc... - Bloodborne Gun Parry isn't a base mechanic like dodging, it's an optional mechanic that the bosses do not have to contend with, it's a way to engage with bosses & enemies, just like using Shield parry against any boss in ER. In fact, Gun Parry is a "Press L2 to win" button in Bloodborne, you won't even learn much of the bosses' patterns because you do not fully engage with them. I like to play Bloodborne without Gun Parry, I think it ruins the encounters IMO, it's boring. - Rally Mechanic has no bare nor any relevance on how fast bosses can dish out attacks at you, what they're basically implying is that as long as you gain health on hits then it's OK for bosses to have unavoidable attacks, which is incredibly wrong, it doesn't justify unfair bosses because it will count as a mechanical flaw, not something that can be mended by having the Rally Mechanic, it's just a bonus for the player to remain aggressive, it was a heavy-handed tutorial to the player to play aggressively especially after FromSoft releasing it after DS2, so they train the player to rely on that more than what they relied on in DS1 & DS2, and the ironic part about it is you have Talismans in ER that can give you health on hits & you can have Malenia's Great Rune which is straight up BB's Rally. Elden Ring simply gives the player so many more tools to counter bosses than any of the previous Souls combined, you have: - Plenty of Consumables that can spice up the pace of any fight, offensive & defensive measures. - You have Ashes of War that can you out of any boss attacks no matter what they are. - You have Dual-wielding builds, each weapon with an Ash of War. - You have the Deflection mechanic which massively change the pace of the combat. - You have Guard Countering too which lands a huge damage to bosses' health & posture bar. Offensive measure. - You have Backstep s, another one that changes the combat in a big way & acts as a defensive measure. - Even throwing knives in Bloodborne is as slow as a turtle, while it's much faster in ER & can keep bosses' posture from regenerating which is a massive thing. There are so many ways to counter Elden Ring bosses more than Bloodborne could ever dream of, ER's bosses are more complex, they need more trial & error, they allow for way higher combat expression than BB could ever do, the difference is vast, watch ONGBAL's videos of him fighting BB's bosses & compare them to ER's bosses, it's sad in BB. (I'll link some): ONGBAL VS Lady Maria: th-cam.com/video/V4YG5URsc2Q/w-d-xo.html ONGBAL VS Ludwig: th-cam.com/video/_LgDtgBScRM/w-d-xo.html ONGBAL VS Dancing Lion: th-cam.com/video/wyrT6vzt7XY/w-d-xo.html ONGBAL VS Morgott: th-cam.com/video/oAzgc0aZAsg/w-d-xo.html I'd wager a boss like Divine Beast Dancing Lion would simply not work if you were to put it in Bloodborne, dash has less s & you can't sprint while locking-on in all directions, therefore you're massively screwed, you don't even have the jumping mechanic to avoid frost explosions after every move he does nor his lightning AOEs around it nor it's spinning attack where it throws lightning/frost/air breath.
souls veterans that say those things about elden ring boss design are delusional idiots that played elden ring like bb and ds3 and got their ass handed to them for it, their small ego got hurt, saw the joseph anderson video and went along with the delusional self gratifying objectively false narrative. elden rings combat is far above the likes of bb.
@@akshatsaxena4137 What do you mean by core mechanic? Then what’s the point of the trick mode in weapons? I always play with the 2nd Ludwig’s blade form, or 2nd Rayuko form. A core mechanic implies that the game’s combat doesn’t work or make sense without that mechanic, like dodge rolling (even without dodge rolling, you can beat these games, we’ve seen people do it lol but that’s besides the point), all I’m saying is the gun parry mechanic is an optional mechanic just as shield parrying in Elden Ring is an optional mechanic.
@@HeyTarnished Its absolutely not comparable to a shield parry in Elden Ring. You are stuck with a gun in Bloodborne from the off. Its more comparable to the prosthetic arm in Sekiro, if anything. Sure, most weapons have a trick form that's either a 2 handed or a dual wield setup, but they all also have a base form where the gun is ever present in your off hand. Bullet ammo is a key resource in the game. The trick forms are mostly there to fill out the moveset and provide utility, since you can't 2 hand every weapon on will as you can in the Souls games. Also DS3 and ER added weapon arts, and Sekiro had combat arts, for the same purpose. You can play the game without using the gun at all, but you're not fully engaging with the mechanics at that point. Because every BB player is given a gun, but not every ER player is given a shield. That's just one of many options in ER. Also how can you argue that a core mechanic is something that the combat doesn't work without, then claim that rolling/dodging is core to the combat whilst also acknowledging that the game can be beaten without using dodges? Doesn't make much sense to me.
@@akshatsaxena4137 I haven't expanded upon my point about dodge rolling, and I am sorry for the confusion. I was only mentioning it as an extreme example, it only highlights the amount of skill mastery these games can accommodate (especially for ER since most of its bosses depend much more on positioning than only getting dodge timings correctly), there are bosses where dodge rolling is necessary, it is also necessary for the combat to be fast paced & to find punishes, I know if you didn't use rolling (which needs mastery in game mechanics & ample understanding of bosses' moveset), it would result in you being to passive. Dodging is the main defensive/evasion tactic in Souls games, well for ER, it gives you jumping & many Ashes of War options as they can be used as substitutions for dodge rolling. I mentioned the Gun parry thing because, functionally, it's like shield parrying but from a distance, it's not something that the game's combat depends upon, it's another way of combat expression, it's a way to engage against bosses, EVEN if it's build independent, like you get it all the time no matter what your build is, well let's be honest, BB doesn't have build variety nor provides any depth to them as something like Elden Ring or DS3, but you get my point.
only bad things about bb is that arcane sucks and the best gems, some unique bosses, and different weapon variations are locked behind the awful chalice dungeon system
@@jor8025 people complete the chalice dungeons once to get the best gems in the game and the weapon variations for NG+ runs, then never again. collecting the chalice ritual materials every playthrough is a huge chore.
Speak your truth my man, bless you for actually criticizing the RPG and upgrade mechanics I fully agree that it realistically is more limiting than anything and I too have thought about how retroactively being like Sekiro would be the ideal instead of staying unfortunately too close to original Dark Souls.
lies of p is an obviously bloodborne inspired game and it had a really interesting approach to healing in that it's basically just an estus system, but after you run out, you can regain a heal by successfully dealing enough damage. it came in handy a few times. it also kept a near identical rallying system, which i now frankly find difficult to not have in souls-likes. lies of p is a really good game guys
I think every game has its flaws but bloodborne is very minimal with it and the enjoyment/experience I had with it made me forget those bad points. That's how a masterpiece it is. It's truly one of those rare artistic experience u could have with a game.
I think they just gave players a lot of heals because the game is hard as balls, and if youre dying a lot you need to get better at the game, thus running out of vials is a way to get the player to stop banging their head on the wall and level up a bit both in stats and skills. Vials are plentiful in almost every area in the game so its a good opportunity to sharpen your skills. People make the mistake of going to yharnam which actually isnt the best for vials when you consider how few echoes the enemies there give you.
Yeah just clearing enemies in basically every area in the game will give you plenty of blood vials. It's a nice incentive to not just run past everything. It sucks when you're hard stuck on a boss and need to farm though (happens to me with Ludwig).
Bloodborne was my first fromsoft game and I loved the overall experience, but the vial mechanic was the one thing that I hated. I've not designed this, I don't know what the team had in mind, but the outcome is that the typical player struggling with the boss will not go and level up while picking up vials. He'll spend every single penny he grinded to buy more vials, because he doesn't want to do this all over again after each boss attempt.
I didn’t even watch the video yet, and I’m already sure one of the biggest issues cited is the GODDAMN FARMING. Farm for vials. Farm for bullets. Farm for Echoes. Farm for Runes. Farm upgrade materials. Farm farm farm farm farm. And then the goddamn abysmal drop rate on the good stuff, and ONE SINGLE FEKKEN BLOOD ROCK IN THE BASE GAME!? ONE? This game has some of the coolest, most iconic weapons in all of gaming, and I CANNOT max out more than two per playthrough unless I grind those mind numbingly boring chalice dungeons? God I love this game but this… This I simply don’t understand. I can make do with the not-at-all-fast-travel. I can make do with the horrendous performance. Heck I can even make do with the fact that I can’t romance Ludwig. But the farming and absolutely insane drop rates, fek no. I could understand it in Demon’s Souls. It was their first game. I could understand it in Dark Souls still. But by the time of Bloodborne how come they not only made a huge part of it worse, but also managed to REVERT to some of the biggest issues of their first iteration on the formula? Micheal Zaki grant me eyes for I cannot see how you thought this was fine. ‘Kay rant over.
A point on the Blood Vials and rallying, you constantly pick up Vials from corpses or dead enemies, which means that you don't necessarily need to resort to the rallying mechanic, which is kinda poorly implemented since almost all enemies have hyper armor and can interrupt you when attacking, or if you're more patient the window for rallying is gone before you could fully take advantage of it. Amd you put it perfectly regarding the parry, it deincentivizes aggressive play since it can give you so much damage yet it can be executed from such a safe distance, making a fishing tactic style of play viable, at that point just give us a damn shield, there wouldn't be any difference. It's no wonder why to me the best bosses are those that you cannot abuse with the guns, Ludwig comes to mind because of that very reason, he's super aggressive and you need to be too, you can't run away and fish for openings, you need to get in his face, Ludwig is an example of the game playing to its strengths and being amazing because of it. Maria was so easy to abuse parries with and I ended up killing her on my first try, she is forgettable in my mind to this very day because of this. Overall great video, I can tell you put a lot of thought into this. As someone who has been thinking about the flaws of this game for a very very long time, this gave me so much more to think about. Subbed If people want the strongest gameplay in the lineup, Sekiro is the go to, like you said.
The tedium of grinding can be mitigated to some extent by using Bold Hunter’s Marks.. which themselves cost resources. Warping to the dream isn’t necessary if you have BHMs available. Just a nitpick, the grinding always sucks.
The argument about the combat and exploration having different paces, and somehow that's a problem, is bizarre to me. There are so many great games that don't even attempt to reconcile the two. They are not two things i would ever think someone would desire that they match. Maybe i'm misunderstanding? Sounds like you're saying that any game that encourages agressive combat should have a certain type of level design? I can think of several pure action titles that have more souls-like level design. Or even open-world games with long bouts of slow exploration and agressive combat systems. Fromsoft level design is a highlight of all their games to me. I'm curious in what way you would modify Bloodborne's level design to get your desired effect? There has to be something i'm not grasping here.
A “problem” in this context is referring to contradictory gameplay mechanics. Part of what makes DS the lauded masterpiece it is, is that level and boss design are designed to be harmonious in play style - play the way that got you through the DS level, and you’ll find success against a DS boss. BB simply is not that way. Is it “bad”? Of course not, it only falls short of the mechanical harmony of DS, to quote myself, “dark souls level design is an effective teacher, but it only teaches dark souls play”. Since you asked, levels that reward the play style required in Boss fights would be more harmonious for BB combat. More timed or DPS-check encounters, less enemy groups, less ambushes, less traps - I’m just spitballing though, I’m not a game designer
@@Egotesticals ok, so you're talking more about the encounter and enemy design rather than the actual physical level/world design? It's more about the competency of teaching the player what the boss fights expect from them through the broader combat experience? If that's so, that isn't what i gathered from from what you said in the video at all. I was at work and listening in the background, so I may have misinterpreted. This makes much more sense, and although that's not something i'd ever care about enough to effect my personal enjoyment, i get your point. If i'm still not understanding correctly, clarify if you get around to it.
@@YeOldeMachine I think your interpretation is valid, I do sort of equate the encounter design and level design, despite them being obviously different. My point with this is basically that the encounter design and level design was lifted from DS1 and not updated for BB. Again, this isn't a "bad" thing, DS styled levels and encounters have grown to be the standard that most modern action/RPGs follow and rightly so. What I'm saying is that what made those encounters and levels such perfect tools for teaching the player how to survive in DS no longer applies in BB. Enemy and level design philosophy that encouraged patience, careful play and curiosity/exploration in DS does the same thing for BB but in BB the careful play and patience doesn't extended to the Boss fights, creating a dissonance between levels and the boss encounters. Some people love this constant change in rhythm and it's what makes BB unique in the FS line up and I'm not trying to argue that they shouldn't like it, I'm just pointing out that it's present and conflicts with some of the other design choices made in the game.
All of the problems you mention in the video don't seem like problems imo. The only issues I've found in the game is the healing, leveling, and the checkpoints or lamps not being able to be used as a resting place like the older games. The attributes in the game do not only determine what weapon will you play with. They also determine what play style you want. An arcane build plays extremely different from a strength build. And a bloodtinge is algo vastly different with weapons like rifle spear and Simon's Bowblade. But I understand your points and appreciate you took the time to show these problems, even though I don't find these actual problems.
Regarding grinding, I feel that every soulsborne game has had grinding as an intended part of play. Every game has new game cycles and every game has rnd. In fact, I argue that all of the games in fact have a lot of DNA from the Diablo series and that Bloodborne is the closest they ever got to going full Diablo 1 with randomized dungeons, fire and lightning as your forms of elemental damage, intrinsic damage modifiers for certain weapons vs certain foes and randomized bloodgems for even more rnd. In fact for myself, a pathological grinder who spends a good portion of every DS1 run in New Londo farming dark wraiths, I felt that Bloodborne was their most grind-as-a-central-part-of-the-game-concept game. In fact, if you ask me, their main failure with Bloodborne was to fail to make a proper procedural dungeon making system.
I love BloodBorne, it introduced me to, and made me a FromSoft fanatic. However, a lot of the base game bosses aren't good. They hadn't quite figured out how to properly do giant beast type enemies yet. The amygdalla and Yar'hargul bosses being the best examples. Lies of P is often compared to BloodBorne. It's bosses are head and shoulders better than base game BloodBorne's. Like... it isn't even close
I think your concept of "Bloodborne's intended experience" being "applying pressure and aggression" and anything that doesn't fit your definition of this "intended experience " is a negative is misguided. Bloodborne is not a hyperfocused experience, is it more focused than dark souls? Arguably. Does that mean that all build variety, playstyle variety, skill expression, player expression that doesn't service your perceived "intended experience" is a negative towards the game? It can be, if that's your opinion. Definitely not in my opinion. You can play Bloodborne calculated, looking for charged back attack openings and fishing for parries which you consider "passive and not intended". How do you know it's not intended, when the developers intentionally put those mechanics in the game? You presume removing the leveling system and removing consumables like blood vials would bring the game closer to your idea of "intended experience" yet completely disregard the punishment of death, horror survival aspects of the game which losing experience and lost of consumables add to fear of dying. "Conflicting messaging of how the game is meant to be played". Again you're fixated that's there's only one way to play the game. There are mechanics in Bloodborne that don't purely serve your "intended experience of aggression" and thank god they exist because the game is better for it. Is the game perfect? Perfection can't exist in subjective mediums, it can only be perfect in the eye of the beholder. Looking at a subjective medium objectively will always be a flawed process
I very much agree it is a flawed process, and I I probably wouldn’t do another analysis predicated on one perspective about the mechanics. The word “problem” is causing a lot of argument in the comments. Had i said “incongruous” or “contradictory”, there would be far less room for disagreement, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. Conversations around this particular game have a tendency to shift the goal posts whenever a flaw arises. I tried to focus my analysis parameters to alleviate that, at the cost of presenting a somewhat reductive viewpoint. I presented the “intended experience” as a focus on aggression because that is what most of the new (to BB) gameplay elements emphasize. Rallying, Bloodvials, boss poise, player movement, de-emphasized defensive options, faster but squishier bosses and neutered ranged options are just some of the ways FS has incentivized aggression in the player. Are there mechanics that present balance to this aggression? Absolutely and that’s fine, but there also mechanics that present contradictions or drawbacks that undercut that aggression. I am not saying these contradictions are necessarily “good” or “bad”. I am saying they are contradictions, if you personally find that grinding for BVs strikes a pleasant balance with the methodical level design, that’s your perspective and it’s totally valid. All that’s happening here is reframing my phrasing of “problem” into “balance”, turning a negative connotation into a positive one. We are all entitled to our opinions and selective phrasing and this video was never about trying to convince anyone the game is bad. I “fixated” as you say, on one playstyle because playstyle variety has been heavily streamlined in this game compared to previous FS titles. I speak about this at length in the video as to how this streamlining was achieved and how the inclusion of some legacy elements and exclusion of others results in a lack of meaningful playstyle variety but with all the old downsides of engaging with RPG elements. If you fundamentally disagree with my premise that BB more readily rewards aggression in the player with its updated mechanics, I’ll listen to your evidence.
I think if this video was generalised as "RPG elements in ARPGs can detract from the focus of action games without adding much value" and Bloodborne was used as one of the examples, while possibly being a bigger undertaking, would open that discussion in a much less controversial way. As an opinion piece without the objectivity. But as you said it's YT and it may not get as much engagement. The "intended experience" phrase is a killer, those RPG additions to the skeleton of the game add an incredible amount of time to development compared to having none of it, the devs wouldn't sink so much time and effort and consideration into these mechanisms if they didn't want engaging with the mechanics to be part of the experience. If you mean BB rewards aggression more than it DeS, DS1 and DS2 then yeah of course I agree. I'd also agree if ARPG had a spectrum those games would sit further towards the RPG side than BB. BB still has a cautious calculated side to both the level design and the boss fights though. If you play with pure aggression you die, the rally system won't save you. The rally system gives you a second option to healing after getting hit, burn through your consumables for a safer, bigger heal or get back in there and recover some for free through attacks though with risk. The blood vials being a non- replenishable consumable actually feed into the rally system being a more tempting option. I don't think It matters for the conversation but my opinion always was the time people spend grinding blood vials they could just be in there learning the fight. It's a balance of A and RPG, being good at the RPG elements (resource management with consumables and currencies in this case) compliments the A elements and the A elements (taking minimal damage via avoiding hits, killing fast, rally system) feed back into the RPG systems (more resources for leveling and gear improvements, don't have to buy consumables as much). Thank you for the reply I appreciate the discussion Edit: I haven't finished watching the video when I left those comments, I'm not sure if you believe the "flaws/problems" you discuss as something that should be removed or heavily altered or just pointed out as imperfections without solutions. Just out of curiosity, what do you personally feel.
I do appreciate the discourse, i’m really impressed by how many people in here are willing to engage with this analysis productively instead of just yelling at me which was kind of what I was prepared for. Personally? The only mechanic that I genuinely dislike is the finite Blood Vials but I honestly wouldn’t change a thing about Bloodborne. I think the game is enjoyable on its own and interesting as an early experiment from a legendary studio. It’s fun to look at BB and see what FS learned from the game, which elements they retained and which they omitted. We see a big upgrade in enemy and player speed in all of FS games after BB. Obviously Sekiro took streamlined RPG mechanics to new heights and even DS3 and ER are much faster and the combat higher stakes than DS1/2. I would love to see their next game be an expansion on the BB/Sekiro foundation, further rewarding precision/aggression and leaving RPG mechanics further behind, but that’s just my preference.
@@Egotesticals Agree with most of this comment but I doubt they will lessen the RPG mechanics. Sekiro always comes up somewhere in the top 3 in most people's rank of FS games and it has like no RPG mechanics, but Elden Ring is also usually on that top 3 (BB is usually there too, new ips>>>>>sequels) and it went deeper into the RPG direction. Even ER's biggest critics generally believe that it has the best build variety and use of its RPG mechanics out of the FS games, and it is the most popular FS game. I do believe ER has the beat build variety, but I would love and prefer for them to make another game more like sekiro that has fewer RPG mechanics, I just doubt they would.
39:02 it feels like every single criticism of a souls game is just met with get gud and skill issue rather than engaging with legitimate flaws. I have the Platinum for Bloodborne, Elden ring and DS3 love the games but man. Every single point here is arguably true, I haven’t replayed bloodborne since getting the plat because there’s no build variety and the opening is a straight 1 hour of the same thing every time. Meanwhile in ER and DS1-3 I can pick a different playstyle and weapon every time and still have a great experience.
On my base PS5 the load times are still much longer than in ER and DeS, and the fight against the lightning beast in the chalice dungeons is still laggy (among others)
So players only needed to wait 5 years, beat scalpers and get a different console than what it was originally designed for, and you STILL only get 30fps ... Bruh ... That's the Bloodborne excuses this video is talking about when other games that are much more detailed run at a stable 60.
A good move, but BB has so many more flaws. In addition to RPG problems, vials, lack of bloodstones, semi-functional lamps, loadings... (though I don't agree with the tutorial and parrying takes) - Lame blood gem system. +% DMG outclasses any other gem. If you are not stacking 3 +%dmg gems you lack damage and get nothing really useful in exchange. - Lame rune system comparing to the rings system in any DS or ER. - Cut "disguise" option. - Shotguns outclassed by pistols. - Some arcane hunter tools are worthless (and there is little of them). Oh, you leveled arcane to 50 and found phatasm shell? Here is your 100 arcane damage which practically does nothing. - Serrated weapon affiliation > any other (which are almost non present and hidden). - Most transitional attacks are too slow and thus worthless. Combine with the previous and don't wonder why the saw-cleaver is the only weapon you really need. - NPC enemies are too annoying, with bloated HP and infinite bullets. - Armor is mostly cosmetic. It should not. - No sprinting while target is locked. DS2 had that. - No respec lol. - Horrible camera work on big enemies. - Killing creepers doesn't add stones to your inventory automatically. - No automatic item provision from stock upon death. - Forced NG+. - Severe lack of content, the game is too short, the story was cut. Almost half of the game's content is optional. Mensis Nightmare is half done. - Some non-sensical level design choices like the ability to get to the Brain through a locked door, cut variety of how you get to the Cathedral ward, the shortcut after Paarl etc. - Horrible run backs and lack of additional checkpoints. The game forgets it isn't Demon's Souls anymore. A lamp near Logarius? Any time! - Can't see blood echoes requirements for the next level in the status menu. - Solid echoes on NG+... don't scale. - Chalice dungeons are super boring, yet they hide some pretty bosses. - PvP broken. - Some fake lights here and there. - Unskippable logos. It is still one of the best From's creations, but everyone have to admit: BB is not just overrated, it is a MESS. A beautiful one, but a mess. If they ever re-issue the game, don't even try wihtout fixing at least most of the above. Or I would prefer an actual sequel with all the improvements.
Amazing analysis; I concur with every point. I'm really curious, did you also think about solutions to these problems? I've especially spent a lot of time recently thinking about the RPG mechanics, and how they could have designed them in a different way without going down the sekiro path.
dangitjm made quite a few similar points about how the rpg elements arent very compatible with the rest of the game in his a pc port is not enough video
I don't wanna be that guy, but the background music is way too loud and distracting Edit: Regarding the actual content of the video, though, I do think that you are overlooking the survival horror aspects of Bloodborne. Because sure, Bloodborne does reward aggression, but only up to a certain point. If you are greedy or impatient, or up against a foe that does not die in a few hits (like some NPC fights), then blind aggression is punished heavily, and I don't think that this is at odds with the core gameplay intent of Bloodborne. Because you're not Doom Guy; you're not expected to blindly rush in like a speedrunner to rip and tear through hordes of demons without ever slowing down. Bloodborne is a survival horror game just as much as it's an action RPG. From the very beginning, the whole atmosphere and presentation of the game are intense and suspenseful, leaving the player to fend for themselves, more like any other modern FromSoftware game. To me, at least, the player is not supposed to be this relentless killing machine from the very start. You're more like a wolf that's backed into a corner, afraid and wary, and forced to lash out. And from that perspective, a lot of the game mechanics mentioned make a lot more sense. There is constant dread because you can run out of crucial consumables, and in every combat encounter, there is this inner conflict between rushing in and risking it all or backing away to use blood vials or parry and attack. And I do think that this conflict is intentional and fits the game very well. The player has to overcome this conflict and learn how and when to be be agressive.
bb is a badly design survival horror game compared to the industry greats by your logic. this is frankly kind of a cop out argument to avoid admitting the game has quite a few flaws, which the bb fanbase especially has a problem admitting and accepting basic critique. most enemies dont have poise (the ones that dont comprise atleast 80% of the games areas) which means that u can walk up to most enemies and spam R1 till theyy stop moving, then u get to bosses and heavy enemies and npc fights and then that stuff goes out the window. the constant "dread" youre talking about is called annoyance, not dread imo, actual survival horror games do that far better and feels actually dreadful. the bloodvial system is an even worse version of demons souls grass system. lets not claim its there for survival horror elements, hell i was more afraid of exploring in ds1 than i was in bb.
I agree with everything. I beat the game on ng+10, got platinum excetera. Still for as much I liked the game, I still see so many problems in it and I'm speechless when I see fanboys elevating this game as undisputed masterpiece. It's not. It has a lot of problems in literally every department. Still overall I liked it but far from be perfect,not a masterpiece.
Your writing and the quality of analysis were the best part of the video, to the point that I was consciously staying for them prior to you bringing them up at the end. With regards to the points you made, they are wel- constructed arguments, yet I disagree with most of them to some degree or another anyway, and this is primarily because of a single pair of critical assumptions you seem to make, which I don't find persuasive: (1) That the dynamics created by any single mechanic in a game encourage a specific playstyle, while discouraging others. The playstyle encouraged, or spectrum of playstyles made viable in a game are determined by all of that game's mechanics in aggregate, including how they do and do not interact with each other. So I don't think we can say that rally encourages an aggressive total playstyle, and blood vials encourage a cautious total playstyle, therefore putting them at odds. Rather, it's that From's design choice was to include both rally and blood vials, and the playstyle their game encourages you to adopt is one that accounts for the existence of both of these and the tradeoffs between them (ex. short time window and high risk for rally, limited health regain from rally, lack of damage output from use of blood vials, finiteness of blood vials, risks associated with attempts to disengage and re-engage to make use of blood vials, etc.). We can still say that two mechanics pull against each other in some respect or another, but not that any single mechanic instructs the player to adopt a certain playstyle, and any other one encourages them to adopt a different one. This mistake is similar imo, to the silliness in the Sekiro discourse, where people claim the game is intended to be all about parrying, just because parrying is one among its several relatively potent and useful mechanics. Of course, these same people also say Sekiro is the hardest game ever, because they handicap themselves needlessly by putting all their eggs into parrying, rather than adapting a style of play encouraged by the totality of the game's mechanics. (2) Relatedly, you seem to assume that any two mechanics pulling the player in opposite directions is necessarily a bad thing, a design flaw. Why should it be? The pushes and pulls between conflicting incentives and incentive structures may be part of the designer's intended experience for the player. Pairings like this may also be built-in counterbalances to each other, to stop the natural, logical, or optimal approaches to play from going "too far" in one direction or the other for the designer's vision, and instead keep them within an intended sweet spot range. Like, "Okay, we want you to be aggressive, but we don't want this to play like an all-out, wreckless brute force, hack-and-slash spamming aggression game. We want this to be a fast-paced game where your innumerable split-second decisions dangle the allure of aggression at you if only you can execute on it with precision, while you are punished if you let it make you reckless. How can we tweak the whole constellation of mechanics to achieve that? Hmm, how about high damage from enemies relative to player health? Stamina limitations? Finite healing? A rally mechanic that opens the risk of taking further damage while trying to use it?" This applies to your point regarding methodical exploration versus frenzied, fast-paced combat as well. There is no contradiction there; it's just a design choice. A game that plays out as cautious, wary, exploration of ominous environments, punctuated by abrupt outbreaks of fast-paced, high-stakes violence is a legitimate vision. From Software seems to in general prefer designing games with distinct ebbs and flows to their pacing, rather than games with all vectors pointed in the same direction at all times, so that they're tuned up to provide and encourage a single experience and rhythm at all times. For an examples of the latter type of design, see games like the Dragonball Z Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi series' or probably other DBZ published by Bandai Namco (those 6 are just the ones I've played). For me, the big, no-holds barred, dramatic throwdowns against bosses are enhanced as experiences specifically by the way their contrast with the surrounding gameplay accentuates them as climaxes in the gameplay loop. If most or all of the gameplay leading up to the bosses was similarly fast-paced and aggressive, that would be a legitimate design choice too, and may or may not be enjoyable for players, but it certainly wouldn't feel like the Bloodborne we love, and the Bloodborne Miyazaki & co. apparently intended us to experience. There is one minor point that I would say "skill issue" on, but for substantive reasons. There's a point in the vid when you say that most of Bloodborne is designed around baiting enemies out to fight one-on-one like in Dark Souls, which clashes with BB's intended playstyle, etc. Even though I think its okay for Bloodborne to include cautious and methodical aspects to its gameplay (as mentioned above), I nonetheless also think that your statement there significantly oversells the degree to which it does so.To the contrary, I would say that almost NONE of Bloodborne is designed to encourage or require the player to lure and bait enemies for one-on-one combat. The large swarms of enemies that easily aggro simultaneously, the frequent inclusion of ranged attackers and highly mobile dogs in enemy formations, the lowered stamina requirements for attacking and dodging, the rapidity of the healing, the speed and nimbless of the hunter's step-dodge and rolling, the speed of the hunter's attacks, the gun parry, the crowd control attacks, and the time it takes to fully charge a backstab all DISCOURAGE adopting a "try fighting one at a time" playstyle. They push a player to get out of that Dark Souls comfort zone, and throw themselves into the midst of swarms and react to threats in real time, as quick-witted, flexible, and agile hunters, rather than hanging back and calculating a solution to the puzzle of the enemy array. That way of play is much more viable in Bloodborne than in previous games, and much more efficient in Bloodborne than the baiting and luring method. It requires a certain measure of skill to pull off, sure, but the aforementioned mechanical and balancing choices encourage the player to acquire that level of skill. Now, I didn't have that skill when I first played BB either, and did go through at least some parts of it by trying to bait and lure enemies into one-on-one combat, but this was extremely suboptimal and unnecessarily time-consuming, given the tools available, so I naturally saw myself shedding these habits, and became more comfortable with the differing player constraints and design philosophy of BB compared to DS1 and DS2.
I like to be open minded and judge things fairly. As he does in this video and I appreciate that. But I disagree with the disliking of level vs boss design. In my opinion, the fact that you have to progress through the level slowly and methodically, but then when you get to a fight, you have to be a ruthless animal is the beauty of the game. I’m new to the whole of the Frome software games. I was brought to it by Elden Ring and I loved Elden Ring so much so that now I want to play every game and I’m on Bloodborne now and it’s a breath of fresh air. In fact, I love this game so much I dug my PS4 out of the closet. Bought the digital version download it played it loved it so much. I bought a disk version just in case the Internet disappears one day.
I think you raise a lot of valid point about the rpg mechanica of bloodborne that i often feel myself, however i think youre also missing some other important points. What the rpg mechanics contribute to bloodborne is a way to balance the game very naturally and make a good difficulty curve. By giving you the choice you can make a custom playstyle that suits your skills and makes up for your weaknesses. If you never use visceral attacks there's no need to level up skill and you can focus the other attack stats, or if you never use guns much dont bother with bloodtinge. If a boss is giving you trouble upgrade your vit and stamina. By having an upgrade system the player basically has full control of the difficulty as they can grind to a level where the game feels comfortable. Bloodborne has a diverse set of weapons that can all be overpowered in their own right, so the devs force you to make a choice otherwise you would have the perfect tool for every situation. They all play and feel vastly different and some will align more with your playstyle than others, the rpg mechanics act as way to make the weapons feel like they're truly your own and give you power over your playstyle. Is it perfect? DEFINITELY NOT. you brought up a lot of the reasons why and most of them could have been solved with a simple re-speccing mechanic. And bloodgems are a terrible implemented feature that could have been cool.
I think you make a good point and the RPG mechanics do more than just provide choice/playstyle variety. It's challenging to talk about game mechanics from a perspective of difficulty, since difficulty is completely subjective but RPG elements do allow players to dictate their own difficulty curve, to some extent. I didn't speak at length about the difficulty curve in BB because it isn't necessarily a flaw or even objectively measurable. My point in including RPG elements in this video was that the feature doesn't provide playstyle variety and choice, as well as deleting them would. To your point, I could have included that choice is only half of the function of those mechanics.
Sekiro is still peak souls type combat, because despite how aggressive Bloodborne is trying to be, patience and perfect timing is still the core of all souls games and Sekiro rewards you for your clam reactions and focus. In Bloodborne, althought healing through combat is a genius, innovative idea, it still punishes the player for attempting to regain most your hp since the enemy animations tend to have priority after your second light attack regardless of how little armor you're wearing. It feels like bait more than anything at times. Bloodborne is still fantastic, but theres some idiosyncrasies with how Bloodborne wants you to play vs the optimal way to see results.
Grinding for bloodvials isnt an issue of you do some of the chalice dungeons, buy some instead of leveling up (highly recommended) or simply is good at the game. Another option is to do co-op or PvP and spend those blood echoes on vials. Personally I think I only had to farm 1 or 2 hours which was during my first playthrough back in 2015 when I wasnt familiar with the combat system yet. Which farming forces you to learn by repetition.
Ok, i like the video, and it have ALOT i agree with, but i have immediate problems with it :) You took one consept - COMBAT and extrapolate it on both combat and exploration. I can see from where you coming from, but im not so sure you can say so authoritatively you know what intended expierience is for an exploration part of the game. You can speculate, you can express your own feelings about how well this two aspects fits in the game, but by no means you can so confidently say "if combat are more agressive, exploration should be agressive coz it's intended expierience" it' more than possible From made combat fast and agressive as intended expierience and exploration more methodical as intended expieriecne. I have zero idea why someone shouldn't choose such a combination of dinamics. Severance Blade of Darkness immediately comes to mind. It's a game with exactly slow methodical movement through the level, almoust survival horror-like, but combat is frantic, fast and extremely deadly. So, from my perspective huge portion of the video is constructed on top of a false premise. To not be so negative, i just must compliment that part about how all bosses in DS1 is not just a stron enemy, but continuation of a level. This is something so rareley talked about and the part i missing the most in later games. After DS2 bosses are just separated challenge and not part of the level.
I do not believe that videos such as these prevent any stagnation over at From Software. Bloodborne came out ten years ago and they have not repeated the same experiment since then but rather took what worked and experimented further. It is, however, useful for aspiring game designers to help them understand what works and what doesn't, and more important why.
I can't believe you would make an entire video about the overlooked problems of Bloodborne and not talk about its archaic multiplayer and network system. I understand your point for this vid is intended experience so the majority of your point was the intended experience is aggression. But still! Yes, its a known From Software problem, but having to do an entire level twice (with your world, then your friends world) is fucking mind boggling, not to mention all the other bullshittery that comes with its network system. I've plated bloodborne, sekiro and I'm a From fanboy, but I'd make my own video about all of From's game flaws too, but its only because I love them so much.
Hey great video! Tbh yeah i think the rpg elements of leveling just held back this game just like you said in the vid. And Sekiro just proves how getting rid of it opened up for more in depth fighting mechanics. But small nit pick on the vid. Your voice was very quiet compared to the background music which made it hard to listen to
The only time I really want to make a TH-cam video is to make a video exactly like this. The cult around this game makes me suspect all these people legitimately made some type of bargain with an eldritch deity.
Only recently playing Bloodborne after engaging with all of dark souls was a bit strange to me. A lot of people I am friends with and people I respect a lot told me bloodborne was the best thing since toilet paper. I wasn't let down with how good it was but I was dissapointed with how hyped up it was and how much less it offered than any of the dark souls games I am into.
Great video, the audio balance is a bit off. Your voice tends to be on the quiet side which leads me to increase the volume, and the montage music tends to be way too loud in comparison. Borderline jump scare loudness.
I really appreciate this take. It's helped me better understand my issue with the rally system. I've always had my gripes but wasn't quite sure what exactly it was. I don't think I've ever heard someone mention the inherent strength of blood vials detracting from the use of rally. I am fundamentally a more risk adverse person, so after several misguided pushes to heal with rally resulting in my dying I avoided the rally system. I committed to a slower more dark souls approach of learning the boss and reducing my mistakes so I could conserve blood vials. And yeah that is directly at odds with what from soft wants you to do. I thought maybe I was just hard headed and not playing the game the right way, but no rally is flawed, big time. People regularly praise this game shamelessly, but I've always felt that for its healing system alone (and having to grind) it doesn't deserve the title of from softs magnum opus.
I heavily disagree with your second point about the relation of bosses to their areas in this game, which i think comes at odds about lore importance in the beginning. The themes of this game and the plot points are what drive it in comparison to dark souls more disparite theming. Not to say that this game isnt vague as hell as well, but some boss fights have part of there enjoyment from understanding the narrative up until the point of the boss. I find micolash to not be an entirely mechanically satisfying fight, but it serves as a rare point in fromsoftwares catalog where they chose to base a boss fight around character first, and built the mechanics around that instead of their usual mechanical framing of moveset first lore in an item you get after. Your point that bloodbornes inability to frame bossfights around the mechanics of the level doesnt make sense when paired to your other rruthful point of bloodborne being a build restrictive game. Since there is a limited build variety of fast or very fast in this game, bosses that are based around combat and game mechanics and not story are also structured to be mechanically similar to that very narrow combat system. You act like this is an oversight or flaw in the game, but it feels very intentional to me as a player. The way i see it, and this is all my opinion i could be talking unintelligible nonsense, bloodborne is relegated to two boss archetypes: the speedy combat boss that pairs well with the games playstyle, and the boss that serves the narrative and aesthetic appeal of the level. Both are equally important to this game, as bloodborne is as much about its world feel as it is about its game feel, if that makes sense. If you have a boss that fully reflects the buildup of a level on an aesthetic and structural level like in dark souls, then that gets rid of the mystery and intrigue of the boss fight that bloodborne provokes in many of its bosses. I feel that in bloodborne, if a boss clashes with the design of the level preceding it, its done in an intentional way that makes me want to investigate why it contrasts to the level so hard, what is the story here, what clues about this being the real end point to what led to it were strewn about the level that i was ignorant of? When i beat a boss like that in bloodborne, it makes me feel like i want to go back through a level to see whst i can piece together, and it makes new playthroughs more enjoyable as i get to discover things i didnt see before, or see things differently with the context of the boss. From completely capitilized on the unknown element that levels in dark souls had, like what was waiting inside sens fortress or past the depths, and completely turned it on its head with bloodborne. Its an aesthetic and narrative reversal of their preceding game, while also elmboldening the elements of their previous game even more. Maybe im too up froms ass, and i am still able to agree with many of the other points of your video, but i cant agree with you on that. Also im only halfwsy through the video so maybe you end up making my stream of consciousness rant completely redundant by the end of it 😂😂😂 im pretty impatient i guess. hopefully whoever reads this will understand my points to some degree
The thing about this video is that everybody already knows what the problems are but the game is so good you forget about it, they become part of the experience
This is correct. For me, for example first the blood vial thing seems like a pain, but it actually fits the theme of the narrative and isn't actually that much of a chore
@@boredomkiller99 What problem specifically would make it "better"? most of the problems are due to the game being a decade old and the rest that he mentioned about the grinding, healing, etc.. would basically just make the game easier
When it comes to the rallying system, personally, its not reliable at all. A majority of enemies and bosses in Bloodborne are too aggressive and hard to stagger to take advantage of the rallying. The withering of the portion of the healthbar not being permanent and going away in my opinion is also not a good design choice for enforcing aggression or smart play. Because the withered portion goes away quickly it can reinforce a bad habit where players just react to taking damage by spamming R1 only to get more damage back and force you to take more blood vials.
While I think Bloodborne is awesome if it was made by FS today it’d be definitely more fluid, even more intelligently designed and have many QoL features that we see in DS3, Sekiro and ER
Haven’t watched the entire video yet but the points about the leveling and weapon requirements I totally agree with. The Sekiro comparison of less RPG mechanics giving more variety potential for every player each play through is spot on.
A great video and all of your points are valid, BUT, you have to look at the bigger picture, a video is rarely successful when it's built from scratch and From Software have perfected the art of building on top of their previous games, you don't know how hard it is to build a new system and implemented into a game, i'm glad we have all the souls games, they're some of the rarest masterpieces on modern gaming, and they wouldn't have existed (or at least took way longer) had From Software built all new systems from scratch for every new game.
Probably a bad take, I think lifegems can actually help make gameplay in DS2 more strategic in addition to Estus use relies wholly on the fact that ADP is a stat at all. I can kind of see what the devs were probably going for. Either that or it's just my interpretation. That doesn't justify the garbage stat, and the fact that many points are wasted going into it just for the movement in the game to be bearable. This leads me to my next idea that Bloodborne's healing system works on its own tandem system, albeit not tied to stats. Bloodborne tries to do its own thing when it comes to being strategic when employing its use of its healing systems. Sure you have gems you can socket into your weapons to make them be able to heal as a minor way to increase healing. The next step up is of course the blood vials. In a way, as the game leans more into its 'horror' elements, I think it takes some inspiration from classic games like Resident Evil where item and resource management. Blood vials are akin to grasses or flowers or medkits, they're a finite resource. This isn't done to actually force you to conserve your uses of them. They're free all throughout the game when you kill most enemies. They don't automatically refill just because, they refill because you're more than likely to have a huge stockpile in your storage. This is to say, mostly if you are an expert at your 'skill' as a hunter, so to speak, the rally system is the final step in how Bloodborne goes about healing as a mechanic. With the abundance of blood vials, I don't think Bloodborne translates its style of healing in its moment to moment gameplay. The blood vials are supposed to be a last resort, when you're on you're last leg, out of stamina and near death. When you're not trying to rely on solely on blood vials and play the game in the style that is truly the opposite of the Souls games, it's easier to understand how the game wants you to play it. The rallying system forces you to be aggressive to the point where you're recovering your health at a rate in which you'd likely hardly need to use them. Blood vials are finite because they're not the main focus of the game's healing. It plays into the lore of the hunt and the bloodlust that overcomes hunters. The blood they hack out of all the beasts is the exact kind of blood as in blood vials. The more they kill, the more they get lost in the in their own actions. That's why attacking with so much ferocity is what 'revives' the player character and keeps them going in the fight. If the main point of the game IS aggression, then Bloodborne tries its damndest to subvert the standard Estus usage and even lifegems entirely. I'm in the middle of a BL4 run and personally I don't use blood vials unless I have to. They're kind of useless unless used as an aid. The rally system suffices when I'm literally going to die in one or two hits anyway. This could have been made better if they probably limited how many vials you're able to carry. A cap of probably 10 or less would have made the game more intense, but perhaps also have reinforced its rallying system to a greater extent. Making rallying last potentially longer or heal more would have probably given more incentive to use it. It may all just be personal conjecture, but I do try to appreciate the inner workings of these games. I think game mechanics being justified in the story or lore of a game is fascinating. The way FromSoft pulls it off is ridiculous considering how consistent they've been with that exact thing. It may not work, but I think it can be explained as to why it's there, even if it's not optimized well. That could be the case here in that the game tries to compromise too much with what came before, while also trying to carry its subversive motif.
I never understood the complaints about ADP in DS2, it's so massively overexaggerated. The only REAL issue with the stat is that it isn't explained very well in-game (which isn't specific to the stat, a lot of things in these games suffer from this), but once you know what it does, you'll be finished levelling it within hours, if not minutes, you only need like 18-24 at most. I find the 60 vigor "mandate" of Elden Ring MUCH worse for several reasons. Another thing to add is that people say that the game is unplayable without ADP, but there are several ways to mitigate or avoid damage entirely without even touching the stat, like strafing, outspacing, blocking, or just rolling with better timing and direction. This is one reason that the obscene vigor tax of ER is worse, you can't just stop being 1-2 shot if you didn't level the stat a lot. If you didn't level ADP, you still had a multitude of perfectly viable options to avoid damage.
@@YEY0806 While it's true that the effect of *agility* is somewhat explained ingame, the tooltip for ADP isn't very helpful, and it could've been a little more specific that agility has breakpoints for s. It also doesn't imply that it makes using items faster, though that's not a huge deal. The main issue is that you need to dig for a tooltip hidden among the dozens of stats in the menus in order to find it, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the tooltip for ADP simply said that it makes dodging easier, rather than agility.
@chaoskiller6084 I mean, that's part of the staple of these games. Not everything is explained to you. Besides, why would ADP need to uniquely explain the breakpoint for each stat investment when other stats don't do the same. Fromsoft have always wanted to inspire communication and sharing of discoveries between fans of these games with not just lore but also with game mechanics, and it comes with trail and error. It's part of why these games continue to be talked about and played years after being released. There was a time when people thought that Resistance in DS1 was a useful stat
I hate the blood vial system too, but id recomment giving the game a go if you still have it. Especially if you have the dlc, you wont regret playing the game all the way through.@@BiggRich95
People complain when all souls are copies reskinned. People complain when the game is different, can’t satisfy them all. I will say if it sucks for you thats because you suck. Blood vials makes sense from a lore perspective and you can always heal your lost health by hitting enemies right back.
Expected some different stuff to come up, but I guess my issues with stuff like Bloodborne and MGR do tend to be weirdly unique to myself. Maybe I'll have to make a Bloodborne critique myself sometime lol
Or how the more slower nature of trick weapon transformations conflicts with a rally system that rewards light attack spam especially considering how a lot of enemies get hyper armor when they jump away, repetitive and reskinned enemies, little to no weapon variety for arcane/bloodtinge builds - yeah bloodborne is quality but also has a lot of problems.
Just found this video and I’m sure you’ve put out more things since but I thought it was a very well done video, good audio and such. Maybe would’ve more clearly defined your points you were to make earlier but other than that it was very professional and if I like your next video I watch I’m subscribing for sure.
My biggest gripe with it was its abysmal performance, barely hitting 30fps with duplicate frames at 900p with no anti aliasing on the *PS4 pro*. It sucked so god damn hard i refunded the game. Loved every other From Soft game, played them all on PC, but this was just unacceptable.
That was a pretty lengthy video so it did take a good clip to get through. That said I do appreciate the honesty on most of your points and a lot of the critiques. Its not a review as you stated many times so I do feel the comparisons you wanted to make to Sekieo would have been warranted. Your intent would have been to show the players with rose tinted glasses what would have been better. I haven't finished Bloodborne, I'm pretty far in but as you pointed out here there are a few things that don't jive well with me. The way you get bloodviles being one especially how they randomly balloon in price later in the game. And the second is definitely the way builds are restrictive though not as diverse as DS or ER. I run into that problem for most RPG's since very few of them cater to my desired play style. Typically A High DPS glass Cannon that is nimble and hits hard at mid and close range (with a longer ranged option). Bloodborne's speed is at odds with this idea both for the player and the enemies. I initially put lots of points into blood tinge and started with the threaded cane, going for my speedy and midrange play style. I was heavily disappointed in what little damage the bullets do, or how quickly they ran out. Not a problem in the beginner area but heavily annoying when they strop dropping in later areas. As for how the level design doesn't match the constant aggression idea i think you are spot on. Although I have difficulties imagining what that would look like... Some form of ghoul infested place where they constantly chase and attack you? The combat struggle when dealing with multiple opponents so i couldn't see that gameplay loop being a core feature. That about sums up my thoughts on your video and this game. Thanks
I dont really have any wild ideas about a different level structure, and to reiterate, I think the default DS level design is perfectly fine. I brought up that comparison to show how the level design and encounter type are lauded for being so harmonious in DS but in the BB none of those same compliments apply. A good point to illustrate what I meant would be that Sekiro lays out many of it's combat encounters so you are encouraged to use the stealth tools to secure the 1v1s in which the combat really shines. Sekiro enemy layout and levels are not similar to DS levels because the tools available to the player are so different. Thanks for watching the video!
@Egotesticals Okay that makes it more clean for me now. From a mechanical level Sekiro has stealthing and the vertically to go around the level and reposition for your one v one. DS teaches you about hiding enemies and traps early teaching you to explore cautiously and to usually have a shield out in the landscape. Makes sense in both. Bloodborne teaches you that enemies do hide and their are traps as well... But speeding through the level nor being aggressive helps with either. Gotcha. I wanted to play BB to find out why so many loved it, but it's honestly not my cup of tea. Those hiding enemies later on just become jump scares and later on I literally refused to play BB at night because of it 😂😂😅. Probably the most stressful game I have ever played
I really enjoyed your video and your points, your writing is mostly quite solid, nicely done! However, I'd appreciate a bit more attention with: 1. Music in the background while you're speaking needs to be more neutral in tone, or else don't any music at all when speaking, or keep it very very low. 2. There's some really LOUD audio transitions particularly when addressing points from other people, I think this really hurts the viewing experience. I'd say you have really good voice for listening for long amounts of time, so keep your videos a bit more pleasant to watch in regards to audio. That aside I throughouly enjoyed your points, I've subscribed and I'm looking forward to hearing more.
Some of the cryptic bs should be a hit on the game. The disappointment of beating bsb to get to ......a dead end. The entrance to the dlcs is ridiculous. The place with the dolls cloths.
Fair point. It's easily one of my favourite games ever and yet I dislike the Forbidden Woods for the same reason I dislike most of Elden Ring. Don't give me wide open spaces where avoiding the enemies is easy, essentially making them optional. I should have to go THROUGH every. single. enemy. Or it's essentially a pointless running simulator which looks nice.
Damn, this video pleasantly surprised me, especially because the last video I saw of someone talking about why BloodBorne’s bad… was itself pretty bad. I honestly agreed with most of your takes and this video opened my eyes to some problems I’ve never thought about before, so I don’t really have anything to say other than good job!
The healing can be argued, I don’t think it’s so black and white. Bloodborne wants to promote the rally system it wants you to be aggressive, but it also doesn’t want you to feel forced to play this way. Hence the point of blood vials. The reason vials are finite is because they want you to eventually use the rally system. Basically, their intent was, “hey we have a new healing system and it wants you to be much more aggressive, but don’t feel forced to use this right away, we’ll give you blood vials to compensate. But if you don’t eventually learn the game and use the rally system, you’ll be punished for using too many blood vials.”
The funny thing is blood vials are so heavily dropped and easily purchased that they end up being much easier to abuse (with the 20 capacity) than the more limited estus flask anyway.
@@fjkebhnfdnsjkb7762that is the problem, you are likely to stock up on vials killing mooks but then waste them all on bosses trying to learn them. So you basically spend most of the time thriving or starving on healing
Bold hunters mark teleports you back to the lamp you first spawn in -_- I used it so many times while farming to reset the area without having to double warp
![เปิด อาณาจักร หมื่นล้าน "สาระตั้ม" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3XE0nPF4YkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Late to this, but the blood vial thing always annoyed me. I agree with the argument I see from some here that blood vials ARE scattered around the level so you don't lose that many while progressing through a level, but if you're stuck on a fight, there is nothing worse than having to break the flow of it just to go get blood vials. I had to do this for the bastard that is the Crow of Cainhurst because his gun takes like half your health
That’s interesting. When I first played Bloodborne I never thought about blood vials as inventory for a while because I played conservatively. If I couldn’t make it past a segment or boss under 5 vials I would just die and restart so I never ran out of vials on my first playthrough. Then on a second playthrough I wanted to rush through the game so I was a lot more liberal with using them and I found out “oh shit yeah you can run out of these”. I always preferred the vial system over any other health system in souls-likes because you weren’t limited to a set number on a single life since you could always get more during.
@@SLRsquared The bloodvial farming & having to go back to the hunter's dream to travel to anywhere else are my only complaints. I still think it's amazing & it's my favorite game & what got me into Fromsoft games this past winter. I'm actually on my 2nd playthrough of it, rn & I wanna platinum it.
i just buy a shi ton in the beginning. sell the doll set, buy vials, done for rest of game
I wouldn't mind it, were they affordable at the store. Was so annoyed when i realised the price of vials & quicksilver bullets increases as you progress
@@SLRsquared I think the issues can be easily solved by having you always respawn with 20 but still being able to get extras as loot drops if you don’t have the max amount
I like how this video isn't just a hating video, you clearly enjoy the game, you aren't one of those salty people that just spouts insults, you recognize the game is good but you recognize it has flaws as well.
Rare video thats neither mindless glazing or mindless hating.
My take is that this game came out before its time. With more knowledge and better technology, this game could be nigh perfect. With bosses like Elden Rings remembrance line-up, smooth 60 fps minor quality of life stuff and probably better chalice dungeons.
@@Mr.Starlight_gamingElden ring is straight trash.
Pull your tongue out.
Not a fan of the thumbnail claiming it’s “overrated”.
The only problem with Bloodborne is that it ends
too short
and its shitty bosses, and its shitt dungeons, and its shitty rpg design, and its shitty weapon balance, and its shitty parry strength, and its shitty stat distribution, and its shitty 2nd half, and its shitty recycled atmosphere, hot take i know, but frankly bbs regurgitated and copy pasted brown and black castles, cobblestone roads, coffins, gravestones and carriages got very old and repetitive 10 hours in.
Most mentally stable Bloodborne hater
@@flamingmanure thank you. I thought I was the only one.
Funny to find another survivor. The only time the Dork Souls Fandom takes Miyazakis dick out of their mouths to go outside was to come attack me because I criticized this game.
@@flamingmanure good lord bro, you’re seriously lacking some brain cells nothing more to say really
my main problem is how items get more expensive the more you progress, just removing that essentially fixes the issues i have with the game
it literally only exists to make you waste time grinding for consumables
I got through the entire game using only the Saw Cleaver and Ludwig's Holy Blade. I didn't even have to buy upgrade materials, I just used the ones I found in the environment.
The biggest problems in fromsoft games is the community won’t let you criticize the current game until it’s replaced. Even clear issues are just justified with “skill issue” then years later it’s admission
That's because the games are just trash for normies, I have a sneaking suspicion that the get good crowd never played ninja gaiden, and at this point the company and its shills lie right to your face, my favorite one being "Armored Core Six is not a souls game." That one costed them a die hard fan since the PS2 era.
@TRSOE If the games asked to develop actual skills no one whould play them.
@@SoftBoiledArtyeah i remember when i first played souls acting like it was a challenge to play it but i realized that none of the games are hard they create artificial difficulty most of the time once you can role properly and know when to attack its easy only exception is elden ring but thats only because its so insanely fast
Other way around. When a game comes out fans criticise it, then when the next one comes out ppl criticise it and put the older titles on a pedestal. Same for DLC's.
People loved Bloodborne at release, but not to the feverish level they do now.
@@TRSOEThey also never played Nioh 1 & 2, which improved upon the “Soulslike” design in two games what FromSoftware hasn’t been able to do in over a decade.
Like you, I'm someone else who loves Bloodborne, but also has a LOT of problems with it, mostly gameplay oriented. Problems which I'm going to list now; it'll be LOOOOONG, so whoever decides to read through this, I'm honored. While your video focused almost exclusively on the player's end, I will be adding a bit more on what the player faces and things that are a mix of both:
1. WAAAY too many options and upgrade materials after Central Yharnam. I'm not talking about difficulty in exploring and the potential of getting lost - those are actually positives for me - but that this design choice brings such incredible potential for gameplay imbalance, all of it to the player's immense favor. Despite the 'potential', this is not entirely hypothetical, as it happened to me on my first playthrough without me intending it to. Do you know how stupidly easy it is to upgrade your weapon to +6 before facing Vicar Amelia? To upgrade a weapon 2 thirds of the way before facing the boss that marks the end of only the first third of main story progression? Just explore a little and you'll be there, because there are 23 (if not more, wikis are iffy about counting Wandering Nightmare drops) scattered Twin Blood Stone Shards between Cathedral Ward, Hemwick, and Yahar'gul, not counting enemy drops and Chalice Dungeons. Oh right, on top of the insanely easy way to upgrade your weapon to over halfway, it's insanely easy to overlevel yourself between all of these options as well. Beyond the overworld locations, the game encourages you to interact with the chalice dungeons, which means more levels, but also more blood gems to REALLY break the game without you realizing it. In my opinion, it's more egregious here than in Elden Ring because apart from Bloodborne being a smaller, tighter, and more linear game, ER has more stats to put points into and reasons to do so, and the amount of runes the enemies drop is much better tweaked to take its open-ended nature into account.
To add to this, late game upgrade materials are excessively scarce. Unless you want to grind for hours or go to NG+, you'll be getting only 2 or 3 weapons to a somewhat appropriate level. You can't even buy Chunks with Blood Echoes. Why? Not to mention that they cost 20 Insight per piece, despite Twins costing only 2.
2. The stats are utterly imbalanced in their effectiveness. Skill is almost inherently superior to Strength due to visceral damage; stamina is SLOW to upgrade, especially harmful in a game like BB, and there is only one - pretty weak - option to boost stamina recovery; Arcane is just plain weak, and while fun is valid subjective reason, objectively you're better off doing anything else.
3. Everything regarding viscerals is thematically cool and mechanically BUSTED. Parrying is easier than ever, a singular stat and several Caryll Runes can further boost it to insane degrees, and between the game's unbalanced design and all the options it provides you (like Beast Blood Pellets), limb breaks and chain staggers via limb breaks are easy to achieve. Again, personal experience from my first playthrough; Amelia and Paarl were an absolute joke.
4. Enemy design and encounters overall get progressively more boring as you go further in. Again, thematically cool. Mechanically? Not so much. Imo, the best enemies in the game are found in the early areas, like Executioners, Werewolves, Chapel Giants, Mad Ones, and Snatchers. What interesting enemies do the mid and late game offer? Mergo's Chief Attendants? You mean, 60% discount Executioners. Large Viper Pits? Time to play Strafe Simulator or get stun-bitten (and poisoned) to death.The DLC falls into the same trap, unfortunately. Old Hunters and Nightmare Executioners are amazing, but the Patients and Fishmen are far too basic to be as prevalent as they are. Even the more fun enemies get fumbled in some way. Shark Giants are appropriately challenging, but just one of them is actually fight-able one vs one. Brador's invasions are cool, but he uses Lead Elixir, forcing you to either parry him to death when he's erect, or R1 spam him to death when he's not. Indirectly, this hurts the trick weapons as well. I would love to use more of the weapons that fit my build, but since most of the enemies are so ineffectual and easy from the halfway point of the game, then there's really no point to it. The base game boss roster post-Forbidden Woods is also one of the weakest in the series, so they don't offer much reprieve.
On top of this, the level design in both the base game's second half and in the DLC is notably weaker than in the first, except for Research Hall. Nightmare Frontier is VERY linear, despite how it may appear upon first impression, and both Byrgenwerth and Upper Cathedral Ward, two of the most narratively significant areas in the game, feel quite unfinished. Hunter's Nightmare and Fishing Hamlet lack both the scale and complexity of the likes of Central Yharnam and Forbidden Woods, even if they're still well-designed as a whole.
In general, I feel Bloodborne's gameplay quality is more severely compromised by narrative needs than in any other Soulsborne game.
5. Insight feels underdeveloped, and it's been proven that Blood Moon would have changed the enemies in the previous areas. Obviously, it never happened. I'll lump chalice dungeons here too, cus why not. They're an interesting concept executed to mixed results. While offering some new enemies and bosses, they're also highly repetitive, bloated, and undercooked.
6. Which blood gems to use? Adept? Elemental? Heavy? The right answer is (almost) always Tempering; everything else is pointless.
7. The game is just plain janky. Unstable framerates, inconsistent AI, bad hitboxes, and the worst camera against large bosses in the entire series. Instability damage during non-invincible dodging frames is beyond infuriating, as is jumping being tied to the circle button.
Sorry. I know that was a lot of shit-talking towards a game I supposedly love. Like in the video, the shortcomings are not made equal and they don't all bother me to the same degree. Admittedly, they all bother me enough that none of these are really just nitpicks either. I still do love Bloodborne, but unlike with Egotistical, I don't think it's a masterpiece. It's so very close, but it doesn't quite make it. Nonetheless, it still tried and I hugely respect that.
Man you took the words out of my mouth, couldn't agree more. I loved this game, but the things you mentioned just stick out like a sore thumb.
I like to do things semi blind and explore every nook and cranny, so maintaining a balanced playthrough was hard, leading to many unfulfilling boss encounters. Eventually what I resorted to was spreading the stats to get a bit of a taste of everything, but even then very easy to accidentally over-level. Didnt help that I actually enjoyed Chalice dungeons. Add to that the fact that the healing system is ridiculously overpowered, you can't help but facetank without much consequence, which takes away some of the thrill and tension that the game otherwise builds so well. Nerfing yourself is not as fun as having pre-designed bars to surpass.
Enemies got progressively worse, completely agreed. They could've sprinkled in some of the chalice enemies like the watchers, greatsword mummies, snatchers, madmen, but no, take some celestial emissaries and snake-balls. The reliance on bumping the number of scrubs instead of focusing on fulfilling encounters also leaves the experience feeling more tedious than challenging. Cainhurst, mega cool premise, vampire snowy castle - nope, screaming bitches and blowdarts. Admitedly, the rapier dudes are fun to fight but feel thematicaly uninteresting. Something is missing.
Byrgenwerth and Upper Cathedral was a huge dissapointment. Mega relevance, mega undercooked. So the big college is just a lakeside mansion? Oh nevermind, It WaS tAkEn By ThE nIgHtMaRe... SURE. In upper ward i craved more creepy badass threats, and what i got was goofy mobs.
Frame rate drops borderlining on powerpoint slides on every limb break make it frustrating to try to capitalize on the opportunity.
Thankfully, the satisfaction of the combat, coupled with the feeling of the atmosphere, art direction and lore vastly outweigh these complaints for me.
I agree with the visceral and level design points so much.
I played bloodborne at release, but playing it again after playing Elden Ring I realised not only were central yharnam and cainhurst the only areas that were similar in quality to legacy dungeons, but that I disagreed with my older thoughts on the game. When BB came out I always preferred cainhurst and central yharnam to the rest of the game, but I just thought that the other areas were still good, just not as good as them. Now I more believe that later areas are pretty mediocre for the same reasons you mentioned.
I know it's beating a dead horse, but it simply makes no sense that you can't rest at lanterns. It makes grinding extra tedious
While I appreciate the video's attempts at bringing conversation towards the gameplay of Bloodborne, an aspect that is very rarely discussed in depth, I think it assumes too many aspects of the "intended player experience", and judging every aspect of the game by that lens detracts from the points made, not to mention that said points often ignore aspects of its gameplay.
For example, assuming that the RPG progression in BB is intended to give players a wider array of player choice like in DS. Why can't it be the opposite, and the system be intended for the character to become proficient in one playstyle per playthrough? It's not uncommon to have stats have this effect, Atlus' RPGs like Persona and SMT all work that way for example, why can't BB be the same?
You also disregard that the difference in weapon styles is just as important in both games, DS and BB both divide Str and Dex weapons in the same way, slow and strong vs fast and weak, with each weapon bringing a different moveset inside those two archetypes. If you think the distinction is not as important is one thing, but this point still deserves to be mentioned.
The level design point is one I don't get at all. Yes the exploration can be dealt with more carefully, but once you enter combat, you're still heavily icentivized to be extremely agressive in your playstyle. This is not a contradiction, both aspects of gameplay complement each other to create the experience of what it is to be a hunter, analyzing your surroundings and then attacking, fighting for your life, dealing with enemies in a visceral way.
Not to mention how the game still somewhat retains the "learn something in the level and bring it to the boss" design of DS1, it's just been moved to item placement. Oil Urns and Firebombs before Cleric Beast, the Music Box before Gascoine, Fire Paper and Cocktails on the path to BSB, Bolt Paper when the aliens start appearing, you can probably name other examples.
While I agree that BB's grinding is extremely boring and badly implemented, you treat BB as a pure action game in that section of the video, which it isn't. BB is an ARPG, and the RPG Progression naturally allows for grinding and number crunching to be used as a difficulty modulator. Its inclusion makes sense, the issue moreso lies in how the grinding is executed.
Case in point, punishing players who are not that good at the game forcing grinding so they can refill their Blood Vials. That is a complete pace breaker and too heavy of a punishment for newcomers and less skilled players and we're in complete agreement there.
However, asking if the game wants the player to rely on Blood Vials or Rally for healing makes no sense when the game wants you to interact with both in tandem. The enemies and overall encounters put you in situations where both methods of healing are useful without breaking the game's combat rhythm. The moment to moment choice of what to use adds to the game's dynamics, it doesn't detract from them.
Finishing this comment like it started, I want to reiterate that the "intent" (haha pun laugh) of the video is admirable, Souls games definetly lack this sort of deeper mechanical discussion. However, ignoring so many parts of its gameplay to make your points work makes a lot of points faulty. This is a somewhat new channel, so I hope your next analyses become better and better as they go on
I just wanna say I really appreciate this comment and you engaging with the analysis on a level deeper than "intended experience is a stupid premise", so thank you. I agree with you in that sticking to my lens for this analysis does mean that I didn't do certain mechanics justice or acknowledge that some are flexible and provide multiple functions to the player. Example, maybe the intent in the level design was to inspire a change in player responses or maybe the healing system is working is exactly as intended to provide a rhythm in combat of balancing aggression with safety. While these are nuances that I should have discussed, I also think this reasoning starts to down a road that ends in justifying any mechanic in the game because it's in the game.
For example, if we ask: is Micolash is a mechanically shallow encounter? In attempting to analyze objectively, we might say something like "yes, Micolash requires less memorization of attack patterns and asks less of the player in combat compared to other boss fights making it comparatively simple to the boss average". Your reasoning would say "(all that same stuff), but it's supposed to be that way, the fight is operating as intended and is therefor it's not a problem." Is this true? Yeah, it is true - FS designed Micolash that way on purpose - but it's worth asking, is the encounter in harmony with BB's other mechanics or is it in contrast to them?
I'm not saying you're wrong, your gripes with my premise is one of the main complaints I've seen in the comments here. I went back and forth on calling anything a "problem" in this game (and using that word in the title of the video) because "problem" implies a preference or an objective standard of game design that obviously doesn't exist and I put myself in a position to prove a point instead of speaking about mechanics in their totality. It would be far more accurate to call my video "The Incongruous Mechanics in Bloodborne" but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
Again, thanks for engaging with me so thoughtfully and for the encouragement!
@@Egotesticals "Why can't it be the opposite, and the system be intended for the character to become proficient in one playstyle per playthrough? It's not uncommon to have stats have this effect, Atlus' RPGs like Persona and SMT all work that way for example, why can't BB be the same?".............what? you realize how silly this comparison is yes?
@@flamingmanure Why is it silly? Many games throughout the years have limited you to specialize in one stat or specialty. Bloodborne has much less build variety than other FromSoft games, it completely makes sense.
I feel like items are the weakest part of this entire franchise. How is it supposed to be fulfilling to use some random item to skip a phase of the fight completely? The game rewards you by skipping itself? It's the same in other souls games, especially ER with it's hundreds upon hundreds of absolutely useless consumables.
In regards to BB wanting people to play aggressively, I never felt that because I was always punished way more for playing like that rather than playing cautiously and carefully like the previous games want.
@@ennayanneDS2 showing off its superiority with how getting and using items is actually not hard at all along with adding scaling to knives and bombs
Imagine if all the bosses and enemies from the chalice dungeons were in the main game. I will never understand why they hide half of the enemies in the most underwhelming part of the game.
Because they didn’t have the time and resources to make twice the amount of levels, so they put the otherwise unused enemies in bonus dungeons
I worked on Bloodborne (marketing department). Very interesting video and thoughts. I will look at some notes based on design documents and come back to you.
Here for this
Same, here for this as well. Interest is super piqued.
"(marketing department)" lol
@@ennayanne You understand devs don’t work in isolation and that the game direction changes based on marketing and audience feedback right? The game was very different to begin with. Had a different name, story and fight mechanics among other things which changed based on audience research, testing previously unreleased versions of the game and much much more. So yeah, marketing department.
@@PadPoet just thought it was funny nbd
The healing system Bloodborne was going for was perfected by Lies of P. You have a finite, refillable amount, but being aggressive can give you extra ones during a fight if you run out
My thoughts, loved this in LoP, although the system is a bit strange at start of the game where you have like 3 heals total, you just end up refilling the last flask all the time, but thats a nitpick. Also love the LoP grindstones.
@@saawysorenson4585 i love the little things like being able to buff every weapon ^^
@@rmartinez1993 that's why DS2 rules
Lies of P is a little rough in some parts but it's an amazing game. Like what you said with it improving blood vials, it also legitimately iterates on and improves a few other key fromsoft systems such as the weapons instead of just using them as is. The bonfire list with the npcs indicating that you should talk is also a great addition. I am very hyped for the dlc and sequel.
I don't think Lies of P's system is at all close to what Bloodborne was going for, actually? In Bloodborne, they quite purposefully made choices to give you a limit of 20 from the very beginning of the game. It also heals for a lot less health than the heals from Lies of P do. In Bloodborne's levels, you also collect a bunch of vials from corpses, unlike Lies of P.
If Bloodborne was trying to do a similar thing to Lies of P in regards to the healing system, they failed in almost every single way. I don't think they were trying to do a similar thing, and the only big fail is that it's too common to run out of vials completely at a tough boss.
8:20 “Games are not movies”
- Kojima has entered the chat
Even Konjima knows it's a game that's why you can skip every cutscene and codec conversation.
@@Itsfinebuddy …
…
…
….
METAL GEAR
@@ZeroCiero???
@@ZeroCiero I can completely understand you in every essence of your being
Metal..... GEAR !?!?!?!?
OMG THIS!
Although some argumentens does not fit for me in a sense I would be a little more critical about other aspects of a game, thank you for a video. I am always fond of criticisms of beloved and popular games, but they’re absolutely hard to find. Despite looking for Bloodborne critiques really deep i found only like three videos counting yours, and this game is obviously flawed, in my humble opinion much more than you’ve presented it. The person who’s critical on something most of the time saying most interested thing about media and art, especially in cases when object of a crtiticism is canon or critically and/or publicly acclaimed thing. So again, many thanks!
Hey thanks! I appreciate this comment cause sometimes i feel like i’m losing my mind when I see criticism of this game ignore pretty obvious flaws.
I was halfway through the video when I realized that this isn't a 250k+ subscriber channel.
How do you not have more subs.
I enjoyed this video so much, seriously, good job. Have my sub
Real, i was extremely surprised when i saw his subscriber count, he really cooked with this video. I subbed instantly
Parrying is only a passive play style if you back away from the enemy and use it at a distance. If you instead use it close up in the middle of your combo then it turns into an active and aggressive option. Same with Arcane magic. Beast Roar for example is an excellent mid combo option to see taggen and knock back your enemy so you can continue hitting them, since it interupts all non hyper armor attacks. Which is the same thing a parry does.
I would like to throw in the fact you take double damage if hit out of your dodge.
In a game where shields are a non-option and not every enemy is parryable (I also think determining which enemies are parryable or what moves are unparryable on usually parryable enemies is too vague) creates a disconnect with games' goal of aggression and it "engenders passivity"
On the contrary, Bloodborne is the clearest game (except Sekiro) in communicating to the player what enemies are and are not parriable.
Is it a huge enemy that towers above the hunter several times his height? Is it a very small enemy that is about waist level of the hunter? You can't parry them.
Anyone else? You can.
There's no confusing choices like, for example in DS3 - You can parry Pontiff's UGS but you can't parry Dancer's Curved sword. You can parry Crystal Sage's Farron Flashsword attack but you can't parry Nameless King's Swordspear at all. Bloodborne does a way better job at this.
@@Akaarei you can parry the fishing hamlet sharks, living failures, and maneater boar. you cannot parry some smaller enemies like the abhorrent beast. FromSoft has always been inconsistent with what's parryable.
The "fast/slow" dichotomy thing isn't really an issue to me - Bloodborne is a game about being a hunter. Hunting requires both methodical stalking/scouting as well as (when dealing with the types of fights present in Bloodborne) high aggression and speed/violence/momentum pretty much. Dark Souls is more like a dark adventure whereas Bloodborne is more like a desperate hunt? I dunno - I enjoyed the dichotomy of methodical exploration and ungabunga combat.
True. I like levels that are intracite and make you check every corner for traps or secrets. I also like big, fast and spectacular bosses that challenge my skills of reading attack patterns and managing my resources. If a game has both (bloodborne admittedly lacking a bit in the second) has both, i couldn't care less if they "conflict" or some bs like that.
He didn’t say that it’s inherently a problem, he’s saying that bloodbornes build mechanics (strength/dex) don’t correlate with the system, because weapons are so similar in moveset and playstyle. Thus the only impact of asking the player to choose a build type is limiting what weapons they can use, which isn’t fun.
Personally I don’t fully agree with the take because strength weapons are still definitely slower than dex, but there is still less of a dichotomy when compared to dark souls.
@@Timebomb_19 I don't even agree with that because the stagger potential on ultra-heavy weapons outweighs something like the cane-whip's speed/AoE, right?
I played BB with an Arcane build (useless until I got the Cyclops spell which then melted everything after I got it) my first time, then played a Bloodtinge, then finally a Strength build. They were all pretty different, from what I can remember.
Note on your runback to BSB: there is a shorter one from the staircase where the beast breaks through the door, which you pass
As a person that has never felt as fond about Bloodborne like everyone else seems to be (even despite the fact that it has grown on me), it's always interesting to see a bit of light thrown to some of the actual issues that the game has. That being said, I also would like to show some of my thoughts about larger and minor points across the video.
RPG Mechanics
I think It is undeniable that the build variety found in Bloodborne is a lot more limited, and yet, I find that the way you describe the role of the level up system suffers of similar limitations. I can't really blame you, after all, a big part of the choice and decision making plays around the investment over sources of damage, but I think it's a big mistake to forgot the importance of the management of progression as a whole. It's not only about granting the player a way to decide the ways they are dealing damage, but also to give agency in the growth and progression of their characters. Choosing how many actions they can do, how much attacks they can suffer and how much damage they can deal. Prioritize the aspects that each player believes are most important or necessary in relation to their way of playing, or even their chosen weapons; level by level at each moment of the adventure.
Additionally, I took a look into the weapon Rooster and I will say; I don't believe that the idea of almost every weapon working in between a fast and heavy mode is actually true. It is a common staple between them, and surely some of the ones I dont really count could be open to some kind of discussion, but theres plenty of examples that simply disrupt that idea. And going further, I think it's another mistake to take the lesser gap of speed that exist between light and heavy weapons at face value, without taking into account nuance like recovery time, level of stun and stamina consumption. Or even the unique properties of some weapons, because it should be clear for everyone that the Whirligig Saw isn't the same as other Heavy Weapons. It's because all of this why the comparison with Sekiro doesn't work for me, because while there you are just choosing ways to complement the fixed playstyle, in Bloodborne, even if in a less flexible way than the other souls games, is still choosing how you play at it's core.
Levels
Not much to say here, not because I agree or disagree but rather than I find a bit difficult to relate to the sentiment. I think it's an interesting exercise to view the difference in between what the levels and what the bosses encourage, but I find myself wondering to what extent you couldn't simply say that the rally, as a ever present mechanic, is still the link between the two. Or even, I don't fully view how you couldn't say the same about the change between the levels and bosses in the other games, even with your examples that, I personally feel like are stretchs and not fully representative of the actual experience between the two.
Misc notes:
7:17 You actually took the path without the shortcut behind the werewolf that breaks the door, so that actually isn't the legit runback.
10:38 It is indeed carried from Demon's Souls, just like the way the lanterns work as opposite to the bonfires. As DS2 and BB were developed at the same time, theres not a lot that the later could learn and implement, and it shows in several QoL options missing that had no problem to appear right after in DS3. One of them, sadly, being the respec mechanics.
27:07 Bullets are always a finite resource, but as long as you have vials, you always have bullets, so is easy to say that you always have the chance of using parries.
PD: It's a shame that this video doesn't feature a talk about how underwhelming can be a lot of the bosses on this game, wich is probably one of my biggest gripes with the game besides how much it likes to waste your time.
Superb video, deserves soooo much more attention!
As much as I love this game, the grinding for blood echoes is HELL if you don't have ps+/play offline. There aren't any good places that give you a large amount of blood echoes. You have to keep grinding for hours.
Why would you need to grind for blood echoes? Other FromSoft games (especially Elden Ring) I get, but Bloodborne gives you more than enough in normal playthrough, and it's not like you need a ton of them for multiple purposes like you do in other FS games.
@@fjkebhnfdnsjkb7762 i personally like to be OP as early as possible. Makes it more fun for me. Or sometimes I wanna try a new weapon but I don't have the stats for it. Plus, sometimes I run out of blood vials/bullets and I have no echoes because I just died to the boss or something.
@@Proto-MartyrThe closest thing we have to a farming spot is the way up to Mergo's Wet Nurse, using the Heir runes and going visceral on the three boars. A shame it's in the end-game, but at least Bloodborne requires the least amount of levels to be OP/at max.
@@marioburgos712with the 3 blood echo runes, in the lecture hall after unlocking the locked room with a ton of those white slimy guys sitting at desks, it's right next to the lantern and can be gotten to after the one reborn. 20k blood echoes every 1 minute, since the room is right next to the floor 1 lecture hall lamp.
In complete honesty I held off on watching this video due to the low view and subscriber count, unfairly assuming it wouldn't be of good quality. My line of thinking was, "If the video was good, it would surely have higher views and the account would have more subscribers." This was wrong. The video is very well made and I realize after watching the entire thing that I have somehow stumbled upon a massive popular account, before the community was able to properly acknowledge its' deserved success. I've tried 4 times to play BB and every single time I found myself with the same problems, granted I was slightly crueler with my judgement with the latter 3 attempts due to an issue with Sony deleting about 40 hours of play time on my first file, leading me to not particularly care about the following 3 files. However, almost a year has passed since my original attempt and I felt like playing while listening to this in the background, I'm on my 5th-ish attempt and honestly I could narror my gripes down to 2 factors; vial and bullet grinding, and the lanterns being a bad form of transportation around the world. I could ignore almost any other problem with the game except those. I value the ability to quickly travel and I have a very rough style of play, leading me to always be spending what BE I have, as well as playing very fast and loose with vials and bullets. In nearly every other Fromsoft game I've touched this has been okay, I plat Sekiro and ER, and came close to plat on DS3 with this play style. But BB is has the two features that slam my style on its' head, a (personally speaking in comparison to games like Sekiro and ER) piss poor way of moving about the different levels via lanters and the hub world, and vial/bullets being consumables. I enjoy parrying in these games, Sekiro is my personal favorite FS game, so you would think ranged parry is perfect, but when I run out of bullets I'm left with half of my controller being basically worthless now. I'm also remembering that I meant to leave a small comment about how good the video was and my appreciation for the way in which the faults are being talked about, and I scammed myself into explaining my own gripes.
TL;DR Fantastic video and I can't wait to see what kind of content this channel makes from here on, I was wrong in my judgement that low views meant low quality, this guy is only going to get better from this point on
This is incredibly flattering, thank you so much! I hope this brought some catharsis in knowing you’re not alone in feeling that BB has problems
@@Egotesticals I ended up finally beating the game earlier today, if I had not watched this video I would still be sulking about issues I had almost a year ago instead of actually trying to have fun with it. I did end up shilling out 10 dubloons for the cummmfpk dungeon, though this was primarily for bullets and vials. With no fear of running out of those I was able to play without worrying about being "punished" for using the mechanics. I like parrying in BB a lot but I always ran out of bullet in my previous forays in the game, with hundreds waiting in my storage I found myself playing from 10PM to 4AM the last 2 days lol. Thank you for making this video, and thank you for making it in the way that you did. I doubt I would've given it another shot if it had been an whiny echo chamber of everything negative I wanted to hear. This video was everything I *needed* to hear, the game isn't perfect but neither is Sekiro, which is arguably my favorite FS game I've ever touched. But even with the flaws, I spent a year just perpetually making them bigger and bigger in my head until I actually picked it back up and gave it a genuine chance. It's not my favorite, but I'm glad I finally beat it, thank you again!
It almost feels like you take everyone’s positivity to it personally. I’ve seen people who praise the game as the best game ever bring up the problems you are, but because the positives outweigh the negatives so heavily, it’s frankly quite easy to overlook them
That's the thing though, the "weight" of a positive aspect or a negative aspect is entirely personal. For example, I played Gris and didn't enjoy the game at all, because the lack of engaging gameplay made it so that it was incredibly hard for me to appreciate the gorgeous art direction and the beautiful soundtrack since I was quite literally bored to tears while playing it. My brother, on the other hand, absolutely loved the game because he got so into the art and the OST that he didn't mind the simplistic gameplay.
The problem with Bloodborne - or more precisely with the Fromsoft community and gaming discourse in general - is that there is no nuance to the discussion around the game. Either you praise Bloodborne to the highest heavens and only recognize its flaws as the most miniscule of footnotes, or you get crucified by its rabid fanbase. For fuck's sake, look at the top comment in this very video: here's an in depth 50 minute piece discussing the game's flaws, and the most liked comment is of someone deliberately choosing not to engage with the discussion at all. That is textbook toxic positivity.
As we have discussed earlier, Bloodborne's flaws will weigh differently according to each and every person's perspective. The one who made this video evidently had his experience much more impacted by the flaws being discussed than someone who gives the game nothing but the highest praise, and that's entirely okay. The problem arises when the discussion around flaws and qualities are supressed in favor of a dominant narrative. If you can't talk about Bloodborne's flaws without someone accusing you of taking people's love of the game as a personal offense, then there is extreme levels of toxicity floating around.
There is a cycle that comes with the discourse around Fromsoft titles. The games are widely praised, then the honeymoon phase wears off and people start tearing the new title apart for all its flaws big and small, then discussion dies down until years later the title is considered a "flawed masterpiece". Same thing happened with Bloodborne, Sekiro, DS3, DS2 and is now happening with Elden Ring. The problem is, those games don't change much in that meantime, so there are always people engaging with them as pieces of art and consequently acquiring their own assessment of a specific title's qualities and flaws, yet if those people go against the current established narrative - be it of unfathomable praise or unreleting criticism - they are viciously shunned.
I have experience this myself. I despise Dark Souls 3 with every fiber of my being for hundreds of reasons and I really like DS2, yet discussion around DS3's flaws and DS2's qualities are always met with someone trying to swerve the discussion in the direction of the established narrative, much like the most liked comment in this video that says, in reponse to criticism: "The only flaw Bloodborne has is that it ends". Currently Shadow of The Erdtree is in the negative phase of the discourse loop, so if you try and say that you like its narrative you won't be met with people discussing its positive aspects with you, you will be met with people desperately reiterating its negatives in order to regain control.
All that said, Bloodborne IS overrated. Why? Because if you were to believe the dominant narrative around it, it would be a perfect game. It isn't perfect, far from it.
Each and every day I am more thankful that I decided to almost completely cut contact with this community, it is one of the most toxic I've ever seen, to the point where I would say Bloodborne's most glaring flaw is the toxic positivity surrounding it. I believe everyone would be much happier if they just decided to engage with Bloodborne on its own terms, without the revolting narrative of the Fromsoft community tainting their impressions of it. This fandom is genuinely one of the worst there is.
I mean, he says several times this isn’t a review video.
If it was he would obviously be signing the praise it deserves
I mean, he says several times this isn’t a review video.
If it was he would obviously be signing the praise it deserves
16:14 so refreshing to hear from a nuanced perspective. i'd always been of the opinion that the paper-thin rpg mechanics present in bloodborne have only served to constrict the scope of build expression in fromsoft's subsequent games, given the critical success of a more """action""" oriented gameplay loop
except elden rings rpg systems are objectively the deepest most complex one in fromsoft by far.
@@flamingmanure versatility doesn't always equate to committal build expression; rather, some weapons in each class are objectively better than others for the sole reason that they infuse better, meaning that you'd always be better off choosing the best in class regardless of your stat spread. i wouldn't exactly consider that 'complex.' prior to bloodborne this issue was largely only relegated to certain specialty weapons
@@flamingmanureIn terms of leveling, there is very little variety, every level 150 chatecter will have 60 vigor, 50 points in their damage stat, and everything else will be split between mind and endurance
For the bloodvials I've seen the argument that it complements the rally mechanic because you'll need to lose less consumables if you attack fast enough. I get the idea behind it and it does make sense if that was the intention of these mechanics. However, what it ends up doing is making the game more difficult for people who are already struggling with it. I quit when I ran out of healing against Gascoigne. I decided I wasn't going to let the game beat me, so picked it up again. Farmed for 15 minutes and got back to 40 vials in storage. On my rematch I ended up needing only 3 heals, and never went without. I platinumed the game and had 500+ still in storage. You find so many vials in the levels that you can get more than you eventually use. I'm not particularly great at souls games, so if I can do it anyone can. Since it doesn't really work as intended I think it would've been better if the game had a similar system as the estus, and have less than 20 available on you. It would also increase the challenge since you cannot just keep refilling your healing with items you find in the wild. Don't know if that would be more punishing to new players.
Lanterns should've just worked like regular bonfires. These are probably the biggest issues of the game for me.
Tbh, I never got the gripe about vials. Yeah, it can be a little annoying to farm them, but it isn't really difficult.
@@patchwilliamson it's not necessarily difficult, but as I've stated. It's a mechanic that's more punishing to players already struggling with the game. You don't want to grind for more healing when you're learning the boss.
I had no more issues after my initial hump, but the game would be better without it. Since it adds nothing to experienced players and makes the game more difficult for newer players.
Yea, I almost dropped the game because of the vials. I don't mind being stuck on a boss if the boss is fun. I'm ok with trying and learning the best strategy to beat the boss. But I hate that I have to stop because I cannot heal suddenly. First I ran out of bullets (I was trying to learn the parry mechanics on this boss and it seamed like one of the best strategies for me) and shortly after I ran out of vials. The worst thing about this is, that the boss that most players will get stuck on is at the beginning, which gives you smaller area to farm - either echoes or vials. Not to mention that apparently enemies will drop less items the more you die in the area. It would be so much better if I could just go on and come back later, or if I could always start with, let's say 5 vials and I could buy more. I somehow pushed through with a big annoyance, the funny thing is that the next bosses are much easier, so the need to farm is smaller, even though now you have better places to farm. I would give up, but my husband played it before me and told me about the chalice farm. I strictly use the echoes from that to buy vials and bullets, so I don't have to care about this annoying aspect of the game. I only level up with echoes that I got from exploration, so I don't loose the motivation and I'm not over leveled. But overall this game is a disappointment. This is often presented as the best FS game and I don't sadly see it. It has amazing atmosphere, enemy design is great but the fight itself? Boring or annoying most of the time. The same strategy over and over - run behind them and hit the legs, no need to look for an opening really, no need to study their movement. I am now at the DLC (I haven't finished the main game yet, wet nurse is next there) and Maria is finally a fun dynamic fight after a looooong time. My 4th FS game and it sits at the bottom for me.
@@Deni-mt9bj I get what you mean. For me after the initial hump I had no issues. But I really can't think of a defence of this mechanic, for the reason that it's really punishing for players that struggle more with some things.
Overall I also agree the bosses are underwhelming. First time that I finished the game I was so disappointed with the last boss. I was convinced there was a phase 2, I didn't want to finish the game. I just wanted to see phase 2 and let myself get killed. I empty the health bar and no phase 2, the credits rolled and I was like "wtf".
I did really enjoy the game, and I love it for the aesthetic and world design more than anything else. Combat itself was nice and engaging, but aside from Gascoigne I didn't really struggle with any other bosses. Because the game wanted me to be aggressive I was just spamming attacks and dodging and I melted every boss. I was about level 70-80 when I finished the game, don't know if I was overleveled but yeah. Tried the DLC in NG+ and once I got past Ludwig it was a cake-walk. I beat the orphan on my first attempt, if you can parry the boss it's really easy. I liked Maria as well, I thought it was a really cool fight, but the parry does trivialize a lot of fights. You'd have to handicap yourself to get a decent challenge.
It's also because it's a survival horror game.
I love Bloodborne, it's one of my favorite games of all time... My biggest complaint the motion sensor emotes, specifically that you have no option to turn them off and the button to activate them is the same as the interact button. Meaning if you try to frantically pick up an item during combat, but don't keep the controller perfectly still you might just have your character sit down or start waving at the enemy in the middle of a fight.... And yes, I have died because of this XD
Great work ! I would look out for the sound balance (quiet voice cuts to another loud video).
For The Healing ! I got tired of it so I looked up and did this :
Upload my save before a Boss Fight, and if I end up running out of Vials,
I Reload the save !
Actual good discussion, especially about the critiques and reviews of people that like something and simply neglect every bad decision, as a choice intended by the dev therefore is not wrong.
I think this a much bigger problem that people dont see, there is a double standard in a relation to alot of developers, companies, creators and even franchises, is something that would like to be discussed more, because i feel like alot of people get influenced and dont even realize why.
I've see so many people parroting the "these devs should be more like these, or they game should be like elden ring design because ubisoft design = bad", not every dev or company can get away with what Nintendo or From does, because there is a double standard by gamers, influencers and games media, i see too much reviews these years from indie games that are too harsh and give minus points for reasons that other devs wouldn't, is insane, i still remember when SIFU came out, and reviewers were giving a low score because it was hard, like wtf, same people go and say "more games should be more difficult like from games" and then give low scores to games that are difficult and go "yeah but From knows how to do it in a challenge way and this devs doesnt therefore bad" when in fact there is a lot of bullshit and from games but people excuse it because "oh is a from game, silly miyazaki once again, GOTY for sure".
anyway, small rant, could go on for a while, great video, my only problem was the music in transitions were too loud, and even the OST from games were a bit loud and too good so it distracted me from the video
I do appreciate this video; I felt like somewhat of an outsider for feeling like the game had some pretty glaring mechanical flaws that impacted the pacing. However I'm surprised you didn't mention how bullets and blood vials are the ONLY consumables that actually replenish from your stock. Any other consumables, such as Hunter Marks or Molotov Cocktails, must be manually refilled from the Hunter's Dream even if you have a surplus in storage. This adds to the timesink aspect as if you died during a boss and used up consumables you need for the fight, you can't just reattempt the boss but rather have to go back after every failed attempt in which you use items.
I will say grinding sucks, and I had to do a lot more than I wanted on my first play through due to refusing to level higher for the DLC. For anyone looking for the best mid/late game vial grind, I would recommend equipping the echo runes and going to the lecture hall. Grind the room with all of the students, rinse and repeat. No matter what area drops more vials off enemies, the overall time to clear the room and make it back to the lamp makes grinding for echos to spend in the dream on vials more efficient than grinding for vials themselves. You also get the bonus of receiving quicksilver drops at the same time, making it a two for one route.
Good video, thought provoking one. I will type a long comment addressing some of the usual misconceptions whenever they discuss about Elden Ring's bosses you'll see some of them mention Bloodborne's quicksteps, Gun parrying & its Rally mechanic as the main mechanics that somehow make it more geared towards aggression compared to Elden Ring, I'm here to disprove all these nonsensical talking points as they couldn't be further from the truth, I hope people read this comment:
- Elden Ring player movement is as fast if not potentially faster than Bloodborne, your rolls are as fast as BB's dashes, the amount of time it takes from executing your rolls in ER to walking after it is less than that of BB, you have much more base stamina & much faster regeneration (not counting the crapton of talismans/flask tears that can massively increase those), you can jump & do jump-attacks, which massively increase aggression & pace of any fight while also ducking upcoming follow-up attacks that bosses usually do, you can sprint in any direction while locking-on, this is a massive speed increase which bodes extremely well with ER's bosses since they require strafing & finding out positioning openings & that's what makes them change their combos based on where you are relative to them, you have posture breaks which literally incentivize aggression, you also have crouching which can also be an evasion tactic while delivering a poke attack after it (Messmer's spinny attacks anyone?). If you don't like med-rolls as much, well then you have light-rolls, Quickstep or Bloodhound Step Ashes of War (all of which have more s than your basic dash in Bloodborne), Backhand Blades' Blind Spot Ash of War, etc...
- Bloodborne Gun Parry isn't a base mechanic like dodging, it's an optional mechanic that the bosses do not have to contend with, it's a way to engage with bosses & enemies, just like using Shield parry against any boss in ER. In fact, Gun Parry is a "Press L2 to win" button in Bloodborne, you won't even learn much of the bosses' patterns because you do not fully engage with them. I like to play Bloodborne without Gun Parry, I think it ruins the encounters IMO, it's boring.
- Rally Mechanic has no bare nor any relevance on how fast bosses can dish out attacks at you, what they're basically implying is that as long as you gain health on hits then it's OK for bosses to have unavoidable attacks, which is incredibly wrong, it doesn't justify unfair bosses because it will count as a mechanical flaw, not something that can be mended by having the Rally Mechanic, it's just a bonus for the player to remain aggressive, it was a heavy-handed tutorial to the player to play aggressively especially after FromSoft releasing it after DS2, so they train the player to rely on that more than what they relied on in DS1 & DS2, and the ironic part about it is you have Talismans in ER that can give you health on hits & you can have Malenia's Great Rune which is straight up BB's Rally.
Elden Ring simply gives the player so many more tools to counter bosses than any of the previous Souls combined, you have:
- Plenty of Consumables that can spice up the pace of any fight, offensive & defensive measures.
- You have Ashes of War that can you out of any boss attacks no matter what they are.
- You have Dual-wielding builds, each weapon with an Ash of War.
- You have the Deflection mechanic which massively change the pace of the combat.
- You have Guard Countering too which lands a huge damage to bosses' health & posture bar. Offensive measure.
- You have Backstep s, another one that changes the combat in a big way & acts as a defensive measure.
- Even throwing knives in Bloodborne is as slow as a turtle, while it's much faster in ER & can keep bosses' posture from regenerating which is a massive thing.
There are so many ways to counter Elden Ring bosses more than Bloodborne could ever dream of, ER's bosses are more complex, they need more trial & error, they allow for way higher combat expression than BB could ever do, the difference is vast, watch ONGBAL's videos of him fighting BB's bosses & compare them to ER's bosses, it's sad in BB. (I'll link some):
ONGBAL VS Lady Maria: th-cam.com/video/V4YG5URsc2Q/w-d-xo.html
ONGBAL VS Ludwig: th-cam.com/video/_LgDtgBScRM/w-d-xo.html
ONGBAL VS Dancing Lion: th-cam.com/video/wyrT6vzt7XY/w-d-xo.html
ONGBAL VS Morgott: th-cam.com/video/oAzgc0aZAsg/w-d-xo.html
I'd wager a boss like Divine Beast Dancing Lion would simply not work if you were to put it in Bloodborne, dash has less s & you can't sprint while locking-on in all directions, therefore you're massively screwed, you don't even have the jumping mechanic to avoid frost explosions after every move he does nor his lightning AOEs around it nor it's spinning attack where it throws lightning/frost/air breath.
souls veterans that say those things about elden ring boss design are delusional idiots that played elden ring like bb and ds3 and got their ass handed to them for it, their small ego got hurt, saw the joseph anderson video and went along with the delusional self gratifying objectively false narrative. elden rings combat is far above the likes of bb.
Claiming that the gun parry is not a core mechanic of the game is absolutely nonsensical.
@@akshatsaxena4137 What do you mean by core mechanic? Then what’s the point of the trick mode in weapons? I always play with the 2nd Ludwig’s blade form, or 2nd Rayuko form.
A core mechanic implies that the game’s combat doesn’t work or make sense without that mechanic, like dodge rolling (even without dodge rolling, you can beat these games, we’ve seen people do it lol but that’s besides the point), all I’m saying is the gun parry mechanic is an optional mechanic just as shield parrying in Elden Ring is an optional mechanic.
@@HeyTarnished Its absolutely not comparable to a shield parry in Elden Ring. You are stuck with a gun in Bloodborne from the off. Its more comparable to the prosthetic arm in Sekiro, if anything.
Sure, most weapons have a trick form that's either a 2 handed or a dual wield setup, but they all also have a base form where the gun is ever present in your off hand. Bullet ammo is a key resource in the game.
The trick forms are mostly there to fill out the moveset and provide utility, since you can't 2 hand every weapon on will as you can in the Souls games. Also DS3 and ER added weapon arts, and Sekiro had combat arts, for the same purpose.
You can play the game without using the gun at all, but you're not fully engaging with the mechanics at that point. Because every BB player is given a gun, but not every ER player is given a shield. That's just one of many options in ER.
Also how can you argue that a core mechanic is something that the combat doesn't work without, then claim that rolling/dodging is core to the combat whilst also acknowledging that the game can be beaten without using dodges? Doesn't make much sense to me.
@@akshatsaxena4137 I haven't expanded upon my point about dodge rolling, and I am sorry for the confusion.
I was only mentioning it as an extreme example, it only highlights the amount of skill mastery these games can accommodate (especially for ER since most of its bosses depend much more on positioning than only getting dodge timings correctly), there are bosses where dodge rolling is necessary, it is also necessary for the combat to be fast paced & to find punishes, I know if you didn't use rolling (which needs mastery in game mechanics & ample understanding of bosses' moveset), it would result in you being to passive.
Dodging is the main defensive/evasion tactic in Souls games, well for ER, it gives you jumping & many Ashes of War options as they can be used as substitutions for dodge rolling.
I mentioned the Gun parry thing because, functionally, it's like shield parrying but from a distance, it's not something that the game's combat depends upon, it's another way of combat expression, it's a way to engage against bosses, EVEN if it's build independent, like you get it all the time no matter what your build is, well let's be honest, BB doesn't have build variety nor provides any depth to them as something like Elden Ring or DS3, but you get my point.
48 minutes?...
Guess I won't be able to restrain my curiosity so... Imma watch it.
Edit: I got no objections. Great vid BTW...
only bad things about bb is that arcane sucks and the best gems, some unique bosses, and different weapon variations are locked behind the awful chalice dungeon system
you are simply wrong
Actually I like the chalice dungeon, would be even better for coop and pvp
@@jor8025 people complete the chalice dungeons once to get the best gems in the game and the weapon variations for NG+ runs, then never again. collecting the chalice ritual materials every playthrough is a huge chore.
What's wrong with Arcane?
Tell that to my arcane only build lol.
Speak your truth my man, bless you for actually criticizing the RPG and upgrade mechanics I fully agree that it realistically is more limiting than anything and I too have thought about how retroactively being like Sekiro would be the ideal instead of staying unfortunately too close to original Dark Souls.
lies of p is an obviously bloodborne inspired game and it had a really interesting approach to healing in that it's basically just an estus system, but after you run out, you can regain a heal by successfully dealing enough damage. it came in handy a few times. it also kept a near identical rallying system, which i now frankly find difficult to not have in souls-likes. lies of p is a really good game guys
I think every game has its flaws but bloodborne is very minimal with it and the enjoyment/experience I had with it made me forget those bad points. That's how a masterpiece it is. It's truly one of those rare artistic experience u could have with a game.
I think they just gave players a lot of heals because the game is hard as balls, and if youre dying a lot you need to get better at the game, thus running out of vials is a way to get the player to stop banging their head on the wall and level up a bit both in stats and skills. Vials are plentiful in almost every area in the game so its a good opportunity to sharpen your skills. People make the mistake of going to yharnam which actually isnt the best for vials when you consider how few echoes the enemies there give you.
Yeah just clearing enemies in basically every area in the game will give you plenty of blood vials. It's a nice incentive to not just run past everything. It sucks when you're hard stuck on a boss and need to farm though (happens to me with Ludwig).
Many areas don’t drop vials. Farming and doing the area over and over just to get vials isn’t fun at all.
Bloodborne was my first fromsoft game and I loved the overall experience, but the vial mechanic was the one thing that I hated. I've not designed this, I don't know what the team had in mind, but the outcome is that the typical player struggling with the boss will not go and level up while picking up vials. He'll spend every single penny he grinded to buy more vials, because he doesn't want to do this all over again after each boss attempt.
How is this game hard
Except for maybe some of the areas
@@Goregreet the game is 10 years old it's not hard anymore, unless you're like me still doing challenge runs and stuff.
I didn’t even watch the video yet, and I’m already sure one of the biggest issues cited is the GODDAMN FARMING.
Farm for vials. Farm for bullets. Farm for Echoes. Farm for Runes. Farm upgrade materials. Farm farm farm farm farm.
And then the goddamn abysmal drop rate on the good stuff, and ONE SINGLE FEKKEN BLOOD ROCK IN THE BASE GAME!? ONE? This game has some of the coolest, most iconic weapons in all of gaming, and I CANNOT max out more than two per playthrough unless I grind those mind numbingly boring chalice dungeons?
God I love this game but this… This I simply don’t understand.
I can make do with the not-at-all-fast-travel. I can make do with the horrendous performance. Heck I can even make do with the fact that I can’t romance Ludwig.
But the farming and absolutely insane drop rates, fek no. I could understand it in Demon’s Souls. It was their first game. I could understand it in Dark Souls still. But by the time of Bloodborne how come they not only made a huge part of it worse, but also managed to REVERT to some of the biggest issues of their first iteration on the formula?
Micheal Zaki grant me eyes for I cannot see how you thought this was fine.
‘Kay rant over.
A point on the Blood Vials and rallying, you constantly pick up Vials from corpses or dead enemies, which means that you don't necessarily need to resort to the rallying mechanic, which is kinda poorly implemented since almost all enemies have hyper armor and can interrupt you when attacking, or if you're more patient the window for rallying is gone before you could fully take advantage of it.
Amd you put it perfectly regarding the parry, it deincentivizes aggressive play since it can give you so much damage yet it can be executed from such a safe distance, making a fishing tactic style of play viable, at that point just give us a damn shield, there wouldn't be any difference.
It's no wonder why to me the best bosses are those that you cannot abuse with the guns, Ludwig comes to mind because of that very reason, he's super aggressive and you need to be too, you can't run away and fish for openings, you need to get in his face, Ludwig is an example of the game playing to its strengths and being amazing because of it. Maria was so easy to abuse parries with and I ended up killing her on my first try, she is forgettable in my mind to this very day because of this.
Overall great video, I can tell you put a lot of thought into this. As someone who has been thinking about the flaws of this game for a very very long time, this gave me so much more to think about. Subbed
If people want the strongest gameplay in the lineup, Sekiro is the go to, like you said.
The tedium of grinding can be mitigated to some extent by using Bold Hunter’s Marks.. which themselves cost resources. Warping to the dream isn’t necessary if you have BHMs available. Just a nitpick, the grinding always sucks.
The argument about the combat and exploration having different paces, and somehow that's a problem, is bizarre to me. There are so many great games that don't even attempt to reconcile the two. They are not two things i would ever think someone would desire that they match.
Maybe i'm misunderstanding? Sounds like you're saying that any game that encourages agressive combat should have a certain type of level design?
I can think of several pure action titles that have more souls-like level design. Or even open-world games with long bouts of slow exploration and agressive combat systems.
Fromsoft level design is a highlight of all their games to me. I'm curious in what way you would modify Bloodborne's level design to get your desired effect? There has to be something i'm not grasping here.
A “problem” in this context is referring to contradictory gameplay mechanics. Part of what makes DS the lauded masterpiece it is, is that level and boss design are designed to be harmonious in play style - play the way that got you through the DS level, and you’ll find success against a DS boss. BB simply is not that way. Is it “bad”? Of course not, it only falls short of the mechanical harmony of DS, to quote myself, “dark souls level design is an effective teacher, but it only teaches dark souls play”.
Since you asked, levels that reward the play style required in Boss fights would be more harmonious for BB combat. More timed or DPS-check encounters, less enemy groups, less ambushes, less traps - I’m just spitballing though, I’m not a game designer
@@Egotesticals ok, so you're talking more about the encounter and enemy design rather than the actual physical level/world design? It's more about the competency of teaching the player what the boss fights expect from them through the broader combat experience? If that's so, that isn't what i gathered from from what you said in the video at all. I was at work and listening in the background, so I may have misinterpreted. This makes much more sense, and although that's not something i'd ever care about enough to effect my personal enjoyment, i get your point. If i'm still not understanding correctly, clarify if you get around to it.
@@YeOldeMachine I think your interpretation is valid, I do sort of equate the encounter design and level design, despite them being obviously different. My point with this is basically that the encounter design and level design was lifted from DS1 and not updated for BB. Again, this isn't a "bad" thing, DS styled levels and encounters have grown to be the standard that most modern action/RPGs follow and rightly so.
What I'm saying is that what made those encounters and levels such perfect tools for teaching the player how to survive in DS no longer applies in BB. Enemy and level design philosophy that encouraged patience, careful play and curiosity/exploration in DS does the same thing for BB but in BB the careful play and patience doesn't extended to the Boss fights, creating a dissonance between levels and the boss encounters. Some people love this constant change in rhythm and it's what makes BB unique in the FS line up and I'm not trying to argue that they shouldn't like it, I'm just pointing out that it's present and conflicts with some of the other design choices made in the game.
All of the problems you mention in the video don't seem like problems imo. The only issues I've found in the game is the healing, leveling, and the checkpoints or lamps not being able to be used as a resting place like the older games.
The attributes in the game do not only determine what weapon will you play with. They also determine what play style you want. An arcane build plays extremely different from a strength build. And a bloodtinge is algo vastly different with weapons like rifle spear and Simon's Bowblade. But I understand your points and appreciate you took the time to show these problems, even though I don't find these actual problems.
Regarding grinding, I feel that every soulsborne game has had grinding as an intended part of play. Every game has new game cycles and every game has rnd. In fact, I argue that all of the games in fact have a lot of DNA from the Diablo series and that Bloodborne is the closest they ever got to going full Diablo 1 with randomized dungeons, fire and lightning as your forms of elemental damage, intrinsic damage modifiers for certain weapons vs certain foes and randomized bloodgems for even more rnd. In fact for myself, a pathological grinder who spends a good portion of every DS1 run in New Londo farming dark wraiths, I felt that Bloodborne was their most grind-as-a-central-part-of-the-game-concept game.
In fact, if you ask me, their main failure with Bloodborne was to fail to make a proper procedural dungeon making system.
i dont really get your comment, eitherway it still doesnt make bb any better when it comes to its grinding. its just trash design for a fromsoft game.
In all seriousness, super well thought out arguments. We should be willing to critique the things we love as much as the things we hate.
beautiful katana zero soundtrack. immediately recognized it. you deserve more support.
I love BloodBorne, it introduced me to, and made me a FromSoft fanatic.
However, a lot of the base game bosses aren't good. They hadn't quite figured out how to properly do giant beast type enemies yet. The amygdalla and Yar'hargul bosses being the best examples.
Lies of P is often compared to BloodBorne. It's bosses are head and shoulders better than base game BloodBorne's. Like... it isn't even close
I think your concept of "Bloodborne's intended experience" being "applying pressure and aggression" and anything that doesn't fit your definition of this "intended experience " is a negative is misguided.
Bloodborne is not a hyperfocused experience, is it more focused than dark souls? Arguably. Does that mean that all build variety, playstyle variety, skill expression, player expression that doesn't service your perceived "intended experience" is a negative towards the game? It can be, if that's your opinion. Definitely not in my opinion.
You can play Bloodborne calculated, looking for charged back attack openings and fishing for parries which you consider "passive and not intended". How do you know it's not intended, when the developers intentionally put those mechanics in the game?
You presume removing the leveling system and removing consumables like blood vials would bring the game closer to your idea of "intended experience" yet completely disregard the punishment of death, horror survival aspects of the game which losing experience and lost of consumables add to fear of dying.
"Conflicting messaging of how the game is meant to be played". Again you're fixated that's there's only one way to play the game.
There are mechanics in Bloodborne that don't purely serve your "intended experience of aggression" and thank god they exist because the game is better for it.
Is the game perfect? Perfection can't exist in subjective mediums, it can only be perfect in the eye of the beholder.
Looking at a subjective medium objectively will always be a flawed process
I very much agree it is a flawed process, and I I probably wouldn’t do another analysis predicated on one perspective about the mechanics. The word “problem” is causing a lot of argument in the comments. Had i said “incongruous” or “contradictory”, there would be far less room for disagreement, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Conversations around this particular game have a tendency to shift the goal posts whenever a flaw arises. I tried to focus my analysis parameters to alleviate that, at the cost of presenting a somewhat reductive viewpoint.
I presented the “intended experience” as a focus on aggression because that is what most of the new (to BB) gameplay elements emphasize. Rallying, Bloodvials, boss poise, player movement, de-emphasized defensive options, faster but squishier bosses and neutered ranged options are just some of the ways FS has incentivized aggression in the player. Are there mechanics that present balance to this aggression? Absolutely and that’s fine, but there also mechanics that present contradictions or drawbacks that undercut that aggression.
I am not saying these contradictions are necessarily “good” or “bad”. I am saying they are contradictions, if you personally find that grinding for BVs strikes a pleasant balance with the methodical level design, that’s your perspective and it’s totally valid. All that’s happening here is reframing my phrasing of “problem” into “balance”, turning a negative connotation into a positive one. We are all entitled to our opinions and selective phrasing and this video was never about trying to convince anyone the game is bad.
I “fixated” as you say, on one playstyle because playstyle variety has been heavily streamlined in this game compared to previous FS titles. I speak about this at length in the video as to how this streamlining was achieved and how the inclusion of some legacy elements and exclusion of others results in a lack of meaningful playstyle variety but with all the old downsides of engaging with RPG elements.
If you fundamentally disagree with my premise that BB more readily rewards aggression in the player with its updated mechanics, I’ll listen to your evidence.
I think if this video was generalised as "RPG elements in ARPGs can detract from the focus of action games without adding much value" and Bloodborne was used as one of the examples, while possibly being a bigger undertaking, would open that discussion in a much less controversial way. As an opinion piece without the objectivity. But as you said it's YT and it may not get as much engagement.
The "intended experience" phrase is a killer, those RPG additions to the skeleton of the game add an incredible amount of time to development compared to having none of it, the devs wouldn't sink so much time and effort and consideration into these mechanisms if they didn't want engaging with the mechanics to be part of the experience.
If you mean BB rewards aggression more than it DeS, DS1 and DS2 then yeah of course I agree. I'd also agree if ARPG had a spectrum those games would sit further towards the RPG side than BB.
BB still has a cautious calculated side to both the level design and the boss fights though. If you play with pure aggression you die, the rally system won't save you.
The rally system gives you a second option to healing after getting hit, burn through your consumables for a safer, bigger heal or get back in there and recover some for free through attacks though with risk.
The blood vials being a non- replenishable consumable actually feed into the rally system being a more tempting option.
I don't think It matters for the conversation but my opinion always was the time people spend grinding blood vials they could just be in there learning the fight. It's a balance of A and RPG, being good at the RPG elements (resource management with consumables and currencies in this case) compliments the A elements and the A elements (taking minimal damage via avoiding hits, killing fast, rally system) feed back into the RPG systems (more resources for leveling and gear improvements, don't have to buy consumables as much).
Thank you for the reply I appreciate the discussion
Edit: I haven't finished watching the video when I left those comments, I'm not sure if you believe the "flaws/problems" you discuss as something that should be removed or heavily altered or just pointed out as imperfections without solutions. Just out of curiosity, what do you personally feel.
I do appreciate the discourse, i’m really impressed by how many people in here are willing to engage with this analysis productively instead of just yelling at me which was kind of what I was prepared for.
Personally? The only mechanic that I genuinely dislike is the finite Blood Vials but I honestly wouldn’t change a thing about Bloodborne. I think the game is enjoyable on its own and interesting as an early experiment from a legendary studio. It’s fun to look at BB and see what FS learned from the game, which elements they retained and which they omitted.
We see a big upgrade in enemy and player speed in all of FS games after BB. Obviously Sekiro took streamlined RPG mechanics to new heights and even DS3 and ER are much faster and the combat higher stakes than DS1/2.
I would love to see their next game be an expansion on the BB/Sekiro foundation, further rewarding precision/aggression and leaving RPG mechanics further behind, but that’s just my preference.
@@Egotesticals Agree with most of this comment but I doubt they will lessen the RPG mechanics. Sekiro always comes up somewhere in the top 3 in most people's rank of FS games and it has like no RPG mechanics, but Elden Ring is also usually on that top 3 (BB is usually there too, new ips>>>>>sequels) and it went deeper into the RPG direction. Even ER's biggest critics generally believe that it has the best build variety and use of its RPG mechanics out of the FS games, and it is the most popular FS game.
I do believe ER has the beat build variety, but I would love and prefer for them to make another game more like sekiro that has fewer RPG mechanics, I just doubt they would.
Was watching this in the background while working and that intro had me thinking I just opened 11 tabs
Eager to see a DS1 Critique Video cause yeah it HAS severe Flaws but me still also liking it
39:02 it feels like every single criticism of a souls game is just met with get gud and skill issue rather than engaging with legitimate flaws.
I have the Platinum for Bloodborne, Elden ring and DS3 love the games but man. Every single point here is arguably true, I haven’t replayed bloodborne since getting the plat because there’s no build variety and the opening is a straight 1 hour of the same thing every time. Meanwhile in ER and DS1-3 I can pick a different playstyle and weapon every time and still have a great experience.
If you play Bloodborne on the PS5 the issues with framerate and load times are no-longer a problem.
good, that’s why performance shouldn’t count as a problem
30 fps took a lot of getting used to after playing sekiro for 200+ hours. really felt janky at first.
On my base PS5 the load times are still much longer than in ER and DeS, and the fight against the lightning beast in the chalice dungeons is still laggy (among others)
So players only needed to wait 5 years, beat scalpers and get a different console than what it was originally designed for, and you STILL only get 30fps ... Bruh ... That's the Bloodborne excuses this video is talking about when other games that are much more detailed run at a stable 60.
I've felt this game is overrated for ages, excited to finally dig into the video and hear your take on it as well.
A good move, but BB has so many more flaws. In addition to RPG problems, vials, lack of bloodstones, semi-functional lamps, loadings... (though I don't agree with the tutorial and parrying takes)
- Lame blood gem system. +% DMG outclasses any other gem. If you are not stacking 3 +%dmg gems you lack damage and get nothing really useful in exchange.
- Lame rune system comparing to the rings system in any DS or ER.
- Cut "disguise" option.
- Shotguns outclassed by pistols.
- Some arcane hunter tools are worthless (and there is little of them). Oh, you leveled arcane to 50 and found phatasm shell? Here is your 100 arcane damage which practically does nothing.
- Serrated weapon affiliation > any other (which are almost non present and hidden).
- Most transitional attacks are too slow and thus worthless. Combine with the previous and don't wonder why the saw-cleaver is the only weapon you really need.
- NPC enemies are too annoying, with bloated HP and infinite bullets.
- Armor is mostly cosmetic. It should not.
- No sprinting while target is locked. DS2 had that.
- No respec lol.
- Horrible camera work on big enemies.
- Killing creepers doesn't add stones to your inventory automatically.
- No automatic item provision from stock upon death.
- Forced NG+.
- Severe lack of content, the game is too short, the story was cut. Almost half of the game's content is optional. Mensis Nightmare is half done.
- Some non-sensical level design choices like the ability to get to the Brain through a locked door, cut variety of how you get to the Cathedral ward, the shortcut after Paarl etc.
- Horrible run backs and lack of additional checkpoints. The game forgets it isn't Demon's Souls anymore. A lamp near Logarius? Any time!
- Can't see blood echoes requirements for the next level in the status menu.
- Solid echoes on NG+... don't scale.
- Chalice dungeons are super boring, yet they hide some pretty bosses.
- PvP broken.
- Some fake lights here and there.
- Unskippable logos.
It is still one of the best From's creations, but everyone have to admit: BB is not just overrated, it is a MESS. A beautiful one, but a mess. If they ever re-issue the game, don't even try wihtout fixing at least most of the above. Or I would prefer an actual sequel with all the improvements.
Amazing analysis; I concur with every point. I'm really curious, did you also think about solutions to these problems? I've especially spent a lot of time recently thinking about the RPG mechanics, and how they could have designed them in a different way without going down the sekiro path.
dangitjm made quite a few similar points about how the rpg elements arent very compatible with the rest of the game in his a pc port is not enough video
Bloodborne is definitely flawed but overall a great step at the time for the studio. Personally for me sekiro is my favorite from this studio.
Great video, you really managed to put into words some of the frustrations I've had with Bloodborne
I don't wanna be that guy, but the background music is way too loud and distracting
Edit: Regarding the actual content of the video, though, I do think that you are overlooking the survival horror aspects of Bloodborne.
Because sure, Bloodborne does reward aggression, but only up to a certain point. If you are greedy or impatient, or up against a foe that does not die in a few hits (like some NPC fights), then blind aggression is punished heavily, and I don't think that this is at odds with the core gameplay intent of Bloodborne. Because you're not Doom Guy; you're not expected to blindly rush in like a speedrunner to rip and tear through hordes of demons without ever slowing down.
Bloodborne is a survival horror game just as much as it's an action RPG. From the very beginning, the whole atmosphere and presentation of the game are intense and suspenseful, leaving the player to fend for themselves, more like any other modern FromSoftware game. To me, at least, the player is not supposed to be this relentless killing machine from the very start. You're more like a wolf that's backed into a corner, afraid and wary, and forced to lash out.
And from that perspective, a lot of the game mechanics mentioned make a lot more sense. There is constant dread because you can run out of crucial consumables, and in every combat encounter, there is this inner conflict between rushing in and risking it all or backing away to use blood vials or parry and attack. And I do think that this conflict is intentional and fits the game very well. The player has to overcome this conflict and learn how and when to be be agressive.
bb is a badly design survival horror game compared to the industry greats by your logic.
this is frankly kind of a cop out argument to avoid admitting the game has quite a few flaws, which the bb fanbase especially has a problem admitting and accepting basic critique.
most enemies dont have poise (the ones that dont comprise atleast 80% of the games areas) which means that u can walk up to most enemies and spam R1 till theyy stop moving, then u get to bosses and heavy enemies and npc fights and then that stuff goes out the window. the constant "dread" youre talking about is called annoyance, not dread imo, actual survival horror games do that far better and feels actually dreadful. the bloodvial system is an even worse version of demons souls grass system. lets not claim its there for survival horror elements, hell i was more afraid of exploring in ds1 than i was in bb.
I definitely agree with a lot of your points and Bloodborne is my favorite game of all time! But even after all its flaws I still love it!
I agree with everything. I beat the game on ng+10, got platinum excetera. Still for as much I liked the game, I still see so many problems in it and I'm speechless when I see fanboys elevating this game as undisputed masterpiece. It's not. It has a lot of problems in literally every department. Still overall I liked it but far from be perfect,not a masterpiece.
Your writing and the quality of analysis were the best part of the video, to the point that I was consciously staying for them prior to you bringing them up at the end. With regards to the points you made, they are wel- constructed arguments, yet I disagree with most of them to some degree or another anyway, and this is primarily because of a single pair of critical assumptions you seem to make, which I don't find persuasive:
(1) That the dynamics created by any single mechanic in a game encourage a specific playstyle, while discouraging others. The playstyle encouraged, or spectrum of playstyles made viable in a game are determined by all of that game's mechanics in aggregate, including how they do and do not interact with each other. So I don't think we can say that rally encourages an aggressive total playstyle, and blood vials encourage a cautious total playstyle, therefore putting them at odds. Rather, it's that From's design choice was to include both rally and blood vials, and the playstyle their game encourages you to adopt is one that accounts for the existence of both of these and the tradeoffs between them (ex. short time window and high risk for rally, limited health regain from rally, lack of damage output from use of blood vials, finiteness of blood vials, risks associated with attempts to disengage and re-engage to make use of blood vials, etc.).
We can still say that two mechanics pull against each other in some respect or another, but not that any single mechanic instructs the player to adopt a certain playstyle, and any other one encourages them to adopt a different one. This mistake is similar imo, to the silliness in the Sekiro discourse, where people claim the game is intended to be all about parrying, just because parrying is one among its several relatively potent and useful mechanics. Of course, these same people also say Sekiro is the hardest game ever, because they handicap themselves needlessly by putting all their eggs into parrying, rather than adapting a style of play encouraged by the totality of the game's mechanics.
(2) Relatedly, you seem to assume that any two mechanics pulling the player in opposite directions is necessarily a bad thing, a design flaw. Why should it be? The pushes and pulls between conflicting incentives and incentive structures may be part of the designer's intended experience for the player. Pairings like this may also be built-in counterbalances to each other, to stop the natural, logical, or optimal approaches to play from going "too far" in one direction or the other for the designer's vision, and instead keep them within an intended sweet spot range. Like, "Okay, we want you to be aggressive, but we don't want this to play like an all-out, wreckless brute force, hack-and-slash spamming aggression game. We want this to be a fast-paced game where your innumerable split-second decisions dangle the allure of aggression at you if only you can execute on it with precision, while you are punished if you let it make you reckless. How can we tweak the whole constellation of mechanics to achieve that? Hmm, how about high damage from enemies relative to player health? Stamina limitations? Finite healing? A rally mechanic that opens the risk of taking further damage while trying to use it?"
This applies to your point regarding methodical exploration versus frenzied, fast-paced combat as well. There is no contradiction there; it's just a design choice. A game that plays out as cautious, wary, exploration of ominous environments, punctuated by abrupt outbreaks of fast-paced, high-stakes violence is a legitimate vision. From Software seems to in general prefer designing games with distinct ebbs and flows to their pacing, rather than games with all vectors pointed in the same direction at all times, so that they're tuned up to provide and encourage a single experience and rhythm at all times. For an examples of the latter type of design, see games like the Dragonball Z Budokai and Budokai Tenkaichi series' or probably other DBZ published by Bandai Namco (those 6 are just the ones I've played). For me, the big, no-holds barred, dramatic throwdowns against bosses are enhanced as experiences specifically by the way their contrast with the surrounding gameplay accentuates them as climaxes in the gameplay loop. If most or all of the gameplay leading up to the bosses was similarly fast-paced and aggressive, that would be a legitimate design choice too, and may or may not be enjoyable for players, but it certainly wouldn't feel like the Bloodborne we love, and the Bloodborne Miyazaki & co. apparently intended us to experience.
There is one minor point that I would say "skill issue" on, but for substantive reasons. There's a point in the vid when you say that most of Bloodborne is designed around baiting enemies out to fight one-on-one like in Dark Souls, which clashes with BB's intended playstyle, etc. Even though I think its okay for Bloodborne to include cautious and methodical aspects to its gameplay (as mentioned above), I nonetheless also think that your statement there significantly oversells the degree to which it does so.To the contrary, I would say that almost NONE of Bloodborne is designed to encourage or require the player to lure and bait enemies for one-on-one combat. The large swarms of enemies that easily aggro simultaneously, the frequent inclusion of ranged attackers and highly mobile dogs in enemy formations, the lowered stamina requirements for attacking and dodging, the rapidity of the healing, the speed and nimbless of the hunter's step-dodge and rolling, the speed of the hunter's attacks, the gun parry, the crowd control attacks, and the time it takes to fully charge a backstab all DISCOURAGE adopting a "try fighting one at a time" playstyle. They push a player to get out of that Dark Souls comfort zone, and throw themselves into the midst of swarms and react to threats in real time, as quick-witted, flexible, and agile hunters, rather than hanging back and calculating a solution to the puzzle of the enemy array. That way of play is much more viable in Bloodborne than in previous games, and much more efficient in Bloodborne than the baiting and luring method. It requires a certain measure of skill to pull off, sure, but the aforementioned mechanical and balancing choices encourage the player to acquire that level of skill.
Now, I didn't have that skill when I first played BB either, and did go through at least some parts of it by trying to bait and lure enemies into one-on-one combat, but this was extremely suboptimal and unnecessarily time-consuming, given the tools available, so I naturally saw myself shedding these habits, and became more comfortable with the differing player constraints and design philosophy of BB compared to DS1 and DS2.
I like to be open minded and judge things fairly. As he does in this video and I appreciate that. But I disagree with the disliking of level vs boss design. In my opinion, the fact that you have to progress through the level slowly and methodically, but then when you get to a fight, you have to be a ruthless animal is the beauty of the game. I’m new to the whole of the Frome software games. I was brought to it by Elden Ring and I loved Elden Ring so much so that now I want to play every game and I’m on Bloodborne now and it’s a breath of fresh air. In fact, I love this game so much I dug my PS4 out of the closet. Bought the digital version download it played it loved it so much. I bought a disk version just in case the Internet disappears one day.
I think you raise a lot of valid point about the rpg mechanica of bloodborne that i often feel myself, however i think youre also missing some other important points. What the rpg mechanics contribute to bloodborne is a way to balance the game very naturally and make a good difficulty curve. By giving you the choice you can make a custom playstyle that suits your skills and makes up for your weaknesses. If you never use visceral attacks there's no need to level up skill and you can focus the other attack stats, or if you never use guns much dont bother with bloodtinge. If a boss is giving you trouble upgrade your vit and stamina. By having an upgrade system the player basically has full control of the difficulty as they can grind to a level where the game feels comfortable. Bloodborne has a diverse set of weapons that can all be overpowered in their own right, so the devs force you to make a choice otherwise you would have the perfect tool for every situation. They all play and feel vastly different and some will align more with your playstyle than others, the rpg mechanics act as way to make the weapons feel like they're truly your own and give you power over your playstyle. Is it perfect? DEFINITELY NOT. you brought up a lot of the reasons why and most of them could have been solved with a simple re-speccing mechanic. And bloodgems are a terrible implemented feature that could have been cool.
I think you make a good point and the RPG mechanics do more than just provide choice/playstyle variety. It's challenging to talk about game mechanics from a perspective of difficulty, since difficulty is completely subjective but RPG elements do allow players to dictate their own difficulty curve, to some extent. I didn't speak at length about the difficulty curve in BB because it isn't necessarily a flaw or even objectively measurable. My point in including RPG elements in this video was that the feature doesn't provide playstyle variety and choice, as well as deleting them would. To your point, I could have included that choice is only half of the function of those mechanics.
Sekiro is still peak souls type combat, because despite how aggressive Bloodborne is trying to be, patience and perfect timing is still the core of all souls games and Sekiro rewards you for your clam reactions and focus. In Bloodborne, althought healing through combat is a genius, innovative idea, it still punishes the player for attempting to regain most your hp since the enemy animations tend to have priority after your second light attack regardless of how little armor you're wearing. It feels like bait more than anything at times. Bloodborne is still fantastic, but theres some idiosyncrasies with how Bloodborne wants you to play vs the optimal way to see results.
6:12 I can't even focus on what you're saying because of that abosulute banger track on the background. What's it called? I NEED TO KNOW!
Grinding for bloodvials isnt an issue of you do some of the chalice dungeons, buy some instead of leveling up (highly recommended) or simply is good at the game. Another option is to do co-op or PvP and spend those blood echoes on vials.
Personally I think I only had to farm 1 or 2 hours which was during my first playthrough back in 2015 when I wasnt familiar with the combat system yet. Which farming forces you to learn by repetition.
Ok, i like the video, and it have ALOT i agree with, but i have immediate problems with it :)
You took one consept - COMBAT and extrapolate it on both combat and exploration. I can see from where you coming from, but im not so sure you can say so authoritatively you know what intended expierience is for an exploration part of the game. You can speculate, you can express your own feelings about how well this two aspects fits in the game, but by no means you can so confidently say "if combat are more agressive, exploration should be agressive coz it's intended expierience" it' more than possible From made combat fast and agressive as intended expierience and exploration more methodical as intended expieriecne. I have zero idea why someone shouldn't choose such a combination of dinamics. Severance Blade of Darkness immediately comes to mind. It's a game with exactly slow methodical movement through the level, almoust survival horror-like, but combat is frantic, fast and extremely deadly.
So, from my perspective huge portion of the video is constructed on top of a false premise.
To not be so negative, i just must compliment that part about how all bosses in DS1 is not just a stron enemy, but continuation of a level. This is something so rareley talked about and the part i missing the most in later games. After DS2 bosses are just separated challenge and not part of the level.
I do not believe that videos such as these prevent any stagnation over at From Software. Bloodborne came out ten years ago and they have not repeated the same experiment since then but rather took what worked and experimented further. It is, however, useful for aspiring game designers to help them understand what works and what doesn't, and more important why.
I can't believe you would make an entire video about the overlooked problems of Bloodborne and not talk about its archaic multiplayer and network system. I understand your point for this vid is intended experience so the majority of your point was the intended experience is aggression. But still! Yes, its a known From Software problem, but having to do an entire level twice (with your world, then your friends world) is fucking mind boggling, not to mention all the other bullshittery that comes with its network system.
I've plated bloodborne, sekiro and I'm a From fanboy, but I'd make my own video about all of From's game flaws too, but its only because I love them so much.
Hey great video!
Tbh yeah i think the rpg elements of leveling just held back this game just like you said in the vid. And Sekiro just proves how getting rid of it opened up for more in depth fighting mechanics.
But small nit pick on the vid. Your voice was very quiet compared to the background music which made it hard to listen to
The only time I really want to make a TH-cam video is to make a video exactly like this.
The cult around this game makes me suspect all these people legitimately made some type of bargain with an eldritch deity.
Only recently playing Bloodborne after engaging with all of dark souls was a bit strange to me. A lot of people I am friends with and people I respect a lot told me bloodborne was the best thing since toilet paper. I wasn't let down with how good it was but I was dissapointed with how hyped up it was and how much less it offered than any of the dark souls games I am into.
POV how to make people press the "Dont recommend videos of this channel" button
Great video, the audio balance is a bit off. Your voice tends to be on the quiet side which leads me to increase the volume, and the montage music tends to be way too loud in comparison. Borderline jump scare loudness.
I really appreciate this take. It's helped me better understand my issue with the rally system. I've always had my gripes but wasn't quite sure what exactly it was. I don't think I've ever heard someone mention the inherent strength of blood vials detracting from the use of rally. I am fundamentally a more risk adverse person, so after several misguided pushes to heal with rally resulting in my dying I avoided the rally system. I committed to a slower more dark souls approach of learning the boss and reducing my mistakes so I could conserve blood vials. And yeah that is directly at odds with what from soft wants you to do. I thought maybe I was just hard headed and not playing the game the right way, but no rally is flawed, big time. People regularly praise this game shamelessly, but I've always felt that for its healing system alone (and having to grind) it doesn't deserve the title of from softs magnum opus.
Now see here, Hbomberguy's review is perfect!.. Having said that, it does have some issues.
I heavily disagree with your second point about the relation of bosses to their areas in this game, which i think comes at odds about lore importance in the beginning. The themes of this game and the plot points are what drive it in comparison to dark souls more disparite theming. Not to say that this game isnt vague as hell as well, but some boss fights have part of there enjoyment from understanding the narrative up until the point of the boss. I find micolash to not be an entirely mechanically satisfying fight, but it serves as a rare point in fromsoftwares catalog where they chose to base a boss fight around character first, and built the mechanics around that instead of their usual mechanical framing of moveset first lore in an item you get after. Your point that bloodbornes inability to frame bossfights around the mechanics of the level doesnt make sense when paired to your other rruthful point of bloodborne being a build restrictive game. Since there is a limited build variety of fast or very fast in this game, bosses that are based around combat and game mechanics and not story are also structured to be mechanically similar to that very narrow combat system. You act like this is an oversight or flaw in the game, but it feels very intentional to me as a player. The way i see it, and this is all my opinion i could be talking unintelligible nonsense, bloodborne is relegated to two boss archetypes: the speedy combat boss that pairs well with the games playstyle, and the boss that serves the narrative and aesthetic appeal of the level. Both are equally important to this game, as bloodborne is as much about its world feel as it is about its game feel, if that makes sense. If you have a boss that fully reflects the buildup of a level on an aesthetic and structural level like in dark souls, then that gets rid of the mystery and intrigue of the boss fight that bloodborne provokes in many of its bosses. I feel that in bloodborne, if a boss clashes with the design of the level preceding it, its done in an intentional way that makes me want to investigate why it contrasts to the level so hard, what is the story here, what clues about this being the real end point to what led to it were strewn about the level that i was ignorant of? When i beat a boss like that in bloodborne, it makes me feel like i want to go back through a level to see whst i can piece together, and it makes new playthroughs more enjoyable as i get to discover things i didnt see before, or see things differently with the context of the boss. From completely capitilized on the unknown element that levels in dark souls had, like what was waiting inside sens fortress or past the depths, and completely turned it on its head with bloodborne. Its an aesthetic and narrative reversal of their preceding game, while also elmboldening the elements of their previous game even more. Maybe im too up froms ass, and i am still able to agree with many of the other points of your video, but i cant agree with you on that. Also im only halfwsy through the video so maybe you end up making my stream of consciousness rant completely redundant by the end of it 😂😂😂 im pretty impatient i guess. hopefully whoever reads this will understand my points to some degree
The average player will run around a new area for an hour but people can’t handle waiting 20 seconds to load in.
The thing about this video is that everybody already knows what the problems are but the game is so good you forget about it, they become part of the experience
This is correct. For me, for example first the blood vial thing seems like a pain, but it actually fits the theme of the narrative and isn't actually that much of a chore
Ehhh no I never forgot them, I may have overlooked them but they definitely hurt the game and the experience would be better without these problems
@@boredomkiller99 What problem specifically would make it "better"? most of the problems are due to the game being a decade old and the rest that he mentioned about the grinding, healing, etc.. would basically just make the game easier
i never understood why they made vials consumable : (
When it comes to the rallying system, personally, its not reliable at all. A majority of enemies and bosses in Bloodborne are too aggressive and hard to stagger to take advantage of the rallying. The withering of the portion of the healthbar not being permanent and going away in my opinion is also not a good design choice for enforcing aggression or smart play. Because the withered portion goes away quickly it can reinforce a bad habit where players just react to taking damage by spamming R1 only to get more damage back and force you to take more blood vials.
While I think Bloodborne is awesome if it was made by FS today it’d be definitely more fluid, even more intelligently designed and have many QoL features that we see in DS3, Sekiro and ER
Haven’t watched the entire video yet but the points about the leveling and weapon requirements I totally agree with. The Sekiro comparison of less RPG mechanics giving more variety potential for every player each play through is spot on.
A great video and all of your points are valid, BUT, you have to look at the bigger picture, a video is rarely successful when it's built from scratch and From Software have perfected the art of building on top of their previous games, you don't know how hard it is to build a new system and implemented into a game, i'm glad we have all the souls games, they're some of the rarest masterpieces on modern gaming, and they wouldn't have existed (or at least took way longer) had From Software built all new systems from scratch for every new game.
Probably a bad take, I think lifegems can actually help make gameplay in DS2 more strategic in addition to Estus use relies wholly on the fact that ADP is a stat at all. I can kind of see what the devs were probably going for. Either that or it's just my interpretation. That doesn't justify the garbage stat, and the fact that many points are wasted going into it just for the movement in the game to be bearable. This leads me to my next idea that Bloodborne's healing system works on its own tandem system, albeit not tied to stats. Bloodborne tries to do its own thing when it comes to being strategic when employing its use of its healing systems. Sure you have gems you can socket into your weapons to make them be able to heal as a minor way to increase healing. The next step up is of course the blood vials.
In a way, as the game leans more into its 'horror' elements, I think it takes some inspiration from classic games like Resident Evil where item and resource management. Blood vials are akin to grasses or flowers or medkits, they're a finite resource. This isn't done to actually force you to conserve your uses of them. They're free all throughout the game when you kill most enemies. They don't automatically refill just because, they refill because you're more than likely to have a huge stockpile in your storage. This is to say, mostly if you are an expert at your 'skill' as a hunter, so to speak, the rally system is the final step in how Bloodborne goes about healing as a mechanic. With the abundance of blood vials, I don't think Bloodborne translates its style of healing in its moment to moment gameplay. The blood vials are supposed to be a last resort, when you're on you're last leg, out of stamina and near death. When you're not trying to rely on solely on blood vials and play the game in the style that is truly the opposite of the Souls games, it's easier to understand how the game wants you to play it. The rallying system forces you to be aggressive to the point where you're recovering your health at a rate in which you'd likely hardly need to use them.
Blood vials are finite because they're not the main focus of the game's healing. It plays into the lore of the hunt and the bloodlust that overcomes hunters. The blood they hack out of all the beasts is the exact kind of blood as in blood vials. The more they kill, the more they get lost in the in their own actions. That's why attacking with so much ferocity is what 'revives' the player character and keeps them going in the fight. If the main point of the game IS aggression, then Bloodborne tries its damndest to subvert the standard Estus usage and even lifegems entirely. I'm in the middle of a BL4 run and personally I don't use blood vials unless I have to. They're kind of useless unless used as an aid. The rally system suffices when I'm literally going to die in one or two hits anyway. This could have been made better if they probably limited how many vials you're able to carry. A cap of probably 10 or less would have made the game more intense, but perhaps also have reinforced its rallying system to a greater extent. Making rallying last potentially longer or heal more would have probably given more incentive to use it.
It may all just be personal conjecture, but I do try to appreciate the inner workings of these games. I think game mechanics being justified in the story or lore of a game is fascinating. The way FromSoft pulls it off is ridiculous considering how consistent they've been with that exact thing. It may not work, but I think it can be explained as to why it's there, even if it's not optimized well. That could be the case here in that the game tries to compromise too much with what came before, while also trying to carry its subversive motif.
I agree life gems oddly fit Ds2 well
I never understood the complaints about ADP in DS2, it's so massively overexaggerated. The only REAL issue with the stat is that it isn't explained very well in-game (which isn't specific to the stat, a lot of things in these games suffer from this), but once you know what it does, you'll be finished levelling it within hours, if not minutes, you only need like 18-24 at most. I find the 60 vigor "mandate" of Elden Ring MUCH worse for several reasons.
Another thing to add is that people say that the game is unplayable without ADP, but there are several ways to mitigate or avoid damage entirely without even touching the stat, like strafing, outspacing, blocking, or just rolling with better timing and direction. This is one reason that the obscene vigor tax of ER is worse, you can't just stop being 1-2 shot if you didn't level the stat a lot. If you didn't level ADP, you still had a multitude of perfectly viable options to avoid damage.
@chaoskiller6084 the game does explain what adp does. "Boosts evasion" like that's self explanatory
@@YEY0806 While it's true that the effect of *agility* is somewhat explained ingame, the tooltip for ADP isn't very helpful, and it could've been a little more specific that agility has breakpoints for s. It also doesn't imply that it makes using items faster, though that's not a huge deal.
The main issue is that you need to dig for a tooltip hidden among the dozens of stats in the menus in order to find it, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the tooltip for ADP simply said that it makes dodging easier, rather than agility.
@chaoskiller6084 I mean, that's part of the staple of these games. Not everything is explained to you. Besides, why would ADP need to uniquely explain the breakpoint for each stat investment when other stats don't do the same. Fromsoft have always wanted to inspire communication and sharing of discoveries between fans of these games with not just lore but also with game mechanics, and it comes with trail and error. It's part of why these games continue to be talked about and played years after being released. There was a time when people thought that Resistance in DS1 was a useful stat
blood vitals is the worst healing items in all soulsborne games
Yes bruh i hated the healing system. Never beat bloodborne tbh
I hate the blood vial system too, but id recomment giving the game a go if you still have it. Especially if you have the dlc, you wont regret playing the game all the way through.@@BiggRich95
People complain when all souls are copies reskinned. People complain when the game is different, can’t satisfy them all. I will say if it sucks for you thats because you suck. Blood vials makes sense from a lore perspective and you can always heal your lost health by hitting enemies right back.
If you people actually played survival horror games you'd know that they have limited healing.
The grass in demon souls:
Expected some different stuff to come up, but I guess my issues with stuff like Bloodborne and MGR do tend to be weirdly unique to myself. Maybe I'll have to make a Bloodborne critique myself sometime lol
Or how the more slower nature of trick weapon transformations conflicts with a rally system that rewards light attack spam especially considering how a lot of enemies get hyper armor when they jump away, repetitive and reskinned enemies, little to no weapon variety for arcane/bloodtinge builds - yeah bloodborne is quality but also has a lot of problems.
Just found this video and I’m sure you’ve put out more things since but I thought it was a very well done video, good audio and such.
Maybe would’ve more clearly defined your points you were to make earlier but other than that it was very professional and if I like your next video I watch I’m subscribing for sure.
My biggest gripe with it was its abysmal performance, barely hitting 30fps with duplicate frames at 900p with no anti aliasing on the *PS4 pro*. It sucked so god damn hard i refunded the game. Loved every other From Soft game, played them all on PC, but this was just unacceptable.
9:50 problems.
That was a pretty lengthy video so it did take a good clip to get through. That said I do appreciate the honesty on most of your points and a lot of the critiques. Its not a review as you stated many times so I do feel the comparisons you wanted to make to Sekieo would have been warranted. Your intent would have been to show the players with rose tinted glasses what would have been better.
I haven't finished Bloodborne, I'm pretty far in but as you pointed out here there are a few things that don't jive well with me. The way you get bloodviles being one especially how they randomly balloon in price later in the game. And the second is definitely the way builds are restrictive though not as diverse as DS or ER.
I run into that problem for most RPG's since very few of them cater to my desired play style. Typically A High DPS glass Cannon that is nimble and hits hard at mid and close range (with a longer ranged option).
Bloodborne's speed is at odds with this idea both for the player and the enemies. I initially put lots of points into blood tinge and started with the threaded cane, going for my speedy and midrange play style. I was heavily disappointed in what little damage the bullets do, or how quickly they ran out. Not a problem in the beginner area but heavily annoying when they strop dropping in later areas.
As for how the level design doesn't match the constant aggression idea i think you are spot on. Although I have difficulties imagining what that would look like... Some form of ghoul infested place where they constantly chase and attack you? The combat struggle when dealing with multiple opponents so i couldn't see that gameplay loop being a core feature.
That about sums up my thoughts on your video and this game. Thanks
I dont really have any wild ideas about a different level structure, and to reiterate, I think the default DS level design is perfectly fine. I brought up that comparison to show how the level design and encounter type are lauded for being so harmonious in DS but in the BB none of those same compliments apply. A good point to illustrate what I meant would be that Sekiro lays out many of it's combat encounters so you are encouraged to use the stealth tools to secure the 1v1s in which the combat really shines. Sekiro enemy layout and levels are not similar to DS levels because the tools available to the player are so different. Thanks for watching the video!
@Egotesticals Okay that makes it more clean for me now. From a mechanical level Sekiro has stealthing and the vertically to go around the level and reposition for your one v one. DS teaches you about hiding enemies and traps early teaching you to explore cautiously and to usually have a shield out in the landscape. Makes sense in both. Bloodborne teaches you that enemies do hide and their are traps as well... But speeding through the level nor being aggressive helps with either. Gotcha. I wanted to play BB to find out why so many loved it, but it's honestly not my cup of tea. Those hiding enemies later on just become jump scares and later on I literally refused to play BB at night because of it 😂😂😅.
Probably the most stressful game I have ever played
I really enjoyed your video and your points, your writing is mostly quite solid, nicely done!
However, I'd appreciate a bit more attention with:
1. Music in the background while you're speaking needs to be more neutral in tone, or else don't any music at all when speaking, or keep it very very low.
2. There's some really LOUD audio transitions particularly when addressing points from other people, I think this really hurts the viewing experience.
I'd say you have really good voice for listening for long amounts of time, so keep your videos a bit more pleasant to watch in regards to audio. That aside I throughouly enjoyed your points, I've subscribed and I'm looking forward to hearing more.
10:39 Don't forget Demon's Souls !!! (aaaaand I spoke too soon )
I am liking the video so far .
Bout time someone who doesn’t constantly glaze this game like it doesn’t have issues outside of being exclusive
Some of the cryptic bs should be a hit on the game. The disappointment of beating bsb to get to ......a dead end. The entrance to the dlcs is ridiculous. The place with the dolls cloths.
Fair point. It's easily one of my favourite games ever and yet I dislike the Forbidden Woods for the same reason I dislike most of Elden Ring. Don't give me wide open spaces where avoiding the enemies is easy, essentially making them optional. I should have to go THROUGH every. single. enemy. Or it's essentially a pointless running simulator which looks nice.
Damn, this video pleasantly surprised me, especially because the last video I saw of someone talking about why BloodBorne’s bad… was itself pretty bad.
I honestly agreed with most of your takes and this video opened my eyes to some problems I’ve never thought about before, so I don’t really have anything to say other than good job!
The healing can be argued, I don’t think it’s so black and white. Bloodborne wants to promote the rally system it wants you to be aggressive, but it also doesn’t want you to feel forced to play this way. Hence the point of blood vials. The reason vials are finite is because they want you to eventually use the rally system. Basically, their intent was, “hey we have a new healing system and it wants you to be much more aggressive, but don’t feel forced to use this right away, we’ll give you blood vials to compensate. But if you don’t eventually learn the game and use the rally system, you’ll be punished for using too many blood vials.”
The funny thing is blood vials are so heavily dropped and easily purchased that they end up being much easier to abuse (with the 20 capacity) than the more limited estus flask anyway.
@@fjkebhnfdnsjkb7762that is the problem, you are likely to stock up on vials killing mooks but then waste them all on bosses trying to learn them. So you basically spend most of the time thriving or starving on healing
Bold hunters mark teleports you back to the lamp you first spawn in -_- I used it so many times while farming to reset the area without having to double warp
Hey keep up the good work. This was well made and argued
thank you!
Got 5 minutes in, and suddenly got the intense urge to play BPM. Damn, I forgot how godly the soundtrack is for that game