Bloodborne (PlayStation 4) Game Review

Great games come and go, Bloodborne is a Playstation 4 exclusive game, an action RPG game set in the ancient city of Yharnam that’s cursed with an endemic illness. Being one of the hunters, your character journeys into the world of peril, death and madness to uncover its dark secrets.

Bloodborne (PlayStation 4) Game Review

Story

Your character mysteriously awakens in Yharnam during the night of “The Hunt”, and is tasked to unravel the mystery behind the endemic illness that has fallen on the ancient city. Being a hunter, the protagonist’s role now is to locate and terminate the source of the curse and escape the nightmare in order to return to the real world.

Bloodborne (PlayStation 4) Game Review

I’ve been playing this game since mid May and have spent countless hours on it and I must say that the story is rather dull, there’s little to no scripts and in many cases the interaction with NPCs are one-sided. The game starts with barely any intro on what’s going on and there’s very little information within the world that shed light on what’s going on in the game.

Put it simple, there’s little to enjoy about the story despite completing quite a portion of the game, based on the number of bosses and level I’m at, I reckon it’s around 25% – 33% of the game. Wait, you’ve only completed 25% after countless hours of gaming? You must be a n00b! Ok well hold your horses, I’ll elaborate more on the following section.

Gameplay

While the world in Bloodborne is extremely detailed and beautifully crafted, the game itself IS NOT. I spent my first few hours at the same level, dying and trying, and not even knowing that I could collect Blood Echoes and level-up my character. Nope, I was stuck at level one with no guide or anything. Eventually I posted my comment on Facebook that the game sucks because I really hate it when a game doesn’t give you any clue on what’s going on.

Bloodborne (PlayStation 4) Game Review

A friend of mine then posted that it was a good game, I just need to get past the nonsensical first part. With some pointers, I finally did so and have been progressing from there ever since, after all I’m not an inexperienced gamer but yeah this is how bad the game was designed. Experience holds no bearing when the game doesn’t tell you what to do, not even a basic tutorial. What it does it that it leaves some notes lying around that you would be able to read here and there and that’s it.

I’ll put it this way, the introduction was such a turn off that I wanted to just end my review there because it wasted too much of my time. However since I’ve progressed based on pointers, I decided to game further of which I did and I enjoyed the game.

The game however is unforgiving. As an experienced gamer myself, I do find the game quite challenging because the AI hits really hard and to make things worse, it takes time to get from the last save point to the Level Boss and they’re no pushovers. 🙁 It annoyed me to bits on my challenges with many Level Bosses, I have no problem going against level bosses but seriously, every other boss I had to fight so far takes some 2 minutes journey (loading time included) just to meet them, each death leads to another 2 minutes of journey. 🙁 The save point is only made available after the boss is defeated and arrggghhhh, it’s really troublesome because all it takes is a tiny mistake to end the Level Boss session prematurely.

Check out this video for the Level Boss Fight.

The game does not come with a compass or a map either, so exploring large maps often seem like to be an activity of mindless running around and trying to remember where you’ve not been. You could be stuck with no progress for days, perhaps even weeks, in most cases you’re best off heading to a forum to find out how to progress.

Bloodborne (PlayStation 4) Game Review

Being an action RPG, the game is rich in usable items – weapons, attired, accessories and whatever else. You are able to level up your character statistics and even customize your weapons for varying effects. On the downside, the game gets a little tiring as you spend much of your time not just exploring but leveling up just to make it easier when you’re up against the odds.

Put it simple – the game is challenging, and if you’re new to gaming then this is not the game for you because the game requires quite some skill when it comes to killing and surviving, not forgetting the exploration part that takes up a lot of time. In a way the game is great that it provides you extremely long hours of game time, there are many builds you can choose from and from what I know the game has multiple endings, what makes it even better is you are able to play online and have co-operative mode and that adds a whole new level of experience!

On the downside – this game is downright challenging and doesn’t offer much story or plot to enjoy compared to the stress and effort placed. Some gamers expressed that they threw the controller out of frustration, I’m not surprised.

Graphics / Audio

Bloodborne is extremely beautiful, each and every scene and every where you are, there’s just so many beautiful scenes to behold. Take for example how the colors of the day change as you progress, and level of detail when it comes to objects around the scene and giving it an outstanding visual experience. I can’t count the number of times I just pan the camera angle around just to admire the scene.

The game is dark for the most part, that’s why I prefer to play it at night with the lights off. I’m quite sure you would’ve noticed by now how the images so far are dark, click on them to have a better view of the detail.

And as if the excellence in visual quality isn’t enough, the game’s superb audio brings the experience to another level. Some scenes are downright spooky, sending chills down my spine as I make my way through minions of darkness that I can’t imagine.

If you’re one of a faint heart, I suggest not playing this game at night and not playing it in the dark or alone. It’s THAT GREAT when it comes to bringing the mysterious Yharnam to your living room.

The Verdict

Bloodborne is a beautiful game and you shouldn’t miss it if you’re up to the challenge, the game could be either rewarding or downright torturing depending on your ability. For those not too keen on precision control and lengthy walk around exploration then please go ahead and skip this game, you probably wouldn’t even progress, let alone enjoy the beauty this game has to offer.

For those experienced in games of this genre and looking for something that pushes your experience to the limits, do give Bloodborne try. I would’ve given this game a very high rating of being near perfect for what it is but I can’t simply because the game is horrible when it comes to getting the gamer accustomed to it, it’s horribly challenging, the world is extremely time consuming to explore, it lacks proper tutorial and very unforgiving.

Score : 7 out of 10 –
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