Defined by the Blood: A Review of "Bloodborne"

If you read my Dark Souls III review, then you know that when I first played Bloodborne, I was so unimpressed that I didn't get past the first major open section. Well, after conversing with a friend on the subject, I realized that I really wasn't doing my job by leaving a game unfinished. So, over the past few weeks I have been trying my hand at Bloodborne again, and I recently got one of the three endings. I still haven't gotten the ending that involves another boss fight, so I won't have any thoughts about that. Now, Bloodborne has been out for over a year at this point, so, while I still won't do any major spoilers, I feel absolutely no shame in saying the names of bosses or describing certain areas. So, if that is the kind of thing that makes a game feel truly spoiled for you, then turn back now. Otherwise, strap in, because this is going to get bloody. Yahtzee Croshaw once described Dark Souls II as a game of give and take: Every time you found something good in the game, there was something bad to cancel it out. In my opinion, this descriptor is more akin to Bloodborne. As I write this, I'm finding it hard to structure this review. I can't structure it as positives first negatives last or vice versa because too often they come hand in hand. With that in mind, I believe my method on this review will just to go with a logical flow, an "in order of appearance" kind of structure. So, here we go. Bloodborne.

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Right off the bat, one of the things that Bloodborne gets right is its foreboding atmosphere. From the opening cutscene, it becomes quite clear that the world of Bloodborne is quite a dark place. Then, you awaken in a clinic to the sounds of muffled whimpers and distant snarls and you know exactly what kind of place you're in...even if you actually know nothing at all about where you are (more on that later). From there, you step out into the city of Yarnham to a burnt orange sky and buildings seeming almost rotted (despite their sound state) because of the sheer darkness of the atmosphere. Even though the particular graphic style of Bloodborne actually makes it hard to see and sometimes gave me a headache, there was simply no doubt that From Software was doing a fantastic job visually establishing their mood. Later on, night falls in Yarnham, and this effect is only strengthened. During the nightfall sections, there were moments when I was legitimately scared to take another step. That is effective atmosphere setup.
However, remember when I said that Bloodborne is a game of give and take? Unfortunately, this can be applied to the atmosphere as well. About three quarters of the way through the game, something happens and instead of burnt orange or pure dark of night...the sky turns...cotton candy purple? For the rest of the game, instead of a vacant expanse of darkness, the sky becomes the little rainbow that you see in soap bubbles. That is really the best way I can think to describe it, and it is absolutely baffling. I mean, I can understand where From Software is coming from; after all, critics and players alike often complain when environments get too samey, but surely there was a way to do that other than by completely destroying the atmosphere.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Bloodborne's narrative revolves around some degree of mind-boggling. The purple sky stretch of the game goes with that, but Bloodborne is at its best when it is sticking to the core premise of its setting: Dark and Victorian. I guarantee you, I would have understood that the story was trippy without the purple sky thing.
I know that this is a lot of time to spend complaining about a simple change in the skybox, but it really destroys the entire atmosphere that Bloodborne had spent the last three quarters of the game building. It is like if "The Road" was the film you know for the first, say, hour and a half, but then in the last half hour somebody painted the sky pink. You would still have the ruined buildings and the hopeless dialogue, but it just wouldn't be the same because the sky would be freaking pink. Hopefully that puts my issues with the purple sky section into some kind of perspective. Also the purple sky actually gave me headaches quite often. Its something about the way the purple clashes with the orange moon. Another way to phrase this complaint that I have would be to say that the atmosphere changes from being something resembling the work of Ridley Scott to being something resembling the work of Tim Burton.

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From there, I suppose its only fair to start talking about the story...or lack thereof. From Software games have never been too forthcoming about their lore. You get your information from a brief prologue, item descriptions, and subtle cues from the environment (more on that in the next section). Sure there is a lot of theory that goes around, and all of it has a base in the facts of the lore, but regardless of how vague the stories have been in previous From Software games, there was always some base to jump off of. In the original Dark Souls, you were thrust into the world knowing only a few things: 1) Gwyn and friends defeated the ancient dragons and pretty much established the world of Dark Souls and 2) Something compels you to ring the bells of awakening. It wasn't much to go on in terms of the grander picture, but it wasn't meant to be. It was meant to be our diving board, something to paint the colors of the grand vista in the background before we went in and actually started drawing the lines...if that makes sense. Point being, we had a basic understanding of the universe before we knew our role in it or where we truly were in time.
Bloodborne represents an attempt to recreate this effect through ambiguity alone, and what the developer failed to understand is that it is not impossible to jump in a pool without a diving board, but you're only barely going to go below the surface. What the diving board adds to the experience is that it lets you get closer to and perhaps reach the bottom by virtue of the extra force as you enter the water. Before I draw that metaphor out any further, perhaps I ought to elaborate. The diving board in this scenario is something resembling a prologue or a basic layout of what the history of this world is like. It is something that lets us put a small hook in the narrative world so that we have some point of reference. It is entirely possible to get into a narrative world cold turkey, but if you provide something for the player to latch onto throughout the experience, they are just going to get a lot more out of it. What From Software failed to recognize here is that it is only possible to get into a narrative world cold turkey if you provide little tidbits of reference along the way. Bloodborne provides nothing of that nature. I feel the best way to describe what I mean here is through comparison.
In the original Dark Souls, you were given a vague objective, but it was an objective nonetheless. Even when you were lost beyond all reason, you knew what you were trying to do. You were trying to ring the bells of awakening. Why? Because it is the fate of the undead. After you rung both bells of awakening, you weren't given much to go off of, but a new path opened, so common sense dictated that you ought to go there. Afterwards, you were taken to a brand new area with a foreboding, grandiose castle in the distance. Likewise, nothing told you what to do, but instinct said to head for the castle. Then you were given a new goal, and you didn't know exactly where to go to accomplish it, but like at the beginning, you had something in the back of your mind driving you. Just in case you still haven't played it, I won't spoil it, but why were you doing it? Well...you pretty much just wanted to, if everybody is being totally honest, but once again, it was your destiny as an undead.
In Dark Souls II, there was less ambiguity involved, but it was pretty much the same principle. You were given a goal: Light the primal bonfires and seek the king. The objective was far less vague, but you still had to figure out where to go yourself, and the whole time, you had that goal in the back of your head. Seek the King. Why? I don't remember. But basically it had something to do with destiny as well.
In Dark Souls III (which, of course, came after Bloodborne, but I'm still using it as an example), nobody directly told you where to go, but based off of information from the prologue and other sources, you had some idea where you might begin your search for the Lords of Cinder. You needed to return the Lords of Cinder to their thrones. Why? Because the fire is fading, and everything is at stake.
In Bloodborne, you are told to go out and kill things...and that is it. You kill some bosses, you go new places, and you keep on killing bosses. Why? Nobody tells you. Later on, you are told to "seek the newborn" after killing a particular boss. Why? Nobody tells you. How one could logically reach the conclusion that, after killing a giant spider, I now need to go and find a baby is beyond me. Then, later on, you have to enter a nightmare of either the head of the school of Mensis or just some joe blow scholar of Mensis. Why? No clue. You don't even know its happening until you're there. Then, inside the nightmare, you go and find the baby. Why? Why is the baby inside a dream? Is the baby even real? What relationship does the dream world have with the world of the living? How can a dream persist after the dreamer has died? Why is it so doggoned important to find this baby? Item descriptions state that babies are precious to the "great ones" (ancient beings of some sort, and sorta kinda the antagonists of the game) because in their many attempts to impregnate human women, almost all of them turn out to be miscarriages. Were I to guess, I'd say the baby we're seeking is the child of a great one. But this only leads to more questions. Why do we feel compelled to find the baby? How do we know the baby exists? How is it that we just happen to reach a dead body that takes us to a dream world in which the baby exists? In fact, who are we? Why do we care? Why do we have to be the ones to find this baby? Do the hunters hate the great ones? None of these questions are ever answered, and you can just tell that it is the developers trying to replicate their tried-and-true drip-feeding storytelling without realizing what it was in previous games that made such a storytelling style work.

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In reviews of Bloodborne, a common theme that I have found is that reviewers like to talk about how this game tells a story through its architecture and its surroundings, but I would like to strongly protest that. In the original Dark Souls, even though you were never directly told anything about the undead burg and the surrounding areas, you could tell certain things through the level design. The undead burg was made up of very small buildings stacked on top of each other and insanely narrow corridors. Blighttown was a series of bamboo shacks built on the sides of pillars holding the rest of the city up, and the enemies you encountered there had a theme of malformation and perpetual disease. Anor Londo was made up of towering palaces and cathedrals, and there were gigantic armed sentinels keeping watch everywhere. Looking at these areas, you could get a pretty good idea what kinds of people might have once lived in each area. You get no such effect in Bloodborne. You can tell that they were at least trying to give you subtle hints through small details like the fact that monsters in old Yharnham wear shawls, kind of implying that maybe poorer folks lived there. But that isn't a detail of architecture. The fact of the matter is that buildings are indistinguishable from each other in Bloodborne. When you walk down a street, you have no idea what kinds of people lived there. There isn't enough enemy variety (more on this later) to give you the slightest clue. Its the same three or four types of villagers everywhere you go, so you can't tell by their clothing what their status might have been or why they might be in this particular area. I simply don't know what reviewers were talking about when they claimed that Bloodborne tells a story through its architecture, because its architecture says absolutely nothing.

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With that, I suppose its time to start getting into gameplay. Those who read my Dark Souls III review may remember me saying that I'm not a big fan of fast paced gameplay. However, as I kept on playing Bloodborne, I realized I was actually having a fun time. Gameplay is Bloodborne's strong suit. Like I said, I'm not one for supremely fast-paced gameplay, but after the first story boss fight, gameplay slows down a tad. It is still much faster-paced than any other From Software games, but it at least slows down a little bit, with the exception of one or two parts (once again, more on that later). Once you get past some of the obvious design changes, it is still pretty much your basic From Software formula, albeit with much less in terms of customization. You pick a threaded cane, a sawblade, or an ax, and then you pick either a pistol or a blunderbuss.
The guns are your shields in this game. If you shoot an enemy at the correct moment, they will be staggered, allowing you to perform a "visceral attack" for more damage. Admittedly, the timing of the guns does take some getting used to, but I for one fell into the habit of parrying regularly by my second night really invested in playing. It becomes quite fun once you get used to it. There is just something really cool about firing a gun that causes enemies to be stunned and then leaping towards them and taking off 3/4 of their health. I did wish that guns were useful more often during boss fights, but that is a minor concern. I just felt like too many of the bosses were giant monsters that the guns would have no effect on, and I felt that introducing a bold new game mechanic like that only to have it be useful for one or two boss fights was kind of a missed opportunity on From Software's part.
Melee combat is much the same as it has always been in From Software games. Some critics have said that the only thing that matters in Bloodborne is being fast enough, but my experience disproves that entire theory. I would like to propose the idea that Bloodborne's melee combat has the exact same premise as in every other From Software game in that all that matters is how well you use your weapon. I chose to use the ax, the slowest of the weapons offered to you, and by the logic of some critics, the weapon that would doom me because it wasn't fast enough. Well, I got used to the timing of the ax, and my reward was that I creamed just about every person I came across in PVP and there were no bosses that were unmanageable (there were some that were unpleasant, but yet again, more on that later). I imagine that if I were to tell critics about my success with one of the slowest weapons in the game, they would tell me that I only succeeded because I had gotten used to it. But isn't that the entire point of the From Software gameplay formula? Picking a weapon and getting used to the way it works being the only way to survive? In this regard, how is Bloodborne any different from any other Souls game? You still are expected to adapt to the mechanics and make the gameplay your own through your weapon choice. Admittedly, Bloodborne is considerably cheaper in its difficulty than other Souls games, which does cheapen the idea a bit, but at its core it is the exact same concept: You will only die until you adapt to your surroundings, at which point the game because less of an exercise in difficulty and more of a test of what you've learned to get you this far. My brother, who hates Bloodborne more than he hates people who don't recycle and about as much as I hated Bioshock: Infinite, is fuming right now.

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There is one last facet of combat that I'd like to touch on before I go further into gameplay, and that is the health recovery system. Does it make a lot of sense? No. Does it really add something special to the gameplay? Yes. Basically, when you get hit by an enemy, you have a short window of time in which you can recover that lost health by hitting the enemy x number of times. Like I said, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it is the kind of element that distinguishes between good and bad fast paced gameplay. There is something really thrilling about being hit by an enemy but shrugging it off after returning a few blows. It also gives a feeling of a little bit more control over the flow of combat, which is a welcome addition.

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Now lets talk other aspects of gameplay. This will be kind of a lightning round.
Like I mentioned earlier, there isn't a lot of enemy variety in the game. If you don't count fusion creatures and stronger variants of enemies, there are a total of 8 different kinds of enemies in Bloodborne. That is around as many enemy kinds as the original Borderlands, which is shameful. In a game such as this, lack of enemy variety really shows.
From Software does get a lot of points as a developer for the fact that they try to make their games have fundamental differences from each other, but I promise you, From Software, nobody will say you're making the same game over and over if you reuse some of the more intuitive design decisions from Dark Souls in other games. There are some really unintuitive game designs in Bloodborne that just baffle me. To name just one, there is the fact that you have to travel through the hub world to fast travel. That means that you have to sit through two loading screens any time you want to go anywhere you don't want to walk on foot. There are a bunch of small complaints like that, but they really add up; especially given the fact that From Software has made much more intuitive design choices in the past.
Bosses are unfortunately too samey throughout the game. Just about every boss is some kind of dog thing with lots of flowing hair effects that slashes at you with claws. They are never unmanageable, but the lack of creativity does show when every other boss is a dog. However, there is one boss fight that I will be taking off a full point, the maximum I can take off for one thing, because of how unpleasant it is. There is a boss at about the 3/4 point called "The one reborn." He isn't a hard boss by any stretch of the imagination, but his fight is so fast paced that I legitimately nearly vomited after beating him. He is basically an assembly line of moving parts that are all attacking you simultaneously while other people shoot fireballs at you from the sidelines. It is a fight where you cannot stay still for even a second, and it is just bad design. The fact that it isn't a difficult fight really drives that point home, like, From Software couldn't think of a way to make a slow moving guy challenging, so instead they made you constantly have to be moving. Fast paced fights can be alright, and even fun, but not when they are so breakneckingly fast that it causes the player to be nauseated.

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As I'm sure has come off from this review, Bloodborne is kind of a mixed bag for me. Every time it brings something interesting to the table, it makes a choice that totally negates its progress. And it all ends off with about as anticlimactic an ending as you can imagine. So, in the end, what can be said about Bloodborne. Given its success, Bloodborne 2 will definitely be From Software's next project, so what can we tell them right now that will make Bloodborne 2 succeed where the original failed? Here's the thing: Bloodborne stood poised. It stood poised ready to really change up the formula and bring something new to the table, and then it crippled itself with a lack of variety and an over-reliance on cheap tactics during boss fights for the sake of difficulty. It stood poised ready to tell an interesting story, but then it got up in front of the class and told the teacher that they totally wrote their report, they just left it at home. It stood poised ready to show us an environment we hadn't seen before and an atmosphere of horror unparalleled by any other souls game, but then it changed the sky to some Tim Burton soap bubble and had us fight the same guys over and over and over and over again, totally destroying any sense of wonder. Bloodborne is not a horrible game, but it isn't really and truly a good one either. So, my answer to the question I posed a few sentences ago is this: Next time, From Software needs to remember where it came from. It needs to remember that its vague storytelling strategy succeeded because they gave us little tidbits to help us on our way to discovering the grander picture, not by just throwing us into the world. It needs to remember that what made their gameplay challenging was its insistence that we become better players, that we become better at playing the game in order to proceed, not because it threw unexpected twists and turns at us. What Bloodborne is is essentially a crisis of identity. The Bloodborne formula could be absolutely fantastic if From Software would make a game in that saga with what made them great in mind. Like I've said, I didn't hate Bloodborne. In fact, I had fun playing it. But the entire time that I spent with Bloodborne, I couldn't help but feel like it kind of missed the point.
So, what can From Software learn to make Bloodborne 2 succeed where Bloodborne failed? Go back to their roots. Focus on testing the players instead of punishing them. Get players invested in and excited about the narrative world right from the get-go rather than expecting players to get invested as they go along. I personally hope that when Bloodborne 2 comes around, they remember the old adage: "We are born by the blood, made men by the blood." There is a deeper meaning to these words than perhaps From Software meant for there to be. In a way, our blood is the sum of our parts. It is the culmination of our pasts, of where we came from. We are defined by the actions of our parents almost as equally as we are defined by our own actions. Blood carries weight, and without it, none of us would be in the position we are in today (regardless of whether or not that is a good thing). From Software has a track record of putting out games with rich gameplay and even richer lore, but with Bloodborne they put their desired changes ahead of these things. We are born by the blood, made men by the blood, and the time has come for From Software to remember the blood that makes them who they are.

If you read my Dark Souls III review, then you'll remember that I've started a new points system, and let me tell you, it is quite liberating. It means I can score games a little bit more accurately. So, here is the breakdown for Bloodborne.

The One Reborn boss fight - 1 point
The entire purple sky section - .5
The abrupt ending - .5
The vagueness of the story - 1 point
The unintuitive design choices - .5
The lack of enemy variety - .5
The overall sense of unfulfillment - .2

So, with these detractions in mind, the score will seem quite shocking to longtime readers. But with this new point system, my grades are more reflective of what they stand for. Bloodborne is an above average game, but it is really prevented from going much farther beyond that because of its many flaws.

My final score for Bloodborne is:

5.8/10
Here's hoping you learn from this, From Software, here's hoping you learn from this.