On the Rally system: the length of time you have to regain health is different for each enemy or even which attack the enemy uses; and the amount of health regained per hit is different for every weapon. In classic fromsoft fashion, this is never explained.
Story notes from a lore nerd: the PC was very sick and came to Yharnam looking for a cure. Paleblood has been confirmed by Miyazaki to be the moon presence (but the fact we need an external interview to confirm this isn’t great) The message you receive after killing Rom telling you [Ritual secret broken. Seek the nightmare newborn] is the Moon Presence speaking in your head.
@@Lycan072I don’t think so; if the whole point is to have these beings that are above human understanding, then why should they have clear motives? It’s not as though the story is told lazily, there’s a lot there
@mostlycoldandfullofrocks3317 there is barely a story. Theres plenty of lore. It's important to distinguish the two. And I never said anything about the eldritch creatures having characters and dialogue. The humans should.
@@Lycan072 What is funny is how dataminers have found so much cut dialog that indicates that there was a story that was told diegetically in the game, but line were cut out.
Amazing video, it really is nice to see people talk about the problems of Bloodborne after so long of people just shutting down any notion that the game isn't perfect. Can't wait for your DS3 video, it's my favorite game and I can already see some of your problems with BB bleeding into DS3, keep up the good work!
I disagree with your analysis on the plot. The lore is fine as is it is presented. Consider where the characters are when you first start the game. All the major factions have already collapsed, most of the major characters are dead and those that are still alive are insane and unreliable. Why would having information dealt by NPCs that you talk to make sense or be worthwhile? Everyone who could explain is in a position where they cannot or would not want to. Also, the notes are flavorful as they tend to reflect the biases and knowledge limitations of those who wrote them. Explaining any more would destroy the cosmic horror because, guess what, everyone in the plot is more or less as confused as the player character.
The way I always explain it to people is souls games are presented from the view point of the people in the world and as your character is a piece of this world they view it from that perspective too example in Elden Ring it's clear many descriptions and accounts are biased however biased towards who is dependent on who wrote it or said it hell the whole point of Yemirs quest is basically the game screaming at you not to trust any accounts at face value because you don't know what's going on behind the scenes and bloodborne that but on steroids because yes both have heavy cosmic horror themes but one is clearly only partially a invested in this cosmic horror while the other is practically living for that cryphic unknowable vibe
There is a major difference between the plot/story and lore/history. Just because a game has good lore does not automatically mean the game has a good story. Likewise, just because a game has a good story does not automatically mean it has good lore. Personally, I'd take a well written story over well thought out lore any day of the week.
Literally discovered the Dark Souls critique you did about 4 days ago, and was disappointed when I saw how new the series was and we only had one video so far. I’m getting in on the ground level, which is rare! Didn’t expect to see this so soon after I watched that one. This is a nice surprise!
Dude I love listening to your Dark Souls 1 video when I’m laying down at night to go to sleep. This is gonna be my new night time relaxation listen. Thanks for this one my dude, you’re the man 🫡👌
My argument as a first time player was “grinding and farming” early on for blood vials made me “git gud” as I constantly started getting more comfortable with the mechanics and slowly became the Hunter. I think it really works imo and I never had an issue with them being finite because I’d always level up then buy blood vials with leftover echoes before going back on the hunt.
How does this channel not even have 3k subs bro. This is one of the better video essays i have seen in the past 6 months and video essays is the only content i consume on youtube.
str builds have weaker visceral attacks because str weapons are stronger in general. Game is much easier with starter Axe, you don't even have to parry or backstab.
I think that may be true if you look at raw damage numbers, but that isn't the case when looking at everything regarding weapons. The saw spear is the best weapon in the game. It has a great moveset, fast attacks, serrated bonus, and scales off of skill.
You made some valid points on parrying in regards to bosses but I always saw it as playing into the themes of the hunter. You are a hunter, and hunters typically only go after prey(which are usually weaker than themselves, whether in terms of skill or strength), so being able to trivialize enemies by being more skilled than them and parrying them always made perfect sense to me, and if you don’t parry them, being stronger than them is still being a hunter because from the start you were stronger and that’s why you won(if you assume that canonically the hunter beat them first try) Edit: I do understand that lore reasons are not an excuse for bad gameplay and stuff, but it does make the experience make sense to the player and immersing them in the game world
To me it’s like that lore video where they mention how the victory message says “prey slaughtered” because you were never actually at a disadvantage or the one being hunted
There were many strong arguements in this video, some i agree with, some i disagree with, but one thing i absolutely cant be left unsaid is how terrible Unseen Village Yahargul would be if it was structured the way you wanted it to be. Imagine your a new player, you lost a fight with an enemy that was tougher than you expected. When you respawn your suddenly in a new area, with no lamps anywhere to be found. The only way out is to defeat Paarl, and until that fairly tough boss is dead you are completely locked out of: Leveling up Upgrading weapons Accessing the shop Swapping out blood gems Swapping out runes Again, this area is acsessed by dying to a regular enemy, so newer players could ended up effectively softlocked as a punishment for poor gameplay. I can understand feeling disappointed over lost potential, but the existence of the Hunters Dream would make such an idea actively detrimental to the game experience.
I think there’s an argument to be made that there isn’t enough farming in the game; or rather that farming isn’t integrated well enough into core gameplay. One of first things Gehrman says to you is to go out and kill some beasts, yet hunting for resources to make yourself more powerful is never really incentivized. The only time the player normally “farms” is as a punishment I.e a boring grind to restock your consumables. Runes and blood gems can be wildly powerful, yet acquiring them is relegated to side content with the chalice dungeons. The dungeons are already a great source of excess vials; if they were better integrated into the main story “grinding” for vials/echoes/whatever would be viewed a lot less painfully, since it would be something the player already does to grow.
@ requiring mid-level chalice materials to access the nightmare of mensis sounds like a good start to me. The main issue with trying to weave the main story and chalice progression together is that the chalices would feel like a pointless distraction unless you put main game items and characters in them to help blend the content more seamlessly. Like have Alfred be in the dungeons searching for clues about vileblood as part of his quest or something.
Why do the enemies even respawn in bloodborne anyway? Nothing is implied to be immortal except the vile blood queen. Dark souls has the curse of u death resurrecting most enemies you kill and elden ring has the rune of death being stolen which prevents true death anything. Bloodborne just seems to have an infinite quantity of beasts appearing from the ether in a single night to less every time you visit the dream.
They tried to diversify farming with Chalice dungeons. Gherman even has a line something about "beasts looming large", hinting to powering up in chalice dungeons, after beating blood starved.
I do wonder if you will eventually cover DS2 and Demon's Souls, as both games have notable impact on Dark Souls 3's gameplay and even level design. Irithyll Dungeon is a rendition of 3-1 from Demon's, the upgrade system is taken directly from Dark Souls 2, the FP system returns from Demon's Souls, and moments like Siegward helping you fight Yhorm or the final runback to the Princes are direct references to moments and storylines from Demon's Souls, such as Biorr of the Twin Fangs helping with Penetrator, (you also have to free both of them from a prison cell earlier in the level, and both of them fight with you out of a sense of duty to the boss, with the Storm Ruler being directly lifted from Demon's Souls) the Morion Blade, Karla the Witch being a clear reference to Yuria the Witch while another character shares that name, both teaching darker arts to the player, etc. Not to mention, if this is going to be an analysis of the series in whole with Elden Ring being the notable conclusion of the series, Dark Souls 2 most notably shows major influence over Elden Ring, to the point of Elden Ring being widely considered the game Dark Souls II could have been given more development time and a better development cycle, with the co-director of Elden Ring being the main director of 2, Yui Tanimura, who saved 2 from near cancellation. Miyazaki has also noted that he believes Dark Souls 2 to be of utmost importance when it comes to the development of these games, even regarding it as a major success and pivotal point for the franchise.
Yeah, I found the "well regarded" proviso in this video's opening to be strange. Why cover the games based on their community perception, and not their influence as their own works or order of release? Dark Souls 1 to Bloodborne to DS3 is a weird chronology choice imo, but maybe I'm being impatient.
I've answered this on a few comments from the last video and this one to the point where I may have to say something about it during the DS3 critique. I am not covering DS2 because these videos are leading to the eventual Elden Ring critique and there isn't anything in DS2 that aids points I'll make in the ER critique. DS2 is entirely unnecessary for the point of the big final critique on Elden Ring. the reason why I say "well regarded" is for 2 reasons: the first is that it's short-hand for saying "I'm not covering DS2" and is also because I think it's interesting covering the games that are universally loved for reasons that will become apparent in the Elden Ring critique. I don't wanna spoil too much of my opinions until the actual video releases so you'll have to wait and see and then you can argue whether or not that was a fair choice.
I really enjoy the thoroughness of the writing (especially as a Bloodborne nerd) but also the neutral tone kept throughout the video. I feel like most people who try to critique Souls games lean far too hard on positive or (mainly) negative, like Joseph Anderson and Feeble King. I respect a lot of fair points brought up (even if I disagree with a few boss takes) and think you did a great job in the modern game critique video which I feel is hard to nail. Looking forward to more!
I LOVED watching this critique! The title does not lie, this critique is thorough, but it is also easy to understand without being redundant. It cannot be understated how useful this video is for studying game design as well. Not only is it good for comparing the design of soulborne/souls-like games, but the method of the critique is good for thinking about games critically in general. Anyway, back to playing Bloodborne for the 138th time.
Kinda odd to just skip Dark Souls 2. Well regarded or not, it’s a part of the series and is worth discussing. Feels like there’s a hole in this series without it
From a game design perspective, I absolutely adore Gascoigne. FromSoft needed to make sure that, before you played the rest of the game, you understood parrying, backpedaling, quickstepping vs. rolling, changing strategies mid-fight, timing heals, so many mechanics, and they’re all put together in this intense juggling act that feels scary and overwhelming until it all clicks. Dodging into the tombstones is annoying… until you learn to roll around them instead of trying to quickstep. The spinning attacks are overwhelming… until you realize when the parry window for it starts. The phase change is terrifying… until you realize where your healing openings are. It all comes together and takes the fight from this insurmountable obstacle to an adrenaline-fueled battle to the death, and when you take your first victory against him, that’s when you know if you want to finish the game or not
the shadows of yharnam are NOT shadows of yharnam, the city, they are shadows of yharnam, pthumerian queen, and are in the nightmare of mensis for the same reason theyre at the end of the forbidden woods: because theyre near yharnam, pthumerian queen
Very good video! Suggestions made reference other games or quoted developer ideas instead of being a backseat developer. No unnecessary bashing of fans. No assuming the developers intent. People analyzing games on this website could seriously take some cues from your content
Really great video on what I would consider my favorite game warts and all! I may have to take this video in chunks due to there being an estimated 52 ad breaks across this video run time.
@@Scowleasy every second of worthless video essayist preamble reduces my life expectancy. I wouldn't do that to my audience. You guys deserve better lmao
Thanks for stating what a lot of souls fans have missed: Bloodborne is the iterative sequel to Dark Souls 1. Many people who love DS1 go immediately to DS2 not understanding that BB was under development during DS1 and you can trace how the team either extended ideas within DS1 or used the game to explore new territory just as Link's Awakening allowed the Zelda team to get off the beaten path from Zelda.
I love your nitpicking because you actually explain why various parts of the game NEED to be picked on. Love this video and will sub. I love how you articulate everything while also making sense. Lolol. But yea cheers.
Thank you. A lot of people think that nitpicks needn't be discussed but I entirely disagree. Even the smallest parts of a game comes together to form the whole.
Haven’t watched other videos of yours, but this one which is the only one I had seen yet earned you a new subscriber. Love the style, of course the break down of my favorite game that is not Minecraft (I highly doubt anything can come close to even be compared to it) just one thing in particular I want to say, kinda a disagreement but more so a perspective: I play these games in a very different style than you and most people, which caused huge mounts of experience difference within boss encounters, beasts in particular. Instead of leaning in to the suggested extreme aggression method of Bloodborne or the mild aggression of the other from software games, my style goes like this: I stand in a fair distance from the boss and reacts to all its moves well finding absolute safe punishment windows. I’ll take Ebrietas for example, your most resented boss, for it’s calm and friendly attack pattern with well perceived aggression and weakness, it’s probably one of my top three bosses in the game, and I know there is the Orphan, Maria, Ludwig and Gahrman etc… Is the camera and the conundrum of a hit box and entity a problem? Positive! But her pace matches mine, every attack is perfectly timed and consistent with moderate pace, great punishments opportunities that aren’t overwhelming to me, which means it does not feels like cheating, for example the back stabs on the orphan, Maria; Ludwig super charge attack second phase(I don’t use parry by the way) etc. I sincerely suggest you to try and take the fight slow, observe your ‘prey’ if you wanna call it that, before planing an assault. I basically never experience camera or hit box problems besides sometimes where they force me under some camera hazard like f*cking shi*ty Paarl. I really believe this is more so a problem of how the game teaches you to approach a fight, if you approach Ebrietas in a heart of battle and me see monster, me kill monster👹 mind set, there will be big problems… and that said I will tell you the lows of my style: There is no where better to start my demise with the most hideous, most revolting, foul, pathetic dark beast f*cking Paarl! This d*ck sucker are designed to fury me, there is no reason to make this sh*t other than to f*ck with my playstyle! I tried to convey my pain through words, but there is no way to express it without making it seem as though nothing but a tantrum… chaotic and unorganized fights or tight spaces maybe some mechanics will always be my achilles heal. Actually I’m gonna end here, try my way out, very entertaining to watch and prideful.
I think one thing you missed is that fact if you fight the witches of hemwick without insight, they don’t spawn the other enemies. Thought that was pretty cool
Yeah I didn't think it was really worth putting in the script. It's a neat detail for sure but doesn't help the Witches encounter because of how unintuitive and unlikely it is to do. It's something one can only do if they know about it beforehand. Still a neat part of the insight mechanic tho.
the unlocked roll is useful for ebrietas' charge because you can move perpendicular to the attack instead of moving on a circle around the boss it can also apply poison buildup from blood gems, allowing the game to be beaten without doing damage by attacking!
As usual, an incredible video! I only wish the shields were touched on, but then you'd have to talk about all the weapons. Taught me a bit I didn't know after these 8 years playing it, like how that one door opens after beating Blood-Starved Beast. Seems like the main path through the game was very bizarrely put together, DLC too. Also the fact that you can get much better runes in the dungeons. Might do that next time. You've laid out these ideas and critiques clearly, concisely, and very well. May your views be many and your Holidays be Merry, and may there be a DS3 stream at 3K! ("Or something" -White Mask Varre)
Thank you so much. I wanted to do a bit with shields and talk about the Hbomberguy video in the process. Instead I decided to skip over shields as it's a pretty useless topic and the Hbomb video was much better suited for the supercut of him saying "Play the game wrong" because it's such a stupid statement.
@@Lycan072 That reminds me. I thought the humor worked very well. I think all the jokes landed, if not with an out loud laugh then intellectually (with my brain).
I disagree with your assessment of ludwigs first phase, the attack where he jumps into the air and crashes back down can be avoided very easily by sprinting in one direction, no roll required, and that goes for both versions of the attack, I can see how it would be frustrating to deal with if you don't know that, but if you do know, it becomes one of his best punish windows, as for the "hit box spam attacks" I won't deny that he does have attacks like that, but those are only a problem when you bombard him with blind aggression, I know bloodborne promotes aggression, but remember, "whoever fights monsters, should see to it, that in the process, HE does not become a monster" I also think maria and orphan deserve a bit more criticism, but that may stem from my lack of understanding and experience with those 2 The critique of roms aggression seems a bit odd to me? I think that depends on which form of logic you wanna use And as for why the shadows or yharnam are at the end of the game, the reason is in their name (bars) they aren't the shadows of yharnam the place, they're the shadows of QUEEN yharnam, her shadows meaning her guards, they're protecting the way to queen yharnam as well as her child mergo, just thought I'd give context to that ^_^ Overall really good video, it's refreshing to see someone speak about positives AND negatives in regard to bloodborne, im looking forward to seeing what you make in the future, happy new year O/ oh also you can trivialize Laurences second phase by sticking to his smaller arm, doing so makes it where you only have to worry about 2 attacks, still a shit boss tho lol
To be a bit more clear on Ludwig, I know that the most effective way to evade the ceiling attack is to run. I'm pretty sure there's footage of me doing so that plays in the video. The issue I have with this is that it is unintuitive. Souls combat only works so far as the player knows what's going on. Because of the camera and lock-on, a player cannot know what Ludwig is doing when he's on the ceiling. The only way to learn is to die or get hit and memorize the timing. Intuition vs rote memorisation, intuitive attacks to dodge is (generally) always the better design.
That's been my experience with Ludwig's 1st phase as well, if I get damaged it's usually because I was greedy with my attacks and stayed under him too long. None of the attacks feel random, if anything they're very predictable
As someone who partially agrees with the “just don’t lock on” bit, I think it’s a mixed bag. Yes, choosing not to lock on is a strategic decision in multiple fights. Having just finished a playthrough of bloodborne, I think a fight that uses it well is the Living Failures, funnily enough. The LF have a simple and clear enough moveset to be dodged while not locked on, are large enough to not easily miss, and can’t be parried regardless, while it’s a large advantage to see their magic attacks. You can still dodge said magic through learning the timings and sound cues without visual input, but it’s a MUCH better fight without locking on, in a way that feels intentional. Shadows of Yharnam fail by every reason I think the LF succeed. They are small, fast, hard to dodge when not locked on, and parriable. The individual enemy is designed to reward locking on, but the encounter including multiple of this enemy confused and frustrates the player by essentially giving them conflicting instructions on how to approach the fight. Not locking on is still something that has viability and strategic meaning, AND some encounters are designed poorly regardless. They’re not mutually exclusive.
This analysis could've been interesting if it came out almost 10 years ago (when bb came out). Script is too dry, reads more like a guidebook with staggering lack of wit or even humour. People thank him for no preamble but every good script for a video has an intro to state ground for the main thesis. Jumping straight into basically describing a walkthrough with interesting-ish bits here and there doesn't allow for making any of it. If the game wasn't almost 10 years old and so thoroughly looked at by the soulsbourne community, then it'd be a nice watch
Great video overhaul ! But I don't get what's wrong with Ludwig 1st phase, I mean okay certain animation are hard to learn but non of them is real bullsht, even his attack where he fall in the player is simply avoidable by running in a straight line, I personnaly find his p2 harder to no hit than the p1 due to it's less amount of opening.
It’s really only his charge I find frustrating, it’s a bit like Ebrietas where the indication and timing is very unintuitive. It isn’t as punishing though, so it doesn’t frustrate me too much.
Hello, saw you on talkative tri Podcast and as a Fan of long Form content i thought i should give you a try. Im not that far into your Video but im already enjoying your vibe, you esrned yourself a sub :)
well put together video, but most of the “critiques” were just opinion based complaints. I think the biggest issue is that you compared this game to ds1 in a lot of ways, where bloodborne is its own thing.
There is something I would add to your discussion of The Nightmare Frontier. I played this game as a 1st time Souls player, never opening my online gate to invasions. I wanted to play it SP only. In the Nightmare Frontier, you can be invaded by other, experienced players who are Immune to the Frenzy beam and who the enemies ignore... regardless of your gate settings, so long as you're online. So you, as a new player, have to deal with getting ganked by FromSoft fanboys while you're trying to dodge what's essentially an Insta-kill AND the Spider mini-boss. I didn't need a reason to hate Souls players, but the Nightmare Frontier sure gave me one. I had to completely go offline to clear it
This vid dropped right as I was beating this game for the second time (in a row) after having been waiting to get my hands on it for half a decade. I loved the game, but felt that it had a lot of issues people chose to ignore for the sake of gassing it up. I adore long form content like this and look forward to the ds3 video and even more for elden ring's. I think the former is the best in the series, and though I love the latter, it has myriad flaws worth looking into. I hope the elden Ring video is 6 hours; I can't wait. Also, are you doing sekiro?
A lot of extremely subjective statements in this "critique" being presented under some false pretense of knowing better. It's unfortunate considering the effort that probably went into this.
@MasterDuelCentral I wanted to comment same, but decided against being too scathing. This is probably my 50th Bloodborne critique, but it's by far the most arrogant. A difficult listen for sure, and yes, there's room for non dev consumers of art to speak, but I think his angle is to be hyper critical in order differentiate himself. I also don't like passing off opinion, speculation, and non knowledge of circumstances at the time as fact
@@ryandavid9850 well idk if you'll find it by looking at latest comments, but I did have a little comment thread with the creator of this video that illustrates his way of looking at things. Was a good conversation but I just don't understand his definition of "objectiveness". Might be worth a look.
I haven’t finished this video yet, but I’m very pleased to hear you acknowledge the increased focus on action and reduced presence of experiential elements and unique encounters regarding bosses. Matthewmatosis was the only other person I’ve heard really calling this out as a decision with some significant drawbacks. I think for him it actually largely ruined his interest in future Fromsoft titles. I’m especially interested to hear your thoughts on boss design regarding Elden Ring. I can’t shake the feeling that something really special is increasingly becoming lost in the chase for spectacle and more mechanically demanding bosses.
(note: maria refers to itself in third person) regarding non-respawning enemies: the scourge beast in iosefkas clinic doesnt respawn and maria doesnt think the beast-possessed soul at the bottom of the healing church workshop platforming section respawns but its not entirely sure about that. technically, there are also two enemies in front of bradors cell that disappear forever once brador starts invading you also, pretty sure the second witch of hemwick does not only appear when the first one is almost dead, she just doesnt draw attention to herself edit: at 2:19:54 you have footage where youre attacking the second witch second edit: you are actually correct if by "close to dying" you mean below 50% hp
I disagree with a lot of your points made, especially about the “lack of balance” between different weapon types, and especially with the healing and rolling systems. I think you’re missing the point of the fighting system. However, I can agree to disagree and still recognize that you’ve made an incredible video with very good points, and i commend your research and articulation of your point in particular. Great vid :)
I really want to write a full proper response to some of your points since I feel there is room for meaningful conversation about some aspects of the game (namely the Camera in the base game) as the fixes may not be as simple as anyone wants. However, I want to offer one small correction to the Chalice Dungeons themselves. Modded Dungeons, if made public (which you can do when you create the dungeon) means they actually become part of the randomly generated dungeon pool since the game does allow for your game to pull in publically available dungeons before attempting to randomly generate them. I haven't run into the legendary cummmfpk chalice but I have run into two specific modded dungeons: the unfinished OG Moon Presence fight and a bizarre Phumera chalice dungeon with the Iz chalice tile set that was much much MUCH harder than should've been accessible when you first get the dang thing. In a way, that makes the Chalice Dungeons much worse since such Modded dungeons can introduce large issues into a player's experiences
This was a very well put together video. There were abundant, concise descriptions provided, qualifiers set up and reasonings given as to what does and does not hold to scrutiny. The methods emolyed in the video certainly makes it a potent 'critique' rather than a string of opinions that the viewer has to grapple with.
@@SiyamthandaQwabe-or7erare you talking about DS2? Or DS2 SotFS? I only played the former and enjoyed it well enough, but I heard SotFS made enemy ganking worse. I will say, DS2 has elements of online play that I really wish were in other souls games (small white soapstone was genius) and I loved that Elden ring brought back powerstance from DS2
Just realized that the curved bone cleaver thingy from the elden ring 's putrescent knight is basically orphan of kos's weapon. Also, you should do a Sekiro critique eventually! Nice work on this one. 👍
Visceral attacks being tied to skill stat was not something i was aware of when i first pucked up the game even though i read the stat descriptions. I had assumed it was tied to bloodtinge since thats what your parry tools scale off of and the vidceral attack but at the same time visually given viscerals involve you shoving your bare fist as hard as possible into the enemy or in the case of piggies literally up their ass it would seem to be strength based. Whats even more odd is the starting defacto skill weapon the cane is the worst starting weapon which will lead new players into thinking skill is just bad.
Another bloodborne critique video. Just what UA-cam needs. No way I'm sitting through 4 more hours of this. Edit: great video. I agree with pretty much everything you said
3:03:00 You can actually just dodge the Nightmare Move. Idk how staggering works with it but if the nurse uses the move and you dodge the whole thing just doesn t happen lol.
I feel like some of your counterarguments for the "just don't use it" argument don't hold up to scrutiny. I think most of them hold water for Bloodborne specifically to be clear, but the way it's framed in the text universalizes the counterargument beyond reason, using specific flaws of Bloodborne that interact poorly with lock-on to criticize generally situations that require you not to use it. The point about the look stick being controlled with the same fingers as most of the basic mechanics just kind of points out the fact that controller is an objectively worse control system than mouse+keyboard. This obviously remains valid criticism for Bloodborne as it's a playstation exclusive, but with any game that has mouse+keyboard controls as an option they should be used. They will always be more variable and customizable and by proxy, more able to not have issues like this. In particular, aiming attacks while not locked on is not particularly hard with mouse-keyboard as the look system is controlled with the right wrist, which is dedicated solely to controlling the camera in this control-scheme. I also think you overstate the essentiality of lock-on as a feature. While it certainly is a feature that is core to the game it is nowhere near as essential as the dodge, which you used as comparison. You can, for any souls game with mouse-keyboard as functional controls, beat the game without using lock-on at all with minor inconvenience. If you try to do the same with dodging you have created a major challenge run. It is a mother-of-all false equivalencies. Some of the other criticisms levied are also very Bloodborne specific. The near-impossibility of parrying without lock-on is 1. again mostly a product of Bloodborne mandating you use a Dualshock and 2. mostly an issue for Bloodborne on its own. No other souls game except maybe sekiro emphasizes parrying as much as Bloodborne(but i dont think you need to me to tell you that Sekiro is so structurally different with both the core game and the parries specifically that it's basically a whole different system). In any of the Dark Souls entries, losing your ability to parry enemies in a group fight is barely an inconvenience Sorry if this came off as overly negative i loved the video overall this one section just came off like it was vastly overstating its case to me
I agree with your take on the quality of the witches of Hemwick boss, however you don't mention how having 0 insight changes the boss fight. I don't think it would change you're overall opinion (making a poor boss fight even easier), but it certainly belongs in here and I'd be curious to here your opinion.
"significantly reduces the ability to use heavy attacks in combat" have you ever used the rifle spear? "transformation attacks are just glorified r1s" no they arent, they let you string combos together between different weapon forms and, for instance, the saw cleavers transformation attack can be used to build up beasthood quickly and then you can r1 with maxed out beasthood
Tbh i take issue with the lock on bit, ive literally never fought laurence locked on outside of my first plathrough because all of his aoe spam bs requires your dodges to clear more distance. Id argue bloodborne is the game in the series that best exemplifies "you have to know when to use lock on".
The distance is identical between all dodges. I literally said that in my video. You can also do more quicksteps per second than rolls per second. So what you are stating is the worse option for covering distance.
Just completed my second playthrough of this game and was curious on what other people thought of it, thanks for the analysis. Some things I wanted to comment on: I’m glad someone else pointed out that not using lock-on is a poor experience other than Matthewmatosis. It gets used as an argument in favor of DS2’s enemy placement (“just kite the enemy mobs while not locked on”) often despite that game also having the worst movement of the series. Of the points you presented against its use, I think that the fact that manually aimed player attacks are easier to miss is the weakest. Its a skill that can be honed much easier than trying to shoot without lock-on and you can still miss while locked-on, after all, if you misjudge your distance from an enemy. You showed yourself using it in Rom’s fight to good effect. In the context of Shadows of Yharnam, not using lock-on does suck though. I often wonder if From intends unlocked play with the design of some of these bosses and their history in the Armored Core series, where you claw-hand the controller a lot. O&S isn’t the best example of a multi-boss in my opinion. The concept of their fight works on paper, but in practice they tend to clump together often which will then only be broken by Ornstein’s janky charge move or their AI getting awkwardly stuck on pillars. Ornstein can shoot lightning through Smough too. I think a better example is the Demons from DS3 Ringed City- the demons compliment each other when their phases differ, and sometimes change the pace of the fight by taking the same phase, but never for long. There’s a better telegraph for ranged attacks if they go through one of the demons too since the explosion is delayed. You’re given a choice of which phase 2 you want to take as well, though the difference is not nearly as pronounced as O&S.
Hey, what are some sources you used for this video?, You used pretty established vocabulary such as 'ludonarratives' ect that would imply you've really done your research and I'm currently undertaking a project like this for school so it would be helful. Thanks!
Thanks a ton! Ludonarrative dissonance is a game design term you can find even on Wikipedia. It's pretty widespread. Refers to when a game’s story or themes contradict with gameplay. Most of my sources are the Bloodborne wiki. If you're making a project for a specific game then a good accurate wiki is amazing.
wow, 4 and a half minutes of chalices, most of it misinformation about their place and how the system works not to mention the slander of them being lower quality and not being part of the core bloodborne experience chalices are absolutely meant to be played off and on in between areas on a first playthrough, you can go into the first right after blood-starved beast then soon get to depth 2 as well, it is just that chalices support a player who actually does want to play the game in different ways so it is the perfect place to play with different weapons and to get stuff to upgrade more, you even get a whole new weapon in loran which gets a literal new moveset from the dlc making it in a way 4 weapons in 1 seeing that you only showed footage of the first layer of the first pthumeru chalice, i assume you havent even seen or beat all 10 preset chalices, since how could you not talk about at the least yharnam (the boss, saying it just to be sure there is no misunderstanding, since i am not sure you even know of the boss) so, you at least did know that there are preset chalices, but you have no idea how root chalices work, first of all you DO NOT need online to play root chalices, you only need online to enter a glyph and to make the root chalice you make have a glyph for others there are 2300 root chalices, depth 1-3 roots have 100 variants, and depth 4-5 have 200, but that does not mean you can only make 2300 distinct chalices, it means that is how many bases there are when you put down a root chalice, it chooses 1 base out of the respective pool, then makes sure you have at least 1 unique item (rare loot, lost or uncanny weapon, rune) but that unique item is once again based on the repsective root chalice on what it can be (not anything can be anywhere) and then, there are more variables that get applied, which does effect enemy layouts, what enemies are in at all, the side room layout, the chance for a 4th layer (20% chance except depth1 which cant have layer 4), chance for poison stuff, chance for shop (patches shop included, if questline is completed) AND THEN you can apply manual changes with the additional rites, with the fetid offering making some enemies stronger with a buff (but more echoes), the rotted offering making it so there are additional select enemy spawns, and the curse having your hp cut in half but in return making it so you find cursed gems way more often (and of course there is a special rite that gets its own chalice variants, the sinister, allowing for invasions even if you are alone by making the bell ringers for online spawn, but even offline there are differences) so to say that chalices are anything but the core bloodborne experience, could only be said if someone thinks they know what bloodborne is, but meanwhile even if you only count the preset chalices (10) then that is the 50% of a first playthrough
All this info (which i know by the way. I have played through them all) does not counter any of my criticisms. The game is not balanced for a player who runs them frequently throughout a playthrough and online is still required to make the exact chalice from the seed. And I also praised them for being a decent method for players to use to lower the difficulty of the main game.
@@Lycan072 so if you did go through all of the preset ones (not "all of them"), then it is simply a bloodborne love difference, which is what it is and also i did try to counter anything, but to simply express how much i like them and how much i do think they are exactly what is needed for a balanced playthrough but of course, YOU need to make it balanced, YOU need to want it to be how you like it, dont be surprised that enemies die fast if you upgrade past +6 and only dump into 2 stats bloodborne is the game that you can get an ending with without seeing 95% of the game (this includes weapons, hunter tools, areas and the raw extraordenary amount of experience that you can feel by playing with great care)
@4blasphemy exactly. We're in agreement there. The issue I have in general regarding the chalice dungeons and balance is that a new player going in blind cannot know that they're ruining their own experience by overlevelling unintentionally in chalice dungeons. It's not the worst issue. I just think it should have been more clearly communicated. Glad we've come to a middle ground tho :)
@@Lycan072 yes, the thing that is pretty true that bloodborne is also the game where it is the most useful to get guidance in terms of new player confusion, like it can allow for that 95% to be not missed (but also, i feel you dont get overleveled from chalices at all, its the other way around, you get overleveled for the chalices by not playing them and they are not connected to the new game+ so they dont scale like that) so i think the best way to play bloodborne for a new player is to have someone there who knows everything to an extent that is very close to truly everything but obviously not backseat but rather information so mechanical confusion and in general context for what and how stuff is (i consider myself that, and i have already helped a few people play through the game like this and it was good for every person involved)
So funny enough +scaling gems can affect your visceral damage, but from a critique perspective this unfortunately 1. This is never explained anywhere and 2. +scaling gems are so unbalanced that heavy (+str) gems are pretty much always better.
I don't know if anyone will end up reading this but I think I need to type it out anyway. I just finished your discussion on the healing system and how leveling health early game is the best use of resources. I don't think the best way to fix the healing system is to just bring estus back. There are other great features of the blood vial system that you didn't mention that I would have to be removed if it was just an estus flask. Bloodborne more than any other game encouraged you to "sanitize" each level for items and blood echoes. One way this is encouraged from my perspective is that enemies drop additional heals you can use to keep going. This is especially true for the deepest depths of the chalice dungeons. If we simply had an estus healing system you would need more frequent stops to the lanterns to refresh yourself especially early game when the player would be limited to less charges. And estus system would require significant changes to the world as well to include all upgrade materials needed to max out your healing effectiveness. An alternative fix would be to decrease the amount of vials the player starts with, lets say 8 for now(this change should also include bullet inventory). As you kill bosses and explore you would get belt upgrades that allow that player to carry more vials to the current max of 20. The biggest change would be have the player always spawn with their maximum capacity of vials and remove the storage and ability to purchase blood vials. Most enemies would have to drop less vials as it would only be to restock your supply instead of being there to farm. They would still heal a percentage of your max health so we will need a separate fix for that. Make health scale with character level instead of vitality being a separate stat. I know this is a pretty big change but almost all of Fromsoft's games would benefit from this. It might give players a clearer understanding of what their stats should look like in each area. This would prevent the vitality issue you mentioned as well. In conclusion Bloodborne uses a very different healing system than any other fromsoft game. I think it would be better to iterate and improve those differences without just saying it was such of a departure that we need to just go back to estus.
4:07:00 (i did not watch the video, i just skipped to a random point but i have thoughts, so sorry if you address anything that i mention here) I think a major reason that bloodborne lore is so ambiguous in comparison to the other games is that the character you play as has no idea what’s going on. They wake up without any clue as to why they’re where they are and are immediately told to start killing things. I think it was very intentional that on your first playthrough you are not supposed to know what your motivations are because the hunter itself does not know what their motivations are. This also generally contributes to the theme of hunters who continue to hunt despite not knowing why. It’s the reason a lot of bosses don’t even aggro onto you immediately, but most people will attack them anyway because that’s how the game/lack of motivation has conditioned you to play(rom, ebrietas, bsb for example) It’s definitely a matter of personal taste but i think having npcs give lore would be a lot less fitting to bloodborne’s story than dark souls’s. In dark souls you are supposed to feel like history has already played out, and you are simply learning about what has already happened. In bloodborne you are supposed to feel like you are uncovering current events that have been hidden from the rest of the world. That’s part of the reason the only npc that actively gives lore information tells you fuck-all, because if the game had a bunch of characters that were extremely knowledgeable about the events you are uncovering, it would take away that feeling of discovery. Learning about the cosmic aspects of the game within the game universe is also tied to ascension, which is why the only npc that might know about rom or the mensis ritual is an old man that can’t even talk. I think the lore notes are the best way of getting this across because they give lore in SMALL fragments that just couldn’t be pulled off with long NPC monologues. In general i think on the first playthrough you are supposed to get the mindless, violent hunter experience, and on subsequent playthroughs you are supposed to get the investigative mensis student experience. So yah definitely a matter of personal taste but i think the methods they used to get across the lore were very intentional and the best fit for the story being told.
Thank you for emphasizing the poor transition between Blood-Starved Beast in Old Yarnham and the door it opens in Cathedral Ward. This was a really discouraging experience my first time playing through the game and all of critiques matched my experience. It doesn't make sense that the door opens arbitrarily after defeating an enemy miles away and I didn't encounter the Gehrman dialogue. I very frustratedly asked my souls expert friend where to go next and he and a few other friends pointed me in the right direction but did so in a way that implied, "oh its simple, just go here... duh." At least DS3 has the decency to teleport you to Dancer of the Boreal Valley after defeating that other boss. This was such a poor execution of progression in an otherwise very well designed game.
And this could've been remedied so easily by getting an item from the boss that implied where to go next. A "Healing Church Workshop Key" or a "Cathedral Ward Key". Literally anything.
I think this video is very weak. Why did it need to be 4 hours long? Do you really need to ramble endlessly explaining how basic systems like healing and fast travel work? It's a safe assumption that people willing to watch the video have played the game and understand how these things work. Also, your counter argument to the 'don't use it' is very lacking. There's benefits to playing with the camera unlocked such as complete freedom of movement which help account for the loss in I frames. You said you 'proved' lock on combat was better but you did no such thing. Also something unique to BB is the ability to sprint in all directions while locked off. Also, you present having to aim your attacks as a strict negative which is just untrue. Aiming your attacks manually allows you to hit when lock on would have you miss, it also allows you to directly target where you want to hit such as weak points which is kind of a big deal as it's a feature heavily present throughout the game. Vicar is a great example as unlocking allows targeting limbs more easily. Also bosses like Rom and the spiders are easier without lock on because of the ability to aim your attacks to hit the body instead of the head even when not fully behind them. The entire thing is basically a strawman in the way you've presented it. You've created a false dichotomy and no one is saying that you just shouldn't use lock on. The point is that there are benefits and draw backs to both and you should learn what the strengths of each are and use them appropriately. The argument that trick weapon attacks are basically just another R1 is just flagrantly incorrect as well. They do more health and more stagger damage, they allow you to rally more health, they are better for limb breaking, the build beasthood faster... I could go on but there are numerous benefits to using a weapons combo over mashing light attack. Also, claiming heavy attacks aren't useful is again just flagrantly incorrect. I could go on but this is yet another disappointing video from someone who isn't qualified to be taking on a project like this.
The Laurence fight could be made a lot better I think if the lava didn't stagger and instead of doing a chunk of damage, did slow damage over time. This would make standing in the lava dangerous but viable, forcing the player to weigh the risk of getting extra hits while taking a bit of damage in the process without being entirely neutered
Thanks for the no preamble.
On a 4+ hour video... yeah thanks a lot! I used to have shit to do.
he says that, but after a minute he gives a statement explaining and validating the following video…
ya know, like a preamble.
@@ShupperDupper better than a 20 minute explanation of the game, i know what bloodborne is.
FOR REAL, Dude's the MVP for that
@@ShupperDupper saw the "no preamble" comment, set my phone down to sleep, then heard the preamble. Thank you dark souls
> “Thorough critique”
> Video is 4 hours long
Yep, that checks out
On the Rally system: the length of time you have to regain health is different for each enemy or even which attack the enemy uses; and the amount of health regained per hit is different for every weapon. In classic fromsoft fashion, this is never explained.
wtf the more you know xD
I think it has to do with the type of damage blunt,slash, etc.
@@JosephWalker-ip7pd no. This is really easy to verify on the Bloodborne-wiki.
@@Scowleasy what decides the length of time?
@@JosephWalker-ip7pd it’s different for every enemy, and sometimes depends on the attack they use. Again, this is all on the Bloodborne-wiki
Story notes from a lore nerd: the PC was very sick and came to Yharnam looking for a cure.
Paleblood has been confirmed by Miyazaki to be the moon presence (but the fact we need an external interview to confirm this isn’t great)
The message you receive after killing Rom telling you [Ritual secret broken. Seek the nightmare newborn] is the Moon Presence speaking in your head.
I can only imagine how awesome of a story it would be if they were able to give clear direction and character motivations.
@@Lycan072I don’t think so; if the whole point is to have these beings that are above human understanding, then why should they have clear motives? It’s not as though the story is told lazily, there’s a lot there
@mostlycoldandfullofrocks3317 there is barely a story. Theres plenty of lore. It's important to distinguish the two. And I never said anything about the eldritch creatures having characters and dialogue. The humans should.
@@Lycan072 What is funny is how dataminers have found so much cut dialog that indicates that there was a story that was told diegetically in the game, but line were cut out.
The pc had a computer virus?
One of my favorite things about the atmosphere of Gehrman's fight is how you can hear his labored breathing in phase 1
Amazing video, it really is nice to see people talk about the problems of Bloodborne after so long of people just shutting down any notion that the game isn't perfect.
Can't wait for your DS3 video, it's my favorite game and I can already see some of your problems with BB bleeding into DS3, keep up the good work!
I disagree with your analysis on the plot. The lore is fine as is it is presented. Consider where the characters are when you first start the game. All the major factions have already collapsed, most of the major characters are dead and those that are still alive are insane and unreliable. Why would having information dealt by NPCs that you talk to make sense or be worthwhile? Everyone who could explain is in a position where they cannot or would not want to. Also, the notes are flavorful as they tend to reflect the biases and knowledge limitations of those who wrote them. Explaining any more would destroy the cosmic horror because, guess what, everyone in the plot is more or less as confused as the player character.
The way I always explain it to people is souls games are presented from the view point of the people in the world and as your character is a piece of this world they view it from that perspective too example in Elden Ring it's clear many descriptions and accounts are biased however biased towards who is dependent on who wrote it or said it hell the whole point of Yemirs quest is basically the game screaming at you not to trust any accounts at face value because you don't know what's going on behind the scenes and bloodborne that but on steroids because yes both have heavy cosmic horror themes but one is clearly only partially a invested in this cosmic horror while the other is practically living for that cryphic unknowable vibe
It irks me when people want to fully understand cosmic horror. The whole point is for it to be incomprehensible.
There is a major difference between the plot/story and lore/history. Just because a game has good lore does not automatically mean the game has a good story. Likewise, just because a game has a good story does not automatically mean it has good lore.
Personally, I'd take a well written story over well thought out lore any day of the week.
@Sam-lf3hn not sure what any of this has to do with the Lovecraftian nature of Bloodborne and its storytelling
Literally discovered the Dark Souls critique you did about 4 days ago, and was disappointed when I saw how new the series was and we only had one video so far. I’m getting in on the ground level, which is rare! Didn’t expect to see this so soon after I watched that one. This is a nice surprise!
Hopefully the DS3 video won't take toooo long to come out.
@@Lycan072Not that I'm complaining too much but are you skipping Dark Souls 2?
I've been waiting desperately for this video since I saw the first one
Glad to deliver.
Dude I love listening to your Dark Souls 1 video when I’m laying down at night to go to sleep.
This is gonna be my new night time relaxation listen.
Thanks for this one my dude, you’re the man 🫡👌
My argument as a first time player was “grinding and farming” early on for blood vials made me “git gud” as I constantly started getting more comfortable with the mechanics and slowly became the Hunter. I think it really works imo and I never had an issue with them being finite because I’d always level up then buy blood vials with leftover echoes before going back on the hunt.
How does this channel not even have 3k subs bro.
This is one of the better video essays i have seen in the past 6 months and video essays is the only content i consume on youtube.
str builds have weaker visceral attacks because str weapons are stronger in general. Game is much easier with starter Axe, you don't even have to parry or backstab.
Heavy gems will cause your viscerals to scale off of strength, narrowing that advantage skill builds have
I think that may be true if you look at raw damage numbers, but that isn't the case when looking at everything regarding weapons. The saw spear is the best weapon in the game. It has a great moveset, fast attacks, serrated bonus, and scales off of skill.
Strength weapons get hyper armor, thats MORE than enough 😂
Pick up ludwigs holy blade, go to big Sword mode and heavy attack stagger everything into a pulp. Thank me later
I usually just do a charged heavy instead of a visceral if I use a strength build.
Haven’t even watched the whole video yet but omg this video is already amazing. 2k subs is criminal, this channel deserves to blow up right now.
You made some valid points on parrying in regards to bosses but I always saw it as playing into the themes of the hunter. You are a hunter, and hunters typically only go after prey(which are usually weaker than themselves, whether in terms of skill or strength), so being able to trivialize enemies by being more skilled than them and parrying them always made perfect sense to me, and if you don’t parry them, being stronger than them is still being a hunter because from the start you were stronger and that’s why you won(if you assume that canonically the hunter beat them first try)
Edit: I do understand that lore reasons are not an excuse for bad gameplay and stuff, but it does make the experience make sense to the player and immersing them in the game world
To me it’s like that lore video where they mention how the victory message says “prey slaughtered” because you were never actually at a disadvantage or the one being hunted
Oh boy, very pumped to dive into this one!
There were many strong arguements in this video, some i agree with, some i disagree with, but one thing i absolutely cant be left unsaid is how terrible Unseen Village Yahargul would be if it was structured the way you wanted it to be.
Imagine your a new player, you lost a fight with an enemy that was tougher than you expected. When you respawn your suddenly in a new area, with no lamps anywhere to be found. The only way out is to defeat Paarl, and until that fairly tough boss is dead you are completely locked out of:
Leveling up
Upgrading weapons
Accessing the shop
Swapping out blood gems
Swapping out runes
Again, this area is acsessed by dying to a regular enemy, so newer players could ended up effectively softlocked as a punishment for poor gameplay.
I can understand feeling disappointed over lost potential, but the existence of the Hunters Dream would make such an idea actively detrimental to the game experience.
You literally go up the spiral staircase and find a lamp, you can get to it 10 seconds after waking up
I think there’s an argument to be made that there isn’t enough farming in the game; or rather that farming isn’t integrated well enough into core gameplay.
One of first things Gehrman says to you is to go out and kill some beasts, yet hunting for resources to make yourself more powerful is never really incentivized. The only time the player normally “farms” is as a punishment I.e a boring grind to restock your consumables.
Runes and blood gems can be wildly powerful, yet acquiring them is relegated to side content with the chalice dungeons. The dungeons are already a great source of excess vials; if they were better integrated into the main story “grinding” for vials/echoes/whatever would be viewed a lot less painfully, since it would be something the player already does to grow.
spot on with this point, but how would you imagine this integration?
@ requiring mid-level chalice materials to access the nightmare of mensis sounds like a good start to me.
The main issue with trying to weave the main story and chalice progression together is that the chalices would feel like a pointless distraction unless you put main game items and characters in them to help blend the content more seamlessly. Like have Alfred be in the dungeons searching for clues about vileblood as part of his quest or something.
Why do the enemies even respawn in bloodborne anyway? Nothing is implied to be immortal except the vile blood queen. Dark souls has the curse of u death resurrecting most enemies you kill and elden ring has the rune of death being stolen which prevents true death anything. Bloodborne just seems to have an infinite quantity of beasts appearing from the ether in a single night to less every time you visit the dream.
They tried to diversify farming with Chalice dungeons. Gherman even has a line something about "beasts looming large", hinting to powering up in chalice dungeons, after beating blood starved.
I do wonder if you will eventually cover DS2 and Demon's Souls, as both games have notable impact on Dark Souls 3's gameplay and even level design. Irithyll Dungeon is a rendition of 3-1 from Demon's, the upgrade system is taken directly from Dark Souls 2, the FP system returns from Demon's Souls, and moments like Siegward helping you fight Yhorm or the final runback to the Princes are direct references to moments and storylines from Demon's Souls, such as Biorr of the Twin Fangs helping with Penetrator, (you also have to free both of them from a prison cell earlier in the level, and both of them fight with you out of a sense of duty to the boss, with the Storm Ruler being directly lifted from Demon's Souls) the Morion Blade, Karla the Witch being a clear reference to Yuria the Witch while another character shares that name, both teaching darker arts to the player, etc. Not to mention, if this is going to be an analysis of the series in whole with Elden Ring being the notable conclusion of the series, Dark Souls 2 most notably shows major influence over Elden Ring, to the point of Elden Ring being widely considered the game Dark Souls II could have been given more development time and a better development cycle, with the co-director of Elden Ring being the main director of 2, Yui Tanimura, who saved 2 from near cancellation. Miyazaki has also noted that he believes Dark Souls 2 to be of utmost importance when it comes to the development of these games, even regarding it as a major success and pivotal point for the franchise.
Yeah, I found the "well regarded" proviso in this video's opening to be strange. Why cover the games based on their community perception, and not their influence as their own works or order of release? Dark Souls 1 to Bloodborne to DS3 is a weird chronology choice imo, but maybe I'm being impatient.
I've answered this on a few comments from the last video and this one to the point where I may have to say something about it during the DS3 critique. I am not covering DS2 because these videos are leading to the eventual Elden Ring critique and there isn't anything in DS2 that aids points I'll make in the ER critique. DS2 is entirely unnecessary for the point of the big final critique on Elden Ring. the reason why I say "well regarded" is for 2 reasons: the first is that it's short-hand for saying "I'm not covering DS2" and is also because I think it's interesting covering the games that are universally loved for reasons that will become apparent in the Elden Ring critique. I don't wanna spoil too much of my opinions until the actual video releases so you'll have to wait and see and then you can argue whether or not that was a fair choice.
WERE SO BACK
I really enjoy the thoroughness of the writing (especially as a Bloodborne nerd) but also the neutral tone kept throughout the video. I feel like most people who try to critique Souls games lean far too hard on positive or (mainly) negative, like Joseph Anderson and Feeble King. I respect a lot of fair points brought up (even if I disagree with a few boss takes) and think you did a great job in the modern game critique video which I feel is hard to nail. Looking forward to more!
I LOVED watching this critique! The title does not lie, this critique is thorough, but it is also easy to understand without being redundant. It cannot be understated how useful this video is for studying game design as well. Not only is it good for comparing the design of soulborne/souls-like games, but the method of the critique is good for thinking about games critically in general. Anyway, back to playing Bloodborne for the 138th time.
Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it!!
Kinda odd to just skip Dark Souls 2. Well regarded or not, it’s a part of the series and is worth discussing. Feels like there’s a hole in this series without it
From a game design perspective, I absolutely adore Gascoigne. FromSoft needed to make sure that, before you played the rest of the game, you understood parrying, backpedaling, quickstepping vs. rolling, changing strategies mid-fight, timing heals, so many mechanics, and they’re all put together in this intense juggling act that feels scary and overwhelming until it all clicks. Dodging into the tombstones is annoying… until you learn to roll around them instead of trying to quickstep. The spinning attacks are overwhelming… until you realize when the parry window for it starts. The phase change is terrifying… until you realize where your healing openings are. It all comes together and takes the fight from this insurmountable obstacle to an adrenaline-fueled battle to the death, and when you take your first victory against him, that’s when you know if you want to finish the game or not
Thanks!
Thank you so much! This truly means a lot! Hopefully the DS3 video won't take too long!
@ I didn’t know it sent a message 😅 No worries! I just want you to know that we’re still supporting and hoping for you to finish the series.
excellent video - clear, thorough, thoughtful, and fair. we need more content like this in general. bravo, mate.
Loved the video, great presentation and thought your critiques were well founded/insightful! Excited for the rest of the series.
the shadows of yharnam are NOT shadows of yharnam, the city, they are shadows of yharnam, pthumerian queen, and are in the nightmare of mensis for the same reason theyre at the end of the forbidden woods: because theyre near yharnam, pthumerian queen
Very good video! Suggestions made reference other games or quoted developer ideas instead of being a backseat developer. No unnecessary bashing of fans. No assuming the developers intent. People analyzing games on this website could seriously take some cues from your content
Really great video on what I would consider my favorite game warts and all!
I may have to take this video in chunks due to there being an estimated 52 ad breaks across this video run time.
Such a long video without timestamps is crazy
Upload the preamble as a separate video to be funny
Now that's a GREAT April fools video idea. I may just steal that.
@ just realize you skip the preamble in your other videos too lol, which makes it even funnier
@@Scowleasy every second of worthless video essayist preamble reduces my life expectancy. I wouldn't do that to my audience. You guys deserve better lmao
Thanks for stating what a lot of souls fans have missed: Bloodborne is the iterative sequel to Dark Souls 1. Many people who love DS1 go immediately to DS2 not understanding that BB was under development during DS1 and you can trace how the team either extended ideas within DS1 or used the game to explore new territory just as Link's Awakening allowed the Zelda team to get off the beaten path from Zelda.
I love your nitpicking because you actually explain why various parts of the game NEED to be picked on. Love this video and will sub. I love how you articulate everything while also making sense. Lolol. But yea cheers.
Thank you. A lot of people think that nitpicks needn't be discussed but I entirely disagree. Even the smallest parts of a game comes together to form the whole.
@@Lycan072 You are right on the money. Especially with the smallest parts.
wake up babe, a new Bloodborne analysis has dropped!
Stat Check: After one day, this is now your 5th most viewed video and you've gained about 100 subs. Congrats!
Haven’t watched other videos of yours, but this one which is the only one I had seen yet earned you a new subscriber.
Love the style, of course the break down of my favorite game that is not Minecraft (I highly doubt anything can come close to even be compared to it) just one thing in particular I want to say, kinda a disagreement but more so a perspective:
I play these games in a very different style than you and most people, which caused huge mounts of experience difference within boss encounters, beasts in particular. Instead of leaning in to the suggested extreme aggression method of Bloodborne or the mild aggression of the other from software games, my style goes like this:
I stand in a fair distance from the boss and reacts to all its moves well finding absolute safe punishment windows. I’ll take Ebrietas for example, your most resented boss, for it’s calm and friendly attack pattern with well perceived aggression and weakness, it’s probably one of my top three bosses in the game, and I know there is the Orphan, Maria, Ludwig and Gahrman etc… Is the camera and the conundrum of a hit box and entity a problem? Positive! But her pace matches mine, every attack is perfectly timed and consistent with moderate pace, great punishments opportunities that aren’t overwhelming to me, which means it does not feels like cheating, for example the back stabs on the orphan, Maria; Ludwig super charge attack second phase(I don’t use parry by the way) etc. I sincerely suggest you to try and take the fight slow, observe your ‘prey’ if you wanna call it that, before planing an assault. I basically never experience camera or hit box problems besides sometimes where they force me under some camera hazard like f*cking shi*ty Paarl.
I really believe this is more so a problem of how the game teaches you to approach a fight, if you approach Ebrietas in a heart of battle and me see monster, me kill monster👹 mind set, there will be big problems… and that said I will tell you the lows of my style:
There is no where better to start my demise with the most hideous, most revolting, foul, pathetic dark beast f*cking Paarl! This d*ck sucker are designed to fury me, there is no reason to make this sh*t other than to f*ck with my playstyle! I tried to convey my pain through words, but there is no way to express it without making it seem as though nothing but a tantrum… chaotic and unorganized fights or tight spaces maybe some mechanics will always be my achilles heal. Actually I’m gonna end here, try my way out, very entertaining to watch and prideful.
I think one thing you missed is that fact if you fight the witches of hemwick without insight, they don’t spawn the other enemies. Thought that was pretty cool
Yeah I didn't think it was really worth putting in the script. It's a neat detail for sure but doesn't help the Witches encounter because of how unintuitive and unlikely it is to do. It's something one can only do if they know about it beforehand. Still a neat part of the insight mechanic tho.
4 hour long video of my all time favorite game?!
Don't mind if I do!
4 hour Bloodborne video posted 25 mins ago?? Just called out of work
the unlocked roll is useful for ebrietas' charge because you can move perpendicular to the attack instead of moving on a circle around the boss
it can also apply poison buildup from blood gems, allowing the game to be beaten without doing damage by attacking!
As usual, an incredible video! I only wish the shields were touched on, but then you'd have to talk about all the weapons.
Taught me a bit I didn't know after these 8 years playing it, like how that one door opens after beating Blood-Starved Beast. Seems like the main path through the game was very bizarrely put together, DLC too. Also the fact that you can get much better runes in the dungeons. Might do that next time.
You've laid out these ideas and critiques clearly, concisely, and very well. May your views be many and your Holidays be Merry, and may there be a DS3 stream at 3K! ("Or something" -White Mask Varre)
Thank you so much. I wanted to do a bit with shields and talk about the Hbomberguy video in the process. Instead I decided to skip over shields as it's a pretty useless topic and the Hbomb video was much better suited for the supercut of him saying "Play the game wrong" because it's such a stupid statement.
@@Lycan072 That reminds me. I thought the humor worked very well. I think all the jokes landed, if not with an out loud laugh then intellectually (with my brain).
I disagree with your assessment of ludwigs first phase, the attack where he jumps into the air and crashes back down can be avoided very easily by sprinting in one direction, no roll required, and that goes for both versions of the attack, I can see how it would be frustrating to deal with if you don't know that, but if you do know, it becomes one of his best punish windows, as for the "hit box spam attacks" I won't deny that he does have attacks like that, but those are only a problem when you bombard him with blind aggression, I know bloodborne promotes aggression, but remember, "whoever fights monsters, should see to it, that in the process, HE does not become a monster"
I also think maria and orphan deserve a bit more criticism, but that may stem from my lack of understanding and experience with those 2
The critique of roms aggression seems a bit odd to me? I think that depends on which form of logic you wanna use
And as for why the shadows or yharnam are at the end of the game, the reason is in their name (bars) they aren't the shadows of yharnam the place, they're the shadows of QUEEN yharnam, her shadows meaning her guards, they're protecting the way to queen yharnam as well as her child mergo, just thought I'd give context to that ^_^
Overall really good video, it's refreshing to see someone speak about positives AND negatives in regard to bloodborne, im looking forward to seeing what you make in the future, happy new year O/
oh also you can trivialize Laurences second phase by sticking to his smaller arm, doing so makes it where you only have to worry about 2 attacks, still a shit boss tho lol
To be a bit more clear on Ludwig, I know that the most effective way to evade the ceiling attack is to run. I'm pretty sure there's footage of me doing so that plays in the video. The issue I have with this is that it is unintuitive. Souls combat only works so far as the player knows what's going on. Because of the camera and lock-on, a player cannot know what Ludwig is doing when he's on the ceiling. The only way to learn is to die or get hit and memorize the timing. Intuition vs rote memorisation, intuitive attacks to dodge is (generally) always the better design.
That's been my experience with Ludwig's 1st phase as well, if I get damaged it's usually because I was greedy with my attacks and stayed under him too long. None of the attacks feel random, if anything they're very predictable
As someone who partially agrees with the “just don’t lock on” bit, I think it’s a mixed bag. Yes, choosing not to lock on is a strategic decision in multiple fights. Having just finished a playthrough of bloodborne, I think a fight that uses it well is the Living Failures, funnily enough.
The LF have a simple and clear enough moveset to be dodged while not locked on, are large enough to not easily miss, and can’t be parried regardless, while it’s a large advantage to see their magic attacks. You can still dodge said magic through learning the timings and sound cues without visual input, but it’s a MUCH better fight without locking on, in a way that feels intentional.
Shadows of Yharnam fail by every reason I think the LF succeed. They are small, fast, hard to dodge when not locked on, and parriable. The individual enemy is designed to reward locking on, but the encounter including multiple of this enemy confused and frustrates the player by essentially giving them conflicting instructions on how to approach the fight.
Not locking on is still something that has viability and strategic meaning, AND some encounters are designed poorly regardless. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Oh thank god, new Bloodborne content. In this dark dark age, it's so nice to finally see some light. ❤️
This analysis could've been interesting if it came out almost 10 years ago (when bb came out). Script is too dry, reads more like a guidebook with staggering lack of wit or even humour. People thank him for no preamble but every good script for a video has an intro to state ground for the main thesis. Jumping straight into basically describing a walkthrough with interesting-ish bits here and there doesn't allow for making any of it. If the game wasn't almost 10 years old and so thoroughly looked at by the soulsbourne community, then it'd be a nice watch
Great video overhaul ! But I don't get what's wrong with Ludwig 1st phase, I mean okay certain animation are hard to learn but non of them is real bullsht, even his attack where he fall in the player is simply avoidable by running in a straight line, I personnaly find his p2 harder to no hit than the p1 due to it's less amount of opening.
It’s really only his charge I find frustrating, it’s a bit like Ebrietas where the indication and timing is very unintuitive. It isn’t as punishing though, so it doesn’t frustrate me too much.
Hello, saw you on talkative tri Podcast and as a Fan of long Form content i thought i should give you a try.
Im not that far into your Video but im already enjoying your vibe, you esrned yourself a sub :)
well put together video, but most of the “critiques” were just opinion based complaints. I think the biggest issue is that you compared this game to ds1 in a lot of ways, where bloodborne is its own thing.
Just finished the dark souls 1 video then this dropped. Crazy timing
Fantastic timing then!
you releasing this video got me to play bloodborne just to watch the critique
There is something I would add to your discussion of The Nightmare Frontier.
I played this game as a 1st time Souls player, never opening my online gate to invasions. I wanted to play it SP only.
In the Nightmare Frontier, you can be invaded by other, experienced players who are Immune to the Frenzy beam and who the enemies ignore... regardless of your gate settings, so long as you're online. So you, as a new player, have to deal with getting ganked by FromSoft fanboys while you're trying to dodge what's essentially an Insta-kill AND the Spider mini-boss.
I didn't need a reason to hate Souls players, but the Nightmare Frontier sure gave me one. I had to completely go offline to clear it
Loved the video, I absolutely adore video essays so your content is great. Are you skipping dark souls 2? Also would love to catch a stream on twitch.
Just started Bloodborne thinking that it would be your next covered game, can't wait to finish it so I can watch this whole ass vid!
This vid dropped right as I was beating this game for the second time (in a row) after having been waiting to get my hands on it for half a decade. I loved the game, but felt that it had a lot of issues people chose to ignore for the sake of gassing it up. I adore long form content like this and look forward to the ds3 video and even more for elden ring's. I think the former is the best in the series, and though I love the latter, it has myriad flaws worth looking into. I hope the elden Ring video is 6 hours; I can't wait. Also, are you doing sekiro?
I might do Sekiro and DeS after Elden Ring. Unsure tho
Playing Bloodborne on emulator as I'm listening to this. We've arrived, baby!
how
Shad has granted us eyes.
Logarius has an aura in 2nd phase, that is why ranged attacks whiff.
But i wasnt born from blood, I was born from my ma's belly
My goat is back reviewing soulsborne
0:27
Nitpick: Roll has been omnidirectional since Dark Souls 2
Ludwig ruined by its first half
This dude is a hoot
The internet runs on hyperbole
A lot of extremely subjective statements in this "critique" being presented under some false pretense of knowing better. It's unfortunate considering the effort that probably went into this.
@MasterDuelCentral I wanted to comment same, but decided against being too scathing. This is probably my 50th Bloodborne critique, but it's by far the most arrogant. A difficult listen for sure, and yes, there's room for non dev consumers of art to speak, but I think his angle is to be hyper critical in order differentiate himself. I also don't like passing off opinion, speculation, and non knowledge of circumstances at the time as fact
@@ryandavid9850 well idk if you'll find it by looking at latest comments, but I did have a little comment thread with the creator of this video that illustrates his way of looking at things. Was a good conversation but I just don't understand his definition of "objectiveness". Might be worth a look.
@MasterDuelCentral I'll take a look
I haven’t finished this video yet, but I’m very pleased to hear you acknowledge the increased focus on action and reduced presence of experiential elements and unique encounters regarding bosses.
Matthewmatosis was the only other person I’ve heard really calling this out as a decision with some significant drawbacks. I think for him it actually largely ruined his interest in future Fromsoft titles.
I’m especially interested to hear your thoughts on boss design regarding Elden Ring. I can’t shake the feeling that something really special is increasingly becoming lost in the chase for spectacle and more mechanically demanding bosses.
(note: maria refers to itself in third person)
regarding non-respawning enemies: the scourge beast in iosefkas clinic doesnt respawn and maria doesnt think the beast-possessed soul at the bottom of the healing church workshop platforming section respawns but its not entirely sure about that. technically, there are also two enemies in front of bradors cell that disappear forever once brador starts invading you
also, pretty sure the second witch of hemwick does not only appear when the first one is almost dead, she just doesnt draw attention to herself
edit: at 2:19:54 you have footage where youre attacking the second witch
second edit: you are actually correct if by "close to dying" you mean below 50% hp
I disagree with a lot of your points made, especially about the “lack of balance” between different weapon types, and especially with the healing and rolling systems. I think you’re missing the point of the fighting system.
However, I can agree to disagree and still recognize that you’ve made an incredible video with very good points, and i commend your research and articulation of your point in particular. Great vid :)
My body is ready 😊
I really want to write a full proper response to some of your points since I feel there is room for meaningful conversation about some aspects of the game (namely the Camera in the base game) as the fixes may not be as simple as anyone wants. However, I want to offer one small correction to the Chalice Dungeons themselves.
Modded Dungeons, if made public (which you can do when you create the dungeon) means they actually become part of the randomly generated dungeon pool since the game does allow for your game to pull in publically available dungeons before attempting to randomly generate them.
I haven't run into the legendary cummmfpk chalice but I have run into two specific modded dungeons: the unfinished OG Moon Presence fight and a bizarre Phumera chalice dungeon with the Iz chalice tile set that was much much MUCH harder than should've been accessible when you first get the dang thing.
In a way, that makes the Chalice Dungeons much worse since such Modded dungeons can introduce large issues into a player's experiences
One of my favorite games of all time, let's go!
Im a simple man, i see a multi hour game critique or retrospective and i watch.
This was a very well put together video.
There were abundant, concise descriptions provided, qualifiers set up and reasonings given as to what does and does not hold to scrutiny.
The methods emolyed in the video certainly makes it a potent 'critique' rather than a string of opinions that the viewer has to grapple with.
Peak vid now guys 50k subs now ds 2 was a masterpiece that needs another retrospective
I'm unsure if you'd want me to cover ds2. You know that I dislike the game, right? Lmao
@@Lycan072 idc pls do its peak plssssss plssss😭😭
@@SiyamthandaQwabe-or7erare you talking about DS2? Or DS2 SotFS? I only played the former and enjoyed it well enough, but I heard SotFS made enemy ganking worse.
I will say, DS2 has elements of online play that I really wish were in other souls games (small white soapstone was genius) and I loved that Elden ring brought back powerstance from DS2
mandarory comment to push this channel in the algorythm
Just realized that the curved bone cleaver thingy from the elden ring 's putrescent knight is basically orphan of kos's weapon. Also, you should do a Sekiro critique eventually! Nice work on this one. 👍
Visceral attacks being tied to skill stat was not something i was aware of when i first pucked up the game even though i read the stat descriptions. I had assumed it was tied to bloodtinge since thats what your parry tools scale off of and the vidceral attack but at the same time visually given viscerals involve you shoving your bare fist as hard as possible into the enemy or in the case of piggies literally up their ass it would seem to be strength based. Whats even more odd is the starting defacto skill weapon the cane is the worst starting weapon which will lead new players into thinking skill is just bad.
Another 2 hours + Bloodborne analysis??? I will be #Watching
Another bloodborne critique video. Just what UA-cam needs. No way I'm sitting through 4 more hours of this.
Edit: great video. I agree with pretty much everything you said
Bloodborne critique + preambles skip. We have witnessed the peak of BB critiques
3:03:00 You can actually just dodge the Nightmare Move. Idk how staggering works with it but if the nurse uses the move and you dodge the whole thing just doesn t happen lol.
I feel like some of your counterarguments for the "just don't use it" argument don't hold up to scrutiny. I think most of them hold water for Bloodborne specifically to be clear, but the way it's framed in the text universalizes the counterargument beyond reason, using specific flaws of Bloodborne that interact poorly with lock-on to criticize generally situations that require you not to use it.
The point about the look stick being controlled with the same fingers as most of the basic mechanics just kind of points out the fact that controller is an objectively worse control system than mouse+keyboard. This obviously remains valid criticism for Bloodborne as it's a playstation exclusive, but with any game that has mouse+keyboard controls as an option they should be used. They will always be more variable and customizable and by proxy, more able to not have issues like this. In particular, aiming attacks while not locked on is not particularly hard with mouse-keyboard as the look system is controlled with the right wrist, which is dedicated solely to controlling the camera in this control-scheme.
I also think you overstate the essentiality of lock-on as a feature. While it certainly is a feature that is core to the game it is nowhere near as essential as the dodge, which you used as comparison. You can, for any souls game with mouse-keyboard as functional controls, beat the game without using lock-on at all with minor inconvenience. If you try to do the same with dodging you have created a major challenge run. It is a mother-of-all false equivalencies.
Some of the other criticisms levied are also very Bloodborne specific. The near-impossibility of parrying without lock-on is 1. again mostly a product of Bloodborne mandating you use a Dualshock and 2. mostly an issue for Bloodborne on its own. No other souls game except maybe sekiro emphasizes parrying as much as Bloodborne(but i dont think you need to me to tell you that Sekiro is so structurally different with both the core game and the parries specifically that it's basically a whole different system). In any of the Dark Souls entries, losing your ability to parry enemies in a group fight is barely an inconvenience
Sorry if this came off as overly negative i loved the video overall this one section just came off like it was vastly overstating its case to me
I agree with your take on the quality of the witches of Hemwick boss, however you don't mention how having 0 insight changes the boss fight. I don't think it would change you're overall opinion (making a poor boss fight even easier), but it certainly belongs in here and I'd be curious to here your opinion.
"significantly reduces the ability to use heavy attacks in combat"
have you ever used the rifle spear?
"transformation attacks are just glorified r1s"
no they arent, they let you string combos together between different weapon forms and, for instance, the saw cleavers transformation attack can be used to build up beasthood quickly and then you can r1 with maxed out beasthood
Tbh i take issue with the lock on bit, ive literally never fought laurence locked on outside of my first plathrough because all of his aoe spam bs requires your dodges to clear more distance. Id argue bloodborne is the game in the series that best exemplifies "you have to know when to use lock on".
The distance is identical between all dodges. I literally said that in my video. You can also do more quicksteps per second than rolls per second. So what you are stating is the worse option for covering distance.
Just completed my second playthrough of this game and was curious on what other people thought of it, thanks for the analysis. Some things I wanted to comment on:
I’m glad someone else pointed out that not using lock-on is a poor experience other than Matthewmatosis. It gets used as an argument in favor of DS2’s enemy placement (“just kite the enemy mobs while not locked on”) often despite that game also having the worst movement of the series. Of the points you presented against its use, I think that the fact that manually aimed player attacks are easier to miss is the weakest.
Its a skill that can be honed much easier than trying to shoot without lock-on and you can still miss while locked-on, after all, if you misjudge your distance from an enemy. You showed yourself using it in Rom’s fight to good effect. In the context of Shadows of Yharnam, not using lock-on does suck though. I often wonder if From intends unlocked play with the design of some of these bosses and their history in the Armored Core series, where you claw-hand the controller a lot.
O&S isn’t the best example of a multi-boss in my opinion. The concept of their fight works on paper, but in practice they tend to clump together often which will then only be broken by Ornstein’s janky charge move or their AI getting awkwardly stuck on pillars. Ornstein can shoot lightning through Smough too.
I think a better example is the Demons from DS3 Ringed City- the demons compliment each other when their phases differ, and sometimes change the pace of the fight by taking the same phase, but never for long. There’s a better telegraph for ranged attacks if they go through one of the demons too since the explosion is delayed. You’re given a choice of which phase 2 you want to take as well, though the difference is not nearly as pronounced as O&S.
Hey, what are some sources you used for this video?, You used pretty established vocabulary such as 'ludonarratives' ect that would imply you've really done your research and I'm currently undertaking a project like this for school so it would be helful. Thanks!
Thanks a ton! Ludonarrative dissonance is a game design term you can find even on Wikipedia. It's pretty widespread. Refers to when a game’s story or themes contradict with gameplay. Most of my sources are the Bloodborne wiki. If you're making a project for a specific game then a good accurate wiki is amazing.
Oh wow, four hours. Did you have to post this thirty minutes from midnight haha?
Great video, earned my sub.
wow, 4 and a half minutes of chalices, most of it misinformation about their place and how the system works not to mention the slander of them being lower quality and not being part of the core bloodborne experience
chalices are absolutely meant to be played off and on in between areas on a first playthrough, you can go into the first right after blood-starved beast then soon get to depth 2 as well, it is just that chalices support a player who actually does want to play the game in different ways so it is the perfect place to play with different weapons and to get stuff to upgrade more, you even get a whole new weapon in loran which gets a literal new moveset from the dlc making it in a way 4 weapons in 1
seeing that you only showed footage of the first layer of the first pthumeru chalice, i assume you havent even seen or beat all 10 preset chalices, since how could you not talk about at the least yharnam (the boss, saying it just to be sure there is no misunderstanding, since i am not sure you even know of the boss)
so, you at least did know that there are preset chalices, but you have no idea how root chalices work, first of all you DO NOT need online to play root chalices, you only need online to enter a glyph and to make the root chalice you make have a glyph for others
there are 2300 root chalices, depth 1-3 roots have 100 variants, and depth 4-5 have 200, but that does not mean you can only make 2300 distinct chalices, it means that is how many bases there are
when you put down a root chalice, it chooses 1 base out of the respective pool, then makes sure you have at least 1 unique item (rare loot, lost or uncanny weapon, rune) but that unique item is once again based on the repsective root chalice on what it can be (not anything can be anywhere)
and then, there are more variables that get applied, which does effect enemy layouts, what enemies are in at all, the side room layout, the chance for a 4th layer (20% chance except depth1 which cant have layer 4), chance for poison stuff, chance for shop (patches shop included, if questline is completed)
AND THEN you can apply manual changes with the additional rites, with the fetid offering making some enemies stronger with a buff (but more echoes), the rotted offering making it so there are additional select enemy spawns, and the curse having your hp cut in half but in return making it so you find cursed gems way more often (and of course there is a special rite that gets its own chalice variants, the sinister, allowing for invasions even if you are alone by making the bell ringers for online spawn, but even offline there are differences)
so to say that chalices are anything but the core bloodborne experience, could only be said if someone thinks they know what bloodborne is, but meanwhile even if you only count the preset chalices (10) then that is the 50% of a first playthrough
All this info (which i know by the way. I have played through them all) does not counter any of my criticisms. The game is not balanced for a player who runs them frequently throughout a playthrough and online is still required to make the exact chalice from the seed. And I also praised them for being a decent method for players to use to lower the difficulty of the main game.
@@Lycan072 so if you did go through all of the preset ones (not "all of them"), then it is simply a bloodborne love difference, which is what it is
and also i did try to counter anything, but to simply express how much i like them and how much i do think they are exactly what is needed for a balanced playthrough
but of course, YOU need to make it balanced, YOU need to want it to be how you like it, dont be surprised that enemies die fast if you upgrade past +6 and only dump into 2 stats
bloodborne is the game that you can get an ending with without seeing 95% of the game (this includes weapons, hunter tools, areas and the raw extraordenary amount of experience that you can feel by playing with great care)
@4blasphemy exactly. We're in agreement there. The issue I have in general regarding the chalice dungeons and balance is that a new player going in blind cannot know that they're ruining their own experience by overlevelling unintentionally in chalice dungeons. It's not the worst issue. I just think it should have been more clearly communicated. Glad we've come to a middle ground tho :)
@@Lycan072 yes, the thing that is pretty true that bloodborne is also the game where it is the most useful to get guidance in terms of new player confusion, like it can allow for that 95% to be not missed
(but also, i feel you dont get overleveled from chalices at all, its the other way around, you get overleveled for the chalices by not playing them and they are not connected to the new game+ so they dont scale like that)
so i think the best way to play bloodborne for a new player is to have someone there who knows everything to an extent that is very close to truly everything but obviously not backseat but rather information so mechanical confusion and in general context for what and how stuff is (i consider myself that, and i have already helped a few people play through the game like this and it was good for every person involved)
I feel like your Elden Ring would be 12hrs long.
So funny enough +scaling gems can affect your visceral damage, but from a critique perspective this unfortunately 1. This is never explained anywhere and 2. +scaling gems are so unbalanced that heavy (+str) gems are pretty much always better.
I don't know if anyone will end up reading this but I think I need to type it out anyway. I just finished your discussion on the healing system and how leveling health early game is the best use of resources. I don't think the best way to fix the healing system is to just bring estus back. There are other great features of the blood vial system that you didn't mention that I would have to be removed if it was just an estus flask. Bloodborne more than any other game encouraged you to "sanitize" each level for items and blood echoes. One way this is encouraged from my perspective is that enemies drop additional heals you can use to keep going. This is especially true for the deepest depths of the chalice dungeons. If we simply had an estus healing system you would need more frequent stops to the lanterns to refresh yourself especially early game when the player would be limited to less charges. And estus system would require significant changes to the world as well to include all upgrade materials needed to max out your healing effectiveness.
An alternative fix would be to decrease the amount of vials the player starts with, lets say 8 for now(this change should also include bullet inventory). As you kill bosses and explore you would get belt upgrades that allow that player to carry more vials to the current max of 20. The biggest change would be have the player always spawn with their maximum capacity of vials and remove the storage and ability to purchase blood vials. Most enemies would have to drop less vials as it would only be to restock your supply instead of being there to farm. They would still heal a percentage of your max health so we will need a separate fix for that. Make health scale with character level instead of vitality being a separate stat. I know this is a pretty big change but almost all of Fromsoft's games would benefit from this. It might give players a clearer understanding of what their stats should look like in each area. This would prevent the vitality issue you mentioned as well.
In conclusion Bloodborne uses a very different healing system than any other fromsoft game. I think it would be better to iterate and improve those differences without just saying it was such of a departure that we need to just go back to estus.
4:07:00 (i did not watch the video, i just skipped to a random point but i have thoughts, so sorry if you address anything that i mention here)
I think a major reason that bloodborne lore is so ambiguous in comparison to the other games is that the character you play as has no idea what’s going on. They wake up without any clue as to why they’re where they are and are immediately told to start killing things. I think it was very intentional that on your first playthrough you are not supposed to know what your motivations are because the hunter itself does not know what their motivations are. This also generally contributes to the theme of hunters who continue to hunt despite not knowing why. It’s the reason a lot of bosses don’t even aggro onto you immediately, but most people will attack them anyway because that’s how the game/lack of motivation has conditioned you to play(rom, ebrietas, bsb for example)
It’s definitely a matter of personal taste but i think having npcs give lore would be a lot less fitting to bloodborne’s story than dark souls’s. In dark souls you are supposed to feel like history has already played out, and you are simply learning about what has already happened. In bloodborne you are supposed to feel like you are uncovering current events that have been hidden from the rest of the world. That’s part of the reason the only npc that actively gives lore information tells you fuck-all, because if the game had a bunch of characters that were extremely knowledgeable about the events you are uncovering, it would take away that feeling of discovery. Learning about the cosmic aspects of the game within the game universe is also tied to ascension, which is why the only npc that might know about rom or the mensis ritual is an old man that can’t even talk. I think the lore notes are the best way of getting this across because they give lore in SMALL fragments that just couldn’t be pulled off with long NPC monologues. In general i think on the first playthrough you are supposed to get the mindless, violent hunter experience, and on subsequent playthroughs you are supposed to get the investigative mensis student experience.
So yah definitely a matter of personal taste but i think the methods they used to get across the lore were very intentional and the best fit for the story being told.
I am going to have soooooooo many thoughts on this video when i actually watch it lmfao
Bloodborne is playable on ShadPS4 right now, no need to wait a year.
Are you making a dark soul 2 video?
I guess I'm the only one that really enjoys laurance fight 💀😂
Thank you for emphasizing the poor transition between Blood-Starved Beast in Old Yarnham and the door it opens in Cathedral Ward. This was a really discouraging experience my first time playing through the game and all of critiques matched my experience. It doesn't make sense that the door opens arbitrarily after defeating an enemy miles away and I didn't encounter the Gehrman dialogue. I very frustratedly asked my souls expert friend where to go next and he and a few other friends pointed me in the right direction but did so in a way that implied, "oh its simple, just go here... duh." At least DS3 has the decency to teleport you to Dancer of the Boreal Valley after defeating that other boss. This was such a poor execution of progression in an otherwise very well designed game.
And this could've been remedied so easily by getting an item from the boss that implied where to go next. A "Healing Church Workshop Key" or a "Cathedral Ward Key". Literally anything.
I expect a video to be 1 hour of only preamble now.
I think this video is very weak. Why did it need to be 4 hours long? Do you really need to ramble endlessly explaining how basic systems like healing and fast travel work? It's a safe assumption that people willing to watch the video have played the game and understand how these things work.
Also, your counter argument to the 'don't use it' is very lacking.
There's benefits to playing with the camera unlocked such as complete freedom of movement which help account for the loss in I frames. You said you 'proved' lock on combat was better but you did no such thing. Also something unique to BB is the ability to sprint in all directions while locked off.
Also, you present having to aim your attacks as a strict negative which is just untrue. Aiming your attacks manually allows you to hit when lock on would have you miss, it also allows you to directly target where you want to hit such as weak points which is kind of a big deal as it's a feature heavily present throughout the game. Vicar is a great example as unlocking allows targeting limbs more easily. Also bosses like Rom and the spiders are easier without lock on because of the ability to aim your attacks to hit the body instead of the head even when not fully behind them.
The entire thing is basically a strawman in the way you've presented it. You've created a false dichotomy and no one is saying that you just shouldn't use lock on. The point is that there are benefits and draw backs to both and you should learn what the strengths of each are and use them appropriately.
The argument that trick weapon attacks are basically just another R1 is just flagrantly incorrect as well. They do more health and more stagger damage, they allow you to rally more health, they are better for limb breaking, the build beasthood faster... I could go on but there are numerous benefits to using a weapons combo over mashing light attack. Also, claiming heavy attacks aren't useful is again just flagrantly incorrect.
I could go on but this is yet another disappointing video from someone who isn't qualified to be taking on a project like this.
4h long video about Bloodborne? Sheesh sign me up
The Laurence fight could be made a lot better I think if the lava didn't stagger and instead of doing a chunk of damage, did slow damage over time. This would make standing in the lava dangerous but viable, forcing the player to weigh the risk of getting extra hits while taking a bit of damage in the process without being entirely neutered
4 hrs !? Uploaded 1 day ago !? I’m too early man. I’ll wait for the timestamps guy.
Only 4 hours? Release the directors cut!