Bloodborne Review

Fromsoftware's 2015 dive into Lovecraft-esque horror is nothing short of adrenaline-filled, bloody and tense action that hits the ground running and never stops. Faster-paced than its cousins in the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne is a standalone entry that invites you to investigate the beasts and indescribable terrors haunting Yharnam.

“Fear the Old Blood”

Bloodborne starts with you on an operation table with someone leaning over you talking about a transfusion with a large wolf suddenly appearing out of a growing pool of blood, bursting into flames and little white aliens clambering to your face. Getting up from the table, you briefly explore the lonely ward before getting killed by another wolf and waking up on a cobblestone path surrounded by flowers leading up to a large mansion- known as The Hunter’s Dream, existing in its own reality.

Sounds confusing? Yep, Bloodborne is a true return-to-form for Fromsoft’s storytelling. Bloodborne has, for me, the most confusing yet the best lore and story of all Fromsoftware games- and I love Dark Souls. There is so much to discover and learn about. So much “insight” to gain.

To give an extreme summary, you arrive at Yharnam seeking its blood transfusion miracle cure-all treatment. This “Old Blood” was discovered by the scholars of Byrgenwerth long ago in old catacombs and studied in secret. Laurence, the First Vicar, convinced of the uses of the Old Blood forms the Healing Church and uses it to help the people- ignoring his master’s warning to fear it. The blood turns out to be cursed and people turn into beasts. The Church splits into different branches. Laurence’s old master, Willem, forms the Choir to study the Cosmos and the Great Ones (powerful beings living on another plane of existence to ours) with the aim of contacting and understanding them. The Hunter’s Workshop led by Gehrman leads secret hunts to cull the beasts transformed by the Old Blood (and a few suspect civilians along the way). And there is the School of Mensis which, studying its own nightmarish research, is isolated from the rest of Yharnam.

The Beast plague becomes so widespread that it is impossible to kill them in secret. Ludwig is appointed as The First Hunter and citizens are recruited to lead crusades against the Beasts and anyone who appears to be one in organised hunts. All the while, Willem and Byrgynwerth get closer to the Old Ones, the School of Mensis conduct increasingly reckless rituals, and the Old Ones and envoys of them begin to make their presence felt.

To say there is a lot is an understatement. There is so much more I have not mentioned, all revealed as you play the game. Bloodborne is a game about discovery, as your character learns about the world. The environmental storytelling is once again fantastic as you stumble across razed towns, hidden experiments, secret labs and areas for studying things humanity should not know about. You learn about humanity’s insatiable need for knowledge, power and desire to use the Old Ones to evolve. You see how things inevitably went wrong and the futile attempts to correct their mistakes. And all the while, in the back of your mind, you know there is something just out of reach watching and waiting.

“Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good.”

Bloodborne is a fast paced game. Designed to encourage offence and ferocity, the Dark Souls roll is replaced with a quickstep to retain momentum into another attack. Attacks (both player and enemy) are faster and are so much more fluidly chained into other actions (such as quickstepping, healing, a heavy attack etc). Upon taking damage, the player can recover their health lost by dealing damage to their enemies. Weapons transform between two forms with their own movesets, and the transformation itself can be an attack. All of this invites the player to stick in the face of their enemy and be aggressive. This can take some time to get used to coming off the slower gameplay of Dark Souls, but once it clicks the combat is very addictive. It is never not satisfying to bob and weave around enemies while hacking and slashing. Also, to parry you shoot them. That is all.

Like other installments, Bloodborne encourages exploration. But this is also represented by an in-game mechanic. “Insight” is an accruable stat that increases as you gain inhuman knowledge. You gain insight through discovering bosses (normally horrific monsters), experiencing otherworldly events and through consumable items. As your insight increases, certain things in the game change. Enemies evolve, the ambience becomes more threatening, new enemies appear, your character becomes weaker to the Frenzy affliction as they near insanity but their Beasthood stat and damage with it also increases. It’s a wonderful mechanic that is ever-present and dynamic (as you can lose insight-willingly or not) that evolves environments as more and more of the weird and forbidden is learned.

The level design is also great and the different areas are really fun to explore and dripping in atmosphere. Be it an old town completely taken over by the beasts, a hideout for only the highest ranking members of the Choir, concealing their experiments within to just the streets of the ailing town itself, each area is distinct and memorable and serves as a great asset to further build up the environment and story Bloodborne tells. I loved to investigate every path to (more times than not) uncover more horrible creatures and locations, but also to keep learning about key characters. Questions like what happened to Ludwig and Willem, what the Choir does, and (frequently) what happened here kept me exploring for hours.

Bosses yet again are brilliant. Even those with the more uninteresting boss fights are still spectacularly designed and just so amazing to behold. Some of them are alluded to a lot in various item descriptions and dialogues and others do simply appear before you. But all of them can be learned about and all of them piqued my interest without fail. From freshly transformed beasts to the Old Ones themselves, the bosses of Bloodborne are amazingly designed. And, the further you go, the stranger things get as you get closer to the Old Ones and the knowledge of them. The game starts off with beasts and wolves etc., and then in one area you see someone walking a little too rigid. Getting closer to him, he notices you and… snakes burst out of his head. Failed experiments to mimic the outer gods try to get at your brain, spiders with human faces. The switch from the disturbing to outright horrifying is simply amazing.

The Old Hunters

Bloodborne’s DLC is the best content Fromsoftware has ever made to date. While this may be a controversial opinion with the existence of Elden Ring and its own DLC, I still believe The Old Hunters is the best Fromsoftware has ever been. Quite short and very sweet, the player is transported to the Hunter’s Nightmare- a twisted and distorted version of Yharnam, full of other Hunters who lost themselves to bloodlust and were transported here too- as well as other stronger foes.

The Old Hunters only has a few areas but each are carefully put together and are some of the most important locations for the story in the game, culminating in the Old Hunter’s biggest secret, a secluded fishing village cursed from the time where they found, and killed, their first outer being.

The DLC includes story developments for major characters referred to but not seen in the main game (think of Artorias from Dark Souls) and seeing their tragic fates and struggles is as poignant as it is disgusting. The bosses are masterpieces as is the music and story that holds them together. Simply put, this DLC is perfect.

Verdict

Bloodborne is a violent and wonderfully terrifying standalone game from Fromsoftware, offering some of the best gameplay, lore, music, design and craftwork to date. It is wonderfully made and addictive with rewarding difficulty and exploration which is well worth your attention. If only they would remaster it.

Scores

100% score
Graphics- 4 / 5
Multiplayer- 3 / 5
Story- 5 / 5
Originality- 5 / 5

You may like:
Lovecraft theme on top of the Dark Souls formula
Fast paced combat rewarding aggression
Truly rewarding exploration
Evolving environments
Some of the best bosses the series has to offer
Masterpiece DLC

You may not like:
Learning curve with newer aggressive mechanics

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