Bloodborne is NOT as Good as You Remember

look I even wore my special bloodborne shirt for this it's unofficially licensed uh Redbubble obviously [ __ ] Sony you're not getting my money bloodborne was always supposed to be my favorite soulsborne game with a Victorian and lovecraftian setting a unique weapon system as well as a unique gun Parry system fast-paced gameplay and notoriously difficult bosses it was everything I could have ever wanted in a soul that was until I actually had the chance to play it after years of looking forward to the point where I'd have access to bloodborne I finally took the plunge and purchased the PlayStation so why was it that I found myself completely disappointed by The Fan Favorite cult classic award-winning bloodborne while the game is undeniably Charming in a disgusting and beautiful way uh just about everything else fell flat for me the trick weapons are ultimately simplistic and there are very few in the game most of which are found in the DLC fast-paced combat is generally subverted by placing an over emphasis on positioning crippling and viscerals meaning that most boss fights are only difficult on a first playthrough if even that and that's only the bosses that aren't gank asset spamming an overwhelming amount of boss fights pitch you against 3 to 30 to even infinite amounts of enemies just about everything that bloodborne is praised for is simply aesthetic and surface level and when put to practice fails to meet any standard of quality in an attempt to disprove that I set out to see just about everything in bloodborne as my father once taught me at a young age if you don't like something just try beating it a lot my first playthrough consisted of no hitting every boss followed by several casual playthroughs and then a playthrough focused on beating the entirety of the Chalice dungeons I then switched my attention to the weapons playing a new new game plus with a new weapon through every playthrough I used the goat spear the rakuyo the cost parasite the boom Hammer the Chicago the burial Scythe the blades of Mercy the amygdalan arm and I played for a couple of bosses with the whirly gig finally I beat a blood level 4 playthrough which consists of no leveling and picking the waste of skin character all of this is to say that I've done my homework I'm well informed and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that bloodborne is a mid remaster would be a waste of time and effort of creative people who could be spending their time on Modern projects instead of catering to the blind masses who want to play outdated content with Fresh coat of paint so let's dissect bloodborne and see why my opinion is generally much lower than the popular opinion I'll analyze each boss individually but first I'd like to take a look at bloodborne as a microcosm in the form of the first three areas of the game Central yharnam Cathedral Ward and old yarnum are likely the images that come to mind when one speaks of bloodborne rightfully so as they're full of environmental storytelling which can easily immerse you into the main theme of the game The Duality between the hunters and the beasts Central yarnum pits you against the two first bosses of the game teaches you earlier what to expect out of the two distinct fights in bloodborne each with their strengths and glaring flaws the cleric Beast is a pretty good early game fight and a good example of what you could come to expect from Beast fights beasts are generally large unparriable creatures with several crippleable limbs some of which drop them into a visceral stance beasts also generally have a move that will mend their broken limbs cleric Beast teaches you early just how important taking advantage of [ __ ] staggers can be especially when comboed together to [ __ ] multiple limbs at once the body layout of two [ __ ] Limbs and one cripplingable head that drops the Beast into a visceral seems to be the sweet spot for making an engaging beast fight any more than that can lead to some extremely lackluster battles and all too many bloodborne's fights have a surplus of Limbs to Cabo against in some cases this is a bad thing as it can end an otherwise good boss fight without a challenge however in the vast majority of cases the [ __ ] mechanic can serve as a bandage on an otherwise terrible boss fight this could easily trick a less critical player into ignoring the flaws of said boss all I have to ask is if you would rather just be it out of a helpless boss rather than fight them then maybe they're just not that good of a boss fight also I just wanted to point out that bloodborne has a bunch of bosses that jump so high above character that you lose tracking with your camera and you can't see the attack coming this not only serves the disorient but it also disengages your target lock and you still have to dodge the move that you can't see coming from above you on Telegraph moves are what I consider poor attempts at making the game more difficult the only course of action you have is to be hit by the move so many times that you just naturally learn the timing of the move and there's no real skill involved other than that which just feels lazy to me this doesn't just apply to Beast fights but there are many Beast examples including the cleric Beast anyway to wrap this section up the Beast fights in bloodborne they feel like a spectacle but mechanically they come off as sloppy however cleric Beast is one of the best of them gascoigne is my favorite fight in bloodborne I generally prefer the hunter fights and he embodies everything that makes them great hunter fights are periable and backstabable they're generally quick fight with projectiles and mirror the player as their phase changes generally involve using their trick weapons which vastly changes up their moveset and the pace of the fight however Hunter fights are not without their overarching flaws while each of the hunter fights will be judged on their own Merit most of the hunter fights fail in some of the same categories a large amount of them fight with such quick move sets that dodging each move within a combo is physically impossible it's easy enough to get behind their attacks and strike them yourself which usually results in a stagger that forces them to either Dash away or do a proximity punish so how then are you supposed to fight back in a reliable way well the answer is simple but also lies at the heart of another failed mechanic of bloodborne visceral attacks the gun Parry system for all intenses purposes is the coolest [ __ ] thing I've ever seen don't you worry about me I'm a master of Mercy large and I'm also packing some serious heat staring down your enemies attack just to shoot them in the face of the last second is immeasurably satisfying yet that as a concept is only when the Perry system is working at its best at its worst it'll have you grinding for bullets while you're trying to learn the timings of the boss's attack missing your shot when you've timed the attack perfectly shooting over the head of shorter enemies then ultimately reach Perry Mastery and realize that the only Perry worth shooting is a zero risk Parry in which bosses never had the chance to hit you you fire from outside of the range of their attack Dash in and get the visceral if you can't see the problem with this I'll likely never be able to change your mind however as a certified Perry Lord it is in my opinion that if you're pairing without the risk of damage you might as well just be casting spells sad thing however is that zero risk parries aren't even the worst mechanic in Hunter fights the visceral backstab is one of frumpstaff's most unbalanced mechanics that I could possibly think of the time investment of charging the heavy is rewarded with a significant increase of damage which if positioned correctly results in the visceral attack that can be further increased and reward based on your Carol room and finally since the boss is pushed onto its stomach and has to do the animation to turn around you generally have a chance to punish that animation I heard this with Beast blood which sees its greatest increases from single hits of large amounts of damage and the backstab becomes so valuable that it's often better to forego the visceral attack and hit another charged heavy further increasing your beastood all of this is without the cost of a quicksilver bullet so the bottom line becomes if any boss is backstabable it becomes the hands down single best option and in situations where you can't land the backstab where you otherwise would you feel a significant decrease in damage the best hunter fights will limit the possible backstabs forcing you to engage with their move sets gascoigne does this well the only opportunity I've ever found to backstab them is if you can predict his phase two wait for him to fire the gun and then charge up your heavy while he's reloading with a quick yet not undodgeably quick moveset a single backstab and a single zero risk Parry easy to see why I've always considered gas going to be one of my favorite boss fights unfortunately that meant that it's all downhill from here old Garden is another pivotal point in the environmental storytelling of bloodborne having Hunters protect the beasts around them lend some depth to the moral ambiguity of the church and their old blood bloodborne is forward presenting as a game where you hunt beasts in order to end their score John yharnam yet early on in the game you are presented with information that seems contradictory towards this very simple motivation [ __ ] complicates and enriches the main theme the boss of old yarnum is a good representation of this the bloodstar Beast is one of the most horrifying bosses I've ever seen it also fills the role somewhere between human and massive hulking creature its small stature could be a result of the blood starvation which would imply that larger doses of the old blood could result in more monstrous creatures whereas starving the creature of their blood results in an emaciated rotten deteriorating creature while there's a lot that could be speculated on lore wise with blood starved to fight itself is somewhat lackluster serves well to be an easy simple early game fight but there's not much else to say about it say that in classic from fashion BSB is a end game Enemy placed in a early game area with a fog wall but even that doesn't really track as blood starve doesn't really appear in the game until the DLC moving on Cathedral Ward acts as a connection point between many areas of the game with several Gates and shortcuts to unlock after exploring everything within the early game you're left with nothing to face but the boss of this area vicar Amelia Amelia is what I consider to be the last good mandatory fight in bloodborne however she's not without her flaws having four crippled limbs two of which drop her into a visceral State means she can easily be destroyed with the combination of fire paper Beast blood and [ __ ] spam however she's one of the few spammable fights that I consider to be good enough to fight legitimately her moveset works well enough while still being complex sharing similar moves to the other two of the cars while subtly changing enough up so it'll still catch you off guard her healing mechanic is interesting enough to set her apart while still offering the player options to take advantage of either by just wailing on her subdued state or by initiating a limb [ __ ] all this is to say that early game bloodborne is where the game is at its best and I can see why people latch onto these areas as strong examples as to bloodborne is great however the game unfortunately continues and takes a steep dive in quality but first I'd like to take one last look at an overarching problem that plagues yharnam that being the trick weapons I feel like this is going to be a hard point to articulate and an even harder pill for hardcore bloodboard fans to swallow but I ask this what exactly is a trick weapon I've seen plenty of people claiming that the trick weapons are an important part of bloodborne's identity and a unique interesting combat system but are they anything really more than smoke and mirrors like just ask yourself if you would map the transform button to Y instead or triangle or whatever it is on PlayStation would that really change anything comparatively to dual wielding to single wielding a weapon or two-handing to one handing a weapon not even every trick weapon has two forms the tantritis and the boom Hammer simply buff themselves with their respective element the only thing I can find of value in the whole of the transform system is that the transform combos on the sauce beer and saw Cleaver do significant damage and build beastood especially fast however most other weapons have very little utility when using their transforms in the case of the weapon two hands when transformed you lose the ability to shoot your gun meaning you miss out on potential parries while you reset your transform this problem is many times worse on a dual wield transform in which you lose your gun and the ability to backstab the generally smaller forms that dual wield weapons take also make it harder to tell when your weapon is transformed which can be annoying and what I can gather most weapons just have a single form that's the best form to take and transforming otherwise becomes useless trick weapons fundamentally lack a philosophy behind their design and they're left in a state of identity crisis the sad thing is the main theme of the game points to an ideology that each weapon should follow quick folded forms to use on Hunter fights and larger slower extended forms to use to [ __ ] beasts if every weapon in the game had a hunter form and a beast-focused extended form transform system would justify its existence but as it stands the only weapon that remotely follows this is the burial Scythe which you can only get in New Game Plus and even then I just found myself using the sword mode more often because it was quicker maybe this is going to be an unpopular opinion but as I played with more and more of the trick weapons throughout my mini playthroughs I ended up wishing that bloodborne had taken the Sakura path leaving the players with one single weapon to standardize the combat so that each fight could be fine-tuned to be more difficult and tailored to play well against the chosen weapons the sock lever would be an easy choice because it's the title weapon what if the transform was similar to Sakura's prosthetic with various upgrades that change its transformed form the unfolded weapon could be designed by players to focus on specific aspects of Beast fights with higher crippling potential some kind of projectile or the paper effect of the tantritis this would add variability to the build crafting while also having a standardized form for the tighter quicker Hunter fights if they ever made a sequel I would love to see something like this implemented rather than having a small assortment of so-called trick weapons where the only trick is that they tricked you anything and there were something special so let's talk about the rest of the boss fights in bloodborne starting with the witches of hamwick I don't believe anyone has anything good to say about this fight it's silly stupid looking clunky and has needless gank putting two of these things in a room does not a boss fight make even if you add the optional race they called rates that might be an Elden ring thing whatever I'm calling them rates exception of fighting this fight with zero insight and avoiding the rates entirely is not even a question the only reason you would not do this is if you wanted to save yourself the trip back as entering the fight gives you one Insight which I'll have to spend at The Messengers The invisibility and teleport mechanic is pointless and only starts to waste your time the grab attack is far too brutal for a fight you otherwise shouldn't have to take seriously overall the witches are a huge Miss and it only compounds the issues that the Carol runes as well as cainhurst Manor including the logarius fight are all locked behind a boring poorly designed gank fight shut his yarnama better but also a gank fight which means the risk of the fight ending up as a annoyance more than a challenge is dramatically increased however on my first playthrough I found the Shadows to be somewhat compelling the fact that they switch up dominant aggro after phase changing had me wondering just how best to tackle the order which I would take them out there's only a couple glitches into phase 3 and seeing the ultimate snake move they're my ultimate snake move I was genuinely invested in how many scenarios could play out with taking out each of the shadows and what their phase three would be like unfortunately my imagination had gotten the better of me the Shadows only really have one way of playing out effectively at least take out the sword guy with zero risk parries take out the fireball guy and then cheese the final fire sword guy and when I say cheese I really just mean hit him his AI is so bad that it'll Dodge away every time you hit him leaving a chance to restore stamina so you can be ready for the next hit I teased him on my first playthrough on accident and only later attempted to fight him legitimately only to realize just how awkward of a fight it would be they don't even like actively try to attack you hard not to cheese him when that's all he wants to do okay okay it doesn't do as much damage as I would have thought on new game I thought it was gonna [ __ ] destroy me let's uh do this the way it's meant to be done then eh ultimate snake move is all spectacle and no skill forcing you to disengage to find a safe spot before returning to the battle just to end up hitting him watching him Dodge away and realizing that the cheese is really the only way to fight him he's Beyond embarrassing that a phase three would be so slacid simplistic and boring gas is going to be rolling in his [ __ ] grave to see these three [ __ ] fumble this fight so badly the more you play Shadows the worse it feels and the more you realize just how simplistic it is which is the exact opposite of how a boss should feel refining bosses you know well should be a treat a chance to like show off how much you've changed how much you've grown and learned since you first set foot in their Arena Shadows feels like a chore yet not as much as the next boss the only compliment I've ever heard about ROM is that his arena is cool do I really need to even say more nobody likes his boss and anyone who says they do is lying because bloodborne is their sacred cow this horde mode of a boss has no redeeming qualities the spider ads takes several minutes to clean up at each of the three phases and ROM himself cannot be attacked safely when he's using any of his moves there's effectively zero real openings in phase three you simply have to wait until the AI forgets to do a move long enough you can get an attack in this is tedium the boss fight it is designed in every aspect to waste your finite time in this earth so let me show you how to really beat him why do you want to give away your kidney thousand people in this country in the active waiting list for a kidney in less than ten thousand dead people here to give him one yeah kill 60 000 more people a year all would be golden I'll give you your money that's every fight on the frontier headstone and they all suck this whole Tombstone could effectively be removed from the game and bloodborne would be better off for it and that's just honestly sad the one reborn should have been aborted again yeah this is the future Liberals are fighting against there's no other boss that perfectly represents my sentiments on the [ __ ] system acting as a bandage on a shitty boss if you were to fight this without [ __ ] spamming this boss would send random bits of meat raining down on you sniper shots of blood that explode on impact acid vomit that damage you through the poorly mapped Arena erratic attack pattern of limb thrashes and worst of all women having to kill six of these adds before every attempt is needlessly tedious and earns this fight a label as a gank fight despite the fact that just about every playthrough will involve killing all six of these women so quickly that the boss can't really keep up only getting an attack or two in before you move too far away leaving it to slowly hobble towards you there's nothing significant about this boss lore-wise it's irrelevant gameplay-wise it's entirely mechanical and uninteresting it's not very cool looking unless you're really into the amalgam of Flesh aesthetic something that Ludwig also does while nailing all of the above thank you [Music] [ __ ] this boss at this point in my first playthrough I had been feeling a nagging sensation of boredom that I couldn't really ignore I hadn't really enjoyed a fight since Amelia and since my expectations of bloodborne were so high I had never looked into bosses to avoid spoiling the best from soft game I just kept telling myself that the next fight is going to be good the next fight for sure is going to be a legendary battle between some imposing creature or hunter that will really put my skills to the test an epic battle of fortitude and endurance as we Clash together in a frenzied state of blood she was a twink in a library you chase a wizard twink around his Library make a Lashes in so much as a boss as he is a guy holding the health bar the boss itself is the arena the mannequins the puzzle aspect of chasing him around trying to lure him at a dead ends except the puzzle doesn't even really work like a puzzle no matter where you approach him he can end up running in any direction meaning the fight doesn't really even have a strategy at that point you just chase the dude until he ends up in a combat Arena from there the fight amounts to killing the annoying mannequins that can go immune at any point for no reason just to be killed hit later then you fight michelash the worst of the hunter fights he has no retaliation for his stagger so a mind-numbing pattern of wailing on him and then retreating to regenerate stamina will naturally set the pace for the fight you repeat the process a second time with the different Arena and new moves added to miklash's moveset and I don't really even care to go into detail this fight is one of the only reasons I would want a PC port for bloodborne because if I have to follow a dude around the library for several minutes before I get the chance to go to town on him it would help to Modern an alstofo skin for him next is the final mandatory fighting bloodborne the first of three potential final boss fights and my pick for the most overrated boss the wet nurse has flown under the radar for so many people and I have no idea why in the past when I've criticized bloodborne before on Tick Tock my comment sections have been flooded with Die Hard stands who are all too eager to give every example why I should think this game is great and one of the most common themes is to list every boss they think is undeniably high quality with so many subtly listing the wet nurse without giving any explanation the wiki lists a total of six move for this boss some of which you might never see as at least two of them only proc when you're in a Range The Phase 2 is complete RNG after the point when the boss's Health dips below 70 percent meaning that with high damage you'll likely never see it either or you'll stagger him out of his startup animation if it managed to actually finish the animation congratulations you get to run around for like a minute straight dodging poorly targeted attacks that will only hit you if the shadow clone happens to spawn directly in front of you this ultimate move is so lazy and adds nothing to the fight your only course of action is to stop fighting and run around until the attack times out this becomes exponentially more boring the more you see it you learn nothing you gain nothing and what did it cost well another gank asset spamming boss fight the code for this boss must be like four lines long move towards player if players in range roll for attack the player is behind after attack Dash away repeat I could see this appeal if this is the tutorial boss but it's the [ __ ] last mandatory fight it was the final boss for a lot of players day one who assumed that following the hunters and submitting their life to German was the right thing to do then the game ends and New Game Plus begins on my first playthrough in which I know hit every boss this boss took me three attempts it was at that point I realized two things that every mandatory fight past Amelia was a gank fight in some way and that all were disappointing it just shows an absolute lack in faith in your design to necessitate having multiple enemies within a boss room it's an easy mindless way to inflate the difficulty and you know what they're not even that difficult four of the five DLC fights absolutely [ __ ] on these fights in terms of Challenge and they do it without acid spam ignore living failures we don't talk about them mergo's wet nurse is as simple as a boss fight can be and it's hilarious to realize that this [ __ ] has more limbs than it has moves in its move set it's unacceptable as a final boss fight nothing can change my mind oh man wait did I just kill a baby never mind this fight is [ __ ] rad moving on to more optional fights the dark beast power is one of the most optional optional fights in the game you could fight him early if you wish after being kidnapped by the snatchers or fight him later on after beating ROM he shares the same issues as one Reborn the terrible movesets that subverted by an easy [ __ ] spam if his four limbs weren't enough you can also [ __ ] his head for a visceral and if that wasn't enough this boss is heavily inclined to heal its broken limbs almost immediately after taking a [ __ ] for some reason this boss discharges its electrical form when its limbs are broken which reverts it to a physical damage form generally para will soon after back away from the fight in an attempt to recharge the lightning but unfortunately this results in giving of a player enough time to [ __ ] its next limb anyway like what kind of a stupid [ __ ] backs away from the fight so they can rebuff just to get smacked in the mouth by their opponent in the process anyway dark Beast is another classic bad fight with an easy solution as its attacks are timed faster than the player can dodge meaning you'll spend most of your time underneath the stomach fighting the camera and the perspective as you attempt to hit his weirdly bouncy physics affected limbs this can be especially annoying when using a shorter weapon he also has this on Telegraph move which can be frustrating overall the best thing parallel does is not stick out too much it's not the most difficult nor easy fight he's not the most rewarding or underwhelming dark peace Carl is a boss in bloodborne Marta logarius is one of the best fights in bloodborne and I can honestly say that I actually enjoy this fight despite his flaws he's a hunter fight and he's a wizard and he's actually good which puts miklash to [ __ ] shame there are however several weak points in logaris's fight including his Arena having terrible Synergy with his moveset phase one will have you pushing towards logarius as he sends a barrage of spells in your direction upon reaching and damaging him he'll usually retaliate with the proximity punish and dash away from you this means that his moveset will naturally have him backed up against the wall or the edge of the roof and there's very little you can do to draw him back into the fight knowing how dangerous it is when he's near Cliffs and knowing how logaria's spells have strange interactions when he stashes back towards the wall I generally avoid engaging with him in these instances which results in me pointlessly attempting to tease him back into the center of the Arena you're too close he'll Dash away again and if you're too far he spams spells while sitting in place it's just frustrating and pointless to try like paying taxes is phase two on the other hand flips the tables on you his aggressive behavior means that he'll often end up very close to you which is unideal when two of his new moves come to play his flying moves are both best dealt with at range as otherwise logarius flies above you and out of sight if he does the slam attack this generally misses because his targeting is terrible up close giving you a free backstab his other flying attack is an easy zero risk Parry if you can get the distance that is as long as the bullet actually lands his movement during this move conflicts with the timing of the Perry resulting in frequent missed shots another Phase 2 problem is that his Phase 2 startup move which should result in a free backstab he just sometimes forgets to do it and ends up surprising you with a phase 2 aggression like a jump scare and yet another Phase 2 problem is his poorly designed ultimate move the sword storm can range from intimidating to frustrating as you attempt to figure it out ultimately you just realize you can shoot the sword hope the bullet lands and the storm doesn't snipe you before the animation ends logarius is one of the only bosses that I would like remade with a few simple tweaks you could be really difficult and interesting it's just a shame that so many bloodborne fights are such a lost cause that a full remake would be like taking the pickles off of a [ __ ] sandwich because you don't like pickles the amygdala is an amalgamation of most of bloodborne's major problems [ __ ] spam undogable attack timings and awkward positioning and camera issues as well as an untelecraft high jump his boss is just frustrating and the defiled Chalice of megdala is just Mor amigla and therefore more frustrating it's not much I'd like to say about it instead I want to talk about how disappointed I was with the cosmic horror side of bloodborne aside from the fishing Hamlet which is fairly fleshed out the rest of the love crafting aspects of bloodborne are so Bare Bones and Mooring Lovecraft has always benefited from the concept that his Horrors he wrote about were indescribably disturbing which kind of feels like a cheat code for a writer however video games are a visual medium and when trying to create character models for such a concept it's kind of understandable but also disappointing to end up with a bunch of weird blue alien Mushroom Men some spiders and macaroni salad lack of diversity within the cosmic enemy leaves this side of the game to be absolutely chopped full of acid spam which ultimately results in the infinite blue guy boss fight which they decided for some reason to do twice talking about the mediocrity of the cosmic horror elements of bloodborne is an easy way to explain away several bad fights that are too simplistic and uninspired to be worth my time analyzing however one of these fights is worth delving into for all the wrong reasons every test has all the makings of a great flight she has two [ __ ] points and one visceral point an interesting moveset with several moves that take advantage for many individual tentacles while leaving room for clever positioning to avoid the moves without fully disengaging she has a proximity punish that feigns as a ranged attack which once fully understood could be used as an opening her phase two moves change the pace of the fight adding a DOT around her as well as the range spell however none of that matters ever test is a zero out of 10 for me single Dash move that she can do at any point in phase one or two completely ruins what could have been bosses like this are a special case for me that being bosses with a single move that defines the fight such as Millennia your enjoyment or hatred of Millennia is entirely defined by your tolerance of her waterfowl dance move you either find the answer for the move that you see is adequate or like me find the move to be a sloppy attempt and making a boss more difficult and every answer for it fails to meet your standards of quality this isn't the time or place for me to go into detail about my opinions on Millennia but every Test's move is far more embarrassing for it to Define her fight simplistic nature of the move means that the answer for it should be simplistic as well yet instead I couldn't find a single consistent Dodge pattern or stagger mechanic whatsoever in one attempt I made with a low damage weapon I know hitter other than this Dash move which took all 20 of my vials I successfully dodged it one out of the 12 times I saw it now I might be a big fat dumb idiot but after hundreds of attempts and seeing this move thousands of times I expected to find an answer for it even an unsatisfying answer would have been better than nothing but the wiki was no help either the bloodborne Community talks big about loving this game but if the wiki was any indicator nobody gives a single [ __ ] about this game the information is out of date or missing on just about every single page and good luck finding any information on the location of bloodstones in the DLC because it's not in there which is a real bummer because the DLC is available immediately after Amelia and just before the game turns to [ __ ] so it's nice to get a little bit more power to avoid spending too much time in the worst areas of the game ever test is like a bad joke except I'm not the one who made it this time the best way to deal with this fight is say it with me [ __ ] spam only this time around it's a shame that she doesn't have more limbs because this fight could really use the bandage I generally get her close to phase two Papa Beast blood and finish her off look at your house look at your sad pathetic Health you loser you [ __ ] loser look what you made me do hate that boss now we've reached the point of no return the most appropriate final boss for bloodborne German for all intents and purposes is gas going on steroids but the actual fight itself is a lot more sloppy it begins the fight with this weapon in Scythe mode which is slower and harder hitting and on paper this should be the most engaging to deal with however there are two main reasons to avoid an actual engagement with him the first of which is this entirely obnoxious proximity punish the move comes at you too fast to land a parry and the ridiculous amount of tracking results in him throwing himself at you with such accuracy that his weapon is almost guaranteed to hit you either on the top of your head with the initial part of his swing and if not then he'll hit you with the follow through and your iframes run out it leaves you with no reliable way of safely damaging him within melee range the second instance you might feel like engaging with him would be if you can get him to initiate his three hit combo if you dodge the first two swings you're rewarded with the timing necessary to reliably get a Perry off unfortunately his hitbox is fairly small his movements are very fast and he tracks you very close and the terrain is steeply unlevel this all results in far too many missed shots to reliably Perry German in any other way than a zero risk Berry which is great news being that German is the Undisputed king of bending over for your Gat this attack is so consistently initiated when you're too clearly too far for it to hit and it swings for an ungodly amount of time like this isn't the [ __ ] ballet practice Garmin what the [ __ ] you even doing his sword form is even more embarrassing and easy you realize this as soon as you dash pass one attack and see that German German is no longer your enemy he's just a severely demented old man he can't even remember why he's here or what he's fighting for and sitting alone in this dream for God knows how long nothing but a familiar looking doll to keep him company now he's locked in a battle with the only person who consistently visited him they can't remember why the fight started why he would race his weapon to a friend continue this fight for right or wrong would be to abuse a senior a man who took you into his home give you his advice first person you met on this long journey through yharnam and then you remember you just hit you 75 times with that [ __ ] undodgeable Scythe attack there's some piss German you poorly coded [ __ ] the moon presence is the final final boss in bloodborne and requires finding three umbilical chord items to unlock I don't even really care to criticize this boss which in itself says a lot it's clearly a gimmick fight that relies on the migraine attack that drains your whole health bar minus rally potential in combination with its anti-healing blood ball attack there's more or less a boss fight for the sake of lore it doesn't really stand out other than that looks really cool but I generally just skip it unless I'm specifically doing an all boss challenge so that's bloodborne and I gotta say I've realized even more after the slog of writing this whole script involving every fight that there's maybe like two good boss fights in the whole game and the rest is uh wait what's going on I'm not a piece of [ __ ] I used to be I was a piece of [ __ ] though it used to be I said what the old Hunters DLC adds some desperately needed credibility to the bloodborne IP introducing several fights to stand up to the test of time difficulty and replayability of the DLC fights firmly built on finely team design and avoid the pitfalls of the mini gimmicks within the main game again we do not talk about living failures for the most part the DLC boss fights were instant Classics that people referenced today as someone bumps off the best and most difficult bosses however as much as I agree with that statement I would not feel like I had maintained my Integrity if I didn't at least point out the flaws that do exist within this content I wouldn't be able to take myself seriously if I were to just simply say they're all perfect let's move on so allow me to do a lightning round of problems that I have with these fights starting with Ludwig he's perfect let's move on I'm not even joking when I say that I find no actual flaws within this fight I could list examples of why I think everything about this fight works pretty well but I wouldn't be saying anything that people don't already know mindless praise isn't exactly my thing so I'll make this short this fight is beloved in the frumpsoft community and I can absolutely see why while it's not my personal favorite I don't see anything wrong with it moving on to Lawrence I don't dislike Lawrence because I already don't list like cleric Beast this feels like the second cheapest boss fight in the DLC that being a somewhat insulting copy and pays but with sick flame decals his face too is pretty bad and doesn't fight well with the combat systems in bloodborne I find myself skipping him a lot because I don't want to fight him or I forgot he exists living failures just doesn't exist so I don't know what I'm even talking about Maria has this untelegraphed Blood snipe move that feels pretty cheap and Costa's phase two doesn't seem to track his distance from you in deciding what move to use so he'll often end up throwing meatballs nowhere near you in this really weird awkward jump actually I don't really like any of his jump moves they're on telegraphed and often disengage your lock on so that's all of bloodborne and probably all there ever will be the dramatic shift of quality leaves far less Peaks than valleys values which people who love this game conveniently always seem to forget so why do people Fawn so hard over this outdated aesthetically forward yet substance lacking property obviously there are a lot of potential factors that can contribute to the worship of this game but I want to focus on one Theory I have I believe that bloodborne's success can be directly correlated to the exact thing that bloodborne fans haven't shut the [ __ ] up about for almost a decade that being PlayStation exclusivity the second most often thing you'll hear from a bloodborne fan after wanting a remake is that there should be a PC port and while bloodborne fans might think this is a curse I see it as a gift bloodborne was released in 2015 on the tail end of the console Wars the Xbox one was an absolute [ __ ] mess on release with embarrassing oversights like tying the ability to invite players to your game to the party system meaning that if party servers were experiencing issues you just couldn't invite people to your games also Xbox had this obviously stupid idea of turning the console into a cable box Xbox players were desperately attempting to justify their purchase and allegiance to their console and in the death throws of the console Wars PlayStation players were somewhere in between running their Victory lap and hammering home just how good their console was this mindset in mind what could have been more than a nail in the argumentative coffin than bloodborne Dark Souls 1 and 2 had released on both consoles and from their success a cult of fromsoft was forming yet their next release would be a Playstation only Sony property whether it was intended to or not this title absolutely preys on the idea of identifying as a PlayStation player in some of the most interesting ways bloodborne is style over substance in just about every way the game is beautiful the lore is interesting all things you gather from watching videos and without playing it the weapons are unique both looking and sounding incredible yeah they play just like any other weapons in any other from title the bosses are difficult and fast-paced except they play like [ __ ] and most of them are subverted by positioning or crippling the gun Parry system is ridiculous and awesome but it rarely lives up to its potential in practice game is designed to look so unbelievably good from the outside looking in it is absolutely nothing special once you play it it is a clunky old from soft game with successors that do everything it does but better bloodborne is the perfect tool for PlayStation players to latch onto and weaponize against Xbox players and in the end that turns out to not be a good thing bloodborne is legally owned by Sony and from what I've read that part of Sony doesn't exist anymore for Sony bloodborne was a quick way to drive up sales for their console and that's it but to us from soft players bloodboard is part of the history of a strange string of unrelated games that we call soulsborne but while I'm willing to criticize each and every one of them I also acknowledge just how important each one is to the greater narrative that is from soft success they reminded us just how difficult games could be after Decades of spineless game devs giving in to the pressures of their whining communities and fear of angering their stockholders Trump told us they don't care if we're frustrated or if we throw our controllers and rage quit they don't care if it takes us hundreds of hours to beat their bosses if we even beat them at all they don't care if we whine or cry or swear because of their games from soft told us to get good despite its potential for toxicity I see the phrase get good as deeply inspiring when we look back at the history of soulsborne especially in the early titles there are countless bosses that use cheap tactics and buggy design to artificially inflate their difficulty much to the frustration of players I choose not to ignore those flaws I still understand that there's nothing players can constructively do other than staying persistent until they beat the challenge taken as a philosophy get good means that no matter how unfair or insurmountable your circumstances may be your only option is to fight back and never give up until you've won doesn't matter if you're not strong or smart if you're an incel and you're broke and my dick doesn't I mean your dick doesn't work focusing on circumstance won't change them and therefore your only option is to get good what most people don't think about however is how this doesn't only apply to the players of games this also applies to game devs I will never stop giving from soft credit for getting good at developing games on one hand this is a huge compliment but there's also a darker side of that statement which mainly lies at the fact that I think Dark Souls 1 is a giant piece of [ __ ] I can make a whole video alone on just how bad I think DS1 is but I'll save that for another time for now let's just say that I honestly feel like ds1's only saving grace was the fact that a community developed around the philosophy of getting good to from soft credit they took full advantage of this moment creating another piece of [ __ ] that was bigger and better in some ways or worse than others then they made a beautiful piece of [ __ ] that proved that they were capable of making something ugly look incredible after that they took everything they had learned previously to create Dark Souls 3. a game that many people including myself consider to be a masterpiece Dark Souls 3 was the perfect way to cap off a series with a dramatic turbulence and quality with Grace and dignity it is still often credited with being the souls-born game with the best bosses however from soft was not done yet after proving without a doubt their competence at delivering incredible boss fights they shifted their focus to more advanced levels of combat with Sakura's jump attacks Perry deflections and perilous attacks and finally they delivered Elden ring culmination of everything they had learned about game development throughout all of soulsborne eldenring had the difficulty of DS1 the world design of DS2 the aesthetic of bloodborne the competent boss design of DS3 and the improved combat of Sakura fromsoft had gotten good at designing games really [ __ ] good which is why my tier list of fromsoft games is essentially reverse chronological order so why I ask you would you want to go back so far in from soft style line to play bloodborne remastered why would you want to give the publicly traded Corporation Sony 70 of your hard-earned dollars just so they can pay some overworked Dev to [ __ ] out a soulless copy of bloodborne with a single new reflective layer in the graphics [ __ ] remasters are just greasier everything just ends up looking wet I [ __ ] hate it it frumpsoff somehow got a hold of the license for bloodborne through some publicity stunt by Sony or something I would gladly purchase the remaster just to support the cause but as it stands I have no reason to want to remaster mostly because I can play bloodborne right now it's on the PS5 store it's not like it's lost the time on some unsupported console it's just as available as it was on the day of its release and it cost me ten dollars because it was on sale it's twenty dollars normally or it's included with PlayStation Plus this is an anecdote but I still think it's funny and therefore worth mentioning I gathered all of my bloodborne footage while streaming on Twitch and Tick Tock and every day my chat was filled with comments asking how I got my hands on a remaster I got my copy to run at 60 frames per second and how it looked so good I didn't it was 30 frames per second and even if it wasn't I was streaming at 30 frames per second I've had such an awesome time with bloodborne and it's not because the gameplay is good or the anything substantial I love it because the community that surrounds it are such an interesting case study they believe the gameplay is perfect when it's not and believe the graphics are ancient when they're not the game came out in 2015. well into the area of next-gen gaming The Cult of bloodborne is so infatuated with the idea that the game could be made perfect if it ran better and looked better which is wild because looking cool is everything it has going for it let me just put it this way if you had a wife that you claim to love you wouldn't have to obsess about how awesome it would be if she looked better and worked a little harder you would just love her and if you love bloodborne just go play it if you can't play bloodborne because of its exclusivity well what are you really missing out on you have an incredible intro that sets your expectations too high a poorly designed gank fight a poorly designed gank fight a poorly designed gank fight a poorly designed fight that's also gank greased up deaf guy a malfunctioning blender a squid a malfunctioning squid a guy who realizes halfway through the fight that his mage build sucks the ones I forgot and Joe Biden then pay twenty dollars again and get the good fights in the DLC I like bloodborne it's not a perfect game and not even that good of a game in my opinion but it hands down has some of the most potential of any series that I can think of while the remaster would squeeze out a little bit of that potential in the form of graphics and frame rate a sequel would be able to build from the ground up starting with everything that bloodborne does well using everything that fromsoft has learned so far however that entirely relies on from having the rights to the property I honestly don't know what the full semantics of the licensing issues are and maybe the IP is so tied up in legal issues that it's not worth the time to invest in I just don't know what I do know is that I have full faith in fromsoft to create better and better gaming experiences like they've done for the last decade the most important Souls born game to me is the next one and if that happens to be bloodborne 2 I'll be happy to see it

Channel: Jester of Juice

Views: 13,286

Keywords: bloodborne, remaster, bloodborne remastered, xbox, playstation, gaming, console, sony, fromsoft, sekiro, eldenring

Id: NfaYURwQUaw

Length: 47min 46sec (2866 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023