Bloodborne(PS4)- Finnished with the DLC this time around and in some ways my feelings have lessened and more flaws have revealed themselfs and in others I appreciatte the game more.
For what I like more, I really appreciated the combat more especially the regain system and how movement works, it's definetly the best combat system out of any of the souls games From made(or at least the one I enjoy the most), the atmosphere is also the best and I still loved the whole aesthetic from central Yharnam to the Fishing Hamlet and the level design here I also think it's the best From ever made.
As for what I liked less well:
I think the overall quality of the game kinda of goes downhill after the halfway point, it doesnt become terrible or anything but I think it's a big step down from the first half(especially if you consider Cainhurst, Hemwick and Nightmare Frontier on the first half since you can do all before finnishing the forest) The moment you reach Byrgenwerth I think the quality goes way down starting to how disapointing and small that area is which culminates with one of the worst fights in the game against ROM especially considering that fight is a turning point, ROM is the Ornstein and Smough of this game and he plain sucks. Afterwards you go back to unseen village and while in terms of visuals and atmosphere that might be my favorite area in the game actually playing trough it is a chore because of the the bell maidens and the laser Amygdalas and once again it culminates into a subpar bossfight. From there is the Nightmare of Mensis which is frenzy central(the worst status in any souls game) and once again a terrible boss fight agaisnt Micolash, the second half does get better(if you dont count that section with the Winter Lanterns, aka the worst enemy in the soul series) and has a good boss fight but then the game is over, playing it again the drop off in quality really showed and it really reminded me about how Dark souls 1 had a similar drop off after its halfway point.
The farming for healing and bullets is really terrible and it's by far the thing I dislike the most about this game, it think it clashes completelly with this type of game especially one that encourages agression, this is made worse by how the bonfires works since you cant reload areas by sitting in one making you either die or warp back and forth to Hunters Dream which talks alot more time and give how the loading times were on the game launched it stuns me that the dev team allowed the game to ship with this healing system that should've been axed right away because it goes even beyond grinding it affects the way you fight, in the middle of a boss I was constantly worried to use my healing itens because I didnt want to waste another 20 minutes grinding for them.
Weapon variety was also a problem I always thought the game had and I felt really vindicated by seeing that the devs seemed to agree because the DLC essentially doubles the amount of weapons in the game now this still means that most weapons are only avaliable at the end of the game due to the high difficulty of the DLC so if you're like me you dont like the early weapon you're kinda of screwed until you get there but still it's way better then it was before.
As for the DLC itself:
- Spoiler: show
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Overall I really liked it, to me it ranks just bellow Artorias and just above Ringed City, I do have some problems with many sections that are just unresonably hard, to me it seemed the designers were just being mean for no reason, like putting I really hard enemy in front of a boss door or hiding a weapon behind 2 of the hardest single enemies in the game. There were areas that I just ran through because I saw no way to do them the "honest" way.
For the bosses I have one general issue with most of them which is they all have this obnoxious jump move that make you lose track of them or makes your lock on go nuts, in fact in alot of the fights I felt I had to get rid of the lock on or I would die and this is mostly because of how lock on affects your movement changing your roll to the sidestep, I really hated those moves.
Maria was by far my favorite boss of the bunch and that's not just because I killed her first try(to compensate I died to Living Faliures a bunch until I figured out how to use the enviroment) but I love everything about her from her looks to her moveset, how the fight progresses,etc.To me she's up there with Gehrman as my favorite fights in the whole game, and coincidently they both have my favorite weapons too.
Oprhan of Kos was pretty tough but all and all I really liked him, the only things I disliked were those jump attacks and that lightining that demands you to dodge both him and the ground at the same time, but I really liked how he essentially had a ball and chain as a weapon in phase and behaved like a hunter and then kinda transformed into a beast in phase 2, it was similar to the first encounter with Gascoigne so i really liked that.
Ludwig I really hated at first, because I found his phase one so hard that I barely made it to 2 but then got stomped almost immediatly, at some point tough I kinda of got into his rythim for lack of a better word, I stopped being afraid of him and started playing more agressivelly and his second phase became really easy I just needed to focus on staying behind him and to never stop attacking XD.
Living Faliures have a pretty fitting name not much else there moving on.
Laurence was the fight I disliked the most,he seemed like a chalice dungeon boss and I do mean that in the worse way possible, down to the fire effects, he's just a more annoying Cleric beast with AoE fire attacks(btw using gear with high fire resist barely affected the fight)and his numbers just seemd cranked way up with him dealing tons of damage and having so much health, especially on his second phase I kept hitting him and it seemed his health bar wasnt going down one bit. Also for such a plot important character we barely get anything more about him storywise in the DLC and I found that really disapointing too.
All and all I really enjoyed go through the game again and the DLC but it's certainlly not perfect, in fact none of the souls games are, DS3 is probably the most consistent of them all but the criticism that it recycles too many ideas is certainly fair, ultimetly I think that fine and people will have their favorite based on different criteria, if i had to pick one I'd be tempted to go for Bloodborne because of the moment to moment gameplay bit I think both DS1 and DS3 are on the same level at least and like I said for different reasons. I love what From did with all the Souls games, DS2 not included, but I do hope they are working on something different with Shadows die twice or whatever it is, especially after listening to the tenchu show the idea of Stealth game by From sounds really appealing =D.