Image courtesy of From Software

Bloodborne: A Review
| published May 24, 2015 |

By Isaac Fink Thursday Review contributor

From Software has made a name for themselves in the past few years with the Dark Souls series of games, particularly among the hardcore community who love the high difficulty and skill requirement. So fans were of course ecstatic when From Software announced Bloodborne, a game in the same vein as Dark Souls.

Bloodborne is a dark action role playing game where players take the role of a hunter who fights everything from werewolves to Lovecraftian monsters. Just like in Dark Souls, players can join each other's games to help fight difficult bosses, or invade other player's games and kill them for rewards.

One of the other big draws of the game is that it's the first “big” exclusive for Sony's Playstation 4. While the PS4 has a large library of games to choose from, the ones worth playing are still on other platforms, giving consumers little reason to buy a PS4 over an Xbox or custom PC. Bloodborne is that reason, as it's perhaps the first game that people are willing to buy a PS4 to play.

The gameplay is largely the same as the Souls series, so players who are familiar with the Souls template should have no problem jumping right in. New players, on the other hand, will likely struggle initially with the punishing difficulty. However, like the Souls games, the action in Bloodborne is high-risk, high-reward, when new players manage to overcome a difficult enemy, the sense of accomplishment is much richer.

There, however, some downsides for the fact that his game comes to us by way of From Software: Bloodborne suffers from the same frame-rate issues that plague the Souls games, as well as a number of ugly filters, making an otherwise pretty game look like an eyesore at times. And with Bloodborne being a PS4 exclusive, players have no chance of a superior PC version where such issues could be easily resolved.

Bloodborne's style and difficulty isn't for everyone. Overall though, Bloodborne is a fantastic game, but whether it's worth buying a PS4, however, is another story. But as long as a few technical issues and graphical hiccups aren't a serious detractor for you, Bloodborne is worth picking up.

I give Bloodborne a score of 8 out of 10.

Related Thursday Review articles:

Game Review: Resident Evil, Revelations 2; Isaac Fink; Thursday Review; March 9, 2015.

Game Review: Devil May Cry; Isaac Fink; Thursday Review; February 18, 2015.