Bloodborne – Fresh Impressions in 2023

Bloodborne, FromSoftware’s more Lovecraftian take on their Dark Souls formula, remains fairly elusive to this day on account of it being exclusive to the PlayStation family of consoles. And whether you yourself have missed the game during its initial launch window, or would merely like to read the thoughts of someone experiencing it for the first time in this post-Elden Ring era of ours, you might be interested in this recent VG247 article.

On top of just sharing some impressions, the article also highlights a helpful trick with the game’s randomized Chalice Dungeons you can leverage in order to negate some of the tedium stemming from Bloodborne’s insistence on moving away from rechargeable flasks to limited Blood Vials.

Here’s a quick excerpt to get you started:

Prey slaughtered. And that’s how I fell in love with Bloodborne. And it’s not been for a lack of trying – this is my third attempt at penetrating From’s obscure take on a fucked-up, Lovecraftian London. I tried at launch, after never really getting into these uber-hard action-RPG exercises in self-flagellation. It didn’t click. I didn’t even make it through to Father Gascoigne. Back on PS4 and PS4 Pro, I was promised a patch had made loading times better and that the hardware would offset some of the rougher edges in the game. Nope, still too slow and dark for me.

Somewhere between then and now, I’d picked up both Nioh games and platinumed them (twice!) Something about Team Ninja’s more stance-based interpretation of the formula worked for me. I was hooked. I became one of you; a masochist, an addict, a scoundrel. The moon was right, the time was now: Yharnam was calling to me again. And on the PS5 – where loading times are but a faint dream, hazy in the distance – the hunt was truly on, for the first time.