BLOODBORNE

[Vyk]

I've been sucked in...

Managed to get a pretty good deal though between some points I had on my GameStop Rewards card, and some money I had saved on a Google debit, and a little my girlfriend had saved up, only had to really pay like $10 out of pocket

Not sure why this one interests me so much. I found the majesty of Dark Souls, but it didn't stick. I got fed up with cheap deaths that required insight or dying previously to have any real chance of accomplishing anything. This one doesn't feel quite like that. You're not stranded between bonfires, and not doomed to constantly have to revive all your old foes just to survive yourself and progress by slogging through the same tedium. The whole blood vial concept makes everything a little more tolerable to me. And it doesn't unbalance the game at all. You still die in 3 or 4 hits if you get sloppy or confident

I like the world a bit more as well. Dark Souls was a nice spin on a generic medieval fantasy, but it was still set in a generic medieval fantasy. There hasn't been too many games set in a world like this other than Silent Hill when it goes all demonic. And other suck DOOM-inspired Hell-locales (Jericho had a nice one)

Super digging all the Brotherhood of the Wolf outfits and creepy plague-doctor masks and everything

Granted, the world is extremely dense with atmosphere and decoration it's really hard to navigate in a fight. Even in wide open spaces you're likely to get backed into something and be unable to dodge properly

And as stated, the controls aren't as tight as they could be. But neither was Dark Souls. I know of many occasions in Dark Souls where I'd hit a direction and dodge, and not actually dodge. I guess there's a lot of electrical signals to process in these things, and it's normal for one to get lost in the mix now and again. One of the reasons I got turned off eventually since death avoidance required a bit too much foresight and controllers had to be made more perfect than even first party controllers can handle. Or maybe it's just the console can't process everything. I'm not sure. But I know a lot of deaths are my own fault, and a good portion are not so much my own fault

But I've kinda learned to get past that. Echoes are not quite as important as the souls were in Dark Souls, so it doesn't hurt as bad when I lose everything

What I found odd is that Dark Souls 2's world was really different from what I could tell. I never played it, but I watched others play it. And This game and Dark Souls 1 seem to follow the same flow. The first bosses are really similar, the paths to get into sewers is really similar. It just all really more riminiscent than what I gathered from Souls 2. But it makes sense considering they've honed this style to an artform, this being basically the fourth game. And even then, they had Kings Field, and another game set in Fuedal Japan that followed a similar format. They've been doing this a very long time...

Glad they haven't burned out I guess. Though I don't appreciate their games the way a lot of people do. It's nice to come back to every now and again..

This is how I've been taking breaks between Pillars of Eternity sessions..

Edit: Just watched Super Best Friends play this on YouTube and they explained that Miyazaki was more directly involved in the first two Souls games, and not so involved in Dark Souls 2. And the things like rag-doll physics, short-cut paths, and all that jazz are more his trademark so it's more closely related to Dark Souls 1. Glad I wasn't hallucinating. And the whole idea that while traveling around the world, "if you can see it, you can get there". Where Souls 2 apparently just had a bit of background dressing that wasn't always accessible, and accessible things weren't often visible from other parts of the world and stuff. I should really play Souls 2 before forming a real opinion. But I think I like this Miyazaki's style