Is anyone picking up Bloodborne?

Hell yes. I've been looking forward to this game for ages.

I completely bypassed Demons' and Dark Souls even though they interested me a lot so I think this new one will do nicely. It looks fantastic.

Where did you hear that? I played Infamous 1 & 2 and it couldn't be more different from Demon's & Dark Souls

So. I played for probably about two and a half hours last night. I'm going to estimate that I died 40 times (probably way more) and I haven't beaten what I'm assuming is the first boss. It's hard, as we all expected, but it's mostly fair too. Once in awhile Each enemy sticks to a pretty specific fighting cycle, so as you encounter them you learn (re: die) and find the best way to take them down. Dying means dropping Blood Echoes, which seem to be the main currency for the game. You use these to purchase gear and consumables, as well as level up. When you die, you return to your checkpoint and go find your body to recover lost Blood Echoes. I say "checkpoint" because in over two hours in game I'd only found one.

Gripes:
Load times: Each death causes you to reload at your last checkpoint. Each reload takes a good 15 or 20 seconds. That might not sound bad on it's own, but count that out in your head and remember that death comes often. It also doesn't seem to matter how far from your checkpoint you are for the load times; it's the same throughout the city. The good news is that From Software is working to patch that.

Lack of tutorial: *Disclaimer: Some of these unknowns may get explained somewhere or I just missed them.* In the beginning you get little blurbs on the basic controls of the game. How to swing your weapon, fire your gun, heal, and how to lock on to an opponent. But that's mostly it. The rest is up to you to figure out.  I didn't know that Blood Echoes were basically exp as well, or that you had go back to the Hunter's Dream (your sort of base of operations where you buy gear, mod weapons, etc.) to level up. I don't think there's an indicator either to let you know when you're ready to level. There's icons and numbers on my HUD that don't mean anything to me. I'm still not sure if there's a map yet...which would have helped me realize the city isn't as linear as I assumed and there's a few different ways to go and new places to see.

Now some good things:
The game looks really good. I was a bit worried at the character creation screen, but moving around the city cleared that up.

You don't lose any equipment or items when you die. Yes, you drop Blood Echoes but those can be recovered. What's most important, to me anyway, is that you retain healing items and equipment mods.

Fair fights. You die a lot, but it's normally your fault. Timing is everything in battle. Watch the enemy's battle rhythm and strike when he's open. Most of the time I couldn't get mad at the game because I lunged at an enemy while he was performing a multiple strike attack and he simply pummeled me into the ground. Patience is everything.

The Regain system. When you get hit by an enemy, you lose health. Makes sense. If you immediately strike back and land hits on the enemy, you will gain some of that lost health back. This is sometimes a gripe actually. When you've got no healing items left and you get hit and you know the regain system is there, you'll want to hit back as soon as you can to get some health. This leads to frantic swings at your enemy, which ALWAYS results in death. It's not the game's fault at all, but sometimes you see the little white line on your health bar that indicates what you could get back and you rush the battle at lose it all instead.


I'm really enjoying my time in the game so far, despite not actually getting that far. I'd say it's easily with the $54 I paid.
Let me know if you guys have any questions so far, otherwise I'll check in should any of my thoughts change.




UPDATE 1: Turns out I've been using my heavy melee attack this whole time. Game easier now. I'm dumb.

Was considering buying this, on the Ps3 I really enjoyed DMC!

Not sure if this is anything remotely similar but to me does look like a good 'hack and slash' type game.

I've previously tried dark souls etc but Tbh those where a little too slow paced for me. I've read that the Ps3, and now on ps4, DMC is sort of the nooby commercialised version of these type of games which is probably why I warmed to it after previously been completely unaware of this type of genre.

Time will tell if i pick this up.

Hmm, but yeah ofcorse alot more exploration is needed from my part.

It's only really a consideration at this point. I'm not really against the slow methodical approach it's just not what I'm used to, consider myself fairly open minded so aside from eagerly awaiting the release of PCars and Just Cause 3 I may pick this up to give it a go.

Nothing better than finding a hidden gem

Thanks