“It is one of the games of all time”
You know, the original title of this post was “After 200 Hours, Bloodborne is Still Kicking Ass,” and then I would say “kicking my ass, specifically,” but it’s probably bad practice to have the profanity so front and center that anyone with a cursory glance over their google results can see it. I just wish there was a family-friendly euphemism for “awesome” that had the same oomph as “kicks ass.” I mean, come on. “Kicks butt?” That’s lame. “Carrying the day?” Thanks, Merriam-Webster. “Extremely good or of a high quality?” Well, it’s a bit of a mouthful. There just isn’t a true alternative! Because “kicks ass” is such a great phrase. The inherent violence heightens the intended impact. The profanity is crucial to its shock factor. It’s such a visually-loaded statement, too. You can see the action unfolding. It’s such a powerful phrase, and I don’t use it enough.
Maybe I should have just gone with it, anyway. I mean, I’m going to be tanking this month’s readership numbers already by running another video game article, but I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot a second time. I can count on two hands the people who reliably read this blog (my mom, my dad, my grandparents who can still read, the weird guy who hangs out in my mom’s garage, Cheyenne, and Cheyenne’s dad’s friend Matt), and can count on several extraneous limbs those family and friends who pop in from time to time. But I found out just the other day that my friend Katie’s mom found my blog and read some of it! Which was a simultaneously delightful and mortifying discovery. It’s always lovely to hear that people actually read this thing, but she went looking for it to read about birds, as one might expect from a blog titled “Owlmanandy.” Presumably, she was hoping to find this post, and my tales from the bog. Katie said she was… surprised by the lack of birds in what she actually read, which I’m assuming is a generous understatement of her mom’s actual response. I can only imagine she managed to stumble across the filthiest, most upsetting thing I’ve ever written. Exploding robins? Vagina jokes? Car sex? You can take your pick for whatever that would be. Hey, I’m tame by comparison to the rest of the internet, but if your daughter told you “my friend writes about birdwatching!” and then you get this, you’re gonna have questions.
But that’s enough filibustering. This week’s post is actually yet another entry in a series of blogs where I delay writing about my feelings on artificial intelligence. Because writing about artificial intelligence would require actual research and critical thought, and Bloodborne is something that I know well enough now that I can just about shit out a post for it on command. Despite the fact that I haven’t really talked about it that much, all things considered. What, I mean, I think I mentioned it in my second-ever post? And then I ranked its bosses as part of a Halloween series? But I guess it pops up often enough, and I’ve written about pretty much every other FromSoft game since then, so you get the idea. I really, really like Bloodborne.
See, I’d narrowed down this week’s blog to three topics. I could write about either a) my fraught entanglement between memory, journaling, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, writing, and what happens after we die, b) how maple syrup is made, or c) Bloodborne. When I talked to my mom about it and asked for her opinion, I decided that it would be too exhausting for me, emotionally, to tackle choice A this week. See, I’ve had a long weekend because I picked up extra shifts at work and lead a whole bunch of weekend programs to teach families and the public about maple syrup in Minnesota. Which is why we got option B. Maple syrup’s been on my mind and in my stomach a lot lately. But my mom said that Maple Syrup is BoringTM and that she’s heard enough about it already (???), though she also said she Doesn’t Understand Video Games Unless It’s Dr. MarioTM so she’d just skim anything I wrote about Bloodborne anyway. Well, it’s late, and it’s easy for me to write about Bloodborne, and it’s also been on my mind a lot lately. Sorry, mom, this one’s not for you.
I have a lot of feelings about Bloodborne. For the unfamiliar, this is the only context you will get: Bloodborne is a 2015 action role-playing game set in a Victorian Gothic city where you beat up werewolves, mutated townsfolk, eldritch abominations, and the Catholic Church with a giant hammer and a gun. The game will not explain to you what any of it means. It looks like this:
It’s been eight years since its release, probably six or seven years since I first played it and spent thirty hours just trying to beat the first area. Since then, I have finished the game at least four times. Fun story, I was fifteen minutes late to brunch with some high school friends because I was trying to beat the very first boss in the game and had been ramming my head against a brick wall for three hours. And that was after punching a hole through two other brick walls by sheer force of rage and skull fragments. But Bloodborne still feels like the tightest, most refined version of the “Souls” formula that FromSoft has ever produced. That is to say, Bloodborne still feels like one of the greatest games ever made. I know those are lofty words to throw at a game that seems to have been overshadowed by both Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring since its release (but then again, what hasn’t been overshadowed by Elden Ring?), but I genuinely believe that Bloodborne is the densest, purest, more refined version of the gameplay that FromSoft has been trying for over a decade to perfect. It has the best world, the best visual design, the best bosses, and the best gameplay, with only Sekiro rivaling it in terms of sheer, fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping, meth-addled, eye-smashing, third-person-RPG-action ultraviolence. Plus, it’s the most accurate representation of London I’ve ever seen, so it’s like taking a vacation while you’re playing the game!
Interestingly (and perhaps oddly, for a game so coated in ancient viscera and opulent gothic statuary that it would give the Vatican a run for its money), Bloodborne is my comfort game. More so than almost any other video game at this point. I do not replay games often, or really ever. There are only a handful of games that I will pull up if I really want to turn off my brain or sink back into some comfortable state of nostalgia. They consist of Minecraft, Pikmin, Mario 64, and… Bloodborne. Although Bloodborne came to me during an incredibly turbulent time in my life, the latter years of high school when my social circle imploded and my self-destructive urges really began to manifest in very real, very dangerous ways, I don’t credit it with “saving me.”
If you spend any time in Soulsborne or FromSoft communities online, I guarantee that you’ve heard or seen a story talking about how these incredibly difficult, incredibly intricate games got someone through a really dark point in their lives, and how they directly attribute these games as part of what saved them from suicide. I certainly respect these stories (anything that saves someone from something like that is a win in my book), and I certainly understand them (the logic behind it clicks with me), I know that Bloodborne did not save me. I was lucky enough to have enough of an existing support system that I didn’t need to find my salvation in a video game (again, not that there’s anything wrong with that). But Bloodborne was there. And it was constant, and I put a lot of time into it, playing it, thinking about it, planning how I could beat the boss I was stuck on. I pored over lore videos and wiki pages. I bought the game guides, even though I knew I would never “use” them except to look at the pretty pictures. Bloodborne didn’t save me, but for a time, it did consume me. And maybe that’s now why, so many years later, I still turn to it for comfort. My life now is also, in some ways, imploding once again. Though this is a controlled, self-designed implosion as I begin to dismantle and pack up my apartment, leave Minneapolis, say goodbye to family, friends, and my cats, and prepare to go to graduate school in Europe. So maybe it makes sense that it’s now that I’m turning back to Bloodborne. And I turn to it to scratch a certain gameplay itch that even Elden Ring can’t quite reach.
I know Bloodborne’s world like the back of my hand. Of any digital space, it is one that I have mapped so completely to memory, that I could tell you how to get through Central Yharnam without having to see the game open. I know how every level connects, where to find every boss, the steps you need to get to each new area, and what the story is behind all of them. So perhaps that’s why I was impressed, but not surprised, to find that when I booted the game up again for the first time in over two years, my very first Bloodborne save file had a hundred and thirty hours played on it. I mean, damn, I did beat the game four times on that same save file, with the same build and weapons. I beat it once when it took me eighty hours to complete a twenty-five hour game, twice and a third time to get all the achievements and secret endings, and then a fourth time just to see how fast I could do it (on NG+3, mind you). That fourth run took me about six hours. That’s no speedrun record, but I think I get a gold medal for most improved performance, right? That’s got to count for something.
This whole thing started because I’d truly been itching to play Bloodborne again. It had been a while since I’d had a chance to play it, like I said, since Nick had had our PS4 for the last couple of years. On top of that, the disc drive had been busted for a while and we couldn’t get the thing to spit out our copy of Doki Doki Massage Parlor Marvel’s Spider-Man. Turns out, all it needed was a hug to get working again. Not for a lack of trying PS4 surgery, of course. We broke into the machine at least three times to figure it out, but after I pressed it real hard against my chest to get a piece back into place, then it started working. You thought I was joking about that hug? No, I was serious. Sony, write this one down; you can fix any electronic problem by hugging it hard enough. They just want love.
So I finally stole the PS4 from Nick and secreted it back to my apartment, where I started the game up and… ahhhh, breathed in that sweet sigh of relief from revisiting an old favorite. I ran through central Yharnam, the first real level of the game, and I knew every twist, turn, and errant werewolf around. I beat the first and second boss of the game on my first go, and several subsequent bosses, too. See, the first time I played the game, Bloodborne was my very first Souls/FromSoft game. I played this one before Dark Souls, before Sekiro, before Elden Ring. Although I bounced off of Dark Souls first, and in some ways Dark Souls still holds a special place in my heart as my “first” Souls game, Bloodborne is what I finally got me to see the magic in the series. It’s what got me hooked. Part of this is because of the narrow focus of the design. Some people criticize Bloodborne’s lack of variety in items and weapons, but I love it. I never noticed this the first time I played the game, but in the intervening years I’ve realized how much of a blessing its utilitarian approach to stats is. You don’t have to min-max your character build in Bloodborne. You don’t have to worry about equipping the wrong armor or leveling up a “bad” weapon. There is exactly one proper way to play Bloodborne, and every option you have is just a variation on that. Everything works. Sure, there’s something to be sad for Elden Ring’s infinite variation in play styles, and how “every playstyle is valid.” Yeah, whatever, but some playstyles are definitely more valid than others. Or at least more fun, or more approachable. There is one playstyle in Bloodborne, and it is laser-focused to be fun. No more faffing about with item weights or dodge speeds; grab an axe and kill something. That’s Bloodborne.
That first time I played it, I was truly bad at these games. I did not know how to play for shit. That’s why it took me eighty fucking hours to finally roll credits on Bloodborne the first time. For one, I didn’t know how to parry attacks, and I had gotten through the game by rolling everywhere, spamming heavy attacks, and ignoring my gun. This is the wrong way to play Bloodborne. It wasn’t until the optional final DLC boss of the game that the fish-man and his placenta pulled a page out of the United States Government’s book and forced my re-education. But then it clicked, and now I’m a parry master. I’ll shoot Gwyn out of the dogdamned sky, and Malenia and her waterfowl fuck can suck an egg. Elden Ring’s toughest bosses would crumble before the might of my, uh, unconcealed-and-carry handgun.
Although I hadn’t really realized truly how far I had come until I reached one of the secret bosses, Martyr Logarius, just a few weeks ago. I distinctly remember having significant trouble with this boss the first time around. He’s fast, has crazy ranged attacks, and rains skulls and daggers out of the sky. Plus you can fall off the edge of his arena and running back up there is a bitch-and-a-half. But I got up there, rolled up on him, and got his sorry, dried-up ass. It was honestly laughable; what once had taken me three hours to beat, I literally took him out in less than two minutes with zero prep ahead of time. I parried everything he threw at me. If he even got close, I just shot him, and he’d stagger and I’d reach inside his chest cavity and root around in there until I found what used to be a heart, before swiftly yanking it out. Now that’s tugging on someone’s heartstrings. The fight was laughable. I almost felt bad for the guy, he couldn’t get a sword in edge-wise. Big knife? Gun. Fast scytheblade? Faster gun. Hiding behind your stupid-ass skull ball? Pop pop, I’ve got a gun, motherfucker. Ah, reminds me of home.
So hopefully you’re kind of starting to get a picture of what Bloodborne is to me. It was, once upon a time, all-consuming. Then it became a comfort, something I could play around in if I just wanted to zone out and relax. It is, perhaps, a comfortable way in which I can engage with the more painful parts of my past. Or perhaps it could be, if I wanted it to. Now, it scratches a nostalgia itch. In some ways, it’s also now a weird marker of the progress in my gaming abilities, as dubious as the value of those abilities might be. I’m better at these games now. I’m better at a lot of games now. I’ve grown and changed, and even though Bloodborne has not, it’s still there for me. Hmm, getting a little close to sappy here.
But I’ve written a lot about this game, and why I love it, and I’ve written far more than I anticipated because my original idea for this post was four things I’d change in a Bloodborne sequel! Becuase Bloodborne’s not perfect, despite the praise I’ve been heaping on it. And playing the game now, with an extra six years of experience under my belt for what makes a good game, I see that there are some glaring issues. Issues that probably get in the way of some people’s enjoyment, enough so that I can see why Bloodborne isn’t the favorite for every other FromSoft fan. So before I go, let me throw them out here, screaming into the void, because they’ve been taking up way too much space in my head.
1. Level-Up and Switch Runes From Lamps
Minor gripe, I know. Demon’s Souls did it, Dark Souls 3 did it, Bloodborne does it, but it’s frustrating to have to go back to the Hunter’s Dream every time you need to level up, restock on items, or equip a new Caryll rune. I mean, it’s a great opportunity to unwind a bit after a particularly tough battle, and it’s cool to have a proper hub world that feels like a home base, but it just takes so much time to jump back and forth between the Hunter’s Dream and everywhere else you want to go, especially when the PS4 loads so slow in its old age. I always appreciated the simplicity of Dark Souls’s bonfires, where you can just do everything at any checkpoint. Firelink Shrine still felt special, but that was because of the interconnected world design. And now that Elden Ring lets you summon A Neat LadyTM everywhere, it would be an easy feature for a Bloodborne sequel. If I had one.
2. Better Chalice Dungeons
Unpopular opinion, I liked the chalice dungeons back in the day. It was a great way for me to get more mileage out of what was, at the time, the only Souls game that I had or understood. The randomization and treasure felt great, and it was super rewarding to dig deep to the bottom of all those Pthumeru dungeons and finally find Queen Yharnam. Plus, the shock of wandering into Isz or Loran dungeons for the first time was something special. This probably has something to do with why I wasn’t too bothered by Elden Ring’s copy-pasted dungeons either. I didn’t mind delving into all of them (at least not until the very end). Of course, even back in the day, I realized that the dungeon layouts were pretty simple and only had a few unique rooms, and they have certainly not aged well in the meantime, but I think that a lot could be done to improve the chalice dungeons pretty significantly. Like, for example, not locking glyph dungeons behind online play. I just want to get to my cum dungeon, damn it! Why do I have to pay for PlayStation live to do it?
3. Boss Weapons
Since Bloodborne was the first Souls game I really got into, this was something I didn’t even know I was missing until I started replaying the game. But Elden Ring has spoiled me, what with its countless bevy of special weapons you can only get by killing certain bosses. Hell, the game lets you copy a boss’s soul so you can get both special weapons you can make by sticking your grubby fingers into the destroyed memories of once-powerful gods and monarchs like you’re trying to pick some wax out of your ears. Even if I never use the boss weapons, they’re also a super-cool reward for a difficult fight.
Bosses in Bloodborne, on the other hand, do not have special rewards. Sure, some give you access to pretty essential items, like the Witch of Hemwick hiding the Caryll Rune tool, or the Blood-Starved Beast letting you get at the chalice dungeons. And sure, sometimes you can find the weapons of bosses out in the world, such as in the case of Lady Maria or Gehrman, and sure, the Orphan of Kos’s boss reward basically is a boss weapon, but still. It’s weird not to have any meaningful rewards for killing some bosses. It would be great if you could forge fancy new weapons, guns, or runes out of their decaying, defiled corpses. Just like in real life!
4. Don’t Have Blood Vials and Bullets Be Consumables
So, in Bloodborne, the way that you regenerate health and ammo is by finding items on the corpses of your enemies. Seems pretty standard game stuff, right? Most games have you get health back from items dropped by enemies. But this is way different than other Souls games, where you have a certain number of health “charges” every time you die and try again. In other games, these charges are infinite. In Bloodborne, you can run out of them. So instead of being able to heal, you could theoretically find yourself with zero healing items after losing to a boss for the fiftieth time.
Fun story, I never even encountered this problem the first time I played the game. See, remember when I said I spent like thirty hours in Central Yharnam? Well, during that time, I stored up like three hundred blood vials or something absurd like that, so for the rest of the game, I always had plenty on hand to refill my stash. It wasn’t until the Orphan of Kos, the game’s “true” final boss, that I started to run dry. That’s when I went back to Central Yharnam to farm for more vials by obliterating a bunch of drunk dudes. Now, playing the game again, I’ve been moving so quickly through it all that I’m constantly running out of blood vials if I die to a boss even a few times. And I find myself spending blood echoes on blood vials when I could be spending them on something better, like blood… stones, I guess? There’s a lot of blood. Anyway, it pisses me off. Just make the health and ammo rechargeable.
But that’s enough for today. Do you love Bloodborne as much as I do? (you don’t) What’s your story of falling in love with the game? What are things you’d change in Bloodborne, or additions you’d make to a sequel? Or do you just have no idea what I’m talking about and read this whole thing out of a sense of obligation because you want to support me? If that’s you, then I just want to say, thanks, mom. Leave your answers in the comments! Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and throw yourself to the wolves.
