jawa wrote:Just wondering, Fade - and you might have said this already and I have missed it - have you played Dark Souls? Reading over your concerns about Bloodborne, it seems like many of the aspects could be attributed to Souls, too.
It kinda feels like the game style may not be your bag. I can totally see why - it can be *so* frustrating to repeat sections after dying, there certainly is some jank and many game functions aren't really explained at all! - and I totally get your complaints, but I find them to be a part of the experience. I'm a newcomer to Souls games but I'm learning that replaying them is a key factor; things that seem impossible, annoying and downright unfair at first can often be worked-around once you discover new tools and techniques.
Should things be better explained during the first play? Possibly, but the "Souls" approach is what the games are. I can understand why they are divisive!
Briefly, also played quite a bit of demon souls back in the day but never finished it.
I don't particularly mind the dying and retrying, my issue is more with the obscurity in which the game presents its stats and systems, combined with the fact you can't respec.
The leveling in this game just doesn't suit it, in Demon and Dark souls it makes sense since you have so many variables and can play as a magic user, rogue, knight etc not only that but you have a larger variety of defensive options which are all affected by your stats. That's the whole point of RPG systems, to give players choice and variance.
This game doesn't do that, on their first playthrough most players are going to be playing in the exact same way because the early game weapons play almost exactly the same and employ exactly the same strategies.
It'd be like if Dark Souls gave you the choice of 3 slightly different sword and shields at the start of the game.
All the stats do in this game is impede your progress rather than let you express yourself as a player. This game would have been so much better without all of the obscure stats. A simplified system like Sekiro would have suited this game a lot more.
This game is good, but the fact it's 92 on metacritic is baffling to me, there's so many things in its design that are just carryovers from old FromSoft games and don't gel well with this game at all, not to mention the technical issues.
It just makes me sad how flawed this game is because I think it's art and character design is my favourite of any game ever.