Bloodborne is very misleading. You see stellar reviews from both users and critics which is totally rare. This lead me to purchase the game (digitally) which i soon regretted....immensely. It’s not the difficulty that got me though...
First of all, I've never played Dark Souls so have no background on the story. If you're not a fan of the series or familiar with the story you will have a lot to catch-up on through online channels. The good news is this game is mostly loved so there are fantastic communities that will help you.
Difficulty: I'm not afraid of hard games at all (I grew up on Megaman and Ninja Gaiden, among others). The game is challenging and grindy but also sort of forgiving; you don't seem to lose items when you revive and progress (other than enemies) will mostly stay the same from where you died. It's a HARD game, not for casuals, so just be aware. I like challenging games so this wasn't an issue for me.
What I disliked:
As soon as I started the game up, I noticed that the graphics were dark mostly pretty, however, it was not graphically impressive to me; it seemed rather dark and much of the environment, while shiny and having a nice gothic feel, seemed more like a set than an impressive 9+ score modern gen game. This is the first game on PS4 that I’ve played that I felt like I was playing a previous generation ported game. The character’s clothes, for example, are totally static. They don’t seem to move or interact like I would expect. Part of this is that Japanese game design style but to me it just feels like corners were cut.
The second huge issue that I noticed immediately was when I started walking and heard the horrible pit-pat-pit-pat sound of the footsteps. These are generic PS1 sounding footsteps... I thought maybe it was just a joke and I would stop hearing it however it wasn't and soon that pit-pat was driving me nuts. This game looks and sounds like a last generation Resident Evil game.
The story: I initially didn't know what was going on despite reading all of the clues in the game. There is an assumption of knowledge about the game that I missed. After reading online and clicking on absolutely everything, I finally figured out the very basics and was able to get my weapons and move forward. I fought and killed the first enemy and laughed out loud at how horrible the physics of this game are. You have got to be kidding me with this game! The enemies all die exactly the same way and then collapse into a blobby heep; like the enemies have jello for bones.
Despite these frustrations, I pushed on with the game and soon ran into the challenges that I had heard about; the enemies soon are very difficult but that is doable with patience and practice, however, the horrible game design, audio, confusing story, and just ridiculous physics would not allow me to enjoy this game.
I feel like this game masks it's generic features with high difficulty and an inside-joke-like story that I somehow never could understand or get into. What is worse is that this game is defended so venomously by fans that I feel that others would agree but have been silenced online. Had I been able to read the above concerns, I would never have purchased this game. If you enjoy the game then I’m super glad for you and wish you the best but if the above items give you pause, please rent the game before dropping good money on it (especially digital copies which you can’t trade in).
UPDATED!!!
The full schizophrenia with BB ... oh the humanity. Yes, this game really is truly magical and, after hours of frustration and trudging through, and even better, once I found how to co-op, I slowly began to love this game...and never looked back. The things I mentioned above still made sense as a fresh to the genre gamer but whatever the catalyst for drinking the Kool-Aid was, I drank it and drowned. This game is tops; totally one of my favorites of all time.