#570 Bloodborne (Playstation 4) – Spring 2015
Finally, something I remember and have things to say about, after months of things I barely remember. This was my first From Software game and the game that revived my interest in the PS4. The system had a pretty weak first year, with Assassin's Creed 4 and Assassin's Creed Unity being the only things that particularly got me excited for it. Then this game came along, and it looked so...different and interesting that I had to give it a try.
My first day playing, I absolutely hated the game. It was slow, linear, and everything just killed me. When given the choice of three (very distinct) weapons to choose from to start, I went with the slow/strong one, the Hunter's Axe.
Second day playing, I still hated the game. As gorgeous as it was, as interesting as the setting was, it just wasn't fun. So the point of the game is to "get good"? Why don't I spend that time getting good at something that's actually useful? I did a post on the game, at least, and totally trashed it. Not a great plan. Usually I do posts on things that are good, and after I finish them. This was the biggest gun-jumping ever.
Third day, I didn't even plan to do anything else with it. I was all set to sell the game, or return it, or whatever the best way to get rid of it back then was. Then, right as I was about to uninstall it forever, I found out how to level up. Turns out all I had to do was reach a boss room (which takes like 5 minutes if you know where to go), and from then on leveling was unlocked. I decided I'd give it a chance, but I was going to start over and try a different weapon that wasn't so slow. With 6 hours on the clock (and nothing accomplished), I ended my first run at the game.
On the replay, I chose the Threaded Cane (which is actually a whip), the fast/light damage weapon. So the opposite end of the spectrum from the Hunter's Axe. The thing that kept killing me was groups of enemies, and this whip had a nice AOE arc to it that held off groups effectively. Suddenly I was dying way less, and handling enemies without much issue. Sure, the weapon was weaker, but I fixed that by grinding some levels and putting it all into the stat that increased damage the most with that weapon.
From there, my run at the game took off like a rocket, and I started actually progressing quickly. Levels went up fast just by playing through the game (though I did find a couple good places to stop and grind). I pretty much played the game nonstop for like a week, every chance I got, which was something I hadn't done with a game in like 15 years. Not sure what it was that made this so compelling, but everything about it pulled me in. Every weapon upgrade mattered, every stat point placement was intentional, and the world itself became fascinating. Eventually I got my main weapon to +10 and beat the game, and pretty much had to play more works from these guys.
Toughest Part: Playing this for the first time and trying to play it like a regular action game, rather than like an RPG / slow-paced crawl. The first several areas are the tough part for a new player and then the rest is fairly smooth once you know how to level and how to fight. Beelining into enemy packs isn't it, you gotta fight strategically. Lure foes out. Dodge towards attacks instead of away. Things like that. The toughest part is the first ten hours or so until you suss all of this out.
Favorite Area: Central Yharnam. Perfect zone to start the game out and learn how it works, and full of enigma and mystery. Also it's bound to make you hate the game at first, which is the funny part. HM to Cainhurst Castle, tremendous zone there. Here's my ranking of the areas.
Favorite Tune: The battle theme for Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos is an epic track that evokes a number of feelings. Sounds like something that would play during the final battle at the end of the world. All the bosses have different themes in this game, but if they all shared a theme, this would be a good choice.
Tune I Listened To A Lot While Playing For Some Reason, That Has Nothing To Do With The Game But Felt Very Appropriate: "Alohamora" by Pogo. I love this guy and his music. This particular track I heard for the first time that week, and once the game started going well and I was generally triumphant, I ended up with this song stuck in my head. Eventually I played it on repeat for the last dungeon, and always have that association between the game and this song. It was something I hadn't felt since the 90's, rising above a game that actually talked back to me. Something worth rising above, no less.
Favorite Boss: Darkbeast Paarl, with his electric aura, is pretty stunning to see in action. As he's an optional boss in an out of the way spot, I usually end up not fighting him until very late in the game and by then he's trivial to beat. Not sure what the "proper" time or level is to be taking him on. I just like his design.
Most Epic Boss Fight: Probably a tie between Rom the Vacuous Spider and Gehrman, the First Hunter, which are both memorable, breathtaking fights.
Scariest Boss Fight: Another tie, between Shadows of Yharnam and Blood-Starved Beast. They're both nasty, especially at the point where you encounter them, and they both make you fight for your damn life. Both have a trick to them, at least. Like throwing blood cocktails across the room to distract BSB into bolting for them instead of you.
Best Early Game Grind - From the Central Yharnam lamp, go up the nearby building with the wheelchair gunners and get to the Cleric Beast bridge. Fight the two big werewolves in the upper doorway of the building, which they can't actually enter, and whack away from the safety of inside the building. Big exp at almost no risk.
Best Mid Game Grind - The Forbidden Woods near the Witches of Hemwick fight, there's a large open area with a bunch of executioners thundering around. These Kandar lookalikes give huge exp and really aren't that tough once you're at midgame strength and have some dodging expertise. Plus they all attack one at a time. I'd mop up 2 or 3 of them, go back to the lamp, repeat.
Best Late Game Grind - Near the top of Mergo's Loft, you can lure the giant boars into chasing you around, mauling all of the Nazgul lookalikes in their path. This results in a tidal wave of EXP rolling in if done right, and you can run the loop over and over to get a level every couple minutes even late in the game.
Path of Least Resistance: There's also the glitched chalice dungeon where you can get a ridiculous amount of EXP for free every time you walk in, but I consider that a totally gamebreaking exploit so I don't use it unless I'm trying a new build and in a hurry. That said, after beating the first 2 or 3 bosses, you get the item that lets you create th
Favorite Weapons: Now this is a tough one. Very tough. I'll probably have to go with Blades of Mercy as the favorite. Dual-wielding these super-quick blades is a stark contrast to most of the slower weapons in the game. I like to pair it with the cloak of feathers that's also owned by the same NPC. Second-favorite weapon is probably Tonitrus, with its infinitely-sparkable lightning enchant. Also liked the Whirligig Saw on my last playthrough. Reiterpallasch was tremendous in a gun-only run. Then there's the Holy Moonlight Greatsword with its laser-slashes. And there's a katana I never used that has its own nuances. And the final boss' scythe that you can wield on NG+. Liked the whip at the beginning for crowd-control. The Hunter's Axe is a real "can't go wrong with this" weapon that's good from start to end. Yanno, pretty much all of the weapons are great. This game has one of the best weapon lineups I've ever seen, and it gives the whole thing so much replayability.
Why This Got Such A Long Essay: This game awakened something long-dormant that I had forgotten about, actually being in awe of a game's scope. It's no joke that it had been 15 years since I played anything this interesting (the last time was a number of things in 2000 - Chrono Cross, RPG Maker, Suikoden 2, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy IX). I was fully drawn-in to the Fromsoft universe and they quickly became my favorite modern developer. All of the Fromsoft Big Seven are incredible and worth playing (Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1/2/3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring) and each for different reasons.
My second Fromsoft game and my first Souls game, picking this up after Bloodborne was a no-brainer. It was the only other Fromsoft game on PS4 at the time and I wasn't keen on going back to PS3, even for them, so I picked this up. It generally gets the worst reviews of the Fromsoft Big Seven and there's a good reason for that: It's the only game of the seven that was made by their B-Team rather than Miyazaki's A-Team (which was working on Bloodborne at the time). However, it still captures the magic and mystery that the other six do, even if the area design and combat aren't really up to par with the rest.
With the woodland settings and atmospheric kingdom, this game brought me back to the wilderness exploration of my youth that later gave way to playing things like Secret of Mana and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as I got older. I hadn't felt that in a bit, at this point. While Bloodborne is very dark and follows the Halloweeny vibe of old Universal monster movies, this game is more of a brightly-lit medieval romp through a kingdom in decline.
While this game is the least of the Big Seven in most regards, one area where it excels over the rest is the story. Yes, I'd say this has the best story out of all of them. Being made by the B-Team meant this has a different storytelling structure; Miyazaki tends to tell stories in piecemeal ways, with fragmented lore that you have to piece together yourself to find out what the history of a place is. That's super-interesting in its own right once you get into it, but I think I prefer this game's more straightforward storytelling.
The gist of it is that the kingdom of Drangleic collapsed after a mal-intentioned queen gained control of the kingdom and proceeded to start a brutal war with the Kingdom of the Giants to the north. Her quest to eradicate the giants, while successful, led to her own kingdom falling apart in the process...which, it turns out, was by design. Her entire goal was to facilitate the collapse so she could rule over the ashes.
This or Dark Souls II OG?: This, easily. The framerate and resolution are super-high in this version, which makes everything look and handle better. Dark Souls II on the PS3, by comparison, looks pretty antiquated and choppy. This version also adds a new optional ending / final boss and makes a bunch of adjustments that are mostly for the better. Some would argue that the original is superior because the enemy placement is better and the challenge is higher as a result, but I think the positives offset the negatives. The two games are similar enough that you only need to play one; it isn't like Demon Souls PS3/PS5 where the two versions are markedly different games (does that mean the Fromsoft Big Seven are actually the Big Eight?) - this also means Dark Souls II won't count on this list, but I'll give it an HM when I get to it.
Favorite Tune: Majula's theme. The hub area has a super relaxing tune and a perpetual state of sunset.
Tune I Listened To A Lot While Playing For Some Reason, That Has Nothing To Do With The Game But Felt Very Appropriate: "Temple of Love" by Sisters of Mercy. Not sure why, but this tune just fit Dark Souls 2 perfectly. I listened to it quite a bit during the midgame, especially Drangleic Castle.
Toughest Part: The optional vertical super-dungeon Brume Tower, in general. Particularly, the boss at the bottom of it: Fume Knight took me lots and lots (and lots) of tries, and was the last thing I did in my quest to platinum the game. I don't know why that boss is so rough. Honorable Mention to the dual giant tigers at the end of the snowfield area. Not necessarily because of them, but because of the area leading up to them. Protip: Bringing summons or allies to the tigers actually makes the fight way harder. They've got super-low HP when going solo. As for Fume Knight, he's just a huge threat no matter what.
Favorite Boss: Sir Alonne is basically a duel with a shinobi, something that felt like an early preview of Sekiro. The floor in the room is shiny enough that you see your reflections in it during the entire fight. It's an awesome boss fight in and of itself, but add in how stunning the room is and it ascends to something else.
Favorite Weapon: While the weapons aren't anywhere near as cool or unique as Bloodborne's lineup, there are about a zillion more of them. Favorite is probably the basic Rapier. Easy to hit with, quick, can get in several strikes between your foe's moves. Adding flat +damage boosts pretty much skyrockets its effectiveness compared to slow weapons.
Favorite Area: Frozen Eleum Loyce is flat-out incredible. Like a snowed-over version of Leyndell from Elden Ring. You can actually see a ton of Elden Ring elements getting their start here, which tells me that ER probably combined the A-Team and B-Team (it had to, it's so damn huge). Second-place goes to Heide's Tower of Flame, which might be my personal favorite location; it evokes a lot of nostalgia, and looks amazing, with a perpetual sunset. Ranking of all the areas here.
#572 Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) - Summer 2015
This isn't counting the Booster Pack on the Switch version, which I got to much later in time. Mario Kart 8 is what I consider the best Mario Kart game hands-down and it isn't even close. It was so good that they basically skipped a console generation for the series and just re-released this game again for the Switch gen (doesn't count as a new game for the list, unfortunately) with a higher framerate and all DLC included and called it a day. That version (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe) is the reigning champion for this series and probably will be for the forseeable future (Mario Kart World ain't really it, unfortunately)...
My experience with this game was basically just getting to it once I had a Wii U, to follow up on my crusade through the rest of the Kart series the previous year. This was definitely the most enjoyable out of all of them, beating previous frontrunner Double Dash pretty handily. Really enjoyed this and it was my favorite thing yet on the Wii U...maybe my favorite thing on the system, period, cause I can't think of anything later that I'd put above it.
Favorite Racetrack: The Hyrule Castle track in the DLC set. At least right this minute. There are so many great tracks that it's pretty difficult to choose one.
Next up: More big heavy-hitters as I plow through Summer 2015.
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