Only negatives
STILL HYPED
Can you buy unlimited healing? How expensive is it compared to the stones in Dark Souls 2?
I heard that at least you can't carry unlimited healing with you, which was my biggest complaint about healing in DeS. Estus remains way better , but at least only the first playthrough should be affected by this problem (and challenges, oh god)
How are combat/architecture/fashion?
You should take everything I say with a degree of skepticism because: A) I bitched a lot about Dark Souls 2 and still wound up enjoying the hell out of it and playing it way too goddamn much; B) I'm still really early in Bloodborne (haven't killed a boss); C) I tend to see the negatives in a thing first anyway, that's just my nature; D) the game is really fucking hard and frustration may be punching the keys once in a while. Nevertheless, point by point:
-Maybe 3-4 standard goons might fuel the purchase of one item where I am right now. I can't easily buy things in large quantities without making multiple farming trips. Healing item inventory caps out at 20 items and the shots I have available heal maybe half a full health bar. Attack items appear to have an inventory cap of 10 (20 for bullets). Drops of both are reasonably common, but not so much that you can wholly evade having to farm up more if you happen to totally exhaust yourself on a failed boss attempt.
-The weirdest thing about combat is just that I have no options other than my starting weapons.
(Alright fine I do also have a torch.) I've found no other weapons, enemies appear to drop only consumables, and that's all the one basic vendor I've found sells as well. Obviously this isn't a Souls game, but you know I can't help but compare it to one, and that is really goddamn bizarre for a Souls game since there's usually a horde of weapon options available from the get-go and one of the key things is just sorting out which type suits you best (and this possibly more than anything else has fueled so many experimental Cid Souls builds). I don't know what to make of this. It's not quite as limited as it sounds because melee weapons have two forms (I hit L1 and my cane oscillates between sword and whip, for example), but still, it's strange to see available inventory be so extraordinarily stripped down and minimalist in a From game. It could be I'm just not far enough in that the game thinks I deserve getting new stuff, but I tend to suspect they want you to commit to a much smaller arsenal this time around.
Otherwise, there's no poise, so far no shields, and backstabs don't exist, so you better get good at dodging. There are critical attacks of a sort, but you have to stagger enemies first and I find I'm almost never in crit range after doing the prerequisite heavy attack. I'm guessing this is how you're supposed to deal with all the really tough enemies that presently take like twenty normal melee hits for me to kill (I'm estimating, of course, because they just kill me first). I feel amazingly incompetent playing this, like almost as bad as when I first played Dark Souls and didn't realize lock-on existed until like the Depths (except I had way more things to try out before the gargoyles than I've found so far in Bloodborne). I feel like I've made no progress at all and I'm doing absolutely everything wrong, which I might well be since I'm going in with reflexes wired for Dark Souls and this isn't Dark Souls. I can't even tell if there are i-frames, I mean there probably are but I haven't internalized this game's movement into instinct yet so every time I get hit I'm still yelling at the screen "How the hell am I supposed to dodge that?"
You can get some health back after taking damage by immediately striking back at an enemy before your healthbar can drain, but usually I find it more worthwhile to just get the fuck out of the way before I get hit again. Knowing you you'll probably try to leverage for this feature for all it is worth and maybe possibly die a lot for it. >.>
There's no leveling at will, you have to go back home and talk to Suigintou in Black to do it, but at least you don't have to button-mash through dialogue whenever you want to level this time.
I went ahead and looked up where the summon sign item turns up. Apparently you need ten insight (think humanity) to open up a certain shop and then one more insight to buy the item. I had one insight. I don't anymore and it sounds like a rare find. How often did you ever have ten humanity in stock the first time you played Dark Souls? So yeah, I don't expect to see multiplayer be any kind of thing until very far into the game. This feels like early edition Dark Souls when humanity didn't drop from bosses and Sunbros took 50 faith and they patched it because they realized these were terrible ideas. I definitely expect similar patches for Bloodborne if I'm forecasting things right based on (admittedly possibly sketchy) information.
-Architecture is outstanding. They really tried to exhume the spirit of the Prison of Hope and pour it over a whole city. Yharnam streets are stacked with coffins and human bonfires and crucifixins and the minor detail on every surface is extensive. This is all a huge step up after Dark Souls 2's often underwhelming environments, though admittedly I really hope the later zones mix things up because I don't want to run through an entire world that's grim in exactly this manner. Actual
level architecture looks pretty promising in its own right? I haven't had a ton of chance to explore since all side areas so far are full of things that will murder me with ease, but I've come across a number of winding diversions that have a nice sense of verticality to them and I'd definitely be intrigued to suss out how everything connects if only this were actually tactically feasible right now.
-Fashion? Well uh I'll let you know if I ever actually find any other clothes. No seriously I've found nothing other than my starting set (which is admittedly fairly swank) and one buyable set. This is
weird, see above points about weapon scarcity, same grounds for bewilderment.
