There's another four f words I use when playing this game that sound like duck. That's because Bloodborne is one of the most immersive and atmospheric games I have ever played. Now I do have to say that I've never played any of the previous souls titles (but after this I definitely want to give them a shot) so I was a bit cautious going into this whether or not I would like it. Well I liked it a lot, in fact I loved it and it is easily among the top ten games I have ever played. The combat is face paced and quite brutal at times due to the fact that when you've been hit you've got a couple of seconds to hit back and regain the health you've lost which a very nice mechanic and gives you more reason to be on the offence. Not to say that it's easy, no,no,no,no. When I say combat is brutal I mean brutal, like watching game of thrones deaths brutal. There are times when your overwhelmed by the opponents strength or numbers. Some enemies have lots of health or move very quickly and some enemies are near impossible to beat especially the bosses. I have to say though when I died (which was a lot) I rarely felt cheated or cheesed. Usually it was my own fault, either I didn't prepare enough, wasn't the right level, used a certain item (like my health potions) too much when I really didn't need to and so on. It makes you think about what you need to improve upon and when you do kill that enemy that's been a thorn your side for ages the sense of satisfaction is unparallelled. Speaking of bosses, most of the bosses in this game I liked or loved fighting, even the highly challenging ones, In fact especially the challenging ones, there are two bosses I came across that I felt where too easy (compared to bosses I fought at earlier stages) and in fact quite boring. Besides that though the rest are awesome with great soundtracks accompanying the fight. I felt my knuckles whiten as I was franticly trying to kill this boss or enemy and gain my blood echoes ( the games first form of currency, used for gear, items and levelling up) after dying previously. The games main story and subplots are not as easy to review mainly as its a "go and figure it out yourself" type deal which I personally liked and it's not too difficult to get what's going on (though near the end you kinda go wtf is that about) and speaking of endings there are three possible endings depending what choice you make and if you gathered certain items. I won't spoil what they are but I went for the third one as it seemed the most complete ending and I got an ex machina vibe from it, I preferred the other two endings I saw on YouTube . Other gripes I have is that I didn't find all the armour sets that great, there are maybe three or four that I'd use, though I love the weapons (at least the Melee as most of the side arms are a bit inept which is fine as it would have defeated the purpose of the game) that i've used and despite the fact there's only really two now that I use frequently I would happily use the others and there is a great variety of unique weapons. Another gripe is that sometimes, usually with bosses I did feel that I was cheated, either a boss or an enemy would spam the same attack over and over or I'd suddenly be surround by enemies that came out of no where. Possibly my biggest complaint though is that when your a higher level, going through the areas at the beginning to farm blood echoes to help level up so you can advance more easily through the area your stuck at can feel repetitive when your pretty much op and aren't really threatened by those enemies that once put the fear of God in you, the game looses a bit of its horror aspects in that regard. My other big complaint is that when you start a new gave + you can't change anything like your characters background ( this decides what stats your character has) or how they look, it was a bit annoying as I wanted to change some things. One thing though that I did like and was actually surprised by was the multiplayer which is not as in your face as other games like cod, destiny and so on. You can select from preset text (this I imagine is to avoid detailed spoilers or tactics) to leave notes that offer some cryptic advice or just leave a inspiring message, which can be found by other players in their world and they then rate them fine (which restores your health) or foul (which removes it if enough people rate it foul) also you can join or invade other gamers to help them out or kill them and vice versa. It's a nice addition that is appreciated in this day and age. I could go on in fact I would but all that matters is that bloodborne is a master piece in my opinion, there's so much more I could talk about, tiny little features like opening shortcuts to get around an area quicker, the chalice dungeons and the unique enemies. All in all bloodborne is a great game, and like I said I've already started a new game plus and I look forward to fighting old foes. 10/10
