What It Feels Like To Finish Bloodborne
May. 4, 2015What It Feels Like To Finish Bloodborne
Nightmare Slain
This is the message that you’re given by killingBloodborne’sfinal boss, Moon Presence. After all of the work you’ve done, all of the prey you’ve slaughtered, you know that you’re at the end of your journey when the Nightmare is slain by your hand. Let the moon set, the morning return and the sun rise once again, your longest night is over.
As I write this, it’s been about 12 hours since I finishedBloodborne’snew game for the first time. It’s taken me a month and a day to finish completely, exploring as many facets of the game as possible, encountering every enemy, boss and NPC in as complete a way as I could. I made mistakes, yeah, I died a lot, I lost some NPCs to Iosefka’s Clinic but I made it to the end in one piece. I wanted to write a review of the game for my own blog, but the more I thought about it, the less a review would do the game justice (besides, they’ve already been done a million times). No, instead I wanted to write about the feeling that you get at the end of the game.
Simply enough, I was exhausted. Mentally and physically exhausted. The final two fights thatBloodbornethrows at you, Gerhman and Moon Presence, run concurrently with each other (if you meet the requirements of having consumed 3 of the One Third Umbilical cords) with only a one minute gap for a cut scene. You’ve barely caught your breath from the tremendous Gerhman fight before you’re thrust back into battle with an unspeakable horror from beyond.
Bloodbornemight actually be the first game I’ve ever played with a perfect combat system. Back when it was revealed, Souls fans around the world lamented the lack of shields in the game; as the prevailing play style across the three titles was to walk everywhere with your shield up, ready for action but largely safe.Bloodborneturned this on its head, instead forcing you to completely adapt to the combat mechanics of the game. Be aggressive, don’t wait for enemies to attack you, instead get in there quickly and kill them before they kill you. No longer could you perpetually circle enemies with your shield up waiting for the perfect opportunity to do some damage. No, instead you had to out dodge them, out damage them and outlive them all.
Against the normal enemies, the combat is meaty and satisfying as it forces you to anticipate every action each creature is going to take and counter that with your own repertoire of movements and attacks. But where the combat really comes into its element is when you’re fighting Hunters. Throughout Yharnam there are around a dozen hunters that you are tasked with dealing with. Some are optional, others are just in your way. What is magnificent about these fights is that all of the Hunters have the same range of movement as you, as well as the same trick weapons and sidearms. This means you end up in the first genuine fights of any game From Software have put out. You are genuinely fighting for your life in a kill-or-be-killed fashion, dodging around each other, trading hits and trying to score parries.
The first of these fights is Father Gascoigne, who also happens to be the first mandatory boss in the game (you don’t actually need to beat the Cleric Beast to beat the game). This fight is designed to shock and horrify you immediately because up until this point you will have never encountered an enemy like this. None of the other enemies in Central Yharnam attack with Gascoigne’s aggression or persistence, you’re forced to learn exactly what your Hunter can and can’t do. Sure, there were ways to cheese the fight, but over all this fight is what will determine if you’re good enough to finish the game or not.
However, the BEST of the hunter fights is most definitely Gerhman’s fight. Depending on your conditions he may be the last boss for you, or he may not. Either way, he is a punishing, vicious enemy to deal with. What makes the fight special and amazing is the room you fight him in. Up in the Hunter’s Dream, underneath the great tree in a bright, light graveyard filled with flowers, you fight him in the most serene environment found anywhere in the game. The music reflects this as it is lighter, less dramatic than other boss fight themes, accentuating the beauty of the experience. To beat Gerhman, you need to become the ultimate hunter and truly master the methods of fighting you have been building throughout the game. What you’re left with is something more akin to a ballet, skipping around the arena, trading hits and eventually conquering the most powerful Hunter in the game.
It is the Hunter fights that permanently left me breathless and feeling my heart beating in my chest. They are by far and away the most exhilarating combat experiences ever put into a game and what can only be described as the pinnacle of From Software’s combat system.
WithBloodborneit was different. I’d decided already that when I got the game I was going to work hard and help contribute to theFextralife Wikis, which I’ve done. I’ve written walkthroughs for roughly two thirds of the game’s areas, I’ve contributed strategies for almost every boss and you can find plenty of my own guide videos throughout the wiki itself. For me, I didn’t want to ruin the experience, so I didn’t buy the guide, I wanted to be fresh and I wanted this to be a genuine From Soft experience. Every new area took my breath away. The first time I walked out into the Nightmare Frontier and I saw its alien landscape stunned me. When I came into Nightmare Of Mensis and saw the twisted, contorted skulls buried into the cave walls I was terrified. Pushing that first gate open into Central Yharnam, looking at the sunset through the arch in the Great Bridge took my breath away.
This is a game of moments, of being amazed and being terrified.Bloodborneis a game where a cheer of “fck yeah!” can be immediately followed by a cry of “holy sit, what the f*ck is that?!” They say that knowing your enemy is half the battle, so when you know nothing of a new area and a new enemy you’re forced to learn everything immediately, otherwise you’ll be tracking back from the last lamp you awoke at.
So my feeling of finishing the game, which consisted of mental and physical exhaustion is truly justified. I spent close to 40 hours, plumbing the depths and horrors of Yharnam, pushing myself further and further to reach that next lamp or the next shortcut. More than that though, as the pride at finishing the game has receded, I feel a certain emptiness and jealousy. You see, I’ll never experienceBloodbornefor the first time again. I’ll not see anything genuinely new, no matter how many NG cycles I complete, which upsets me immensely. I’m now incredibly jealous of anyone from this point on who picks upBloodborneand gets to experience all of this astounding game for the first time.
My message to you all is simply this: Savour every moment of New Game inBloodborne. It might be frustrating, it might be hard, but once you’ve beaten the game, you’ll never get that sense of wonderment back again.
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JudasBlitzkrieg
Bloodborne…Dark souls 2… and Dark Souls… Which of the 3 has the better ending? The more elated feeling? I believe it is Dark souls and Bloodborne tied up. The more I play Bloodborne, the more I feel its, ‘enchant e’. It has the certain allure whereas it wants you to rage quit, it wants to put you down as if you are trash or how they put it as Waste Of Skin. You had to persevere and endure all the trouble it caused for you. You had to take the trouble and difficulty of the boss to your advantage, otherwise you will not survive. It was the same for Dark souls 1, you either had to give in and accept your loss/return the game. Or you could try to take advantage of the difficulty of the game, and that is why many people once believed that Dark souls was perhaps the great game of its time in any Rpg Fantasy series! It was the difficulty… The tediousness of every run to Orinstien and Smough.. It was the amazing feeling between every Great lord boss fight that really made it a great game, aside from lore. This is why I feel like Bloodborne like Dark souls, it was exactly like that.
—-Well maybe not exactly sense you can run much faster and stuff, but the point is, I have no doubts that anyone who went through the ’emotional’ struggle and did not rage quit like most haters of the game did so, then you sire, the player, have an unreasonable feeling. The feeling of being elated, joyous, as if you can conquer any rpg game world wide. Twas the same for our old friend Gwyn, everyone had an unshakable feeling that you are set for any game after beating him. You consistently ran around each of the black knights, watching your self for those pesky Ultra-Black knights, you ran to the gate in hope of learning something new about the boss but only to get your butt whooped and he sends you back to entrance of Kiln as if you were trash. That is exactly how I think anyone felt as they were battling the First Hunter.
“HOLY S***! That guy is so cool yet agile!!! OMG HE JUST DID A 3 COMBO!!!!. UGG AWW MAN, THIS IS GONNA BE A PAIN IN THE BUTT…..” ()
So yeah.. My over all feeling of beating Bloodborne was elated, or I had that one unshakable feeling that this game is only going to be better as I, the hunter, transverse Ng+ and find more secrets to this amazing game….
The Gherman fight is super fun, but I don’t think anything will ever make my heart race like that first Gascoinge fight did.
Very nice work my friend, captures the feeling of going through the epic… kudos.
Its true, some of the late chalices are… brutal.
I wish that brutality had gone into the game, and not saved for the very boring, ultra redundant chalice system.
The main game is easy. Beat all the chalice dungeons and then we can talk about mental and physical exhaustion.
This guy gets it!
Yeah, the final boss should be Godzilla!
I don’t know if I should admit this, but I’ve never played CODor Battlefield. Always preferred the more sci-fi FPS (Bioshock, Borderlands, Halo when I had an Xbox), and then games like Fallout, Skyrim, the Arkham games, God of War, Gears of War, etc…however so many of these IPs have just kept releasing the same reskinned game (kind of like COD??). I picked up the Borderlands Handsome Collection for PS4, played it for about 4 hours, and gave up. Was exactly like playing it before (which isn’t a bad thing – they are great games. But I put hundred of hours into them on PS3. Just didn’t want to go through the same thing all over again).
This is prob why Bloodborne appealed to me so much. Brand new IP from a company who’s games I had never experienced before in a setting that I enjoy very much (the Gothic theme resonates with me more than the medieval theme does).
I think it’s been mentioned before, but if FromSoft is ever designing new IP for these games, I’d love something in the same vein as Bloodborne, but in an ancient feudal Japan setting. I remember playing Bioware’s Jade Empire on Xbox (was their new IP after Knights of the Old Republic), and it was an incredible game. I could definitely see a From-style ancient Japan fantasy horror game genre kicking some serious ass.
Well I haven’t done the chalices yet, because I was keen to get the main story done first. I’m taking a little break to play other things before I do the chalices. The pressure was on to get the wiki written and my YouTube videos made.
Other than that, I guess I just managed pretty well with it. Most of the areas didn’t give metoomuch trouble, save for Nightmare Frontier and Forbidden Woods. I had a lot of issues with the bosses, but managed to get through them all fairly quickly.
Thats EXACTLY what I said the other day. Not so much with Bloodborne (because of the limitation, the need to have a PS4. Interesting enough me and my brother are the only ones I know who posess one) but with Dark Souls 2.Dark Souls 1 was more of a niche-product, but it got a lot of critical acclaim in the press.The ment, everyone and their mother bought DS2 when it hit the PC.I have a lot of friends on Steam, most of them own DS2, but only a few have more than 2 hours on their clocks
What I dont get is how you only took 40 hours of gameplay to finish the game. It took me over 60 hours, also without guides or wikis, and I didnt even start layer5-chalices and I´m sure I didnt see everything along the way.
Other than that, good written article, and similar to what I feel.your definitely spot on with Bloodborne having the most perfect combatsystem ever.
Only because Call Of Duty is far too mainstream
So…does that mean I like Bloodborne ironically?
To me, Bloodborne, like the Souls games, are quite a hipster thing to be into. Modern gamers aren’t used to games with such a steep learning curve or unforgiving difficulty level. I’ve seen people call the game anything from cheap to broken because they can’t get their heads around the idea that every death is their fault, not the game’s.
These games aren’t for everyone and that is part of their brilliance. They offer no concession for the sake of reaching a wider audience. They are made for those who love the challenge and have that sheer stubbornness to push through and succeed in the face or many, many deaths.
Put it this way, I liked Demon’s Souls before it was cool
I loved the gameplay in Destiny, but its a damn shamed it was all sizzle, no steak. I wanted to love it so much.
Awww group hug!! lol
I hear ya, though. I’ve been trying to convince some of my friends to play it and they are all still stuck on Destiny. I left a month ago to play this, and haven’t looked back. One of them asked me how much farming was involved in this game to play it, and I pointed out that all they’re doing in Destiny right now is running patrols to level up guns they got from raids, just to run the raids again and try to get different guns so they can run the raids again lol. At least any farming you do here is to help with progression of the game, and oh so satisfying when it pays off for you!
Aye, I am sad I don’t really have anyone to share it with in my friend circle, but I understand it. It was the main reason I recommended some of my friends either rent the game or come on over for a trial.
Thank god I have you guys! sniffles
Don’t feel bad…I had a friend that I was sure would like it, and I let him have a demo through Share Play. He didn’t even get that far. Just didn’t click for him either. I have another friend, the one who has been playing SOTFS with me, and I”m sure he’ll give BB a try eventually if it goes on sale.
Those two bosses you mention could be pretty significant walls to hit, especially if you still don’t have enough insight to offer your own chime for summoning. Fans love that punishing nature of the game, but some players would just give up, like you say.
@Northborn
Ditto friend, my mates were the same! You almost feel sad that they’ll never have the buzz we had or saw some of the most horrificly gorgeous gothic designs used in a game, not to mention the boss encounters! My mouth is foaming jus thinking about them.
Its a damned shame that I’m the only one in my circle of friends who clicked with the game. The rest of them either bought it or rented it and not one of them saw it through to the end. Afaik they all hit a wall at the Cleric Beast or Gascoigne and gave up.
Beating Bloodborne is definitely on par with beating the Souls games, its not even about bragging rights it’s just a genuinely satisfying feeling to have come out the other end having experienced some of the best hours of gaming offered by such a monster of a game. Well played to any and all who finish this superb game.
Excellent read, you describe it very well.
Thanks bud, I’m glad you enjoyed it
Wow. Incredible article. I just finished my first playthrough last night. It absolutely blew me away. This article encompasses my thoughts on bloodborne to a T. Thank you for taking the time to write it!
