Bloodborne Critic Reviews

There’ll be times when you feel genuinely lost, frustrated and unsure of your next step. But you will carry on, you will beat it, and when you do, there’s no other game that can make you feel more elated about doing so.

Bloodborne is intricate, deep, rewarding and terrifying all at the same time.

Whereas Dark Souls 2 felt to me as if it was laboring under the weight of its forebears, Bloodborne feels like the swaggering culmination of them. From Software has, in the best possible way, brought the evil back.

A dazzling work of dank, abject horror that cements Miyazaki as one of the all-time greats. Sixteen months after PS4's launch, the new generation has finally begun.

Brutal, Repulsive, Revolting and Irresistible. Could be an acrostic like BRRI but it ain’t. It’s Bloodborne.

Bloodborne takes the best of Dark Souls and builds the unrelenting gaming challenge on a prefect foundation - it will test your abilities to the max. The first true must-have exclusive for PS4 is here.

Bloodborne is something truly special – a barbaric horror RPG that will giveth and taketh away in perfect measure, wrapped up in a perverse world that will refuse to let you go.

It is true that some players may feel that making any progress is far too difficult, I felt the same way when I began playing, but trust me this is not a game you want to skip. Don't be scared to try it, Bloodborne is a wonderful addition to the PS4 library and I cannot recommend it enough.

Bloodborne is an immensely intricate and tightly-designed game that arguably surpasses what From have produced before, thanks to a handful of new ideas and tweaked mechanics. A system that promotes repetition to refill your consumables, and a difficulty that encourages level grinding in the opening few areas and at various intervals throughout feel like minor missteps, but they’re tiny ones at that. Despite a few minor performance issues, Bloodborne is an epic, compelling, heart-pounding triumph.

I want to keep playing, I want to discover its secrets, I want to fight every monster, try every weapon, discuss theories and explore as many of the community dungeons as possible. To put it bluntly, I want to bleed the game dry.

Bloodborne is one of those experiences that totally consumes you when you're involved in it and working to see all that it has to offer. In that sense it's the digital edition of a round-the-world trip to foreign continents, each turning of a corner providing equal helpings of excitement and trepidation. That recipe brings it own rewards by simply being a part of it, the seemingly effortless delivery indicative of a design team and philosophy that is only getting sharper.

Its elegance, precision, humour, and challenge make Bloodborne irresistible. Ultimately, the horror is secondary; wonder is the true transfusion on offer here.

It’s the perfect marriage, blending mechanics that seem easy to learn with gameplay and challenge that demands mastery and ingenuity. It’s a creative and technical masterpiece, rife with ability and potency.

Combat aside, Bloodborne is a visionary work by a visionary artist. Intense in both theme and application, it's a gory concession to the tastes of the modern mainstream player, while maintaining the spirit and uncompromising narrative that was the hallmark of the Souls games at their finest. But this is far more consistent in that application than those games, making it From Software's finest work to date.

The sum of its features produces a complex yet accessible gameplay experience that is amazing pretty much in every aspect.

Bloodborne succeeds through sparse storytelling, lush atmospheres (conjuring up notions of the best of Lovecraft’s work), and tight combat that forces you to be aggressive. While this new IP doesn’t stray far from the established Souls franchise, it is a magical, wondrous work that admirably instills both terror and triumph in those brave enough to delve into it.

Between the expansive story, PvP, Chalice Dungeons, the significantly harder new game plus mode, and the countless number of secrets, Bloodborne seems almost limitless. Yet breadth wouldn’t matter if the game wasn’t so captivating. Several moments had us in awe, making us feel things we haven’t felt since the original Dark Souls. Whatever it takes, find a way to join the ranks of the hunters.

The game is exactly what Souls fans have been hoping for in this new generation of consoles. It’s gorgeous, terrifying, relentless and highly addictive. There’s so much depth to this game that it’s impossible to go over everything, and there will be many surprises in store over the next few months as swarms of Hunters descend on Yarnham and explore its twisted alleyways and endless secrets.

Though built on the same core as the Souls games, Bloodborne marks the largest departure from the status quo to date. The numerous changes, many in service of a faster and more aggressive playstyle, might not be for everyone, but if you embrace that shift, you might well have a new favorite in the From Software canon.

Bloodborne is an undisputed revelation.