Bloodborne

If you can get over the initial frustration (of which there will be lots) this game is a masterpiece. It doesn't hold your hand at all and you thrust into the game which will slaughter you, so watch some online tutorials. The lore in this game runs very deep and is worth exploring. If you do take this up and become stuck, stop explore and discover, several times when I thought there was nothing left to find discovered a path, which opened up a whole other section to discover, so stick with it

This game is truly something special. The atmosphere, weaponry, gameplay, music, boss fights, the dlc. Everything is perfect (except blood vials) and it can't get better than Bloodborne. If someone asked me what the highlight of this game is, it has to be none other than the final boss himself, Gehrman. My gosh this is just perfection, the beautiful melancholic soundtrack, the field of white flowers, the looming moon, the lyrics, the gameplay. It's all perfection and honestly just makes me feel so many emotions. Man Bloodborne really is the greatest game of all time. Please play it sometime, you won't regret it.

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

This is my first game from From Software and boy, what a maaserpiece. Haven't even finished yet but it has a special place in my gaming heart already.

Be prepared to die, hundreds of times. And more. Frustration. Impossible. But for some reason you keep coming back. For more deaths. And then it happens. You kill that boss, that satisfaction!!

This kind of challenge used to be standard in good old games so it's really refreshing to witness it again. A lot of new gamers are soft.

Bloodborne wins it on more fronts. The gameplay is astonishing, it's such a joy to use the weapons and fight all those different creatures. And there is a lot of types of them so you have to use different strategies everytime you open new area.

Graphics are great. The detail on the beasts is wow.

Innovative storytelling where the protagonist doesn't say a word and you basically create your own view on the world with witnessing all the cues/notes/messages.

Great sound design and soundtrack especially when fighting bosses.

But the horror and challenge is the main thing.

So well done. You can see the developers love games and man they put a lot of love in creating this.

Hats down.

I meant what I said there, but equally, I mean it when I say that my favourite game of the Soulsborne series so far also has my favourite expansion released for them so far. This DLC lets you loose on the Hunter's Nightmare, and then lets every trick it has loose on you in return. Make no mistake, if you like the base game, this is definitely a worthy purchase, but I would recommend at the very least, you get to the Lecture Hall 2nd floor and do all the optional areas before this, and have a +9 weapon before you even consider taking this on. It's HARD.

A significant portion of the enemies in the first area are hunter NPC fights, there are traps galore, and god do the bosses in this expansion let you have it. I remember the first time I played this part of the game, and three out of the five new bosses you get took me literal days to beat. Crucially though, in keeping with the game's philosophy, they never felt insurmountable, and with time and practice, they crumbled before me, and of these five, three of them are easily in the top ten, maybe even top five best bosses in the game for me.

The other two though...one of them is okay to me, while the other one is a little disappointing. It has some new and interesting things about it, but mostly it kind of feels like it's copying a boss from the base game, which does kind of suck.

Speaking of copying from the base game, my only other complaint is that the first part of the Hunter's Nightmare is more or less just the Cathedral Ward from the main game reskinned, which feels pretty lazy and there isn't even a story reason for this as far as I could see.

But eeeeeeverything else in this expansion is top-quality stuff, easily on par with, if not better than things from the main game. The new areas are well designed and as gorgeous as ever, the new NPC's are interesting and well voice acted, and every single new weapon and armour set added has its uses and is so fun to mess about with.

And the lore of these new areas and characters is as interesting as it ever was, with the last area in particular being an absolute delight for fans of Lovecraft's works, it being easily the most directly inspired place from one of his stories, yet still has that distinct Bloodborne flavour that I adore so much.

At the end of the day, if you loved the original game as much as I do, the mere fact that this is more Bloodborne is probably enough to make this more than worth it to you, so bloody well get it already, what are you waiting for? It's nearly six years old you dummy.