I've finally played my first Souls game: Bloodborne. I definetely get it now!

[SPOILER WARNING] I'm gonna spoil multiple bosses of this game, including the final boss.

For years now have I been wanting to like the Souls games, as people seem to love them and I like difficult games. I haven't been able to get into them yet though, as the dark fantasy stylennever got me and the gameplay looked very clunky. I tried Bloodborne before once and didn't like it at all.

Now, years later, I gave it my second shot. The first 5-ish hours I did NOT enjoy it at all. I hated how unclear the game was. Did not find the combat to be satisfying. And I didn't like how tedious the game was with its runbacks and you having to farm consumeables over and over again. I didn't even enjoy beating the Cleric Beast and Father Casgoine (which I now both really like) for the first time. Luckily soon after beating Casgoine did Bloodborne start to click!

**The gameplay loop**: The gameplay loop of this game is very fun. You're constantly engaged because the enemies are tough and you need to think and memerize where you're going. There's always something at stake because you respawn at the previous lantern when you die and lose all your blood echoes. Because of this there's basically no time to get bored during this game, minus farming, which I'll get to later.

Most games you play nowadays are quite easy combat-wise and are spilled out for you in terms of where you need to go and what you need to do. It therefore felt very refreshing to play a game where you *actually* can explore in and are challenged by its combat. And exploring is also meaningful as every item and stat upgrade can and will make the difference. The only downside is that I often googled what an item, stat, etc. does, and sometimes googled what certain bosses are weak to and where I actually needed to go. This was the trade-off for me that definetely was worth it however.

**The combat**: As mentioned, I didn't like the combat for the first 5 hours. Now however I really like it! I really had to get used to how slow and strategized this games combat is compared to other (difficult) games I've played. I love games like Cuphead, Returnal and God of War, which I tend to play quite aggresivelly, and based on reaction time and precise movement. In Bloodborne I quickly learned that I need to think every movement through, as you can't cancel your animations or make any last second adjustments. I still have a preference for the games named above, but also had a lot of fun with the combat in this game. And man, parrying in this game followed by a visceral attack might just be one of the sickest moves in any videogame!

**The bossfights**: The bossfights in this game are fucking sick! Many have really cool designs, good music and are really fun to fight. Surprisingly most weren't as hard as I expected them to be, but that doesn't mean they were easy. Besides, Kos and Laurence from the Old Hunters DLC took me multiple hours plus a guide (I know) to beat.

**Yarnham**: I stated before that the style of these games never drew me in. Not because it's bad, but because it isn't for me. Well... that's changed. By playing Bloodborne I've really warmed up to the Gothic aesthetic. I already liked most dark settings, and can now add this setting to my list aswell.

**My critiques** Like with any game I also have some critiques. Probably my biggest critique of this game are the runbacks and farming. I love difficult games, but I hate grindy ones. Having to run back to each boss for around a minute feels like tediousness for the sake of tediousness. This especially applies for having to farm blood vials for 20 minutes after multiple boss attempts. Sure it adds some extra stakes to the bossfights, but it mainly adds irritation and often got me just annoyed. I don't mind runbacks in a rogue game, but having to redo the exact same, easy runs over and over gets irritating very quickly.

Another critique, and this one may be very personal, is that there didn't seem to be any logical 'rules' in this game. What I mean with that is that for example some enemies are parryable, yet some are not. And against certain attacks you need to parry them immediatly, whereas with other attacks you needed to parry them last second. Maybe there is logic behind it, but it never made any sense to me. Meanwhile in a game like God of War, I know that in order to parry, I need to wind up my shield at the absolute last second (reaction time-based). With many enemies, specifically bosses in this game, I just had to try and find out what the timing is and remember it per indiviual attack. And I wasn't a big fan of that.

My final critique is about the main bosses. The majority of main bosses were pretty meh for this games standards. It starts off strong with Father Casgoine and Vicar Amelia, but they becomes worse after. The Shadow of Yarnham is still alright, but Rom, the Reborn One and Micolash are boring ass bosses from a gameplay POV. Mergo's wet nurse is good again, but then Gehrman is pretty underwhelming for a final bossight in my opinion. Luckily however, the optional bosses in this game make more then up for it! Ebrietas (my favourite!), Darkbeast, Cleric Beast, Amygdala and Blood-starved Beast were among then best bosses in this game for me.

Having finished both the game and its DLC, years after feeling like Souls games unfortunately aren't for me, I can finally say I get it! It might still not be the perfect game for me, but *mannn* is this a good game! Super happy I played it.