Why Bloodborne Is The Most Overrated FromSoftware Soulsborne Game

Bloodborne has been hailed as the pinnacle of FromSoftware’s “Soulsborne” games ever since its release back in 2015, but the game’s consistent and uniform themes bring the game down when compared to the variety displayed by the Dark Souls series. Dark Souls had a modest start with Demon’s Souls on the PlayStation 3, and the game’s gorgeous remaster is evidence alone that the Souls series is a juggernaut in the industry. Bloodborne is the game that helped many players finally understand what made FromSoftware’s brutal titles so appealing, but it leaves out some key elements that prevent it from reaching the peak of its medieval-inspired siblings.

Bloodborne borrows the core gameplay of the Souls franchise and dresses it up in a gory, Victorian London aesthetic that gives the experience an entirely unique style. From the weaponry used to the outlandishly mutated monsters, Bloodborne is just as bleak and oppressive as the Dark Souls games, but with a brand new flavor and a much faster-paced combat system that rewards aggressive playstyles. The issue with Bloodborne isn’t its core gameplay, but rather its lack of variety and customization.

Dark Souls is a game about experimentation and discovery, even down to how the game’s vast amount of weapons and items may benefit each individual player. In Dark Souls, there are dozens of weapons, rings, spells, and armor sets that completely change the way players engage enemies in combat. Players who prefer using spells will typically maintain their distance and rely on picking off foes from afar, but players can also dress up in massive suits of armor and wield cartoonishly large axes so they can crush anything that moves. There are so many ways to mix and match items for different types of characters, and this is a huge part of what makes Dark Souls such an enjoyable experience – there’s always the option to go through the adventure again with an alternate build that plays in a brand-new way.

What Bloodborne Is Missing From Dark Souls

This element technically exists in Bloodborne, but it’s in a sad state compared to the Dark Souls titles. Without purchasing the DLC, Bloodborne players will have access to a grand total of 15 weapons, whereas Dark Souls 3 offers its players over 100 weapons. This gigantic difference in the number of options players have when designing their characters is a major reason why Bloodborne struggles to compete with Dark Souls. There are also a plethora of weapons, like the Saw Spear and the Saw Cleaver, that share many of the same moves, so not even all 15 of Bloodborne’s weapons are entirely unique. Armor sets in Bloodborne also offer very minuscule differences in stats or passive abilities, so they’re mostly used to simply change the look of one’s avatar.

Not only does this change have a negative impact on repeat playthroughs, since players are extremely limited in terms of what their options are throughout the entire experience, but it also severely weakens the game’s PVP. Fighting other players online was the second reason that Dark Souls had such enormous replay value, but because everyone wields the same few weapons with very little variety in Bloodborne, it’s meta ended up being far less dynamic and engaging than even Dark Souls’ mod-infested competitions. In the Dark Souls series, it was very common to duel against all kinds of creative and fun builds which helped keep the competitive scene fresh, but Bloodborne fails miserably in this department.

Even Bloodborne’s iconic setting limited the creativity of the developers, and each area felt far too similar to the last. Most enemies are similar grotesque abominations, and they’re mostly found in nearly-identical gothic London city-inspired locals. Dark Souls takes players through lush forests with reanimated golems, ruined cities half-buried in pools of magma and infested with demons, and a gorgeous abandoned citadel bathed in the golden glow of the setting sun above. Dark Souls may lack the consistent themes present in Bloodborne, but it allows each area to feel entirely unique instead of constantly retreading tired old ground. Bloodborne is still a solid game in its own right, but Dark Souls‘ ability to keep players guessing at all times is what gives it an edge over its gothic little brother.

About The Author