Bloodborne’s dark tone and brutal difficulty are readily apparent in the spiritual Souls sequel’s opening hours. The brooding action-RPG is packed with the same barrier to entry, environmental storytelling, and bosses that seem to be ripped straight from the deepest depths of your nightmares that fans of the Souls series loved throughout the past console generation. But for all of the great things that Bloodborne shares with the iconic trilogy, it’s the ways it differed that really impressed me throughout my time with the first two hours of the PlayStation 4 exclusive.

The Opening Minutes

As you can see from the opening 18 minutes, Bloodborne throws you right into the deep end, and immediately assaults with a barrage of narrative questions. Who am I? What is this plague that’s sweeping the dark, Victorian town of Yharnam? Why am I electing to get a blood transfusion in a nightmarishly-grim doctor’s office, and am I aware of the awful consequences of my actions?

The opening cutscene also sets a dark, somber, and straight-up weird tone. The creepy doctor who conducts the operation doesn’t seem like someone I should be trusting with my life. Furthermore, the mass of crawling demon babies who descend upon you in the middle of the night, plus being visited by a snarling werewolf who suddenly bursts into flames left me more uneased than any previous From Software game, and that’s saying something.

Once I gained control of my character, the swift tutorial began to play out in familiar fashion. I poked around the run-down doctor’s office I woke up in, ogled at the gorgeous sights (and let me assure you, Bloodborne is all sorts of gorgeous), and fell back into my old routine of rolling into breakable objects. But this relative calm was quickly shattered a few moments later when I came upon a gnarled werewolf devouring a helpless victim. Armed with nothing but my puny fists, my life ended swiftly after the wolf became aware of my presence. But as any Souls fan knows, death is only the beginning.

Demon’s Souls 2

I awoke in an area called “The Hunter’s Dream” (note: area and character names in this early build of the game are subject to change upon release). The Dream was aesthetically different than anything in From Software’s previous games – it was bright, lush with flora, and seemed to exist in the middle of the vast expanse of a waterless ocean. There was a single stone structure perched on top of a hill, winding paths peppered with tutorial nodes, and an unnerving life-sized doll leaning against a rock that definitely gave me the willies. But after choosing my melee weapon and my projectile, I began to realize that the Hunter’s Dream was Bloodborne’s equivalent of The Nexus from Demon’s Souls.

Unlike the Firelink Shrine and Majula, Bloodborne’s hub seemingly exists separate from the rest of the game’s world. This is where you’ll be coming back to whenever you want to level-up, repair your weapons, or just take a breather for the intense beasts that aim to rip you apart. After gaining hold of my first weapons – a swift blade that transforms into a long spear, and a blunderbuss – I was teleported back to the scene of my death. But this time, I sliced right through my former murderer, taking note as the screen dimmed and the words “BLOOD TRANSFUSION COMPLETE” appeared in front of me. It was here that I learned that Blood is this game’s equivalent of Souls.

Like the Souls games, any unspent currency you have on your when you die is dropped in the area of your demise. Also like its three predecessors, dying before you can retrieve your loot means that it’s lost forever. However, instead of being placed on the ground at the scene of your murder, your Blood is actually transfused into a nearby enemy; you’ll know which one by the striking glow emanating from their eyes. In order to get back what was once yours, you need hunt and slay the glowy-eyed menace, but it’s the act of hunting and slaying where Bloodborne feels like a much different beast than the games before it.

Combat Evolved

My first two hours in the world of Bloodborne pointed towards an angrier, more aggressive game than From Software’s previous action-RPGs. The methodical “sword-and-board” playstyle of Dark Souls 1 and 2 has been injected with a treacherous dose of energy in a handful of ways. Enemies in Bloodborne seem to come in at a much higher volume than before, and I oftentimes found a horde of beasts continued to follow me long after I thought I’d lost them. Lucky for me, I quickly adapted to the new style of combat, so I rarely elected to try to run past any enemies.

You’re not going to survive by being passive in Bloodborne. You can’t pop in, draw a single enemy back, and take your sweet time with them. Instead, prepare to dive head-first into an encounter and get a bit messy. The same flow of “observe, dodge, react” exists here, but the cycle rolls much faster than before. You have to soak in all the details of an encounter at a moment’s notice, and decide on how to use your arsenal almost instantly. When an enemy is winding up for a strong attack, pull out your gun for a quick stagger. If you see that you only have a short window to strike, perform a quick slice with your blade before rolling out of the way. If a group of enemies is advancing on you, transform your weapon into a larger, slower, but much wider-ranged instrument of death, and do a bit of crowd control.

The amount of verbs that exist in Bloodborne’s combat, even in the earliest hours of the game, were mighty impressive. Juggling weapon transformations, a limited amount of ammunition, and your stamina meter make for a challenging but rewarding battle economy. Couple this with the game’s new Regain system – a risk/reward mechanic where you can take back a bit of your health if you strike back in the dangerous period immediately after being damaged – and each skirmish in Bloodborne is rife with strategy.

Yharnem, Je t’aime

Winding my way through the alleys of Yharnam brought back feelings of the first time I stepped foot into Dark Souls’ Undead Burg back in 2012. This time around, the city itself exudes much more character. The streets are littered with breakable objects, many of which hold hidden items, deadly enemies, or convenient shortcuts. Yharnam is also packed with townsfolk to interact with, though each of the ones I stumbled across were holed up inside of their homes, hiding from the beasts that roam the streets. By speaking with them through windows, they helped me gain bits of insight into the events unfolding around me.

I loved the winding European nature of the city. Every time I ventured out in a new direction and got impossibly lost, I ended up stumbling upon a shortcut that led back to a familiar area. The way the world folded back into itself gave off a very “Metroidvania” vibe. The city is gorgeous, and displayed a level of density that urged me to continue exploring each dark corner I came across.

After traveling out far enough, I slowly began to make my way to a handful of non-urban environments. I was certainly not ready for the sewers beneath Yharnem. Giant trolls patrolled narrow catwalks, gaggles of menacing rats flooded out of holes in the wall, and what I thought were dead bodies in shallow water turned out to be terrifying mud-creatures that quickly outnumbered me. Even when I managed to run past all of these things, I found myself the victim of a giant armored boar that trampled me before I could get out of the well. And if all of that sounds like a lot to handle, wait until you get to the bosses.

Death by A Thousand Bosses

Of the two bosses I came across in the opening section of the game, I was only able to slay one. The massive Cleric Beast, which has been prominently featured in many of the demos we’ve all seen, appears about 20 minutes into your journey. Through a mix of Souls’ muscle memory, careful pattern memorization, and a handful of useful Molotov cocktails, I was able to fell the beast after a tense encounter. To my surprise and complete joy, its demise was met with a dimming of the screen, and the words “YOU HUNTED” being displayed proudly across my field of view. So many of my fondest memories of the Souls games stem from the elation of defeating a seemingly-impossible adversary, and I’m so glad to see that Bloodborne carries that torch proudly.

On the flip side, many of my other iconic memories from the Souls games include bashing my head against an immovable wall of a boss, which I definitely encountered in the form of Priest Gascoigne, a fellow hunter who becomes infected with the game’s mysterious plague. This boss battle takes place in a fog-laced graveyard peppered with gravestones to impede your movement. Gascoigne is fast as all hell, and utilizes the same combination of melee and projectile attacks that got you here in the first place.

While I stood my own with the Priest for a few minutes, the plague eventually caused him to transform into something more beast than a man. He became more agile than nearly any boss I’ve ever fought in the Souls series, and a combination of this plus sheer panic on my part left me dead before I could complete the hunt.

The Hunt Continues...

I parted ways with Bloodborne with an intense craving. I want to begin building my own character, and evolving them to fit my playstyle. I want to continue to explore Yharnam and the Hunter’s Dream, and try to piece together the fragments of environmental storytelling that From Software builds its worlds with. I want to dig deeper into the combat, and really become confident in battle like I was after I’d put 100 hours into Dark Souls. But most of all, I want to go back to that graveyard and exact my revenge on that damn priest. And rest assured, come March, I’m going to do just that.