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From Software Bloodborne. Discuss or die!

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:excellent:
 
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Digger Nick
Is the game any good?

The general consensus is that, yes, it's a far more successful endeavor (both adaptation and actual game itself) than Dark Souls TBG. (Which was done by completely different company. albeit CMON already did a couple of years a BB Card Game before this, whiich I actually played)

I'll start with the positives - the game is overall pretty great. The mechanics are obviously very unique, and do a brilliant job as an adaptation to translate the "feelings" of the game, with the tension of aggroing enemies, anger of losing blood echoes, fear of getting one-shotted, without anything feeling "cheap" or unfair, anymore than the game did. It also icely translates and adapts that component, where you "learn" the game by trial and error - all I can say, don't expect to finish a campaign on the first attempt. But even with several retries, each one is diverse enough to keep things interesting, no grindiness here. There's actually no time to grind anything - each chapter, which is the main mission, with mandatory completion of, let's say, 2 out of 3 side missions, runs on a timer that respawns enemies along the way - and if it reaches the end and you fail to finish the main quest, restart the campaign from scratch. It seems polarizing, and it's hard to describe in words - but such a mechanic is necessary to maintain the tension, otherwise you could just respawn over and over. It also keeps the session's playtime within 60-90min. The justification of it is mentioned as the Paleblood/Blood Moon rising. Storywise, I'd say it's a remix to the original game, and is a nice interpretation of it.

Other than that, I don't feel very qualified as a "newbie" to compare it to other things, but the game seems to be 8/10 - very good, even great, but not a pinnacle of brilliance or "top 10 of all time) like Gloomhaven. The game is 1-4 players, and apparently is at its most challenging with 4, especially timewise. Solo is fine, but looks even more fun for 2 players, which looks like the sweet spot. So that's something to consider, I guess.

Now let's address the elephant in a room (literally!), of that 14kg/30lbs pile of boxes, because Core box aside, only 4 of those expansions are in retail (Chalice, Forbidden Woods, Cainhurst and Hunter's Dream). The rest are Kickstarter exclusives, with some extras on top included - CMON's business model is obviously preying on FOMO and kickstarting all of their games to amass boatloads of cash, where sky's the limit, and the passionate fanbase of From is very "milkable" (if you look closely, you can already see they will probably do it all over again for the Old Hunters DLC).

The pictures here speak for themselves:

0e01da0770dd76a72a263944d10dd07a_original.jpg

4cf794fe1e0f03215984a0995de032af_original.jpg

Now, why is that kind of a big deal? First of all, a big part of the game's replayability are both the number of "Campaigns"(scenarios), as well as the hunter/trick weapon (it's your character that you're stuck with for a scenario), which play differently with their abilities and deckbuilding. Vanilla has 4, another retail xpac(Chalice) adds another 4, whereas the All-In has whopping 15 of them. While impossibly un-ergonomic, all of this piles up into having a game that's exponentially more diverse.

Second, mostly for fans of the vidya game like us men of culture here, the vanilla box is just the 1st act, with the rest locked behind expansions, with most of the 2nd and 3rd act KS exclusive. If you buy retail and don't know the videogame's story, but wish to learn more about its "Cthulhu-ness", you can go straight to the epilogue, or watch a youtube vid or something I guess.

I don't know about you, but if I were stuck with retail, I'd be pissed.

I actually got extremely lucky, as I was checking eBay etc every now and then, and found everything brand new sealed for 350 GBP (which is the original price adjusted for inflation, I guess?). Other than that, the current price seems to be 900-1000EU/USD for it. I guess if I get bored I can sell Byrgenwerth etc. for 150 EUR (seriously, I've checked).

Don't get me wrong, as for the game itself, the value and content in it is perfectly adequate, especially for someone who never played the PS4 game, etc.

As for the quality of the physical components, cards have a very nice texture to them and are solid (I still sleeve them - 1364 in total!!), the miniatures (plastic) are very well sculpted, with no cheapness, but the same can't be said of cardboard tiles sadly. They have to be shuffled and it immediately shows on the edges. I don't know how you can revolutionize cardboard, but for 4 mil amassed on KS I'd definitely do something differently. A lot of the pictures are originally fan-art, so I'm certain they saved there.

Also, while luck is very mitigated (there's no dice at all), once in a blue moon you can still get extremely unlucky and get shitty tiles, or "roll" in a shuffle the worst possible outcomes. Which actually happened to me just now, so I've ragequit and wrote this post instead :lol:
 
Last edited:
Joined
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Digger Nick
BTW the Rulebook is gibberish and unclear, so I had to watch hour long explanation videos and read 50 point FAQ posts to piece everything together, which is hilariously also a successful adaptation of a From game's "lore".
 

Dhaze

Cipher
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Clear and concise explanation of the game's content and its expansions'.

Thanks for all that. I was considering buying it with a couple of friends, but could only find a handful of the expansions available in retail, which confused me for a bit. It's a shame CMON went with that business model.
 
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Thanks for all that. I was considering buying it with a couple of friends, but could only find a handful of the expansions available in retail, which confused me for a bit. It's a shame CMON went with that business model.

By all means, I'd say definitely do it especially if you have friends that can play it with you. Even if it's the core box alone, which is dozens of hours of fun by itself. As is usual with games like that, the core components like Yharnam street tiles is what you'll be seeing most of the time.

The retail expansions are the most substantial ones. Out of all "exclusive" boxes, 4 are smaller side campaigns, and 1 "Blood Moon Box" is mostly redundant stuff, but adds 6 PC hunters.

You can also look for a "blood moon pledge", which is what most of backers went for and thus is much more available. That's Core + Chalice + aforementioned box with hunters + Mergo's Loft. With what's available in retail, that will cover almost everything.
 

SumDrunkGuy

Guest
Bloodborne wasn't very good.
Neither was your mother.

Other than that, I doubt BB2 is ever coming - or at least not from FS. Stranger things have happened though.

Never gonna happen with Cancerzaki running things. He hates what made him successful.

He also expressed a desire to make a more abstract fantasy game in the future, and that he has ideas that don’t quite fit with FromSoftware’s current image or the kind of games it’s made before.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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mediocrepoet

Philosoraptor in Residence
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Codex 2012 Codex+ Now Streaming! MCA Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Bloodborne wasn't very good.
Neither was your mother.

Other than that, I doubt BB2 is ever coming - or at least not from FS. Stranger things have happened though.

Never gonna happen with Cancerzaki running things. He hates what made him successful.

He also expressed a desire to make a more abstract fantasy game in the future, and that he has ideas that don’t quite fit with FromSoftware’s current image or the kind of games it’s made before.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
This take is dumb as hell. No, don't hold your breath because Bloodborne is an IP owned by Sony but developed by FS as a PS4 exclusive system seller. Meanwhile, FS is completely in bed with Bamco as its publisher and pursues a multiplatform strategy currently.

Elden Ring has sold nearly 13M units based on the last numbers I saw. As of mid-May there were less than 20M PS5s sold in the world. Only a fraction of that installed base would buy Bloodborne. This isn't hard to figure out why you will never see a FS developed Bloodborne sequel without some sort of crazy bribe from Sony. And with Sony looking to brings even its first party titles to PC, this indicates its looking at branching out from traditional console wars and therefore, is less likely to pursue a "system seller" type of investment, rather looking to port out. The expected culmination of that is that Sony will eventually go the way of Sega and get out of hardware development entirely unless the profitability of their boxes continues to make that worthwhile.

What is far more likely is to see a sequel developed by Bluepoint if Sony has them remaster Bloodborne like they did with Demon's Souls, as they'll get exposure to FS's systems, design, and code.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
What "this idiot" did when put on a pedestal is directing Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
Elden Ring was mostly directed by the Dark Souls 2 guy, retard.

Miyazaki's directed titles for FromSoft are Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro (and Déraciné but nobody cares about that)
 

SumDrunkGuy

Guest
https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
What "this idiot" did when put on a pedestal is directing Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
Elden Ring was mostly directed by the Dark Souls 2 guy, retard.

Miyazaki's directed titles for FromSoft are Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro (and Déraciné but nobody cares about that)

I did a google search and saw nothing that confirms this. If it is true then that would explain why Elden Ring is a big improvement over Dark Souls 3
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
What "this idiot" did when put on a pedestal is directing Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
Elden Ring was mostly directed by the Dark Souls 2 guy, retard.
This must be why he is credited as the main director and the "Dark Souls 2 guy" simply as co-director. Thanks for the insight.

Miyazaki's directed titles for FromSoft are Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro (and Déraciné but nobody cares about that)
He was also the lead director of Dark Souls 3, but I guess you only care about your headcanon.
 

Sentinel

Arcane
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6,805
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Ommadawn
https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro....s-next-game-enters-final-stages-16888221/amp/

He basically wants to ruin the company. It wont be long before his ego leads him to create some incredibly stupid and weird passion project like Death Stranding. It's what these idiots do when they get put on a pedestal.
What "this idiot" did when put on a pedestal is directing Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring.
Elden Ring was mostly directed by the Dark Souls 2 guy, retard.
This must be why he is credited as the main director and the "Dark Souls 2 guy" simply as co-director. Thanks for the insight.

Miyazaki's directed titles for FromSoft are Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro (and Déraciné but nobody cares about that)
He was also the lead director of Dark Souls 3, but I guess you only care about your headcanon.
He is credited in Dark Souls 3 mostly for marketing material. He didn't have the same weight in the day-to-day decision making that he did for DeS, DaS and BB, all of that was relegated to Tanimura. Read the pre-release interviews for Dark Souls 3, he states it himself. Tanimura then went on to direct the two DLCs for DS3 while Miyazaki was conceptualizing Elden Ring & directing Sekiro, and he then gave back the control of ER development & design to Tanimura while he worked with BB's lead designer on Sekiro. This is how FromSoft works. There will never be another "Miyazaki game" after BB.
 

Lyric Suite

Converting to Islam
Joined
Mar 23, 2006
Messages
58,237
The fact you have to buy a different console to play each of them shows why NOBODY should ever support consoles. "But you ain't gonna play BB hurr durr". Fuck it, don't give a shit. Just the idea of having to get a PS3, a PS4 and now a PS5 to play all the From soft console exclusives is so nonsensical my brain just can't even picture it. Do you guys stack all the consoles on top of another and fiddle with cables whenever you feel like playing a different game?

And imagine if emulators didn't exist and you had to stack all the older consoles as well lmao holy shit.
 

Machocruz

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Hyperborea
Yeah it was even worse in the past. From games didn't receive PC ports at all, so you also had to have PS1 and PS2 for King's Fields, Armored Cores, and Shadow Tower Abyss (they're actual best game). And Xbox if you gave a shit about Otogi.
 
Unwanted

Don Salieri

Unwanted
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 5, 2022
Messages
78
FromSoft has only made two good games, Bloodborne and Demon's Souls, the rest are mediocre. Because Codexers can't afford to own both consoles and PCs they will deny this due to sour grape syndrome.
Rated E for Effort.
Does Sony pay you on commission or do you just get a flat rate for this shit?
It's not my fault the Japs never ported their best work to PC, maybe it's payback for Hiroshima. The Dark Souls games and Elden Ring were just more mainstream and worse iterations of Demon's Souls culminating in a fucking Skyrim clone, Sekiro was a misstep since they were never going to make Ninja Gaiden and it was retarded to go in that direction.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Do you guys stack all the consoles on top of another and fiddle with cables whenever you feel like playing a different game?

This wasn't really a problem with 6th and 7th gen consoles (PS2 and PS3 era), as they were fully backwards compatible
So when you bought a new console, you could sell the old one but keep it's games
That tech was ditched with the advent of console digital stores
 

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