My Experience with Fromsoft Games
Back in the day, when Dark Souls was the shit, I was still a kid, a fledgling gamer some might say. Back then I used to play mainly RPGs, where I spent most of my gaming time on one specific game, Maplestory. If you aren’t familiar with Maplestory, let’s just say it’s much closer to the easier side of RPGs, where getting good meant grinding for hours for levels, gears and upgrades (and don’t get me started with the Maple Market).
You can now imagine pretty accurately how my first Dark Souls experience was. I don’t remember much, I just remember starting the game, getting frustrated with the first boss (whom I did NOT know I shouldn’t fight) and leaving it at that. I did get to try Dark Souls 2 when it was out as well, in that game I was frustrated with all of the things I didn’t know, the menus, UI, and when I saw my health got chipped off after my first death, I of course dropped it too. Fast forward a few years, I own an Xbox 360, and got quite a bit of console gaming done on it. I was already getting tired with the normal triple A games that were coming out, each one a reskin of an older version (looking at you Assasin’s Creedˆ). I’ve been hearing for quite a while about this game which was out, Bloodborne. I saw trailers, I saw reviews, and eventually I succumbed and bought a PS4 and with it I bought the game as well. P.S I did NOT know it was a game from the same developers of Dark Souls.
And well, I was hooked! Even though the “difficulty” and the souls-like formula were there, my reaction was different this time. The whole look and feel of the game were something I’ve never experienced before. The Gothic structures, the mysteriously aggressive townsfolk, that first scream of the Cleric Beast (which had me in a state where I was both panicking and excited at the same time) and the feeling of weight in each hit you make, it just clicked for me. I played the game, I struggled, I cursed and I yelled, but at the end I came out victorious. I finished the game, finished the DLC, and did all the optional bosses and areas. P.S As someone who doesn’t shy out of a challenge, I took it upon myself to play the whole first playthrough alone, since I felt it was part of the experience (I did use some guides to find locations or bosses though!).
I finished Bloodborne quite a few times afterwards with different builds, I finished Dark Souls 3 a few times with a few different weapon builds too, and I played and finished Dark Souls Remastered too (including DLC in all of them- damn you Manus!). Now I am here, playing Bloodborne again. I started a playthrough which was centered about the Chikage since I really liked that weapon back in the day and I missed this kind of aggressive gameplay after Dark Souls Remastered. I switched midway to Blade of Mercy and after beating Ludwing with the little HP I had (most of my points went to Skill and Bloodtinge) I thought about making it a bit more challenging and doing a BL6 run. Why I didn’t go with a BL4 run is simple, I’m too bored with the starting weapons and I really really like both the Saif and BoM. The details of my experiences so far will be covered in the next post, so stay tuned!
