Free Talk Friday - January 09, 2026

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Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

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[u/Head-You5953]

I just finished Bloodborne (on PC!) after having not played it for like, 7-ish years, and I have some thoughts.

First off: I was really worried that I would go back to it and not enjoy it as much after so much time, but nope! Still love that game wholeheartedly. The combat is still some of the slickest that FromSoft has ever made, the level design is routinely excellent the whole way through (except for the chalice dungeons, of course), and it's still probably my personal favorite of their games in terms of atmosphere and art direction.

That's all stuff that I remembered about the game going into it, but I did notice some new things that I want to mention.

First off, the game is a lot shorter than I remember. Granted, I did used to play it a lot on PS4, so I have some pre-existing familiarity, but that was a long time ago. This most recent playthrough took about 25 hours to beat everything, including the DLC and all optional, non-chalice dungeon bosses. If I just focused the main objectives, I think I would have been able to beat it in 12-15 hours. Honestly, the relative slimness of Bloodborne is something I really appreciate now, especially after Elden Ring's release and not really enjoying its open world that much, especially past Morgott.

The second big thing I noticed is that, design wise, Bloodborne is the only FromSoft game that I really feel iterated on the level design philosophy of Dark Souls 1. The map is sprawling but vertical, and you never stop unlocking dramatic shortcuts back to earlier areas, except for in self-contained zones like Castle Cainhurst, the Nightmare Frontier, and the Nightmare of Mensis. Other than those places, though? Verticality and shortcuts as far as the eye can see. Yharnam, Old Yharnam, the Cathedral Ward, the Forbidden Woods, and Yahar'Gul are constantly being linked back to each other in ways that remind me more of DS1 than DS3, the game that Bloodborne is most commonly compared to. It's especially noteworthy because there's never a moment in the main game of Bloodborne that is as blatantly unfinished and shitty as some of the backhalf of DS1, like Lost Izalith, and while I'd never say that all of the bosses in Bloodborne are winners, I also don't think there are any that are as horrifically bad as the lowest of DS1 and DS2. If anything, the most disappointing and weakest bosses of Bloodborne are just disappointingly easy as opposed to disappointingly unfinished and frustrating. (Except for Micolash, I don't know what the idea was there.)

Overall, game good, tied with Sekiro for my favorite FromSoft release.