Elden Ring, the game that got me to love the Souls Borne series. A very maidenless review.

 This is my third review of a Souls Borne game. I have already reviewed Sekiro and Bloodborne before this game, and I plan to one day review the entire franchise. But here's a funny story you might not know. None of these games were my first Souls Borne game. That "honor" goes to Dark Souls II. And in hindsight, starting with II was probably a mistake, since that game is needlessly oppressive and counterintuitive. As such, I never finished it, but I might replay it again for the purpose of reviewing the whole franchise. But anyway, I bounced off the series for years after trying and failing to complete Dark Souls II. Then I picked up Elden Ring, and that game was so good that not only did I replay the game again as soon as the credits rolled, but it won me over and converted me into a "real" Souls Borne fan. I started tracking down the other games because I liked Elden Ring so much and wanted more games in that style. So here's a heavily biased review of a game that I will openly admit is one of my favorite pieces of media ever. Quick content warning. Elden Ring is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and thus is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Mostly because of violence. And freaky monster designs. And a subplot where the protagonist gets married to a weird witch lady.

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So what exactly is Elden Ring? It's a medieval fantasy action roleplaying game inspired by Norse and Celtic Mythology that was developed by From Software and published by Bandai Namco, with the story and lore being co-written by Hidetaka Miyazaki (the creator of the Souls Borne series) and George R.R. Martin, of Game of Thrones fame. The game would release on February 24th, 2022 and became an overnight success. Not only was it the best selling Bandai Namco-published game ever made, it was the second best selling game of that year, being second only to Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare. Which is impressive, since From Software have spent much of their history being a fairly niche developer. It also has a DLC expansion pack planned for release this coming June (at the time of writing), titled The Shadow of the Erdtree. 

And now I have to tell you about the story in this game. Something you need to understand about From Software is that they don't tell their stories with traditional cinematics. Sure, cinematics exist, but mostly to hype up certain bosses and show how much of a threat they are. Most of the story is told through details in the environment, optional conversations with the few friendly faces you'll meet on your adventure, and reading the descriptions of collectible items. This vagueness was deliberate by design. One of Miyazaki's quirks as a writer is that he loves seeing people come up with theories and pool their knowledge together into a cohesive narrative, and his stories are meant to be vague and mysterious for this exact reason. And even though Martin's involvement was a big part of the prerelease marketing, the game feels less like a 50/50 split between his style and Miyazaki's style, and more like a 70/30 split in Miyazaki's favor. Granted, Elden Ring is somewhat more straightforward in its narrative than previous Souls Borne games. I didn't do any additional research on the lore during my first playthrough and felt like I had a good enough understanding of what was going on.

So here's a basic summary of the lore. In the world of Elden Ring, there is an island nation called the Lands Between. The Lands Between were ruled by a Goddess named Marika the Eternal, who was given divine power by an artefact called the Elden Ring. The Elden Ring was a gift from an even more powerful god called the Greater Will, in exchange for Marika's loyalty and servitude. Marika birthed several children who, while not gods in and of themselves, are still incredibly powerful and have the potential to ascend to godhood in certain circumstances. These kids are called the Demigods. Eventually Marika got tired of being the Greater Will's poster girl so she smashed the Elden Ring and faked her death. And then her kids started a civil war to fill the power vacuum. Fast forward five thousand years later, and the Lands Between are a post-apocalyptic shell of their former glory. Monstrous dragons burn down villages, undead zombies and skeletons attack roaming travelers and a supernatural disease called the Scarlet Rot is spreading through the land like a plague.

You play as a Foul Tarnished, an undead super soldier brought back to life by Marika's Grace and given a task. Track down the scattered remains of the Elden Ring, repair it and claim the throne of the Next Elden Lord. You are not the only Tarnished on this quest, however. In fact there are potentially hundreds of Tarnished running around. But only one of them can be Elden Lord. So any alliance between Tarnished is temporary at best. And in typical From Software fashion, not even ten minutes after waking up your Tarnished gets thrown into a boss fight that you are supposed to lose. Though you do get a cool sword if you beat it on your first try. After that scripted loss, you wake up in a cave and can go through an optional tutorial that teaches you the controls and basic game mechanics. Said tutorial ends with a boss fight against the Soldier of Godrick, which is a much more reasonable "first boss" than the actual first boss. Granted, the Soldier of Godrick is just a slightly buffed version of the basic undead wretches you've been fighting in the tutorial, so he isn't meant to be too hard.

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Elden Ring has a pretty robust character creator, and I am a sucker for a good character creator. You can customize the hair, facial features, body type, gender and more. But more importantly, the game has a bunch of Classes. One thing I love about this game is that there are a ton of different ways to customize your fighting style. Do you want to swing the biggest and heaviest swords imaginable? You can do that. Do you want to run in and unleash a flurry of lightning fast stabs and slices with a pair of daggers? You can do that. Do you want to cast magic spells and shoot laser beams? You can do that. But keep in mind that nothing in this game is class-locked. As long as you meet the minimal stat requirements to use a weapon or cast a spell, you can use it. Even if you start the game as a Hero (a bulky juggernaut who excels with Strength focused weapons but struggles with spellcasting), you can learn magic spells if you put a few upgrades into Intelligence. 

The stats all do more or less what you expect them to. Strength makes the big heavy weapons better, Dexterity makes the fast smaller weapons better. Vigor gives you more health and defense, Endurance gives you more stamina (letting you jump and dodge more frequently) and carry heavier items on you. Intelligence and Faith are both your "magical" stats, with the former making star-themed sorcery better and the latter improving holy incantations. Mind gives you a bigger Focus meter, thus letting you cast more spells before needing to recharge. And finally, Arcane is a weird stat. It makes enemies drop items upon defeating them more frequently, and boosts the power of status effects like Poison, Frostbite and Bleeding. Practically speaking, Arcane is a stat that can be safely ignored if you don't plan on using status effects, since it offers no other benefits to combat. But status effect builds are comically strong. During my second run of the game, I played a Faith/Arcane hybrid character that tore through the game far faster than my original sorcery character did.

The classes mostly exist as a foundation to build off of instead of a railroad you must follow for the whole game. That being said, they do determine what kind of weapons and armor you start the game with, if anything. And it's generally better to specialize than to generalize. A pure Strength build will generally outperform a Strength/Dexterity hybrid. There are exceptions of course. The aforementioned Faith/Arcane build I made was almost comically strong. And the only reason I made that build was because I wanted to make a "dragon" themed character and all the "dragon" themed spells are designed to work with both Faith and Arcane equally. And also in typical From Software tradition, one of the classes, simply called the Wretch, starts with literally nothing more than a wooden stick and a loincloth. The Wretch's only redeeming quality is that it starts with a 10 in every stat, meaning if you can't make up your mind on what to play, the Wretch offers a perfect blank slate that can be easily molded into any play style you want once you find some real weapons and armor. Miyazaki himself has gone on record saying that playing as the Wretch is the closest thing the game has to a hard mode, so maybe don't play Wretch during your first playthrough unless you are very confident in your skills or you don't mind a rougher start.

Elden Ring controls more or less how you expect a Souls Borne to play. I played the game on PS4 and will be using that console's controller as a frame of reference. But anyway, you use the right and left bumper/trigger buttons to attack with whatever weapon is held in your character's left hand and right hand, respectively. The circle button is your dodge, the square button lets you use consumable items like potions or throwing knives. If you have a shield in hand, you can use it to block and parry enemy attacks. You collect a universal currency called Runes that can be used to purchase upgrades for your character, such as increased stats or better quality weapons and armor. All unspent Runes are dropped if you die and must be manually recollected on your next life. All of this is standard stuff. What's new to this game is the ability to JUMP. No, really, this is the first Souls Borne game with an actual jump button. While there was technically a jump in the previous games, it was clumsy, awkward and only worked if you had enough room for a running start. Now, the jump action is tied to a single button and feels actually good to use. You can also attack while jumping. And jump attacks are surprisingly strong. In fact, speed runners who are better at this game than I am discovered that the fastest way for Strength builds to defeat enemies is by doing jump attacks repeatedly. But back on the subject of new mechanics, there's a new technique called a Guard Counter. Basically, if you hit the heavy attack button right after blocking, it charges the normally slow heavy attack instantly.  You can also ride around on a magical steed called Torrent, who is not only much faster than the Tarnished but can also double jump. Torrent cannot be brought indoors, sadly, but he does make navigating the outdoors much easier. And the final new thing are Spirit Ashes. Spirit Ashes are magic spells can be cast once per boss battle that summons a ghostly version of certain monsters and warriors, who will assist you in battle automatically. Spirit Ashes are a nice option to have if you've been struggling against a boss and need just that extra bit of Jolly Cooperation to finish it off. Of course, regular multiplayer co-op is still a thing.

After the tutorial ends you are dumped into the Lands Between properly. You are free to explore wherever and however you want. The amount of freedom and exploration in Elden Ring is simply staggering. A lot of people say that Elden Ring is the most "beginner friendly" Souls Borne game. That is technically true. Not because From Software added an "easy mode" or toned down the enemies and bosses. In fact even the basic enemies can obliterate you if you're not careful. But because there's so much freedom in the open world, if you ever get stuck on a boss, all you have to do is go somewhere else and come back later once you get some upgrades under your belt. The previous games were a lot more linear in their level design, meaning if you got stuck on a boss, you had no real choice besides trying to brute force your way to victory. And if you know where to look, you can find some really powerful weapons long before the first "real" boss.

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Speaking of bosses, this game has a lot of bosses. In fact, at 168 named boss monsters, it has the most number of bosses of any Souls Borne game ever. Funnily enough, out of those bosses, only 12 of them are required to actually finish the game. The rest are optional, but usually reward you with a powerful weapon or spell upon defeat. The only thing I can say negatively about is that most of the non-plot-relevant bosses are recycled at multiple points in the game (meaning you fight them more than once). Some more than others. But considering that Elden Ring is supposed to be From Software's "biggest" game, the world being so huge and packed with details means that the only real way to fill out the game world would be to recycle content. But the good news is that all of the Demigods (sans Godrick) are unique and only fought once. And honestly, the Demigods feel like they have the most amount of polish and effort put into them. They all get an intro cinematic hyping them up. They all are fully voiced and surprisingly chatty, with some of them taunting the Tarnished mid-battle. And of course, they are (generally speaking) the most challenging bosses in the game. 

On the subject of challenge, Elden Ring's difficulty is a little bit all over the place. Back when the game first came out, no one could agree if it was the easiest Souls Borne, or if it was the hardest. The answer is yes. Yes, it is the hardest. But also yes, it is the easiest. That sounds like an obtuse non answer and well, it is, but hear me out. You remember when I said that the game offers tons of different options for developing a unique fighting style? Not all builds are created equally. Elden Ring has 308 different weapons to collect and 171 different magic spells to learn. And generally speaking, 10% of those weapons and spells are so weak that using them is for all intents and purposes, handicapping yourself. 50% are just good enough to get you through the game, though you might struggle against certain enemies. And the rest are so comically powerful that they turn even the toughest battles into a cakewalk. And those comically powerful weapons can potentially be accessed as soon as you leave the tutorial area. The only thing consistent about the game's difficulty is that there is a huge spike in enemy damage in the final two regions of the game, the Mountaintop of the Giants and Crumbling Farum Azula. The enemies and bosses here do so much damage that you need at least 40 points into Vigor just to survive more than one attack. To put that into perspective, the previous games in the series could be beaten with 25 Vigor or less, and any more than that was the defensive equivalent of overkill. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: The most offensive example of Elden Ring's weird difficulty balancing is a boss called Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. She is by far the hardest boss in the game, putting up more of a fight than even the final boss. Her attack patterns and movement are so fast they push Elden Ring's combat to the absolute limit. She honestly feels like she belongs in a different, much faster game than Elden Ring. This is on top of being able to "steal" health from you with every successful slash from her katana. This is a boss that essentially forces you to go the whole fight without getting hit once, because that's the only way to stop her from healing. Even blocked attacks will still heal her. And that's not even mentioning how she has two full health bars AND she adds a poisonous Scarlet Rot effect to her attacks once her first health bar is emptied. Before you jump to conclusions and assume I'm singling her out because I have a "skill issue" or need to "git gud" let me just say this. Malenia took me 13 tries to beat. Every other boss took 2 or 3 tries each. This was with a sorcery build I had planned ahead of time specifically to counter her. My criticisms of Malenia aren't because she's a hard fight. It's that she runs counter to the rest of the game's design, punishing defensive melee builds that rely on blocks and parries for defense and demanding that the player plays this one specific duel to absolute perfection, because anything less than perfect will result in failure. Thankfully, Malenia is an optional boss and the only rewards for beating her are the bragging rights and a replica of her katana. I think my opinion of Elden Ring would sour if she was mandatory.

Ironically, the hardest challenge in the whole game doesn't even come from its bosses or from its exploration. It comes from the side quests. All throughout the Lands Between you can meet various characters that are also traveling on their own adventures. You can choose to help them with their problems, but a lot of the side quests are so cryptic and obscure that you need a walkthrough on hand just to do them properly. And not helping matters is that if you defeat certain bosses before starting the side quests, the characters associated with might just peace out and move to a different location or even leave the game world entirely, thus preventing you from finishing that character's quest. To add insult to injury, there is no way to check which side quests you've found or finished within the game itself. You just have to hope your memory is good enough to revisit past areas. And even if you find the right characters in the right spot, the solution to their problem can be borderline esoteric. Take Boc the Seamster for example. Towards the end of his side quest, he expresses concern for his unsightly appearance and asks the Tarnished if they know of any way to "make him beautiful." There are two ways to end this quest. The simplest solution is to tell him to go visit a sorceress named Rennala of the Full Moon, who possesses the power of rebirth. Only problem is that Rennala still hasn't perfected her rebirth spell yet, so Boc's "beautiful" new body dies just a few minutes afterword. You would think that simply telling Boc that he's beautiful enough as is would persuade him to stay where he is, but no. You need to travel to a completely different region, grab an item called a Prattling Pate, come back to Boc and use that item to tell him that he's beautiful. There is no indication that such an item even exists, much less where to find it. The other side quests work similarly to Boc's. The simple solution will nine times out of ten get the character killed off (or worse) and the only way to save them is to try something weird and out of the box. There is only one side quest that breaks this rule.

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Oh boy, it's time to talk about Ranni the Witch. This character is quite the fan favorite, thanks to a memorable design, distinct Welsh accent and being the only "friendly" demigod. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a Ranni fan, myself. She also has the only quest where doing things out of the "intended" order won't ruin it. In fact, the only real way to fail Ranni's quest is to attack her deliberately. The best thing about Ranni is that she straight up tells you where you need to go and what you need to do to complete the quest. Ranni wants to find a special dagger in an underground city and tells you where to go to find said dagger. Ranni wants the demigod Radahn destroyed as part of her plans, and she tells you to go find Radahn and kill him. Her quest is the only one that is this straightforward. Of course, the beautiful simplicity of her quest isn't the only reason why I like Ranni. The other reason is that her lore is fascinating. She was one of the demigods responsible for turning the Lands Between into a nightmare hellscape. Despite being responsible for many of the horrors that the Tarnished encounters, she has a genuine desire to overthrow the gods and give humanity true, absolute freedom. The third reason I like Ranni is the simple fact that her quest ends with her and the Tarnished getting married. And there's a whole alternate ending, heavily implied to be the best ending, that is rewarded for going through with said marriage. Ranni even gives you the Moonlight Greatsword, which is literally From Software's mascot that they put in every game they work on, as a wedding gift. Out of all the games I have played in my life, Elden Ring is the only one to have an actual marriage in it. Granted, it's a political marriage and Ranni makes it clear her main reason for marrying the Tarnished is because she needs a loyal spouse in order to ascend to godhood. Because marriages in this setting aren't just a romantic ceremony. They are a ritual meant to unlock the true power of the divine. But without context, the idea that Elden Ring's best ending requires you to get married is oddly amusing.

In terms of presentation, Elden Ring is by far the most colorful Souls Borne game. This isn't to say that it's all sunshine and rainbows. Just that it leans more into the "fantasy" side of the phrase "dark fantasy." The monster designs are about what you expect from From Software. Lots of horrifying monstrosities with limbs coming out of places they do not belong. In fact, there's a general motif of hands and arms in the character designs. A lot of characters either have more arms than a normal human, or they have something weird going on with the arms they do have. Just to give a few examples, Ranni has four arms tucked into her robe, Godrick the Golden has two dozen arms erupting out of his back, and Rykard fights with a sword made of bloodied arms. And of course, the main mascot boss of this game, Malenia the Blade of Miquella, has only one natural arm. Her right arm has been replaced with a golden prosthetic that has a retractable sword attached to the wrist. The only bad thing about Elden Ring's aesthetic is that it can at times look a bit too similar to the Dark Souls trilogy. I kind of wish it leaned harder into the Nordic Viking/Celtic Mythology vibes, which are present in things like the Erdtree being modeled after Yggdrasil the World Tree and Malenia's helmet resembling those worn by Valkyries, but the Nordic/Celtic influence is nowhere near as obvious as say, Bloodborne's Victorian vibe or Sekiro's Feudal Japanese aesthetic.

But on a more positive note, we got Legacy Dungeons. Legacy Dungeons are special locations scattered around the open world. These areas are designed to resemble the level design from older Souls Borne games. Not only are they gorgeous to look at, the Legacy Dungeons are by far the most complex areas to navigate, with lots of winding paths that loop back in on themselves, hidden shortcuts and traps. The Legacy Dungeons are a true highlight of Elden Ring's art style, with a personal favorite of mine being Raya Lucaria Academy. It's a giant school for witchcraft and wizardry magic users that rests underneath the pale blue light of an magically conjured night sky, complete with a full moon looming overhead. You work your way up the schoolrooms and past a debate parlor, fighting and/or running past scholarly sorcerers and living puppet soldiers. You eventually reach the tallest point in the school, the Grand Library, where Rennala resides. 

Another Legacy Dungeon I love is Leyndell the Golden Capital. It is exactly what it sounds like; The capital city of the Lands Between. It is far fancier and more upkept than the rest of the world, looking almost serene compared to the hellscape outside its fortified walls. The roofs of the buildings are golden, the streets are lined with golden bricks, even the enemies here fight with golden weaponry. Also, there's a petrified corpse of a dragon so large that it functions as a platform/bridge you can walk on. And some people who are much smarter than me did some measurements and found this corpse dragon (named in the lore as Gransax) is more then 4 times the size of the Dragon God, a boss from the very first Souls Borne game, Demon's Souls. Keep in mind that the Dragon God was the biggest monster From Software ever created and they have yet to make a living  monster that large ever again. One shudders to think what kind of boss battle a dragon of that size could be like. Maybe that's one of the DLC bosses; a dragon as large as Gransax, but actually alive.

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In terms of sound design, music and voice acting, it's all good. The monstrous roars of the various beasts in the Lands Between are disturbing, and the sound of clashing blades is crisp. The music is about what you expect from From Software. Lots of intimidating orchestra with vaguely Latin sounding lyrics. The music only really kicks in when you discover a boss, though there is some ambience in safe zones like the Roundtable Hold or the Volcano Manor. My personal favorite in the whole soundtrack is the Godskin Nobles' theme. It can best be described as "evil Catholic choir music." Which, considering that the Godskin Nobles are a cult that collects the skin of demigods and fashions clothes out of said skin, is weirdly fitting in a morbid way. And since the Godskin Nobles are fought multiple times, you get to hear their theme music more than once. The Ancestor Spirit is another boss with a good theme. It has really pretty and tranquil music, which sounds almost out of place for a battle with an otherworldly animal spirit.

The voice acting is some of the best in the series. One detail I like about the game is that all of the demigods are ancient (being 5,000 years old or older), and as such they all speak in old-timey Shakespearean English (with a lot of "thee" and "thou" and "thy") to show just how old they are compared to the regular mortals, who speak in modern English. Elden Ring is probably the most quotable game in From Software's catalogue. There's a lot of good quotes in this game. You have funny quotes like the White Masked Varre saying "Unfortunately, it appears you are maidenless" at the start of the game. But then you have incredible one-liners like Godfrey saying "I have given thee courtesy enough!" or Malenia saying "You will witness true horror..." I think my favorite piece of voice acting is when you confront Morgott, the Last of all Kings. The scene starts with him walking down a flight of stairs while listing off each and every demigod responsible for the millennia of warfare and violence that has plagued the Lands Between. With each name, the anger in his tired old voice grows and grows. Eventually he explodes with this line; "Willful traitors, all! Thy kind art all of a piece! War lords, emboldened by the flames of ambition! So have it writ upon thy meagre grave... Felled, by King Morgott! The Last of All Kings!" It's a beautifully written and voice-acted speech that conveys all the pent up rage and frustration Morgott feels about his fellow demigods, and how he believes that the Tarnished will become just as bad as Marika if they become Elden Lord. Morgott isn't an antagonist because he's evil. He's an antagonist because he's scared that the Tarnished will repeat his mother's mistakes and has taken great effort to prevent such a scenario from occurring. Morgott's my favorite boss in this whole game, both because he is fun to fight and because I enjoy the lore and narrative surrounding him.

My only complaint on the voice acting has less to do with acting itself and more to do with the translation. You see, From Software is a Japanese company. That means that Japanese is their native language. Obviously. But there's a bit of translation error. And normally, translation errors do happen in From Software games, but they are usually minor and inconsequential details that don't affect the experience. This game's translation error completely changes Ranni's speech at the end of the game, should you go through with her marriage and allow her to become the Goddess of the Full Moon. In English she says that she plans to "bring forth a chill night, of fear and loneliness, without the need to feel ever again." In Japanese she says that plans to "take the chill night far away from here, as I walk the path of fear and loneliness." The former sounds like she is causing another doomsday. The latter sounds like she is sacrificing herself for the betterment of humanity. This is not the fault of Ranni's voice actress, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, but is a little "whoopsies" in the translation. Side note, I really love the sound of Ranni's voice. She could read a phone book out loud and make it sound interesting.

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Overall, Elden Ring is a great jumping on point for anyone new to the Souls Borne series. Is it perfect? No. I still wish that side quests were easier to keep track of, and the game is a bit too similar to Dark Souls aesthetically for my liking. But it's by far the most beginner friendly game in the franchise. And I'm thankful that this game showed me how fun Souls Borne games could be. If you have heard of From Software's work but were scared off by their infamous difficulty, this game, while not being easy per se, is far more accessible than its predecessors. It's definitely one of the better "open world" games out there. I give Elden Ring five stars out of five.

Elden Ring is the property of Bandai Namco and From Software. None of the screenshots featured here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie was pretty neat. A very robotic review.

So when I reviewed the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection bundle, I said I wanted to wait until I watched the movie before reviewing that. Well, I watched it. And I want to talk about it, because as the title of this post implies, it was pretty neat. This post exists primarily as a sequel of sorts to the Core Collection review. As such, I won't cover the lore of the franchise as extensively here as I did there. And Five Nights at Freddy's is a horror franchise that was built on a foundation of deep lore. So if you want more information on the games that this movie is based on, go read that post instead.

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Here's a very simplified recap of the series for those who need a quick refresher. Five Nights at Freddy's, often called FN@F for short, is a horror game franchise created entirely by one guy named Scott Cawthon. Despite working on budget consisting of shoe strings and paper clips, Scott's quirky little horror series exploded seemingly overnight in terms of popularity, and he become a prominent figure in the world of independent video game developers. Basically, the series revolves around a Chuck E Cheese's style pizzeria that is home to a crew of haunted animatronic performers. A movie based on the games was announced all the way back in 2015 as part of a collaboration between Scott and horror movie studio Blumhouse, but the script went through multiple rewrites before Scott and director Emma Tammi settled on a script they actually liked some time in 2021. The movie would finally release on October 26th of 2023.

Our story follows the life of Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck security guard trying his best to provide for his younger sister Abby (played by Piper Rubio) and solve the mysterious disappearance of his brother Garrett. Following an incident where he violently attacked a man that he mistook for a child predator, Mike is fired from his old job. With his Aunt Jane (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) trying to take custody of Abby away, Mike is desperate to prove he can be a functional member of society and actually hold a job. So he takes the next job that becomes available to him regardless of how sketchy it sounds. Which means he gets a job working the night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, the aforementioned Chuck E Cheese's style restaurant. On top of this, Mike's dreams when he sleeps become increasingly weird. Granted, this is deliberate on Mike's part. He is purposely using lucid dream theory (which is a real thing, by the way) to recreate the past and figure out what happened to Garrett. Though, considering this is a Five Nights at Freddy's story, anyone with even a surface level understanding of the lore can guess what happened to him long before the truth is revealed. But most importantly, the animatronic performers start moving by themselves, without any external assistance.

Oh, and Vanessa is here too. Vanessa (played by Elizabeth Lail) is a mysterious police officer that knows an uncomfortable amount of the Pizzeria's history. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the main reason Vanessa is here is to explain the lore to newcomers. She tells Mike about the Missing Children Incident, in which at least five kids died inside the Pizzeria while Fazbear Entertainment (the Pizzeria's parent company) covered up said deaths and hid them from the public. She reveals the true nature of the animatronics, which are haunted by the ghosts of the dead kids. She tells him about the Spring Lock suits, which are failed prototypes for robot-costume hybrids that can either be worn like a suit or controlled remotely. She even name drops William Afton, the big bad final boss villain of the whole franchise. Literally every bad thing that happens in FN@F can be traced back to William Afton. Which is why the reveal of what happened to Garrett is not surprising in the slightest for people familiar with the lore.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

But now I want to tell you about the best thing in the whole movie, the animatronics themselves. Every monster here is a real animatronic built and operated by the lovely people from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. While they did use human actors for some scenes that were too complex for normal animatronics, the costuming is so good that I genuinely can't tell the difference. All four of the main monsters look like they stepped right out of the games. Most impressive is Foxy the Pirate Fox. He has by far the most complex design due to his exposed robotic innards, and the Foxy animatronic was so intricate that they needed no less than seven people working together just to make it move around (one for the face, one for the neck, one for each arm, one for each leg, and one to make the whole rig lean forward or backward as needed). Honestly, even if you don't care about the lore or the franchise as a whole, the movie is worth watching just for the animatronics. They are a true spectacle to behold. I do wish they gave the animatronics the pitch-black eyes with the pin-prick white pupils instead of the red eyes they used, since it would look both scarier and more lore accurate, but that is a minor nitpick.

The second best thing about this movie is that it is a real love letter not just to the games, but the fans of said games. There are a lot of references and inside jokes that only make sense to people familiar with the series. And there's some really deep cut references here. Just to give a few examples, there's a scene where Aunt Jane and her gang visit a diner called Sparky's. Sparky was the name of a unused animatronic that was rumored to haunt certain copies of the first game. Scott had to clarify that Sparky wasn't real and that the whole thing was a urban myth that spiraled out of control. Another example, when Mike finds the dead bodies of said gang in the backstage, they've been shoved into costumes based on various monsters from the sequel games and even the spin-off lore novels, such as Shadow Freddy, Eleanora the Doll and Fetch the Dog. But I want to draw attention to two of my favorite references. During the end credits, the movie plays an electropop song simply called The Five Nights at Freddy's Song. This song was a fan-made project made by a band called The Living Tombstone. Evidently, Scott heard the song and loved it so much he decided to make it the official theme song of the whole franchise (with Living Tombstone's permission, of course). And seeing fan-made stuff get a seal of approval from the original creator is always going to be awesome.

The other references I want to talk about extensively happen in that same diner scene described earlier. While coming up with a plan to ruin Mike's life, Aunt Jane is pestered by an overly eager waiter played by Matthew "Mat Pat" Patrick. Mat Pat was the main host of a YouTube channel called Game Theory, which was a web show devoted to solving the biggest mysteries in video game history. Mat Pat has made dozens of videos trying to solve the lore of this series, and has become synonymous with the franchise as a whole. And his character somehow manages to find a way to sneak in the phrase "That's just a Theory!" in casual conversation, a catchphrase that Mat Pat says at least once per video. There's another scene where Abby is riding in a taxi with Golden Freddy, and the taxi driver is played by Cory "CoryxKenshin" Williams, who made humorous play throughs for all the FN@F games. Both Mat Pat and CoryxKenshin are commonly cited as major reasons the franchise got as popular as it did, since these two individuals provided the first game with a lot of Internet publicity. Is the average viewer going to understand who these people are or why they are a big deal? No. Not in the slightest. But again, for people who are involved in the online fan community for this series, these cameos and inside jokes are a pleasant surprise.

Image from imdb.com

The third best thing about the movie is the main villain, William Afton. Spoilers abound for this section. William Afton is played by Matthew Lillard (best known for being the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Do). Afton is first introduced as Steve Raglan, a career consular that not-so-subtly pushes Mike to take the job at the Pizzeria. The reveal that Steve was actually Afton the whole time would have been shocking, had it not been for the fact that Blumhouse spoiled their own twist with the casting. They didn't even bother to pretend that Lillard wasn't playing William Afton. Which means that anyone who knows the lore or paid attention to the casting can guess that the job consular is probably evil. This isn't a bad thing per se, because once William Afton reveals his true nature, he puts on a delightfully hammy performance as a villain. Lillard was clearly having fun being the "bad guy" for once. And honestly, the most quotable parts of the movie come from William Afton. Seriously. Afton yelling things like "SYMMETRY, MY FRIEND!" and "YOU ROTTEN LITTLE BEASTS!" is stuck in my head like an ear worm. And unlike the other characters, William's Spring Trap persona isn't an animatronic. That's a proper costume meant to be worn by a human actor. And apparently, Lillard couldn't see out of the Spring Trap mask, so for all of the scenes where he wore the mask, he was quite literally acting blind. Which I got to imagine must've been an awkward experience, but it was worth it, since William Afton's portrayal here is a major highlight of the movie.

If I had to say anything negative about the movie, I didn't really find the movie that scary. Granted, I'm a long time FN@F fan and I think I've become desensitized to all of Scott's tricks and jump scares. I've mostly stuck around for the lore and monster designs. But a common saying you'll hear about the games is that Five Nights at Freddy's is a "baby's first" horror game. And to put things bluntly, this movie is a "baby's first" horror movie. The violence here is surprisingly tame, especially when compared to other horror movies. The animatronics almost never kill anyone on screen, because the camera conveniently looks away right before the killing blow lands. Or we see only the aftermath of said kills. Don't get me wrong, this movie can be creepy and atmospheric. That's another thing the movie does well. The vibes of the Pizzeria itself are perfect. The issue is that the movie feels like it's holding itself back. Like it has the potential to get super gory and gross but it's really trying not to lose that PG-13 rating so it tones itself down enough to be technically family friendly. Like the goriest thing in the movie is when one of Aunt Jane's gangsters gets the upper half of her body bit off by Freddy, but the bite and remains are framed in shadow to not show any of the grisly details. So the lack of violence leaves me conflicted.  On one hand, I could probably show this movie to my parents and have them not think I'm a masochistic freak for liking something spooky and weird. On the other hand, if you come looking for a thrill, you'll probably not find it here. It's a fairly "safe" movie, all things considered.

I think the biggest divide on your enjoyment of the movie is your view of the table-fort scene. For context, about halfway through the movie, Abby discovers that she can communicate with the ghosts haunting the animatronics through drawings, and being a 10 year old girl, she uses this newfound power to befriend the animatronics and play games with them. This culminates in her roping in Mike and Vanessa into helping the animatronics build a "fortress" out of tables and party supplies. Depending on your perspective, this is either cute and wholesome or cheesy and lame. I'm of the former opinion, myself. Why, you ask? The animatronics are haunted by the ghosts of children. One of the "rules" the ghosts follow is that will not under any circumstances bring deliberate harm to living children. The only reason the animatronics are hostile in the first place is because they hate all adults on principal, and with the only exceptions being the fourth game and the tenth game, every game has you playing as a "grown-up" employee of Fazbear Entertainment. And even then, there's a lore explanation why the Nightmares from FN@F 4 and the Glam Rocks from FN@F: Security Breach are suddenly attacking a child. The former are the physical manifestation of a coma victim's dying dreams (and thus aren't "real"), the latter are being hacked and controlled by a virus. So the ghost kids using their new mechanical bodies to act like kids is lore accurate.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

So let's answer the biggest question. Is this a good jumping on point for people who are new to Five Nights at Freddy's? Not really, no. This movie carries itself with a "by the fans, for the fans" mentality. It's goal isn't to convince newcomers to invest themselves in the rest of the series, but more so to give long time fans (like me) the cinematic experience they've been waiting literal years for. It does attempt to be newcomer friendly, with things like Vanessa explaining the lore and trying to have a somewhat straightforward narrative compared to the deliberately vague "figure it out yourself!" plot of the games. But there's that signature brand of Scott Cawthon weirdness, like how the drawings work or how the ghost kids can interact/harm Mike directly in his dreams Freddy Krueger style. And indeed, looking at other people's reviews of the FN@F movie, people who are already fans tend to rate the movie more highly than people jumping in for the first time. So I'll give two different ratings, just this once. It's an easy four stars out of five for people who already like Five Nights at Freddy's, but is probably closer to a 3 stars out of five for people who aren't already fans of it. There's enough effort and production quality to prevent the movie from going any lower than that. But again, already being a fan of the series does improve the enjoyment factor.

Five Nights at Freddy's is the property of Scott Cawthon, Steel Wool Studios, Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. None of the images shown here belong to me. Please support the official release.

Devil May Cry 5 is the most bonkers game I've ever played. A very stylish review.

 So here's a funny story. Once upon a time, while browsing the strange and terrifying depths of the Internet, I found a song. A really good power metal song that's almost 10 minutes long. A song so good that still to this day, I listen to it while working on this very blog. Heck, by the time you read this post I have probably listened to this song an additional ten billion times. This song was called Bury the Light, and I wanted to know the story behind the song, because it didn't sound like something that you would stumble across on the radio. After a bit of Googling, I learned that this song was the official theme song of the main antagonist of a game called Devil May Cry 5. Which naturally lead me down a rabbit hole of wacky wahoo pizza man hijinks. And now I'm here to tell you about this game because it is absolutely insane in the best way possible. Quick content warning. Devil May Cry 5 is rated M for Mature and is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Because of violence. And profanity. And an uncensored Michael Jackson dance. All of this is to say that reader discretion is advised.

Image from Wikipedia.org

So what is Devil May Cry 5? It is the fifth game in Capcom's Devil May Cry series. Obviously. But there's a funny reason why this franchise exists. Back in 2004, Capcom was brainstorming ideas for a new Resident Evil game. So their dev team made four game demos, one of which would become Resident Evil 4. But Capcom didn't want to waste the other three demos, so they filed off the "resident evil demo" label and repurposed those demos for different games entirely. This was how the first Devil May Cry was made. Though it is weird that the demo that became Devil May Cry was even considered to be a template for a Resident Evil game, considering that RE is a horror franchise and Devil May Cry is a bombastic, over the top action series. Then again, Hideki Kamiya was the main creative director behind the demo and all subsequent games in the series, and that man is notorious for his love of larger than life action scenes. And we all love him for it, because no matter what is trendy or popular in the video game industry, Kamiya will ignore it and just do his own thing. 

Released in 2019, Devil May Cry 5 is the newest game in the franchise and makes frequent reference to the events of previous games. While this does mean that a newcomer jumping in for the first time will lose some context, the game is kind enough to come with a 30 minute mini-movie that quickly recaps the events of the series to get you up to speed. But I'm going to do my own recap, speaking as someone who has never played a single game prior to 5. So basically, Devil May Cry follows the adventures of a boastful demon hunter named Dante, who alongside his friends Lady, Trish and Nero, runs a company called Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry is a demon hunting company, because demon attacks are so common in this universe that demon hunting is a profitable business. Think of Devil May Cry as the Ghost Busters, but instead of fighting ghosts, they fight demons. Dante is also the son of this demon dude called Sparda the Black Knight. Sparda was a demon who decided that being evil was cringe, actually, so he betrayed all the other demons and saved the world. He then fell in love with a human woman named Eva and had two kids, one of which was Dante. Because of his demonic heritage, Dante is leaps and bounds more powerful than a normal human. He has super strength, super speed, teleporting, rapid healing and the ability to master any weapon with only a few seconds of practice. Also, Nero is Dante's nephew and has almost the exact same powers.

In addition to demon hunting, the Devil May Cry crew have to keep an eye out for Vergil, who is Dante's "evil" twin brother. Vergil was the second child of Sparda and naturally has the same powers and Dante and Nero, but became obsessed with power following the death of his mother, Eva. The descendants of Sparda are the guys you play as in the all the games. And as hinted at in the opening section of this review, Dante himself is a very silly guy. He spouts cheesy one liners and taunts in every other fight, he uses weapons that don't make any sense but look REALLY COOL, and he feels the need to show off with everything he does. Dante believes that it isn't enough to *just* beat the bad guys. He turns every fight into a theatrical performance, just to add further humiliation to his enemies. And Nero is following very closely in his uncle's footsteps, since he is also a bit of a show-off himself. Not as much as Dante, but still.

This game's story begins with the crew fighting a mysterious new demon king called Urizen, who has stolen Nero's right arm. As you do. Urizen immediately wipes the floor with everyone, including Dante and Nero. All without even standing up from his throne. And this isn't even a cinematic. The tutorial ends with a boss fight against Urizen that you are supposed to lose. Though you do get a funny joke ending if you manage to beat him earlier than intended. But anyway, following the advice of a mysterious poet named V (yes, the character's name is literally just the letter "V"), Dante stalls for time while the rest of the crew escape. One month later, and local gunsmith Nico builds Nero a prosthetic arm called the Devil Breaker. Lady and Trish have gone MIA in the meantime. So now it's up to Nero, Nico and V to save everyone else from Urizen's clutches.

Image from trueachievements.com

So let's talk gameplay really fast because SWEET MOTHER OF NEPTUNE IS THE COMBAT IN Devil May Cry 5 AMAZING. This game has three (four if you are playing the Special Edition) playable characters. But generally speaking, the main challenge of a Devil May Cry game doesn't come from the enemies and bosses, though they can pose a threat on higher difficulty settings. But the main challenge is getting a good rank. At the end of every combat encounter you are ranked on how stylish you were in battle. This does not equal to how fast you were or how much damage you did with a single move, but it equals to variety. Sure, you can beat the whole game using the same basic three-hit sword swing combo over and over, but you won't get a good rank from doing so. You have to mix and match different weapons and combos together to take down those pesky demons IN STYLE. And getting better ranks gives you more Red Orbs, the main currency of the game, which can be used to buy upgrades for the crew. And each character has an extensive move set that once mastered, let's you do some incredibly cool stunts. So let's go over each character.

Nero is unlocked right from the start. He is the guy you play as in the tutorial, and he is by far the simplest character in the game. Which isn't saying a lot, since even Nero has a complex toolkit that allows a skilled player to do some wild stuff once you learn how he works. He always has a sword called the Red Queen and a revolver called the Blue Rose. The Blue Rose has infinite ammo, so feel free to blast enemies as much as you want. But holding the button down makes Nero load up explosive bullets, which deal more damage and can stun enemies. The Red Queen is a reliable melee weapon that Nero swings around with reckless abandon. But the Red Queen isn't a normal sword. It has a motorcycle engine attached, and Nero can literally Rev Up his sword to add blazing fire to his combos. And finally, Nero has Devil Breakers, prosthetic arms that grant additional abilities. These can range from a electric pulses, whip attacks and homing rockets, among others. My favorite Devil Breaker is called the Punchline. It's a fist-shaped rocket that Nero can ride on like a skateboard. He can even do tricks on it that improve his rank! But Devil Breakers aren't exactly durable, and they will break if Nero gets hit while using one. Or you can manually choose to make your Devil Breaker self-destruct, which doubles as a counter attack. The only thing I don't like about Nero's kit is that the only way to switch Devil Breakers is to destroy the one you got active. But other than that, he's a fun character who serves as a good introduction to the game's overall vibe.

V is the second character unlocked and he is a little bit weird. V never attacks anything himself. Instead, he summons two shadow monsters named Griffon and Shadow that do all the fighting for him. The only time V actually hits anything himself is during his finishing move. You see, V's summons can't actually destroy demons, they can only weaken demons. It's up to V to actually finish them off. He can also teleport to weakened enemies to make getting closer easier. V has the weirdest fighting style and he is very much a "gimmick" character. Despite this, I personally found it easier to get good ranks with V than with Nero. Mostly because V's summons getting hit does not deal damage to V himself. And taking damage not only brings you closer to failure, but it reduces your rank. And when V is chilling on the other side of a room while his summons do all the work, the result is easy A and S ranks on missions. He gets the fewest amount of levels where you can actually play as him, unfortunately. Of the game's 20 main missions, V is playable in only 8 of them. But on a more positive note, he looks like a skinny, tatted up version of Kylo Ren from Star Wars. So he gets bonus points just for that.

Next up is Dante, who is the final character unlocked in the main game and he is by far the most complex. Dante can carry up to eight weapons with him at any time (four guns and four melee weapons), and he can switch between those weapons at any time. On top of that, Dante has four Styles that he can switch between that radically alters his abilities. Trickster Style gives Dante better mobility and speed. Sword Master Style gives him better melee attacks. Gunslinger Style gives him better long range attacks. And Royal Guard Style let's Dante block any attack. Yes. Any attack, no matter how strong, can be blocked with a well timed Royal Guard. And every successful Royal Guard block charges up a special punch called the Royal Release, and this is one of the strongest attacks in the game. The actual weapons tend to be wacky and ridiculous. Like one of Dante's weapons, the Cavaliere, is literally a motorcycle that can transform into a pair of giant buzz saws. Let me repeat that. Dante can beat the bad guys over the head with a MOTORCYCLE THAT TRANSFORMS INTO BUZZ SAWS. Another weapon, Dr. Faust, is a magic cowboy hat that turns Red Orbs into bullets. It's very expensive to use, but you eventually get so many Red Orbs you kind of stop caring about the money. But I think my favorite weapon is King Cerberus, a bo staff/nun chucks hybrid weapon that can be used to control ice, fire, and lightning. Of course, playing Dante effectively requires you to learn the ins and outs of every tool at his disposal. While he is my favorite to play as, I understand why he takes so long to unlock in the main story.  

And finally we have Vergil, who is only playable in the Special Edition or if you buy a 5 dollar DLC pack for the base game. Vergil is basically Dante on steroids. He only has three weapons, his Yamato sword, a pair of gauntlets and boots for hand-to-hand combat collectively called Beowulf, and a second sword made of magic called Mirage Edge. Instead of having guns like Dante, Vergil just creates mini Mirage Edges that he psychically launches at far away targets. He can also perform super moves with deliciously edgy names like "Judgement Cut End" and "Hell On Earth" to clear out entire rooms of enemies. Playing as Vergil is less like playing a reasonably balanced action game character and is more like if you played the game as the final boss. And well, spoiler alert, but that's exactly what Vergil is. He's the final boss, and if you unlock him you have all the crazy, overpowered final boss tricks at your disposal. Also, Vergil's theme song is the aforementioned Bury the Light, so without Vergil having an amazing theme song I wouldn't know this franchise even existed. Thanks, Vergil.

Image from trueachivements.com

All playable characters eventually unlock a transformation ability called Devil Trigger. While transformed, every character does more damage to enemies, takes less damage from enemy attacks, and any damage they do take will automatically heal over time. The only exception to this rule is V, who simply summons a third shadow monster called Nightmare instead of transforming. You can only use Devil Trigger when the Trigger Gauge is full, and it fills up with every successful attack. Again, the only exception to this rule is V, because he can literally read poetry books to speed up the charge of his Trigger Gauge in addition to charging it the normal way. Dante has a unique variant of the Devil Trigger called Sin Devil Trigger, where he can choose to convert his Trigger Gauge into energy for an even stronger transformation that completely overhauls his move set. Vergil's Devil Trigger let's him create copies of himself that mimic his movements with a slight delay, so with some planning, you can set up a Devil Trigger doppelganger and launch enemies between the real Vergil and his copy like the world's most dangerous game of Ping Pong. One last thing about all the characters. For the handful of levels where multiple characters are available, if you are playing online, you can see in the background other players playing as whoever you didn't select fighting through their own version of that level. It's not quite a co-op feature, since you can't interact with those other players directly. But it is a nice attention to detail since the these characters are supposed to be heading towards the same goal. It ties the gameplay in with the story, and that's neat.

Devil May Cry 5 is a fairly linear game. Almost all of its 20 missions are straight and narrow paths with rooms full of enemies standing between you and the goal, with only occasional branching paths sprinkled in here and there. There are Secret missions, which are bonus levels found by lining the camera up with spooky sigils hidden in each main mission. And almost every level ends with a boss battle. There's barely any exploration, but that doesn't really matter because the game's combat is so polished that having a straight shot to every fight with the occasional secret mission is not that big a deal. But if you are looking for something with exploration or puzzles, well... I don't know what to tell you. The game is laser focused on having the best dang combat in any video game ever, and in that regards, it succeeds. I know it's an overdone cliché to compare something to Dark Souls but I will say this. Devil May Cry is the polar opposite of Dark Souls, at least in terms of combat philosophy. Dark Souls is precise, weighty and cautious. Devil May Cry is bombastic, over the top and stylish. So if you play a lot of Souls games (like I do), you do have to unlearn that series' lessons to get the most out of Devil May Cry's combat. Normally I wouldn't make such a comparison, but I played this game while doing a playthrough of Dark Souls III at the same time, and bouncing between two games with almost exact opposite philosophies is certainly an experience. One thing I will say about DMC 5 is that the way lock-on works is weird. Instead of toggling it on, you have to press and hold a button to remain locked on your intended target. And switching targets while locked on something requires you to press down on the center of the right analog stick without letting go of the aforementioned "lock on" button. It feels bizarre at first because it doesn't work at all like a "modern" lock-on. But you get used to it after a while.

On the subject of difficulty, Devil May Cry 5 is surprisingly beginner friendly. You start off with two difficulty options, Human Mode and Devil Hunter Mode. Human being the equivalent of easy, while Devil Hunter is intended for intermediate players. Beating the game once unlocks a third difficulty option that's a little bit harder than the previous options, called Son of Sparda mode. Beat that mode and you unlock a fourth difficulty option called Dante Must Die mode, which is the hardest challenge the game has outside of "gimmick" difficulty settings. I actually like that the harder difficulties are locked off by beating the game, because by the time the player has unlocked them, they should be competent enough to actually handle those difficulty settings. The punishment for getting defeated is also surprisingly tame. Or maybe it's standard practice and I'm just used to Souls games harshly punishing you for failure. Anyway, Whenever your character's health hits zero, you can choose to either restart the level, or spend some of your Red Orbs on a revive to keep on fighting. Doing so will let you continue the fight right where you left off, but it will hurt your rank if you do so. There's also an auto assist option in the settings that simplifies the move sets and automates certain abilities, such as changing Dante's Styles automatically. The assist option is basically training wheels. Do you need it to learn the combat? No. Does it make the game easier? Yes. But turning auto assist on hurts your rank, so sooner or later those training wheels are going to have to come off. Almost every level ends with a boss fight, and the bosses are generally pretty tough. I had to restart/revive at least once per boss. Also unlocked upon beating the game is a new game mode called Bloody Palace. Bloody Palace is a gauntlet where you fight every enemy and boss in the game, with no chance to heal between fights. The idea is that it's like a survival mode, meant to test your endurance and skill. I haven't messed around with it too much. But I have seen players who are significantly better at the game than I am do some absolutely absurd things in the Bloody Palace. It's probably the best, spoiler-free way to see what end-game combat is like. 

Image from trueachievements.com

Okay, enough gameplay. How's the story? Well... I have to make a few confessions. As previously mentioned, I never played a Devil May Cry game before. That said, because of pop culture references and memes, I accidentally spoiled some rather important plot details for myself. Spoiler warning for the remainder of the post. I already knew that Vergil was the final boss, and I already knew that Vergil was Nero's dad (they play it up as a Darth Vader style plot twist). Granted, I didn't know the entire plot. Somehow, playing the game made the memes both make more sense and less sense. The simplest way to describe the plot of Devil May Cry 5 is that it's like an interactive Shonen battle anime. A menacing villain shows up, defeats the heaviest hitters in the series with minimal effort, and forces the younger heroes to step up and finish what their predecessors started. Meanwhile, said veteran hero goes off for a brief solo adventure to get a big enough power boost to fight said villain on even footing and help out the younger hero. The only thing missing is a martial arts tournament that takes up half a season's worth of episodes.

None of this is a bad thing, by the way. There's a charm to the antics of Dante and his friends. And while the plot is simple (by anime standards), the characterization and character interactions more than make up for it. Half the fun of this game comes from things like seeing Dante's next cheesy one liner, or Nero and Nico's constant teasing and banter with each other, or hearing one of V's silky smooth poems. The only real criticism I have of the story, at least from the perspective of someone who is looking at the series from the perspective of a newcomer, is that they don't really do much with Lady and Trish. From what I understand, those two women were super prominent in previous Devil May Cry games, even being playable in DMC 4. But Lady and Trish spend most of this game being mind controlled by Urizen, and once they are free from said mind control, they kind of just spend the rest of the game chilling in Nico's van. The result is that they can, at times, feel like they are glorified cheerleaders.

One thing that took me by surprise was the relationship between V and Urizen. Spoilers, again. But you know how I said that most of this game's plot was spoiled for me by memes? There's barely any memes about V, so he was the character I knew the least about. And as it turns out, V is actually Vergil. Sort of. Vergil used a magic samurai sword called the Yamato to split his soul in half. The "good" half of his soul became V, the "evil" half became Urizen. V hired the Devil May Cry crew to fight Urizen because V wants to recombine with Urizen and become Vergil again. And the revelation that V and Vergil are (technically) the same person was honestly more surprising than the "Vergil is Nero's dad" reveal. Even if that reveal hadn't been spoiled for me, it is so obvious that Nero is related to Vergil that I am left wondering how only Dante put two and two together. Like, Nero wears almost the same colors as Vergil. Urizen used the arm he stole from Nero to (re)make the Yamato, which is Vergil's signature weapon. Nero has all the same powers that Dante and Vergil have, and I'm not so sure about you, but Dante gives me "goofy uncle who never got married" vibes. This is the man whose first reaction to seeing a cowboy hat is to put it on and do a Michael Jackson dance. There is no way that Dante of all people could sire a child.

Also, speaking of Nero, I actually really like him as a character as well. He's cocky and a bit of a punk, but he is somehow the only person in this franchise that can behave like a functional adult. Mild spoilers here, but it's ultimately Nero that convinces the Sons of Sparda to put their differences aside and settle their rivalry in a nonviolent manner. Despite, you know, smacking them both around in a cool boss fight, because this is an action game and beating things up is how you interact with the world of action games. But funnily enough he takes the whole "Urizen stole my arm" thing surprisingly well. Like, he gets more upset at Dante calling him "dead weight" once than he does at the fact that a literal demon king broke into his house and stole his arm. For context of the "dead weight" thing, Dante wasn't trying to insult Nero. He was trying to protect Nero with some well meaning, but perhaps misguided brutal honesty.

Anyway, the game ends with a two part boss battle against the newly reformed Vergil. And speaking as a newcomer to the franchise, the final boss is really cool. I love that age old trope of "the boss is a human sized duelist with similar moves to your own." And Vergil is, as previously stated, like Dante but cranked up to eleven. At least in terms of fighting style and combat prowess. In terms of personality, Vergil is the exact opposite of Dante. While Dante is silly and flamboyant, Vergil is stoic and reserved. And Vergil is just a really cool antagonist in general. His boss fight was also surprisingly difficult. I first played the game on Devil Hunter mode (I am too prideful to play on the lowest possible difficulty setting) and it took me a good 45 minutes to figure out how to beat him. But during the second part of the fight, the player switches over to Nero, who has literally just unlocked his Devil Trigger form. And for this fight only, Nero's Trigger gauge fills automatically. And even though nothing else about the Vergil fight changes in the second round, it's somehow easier with Nero thanks to him being able to effectively spam Devil Trigger transformations for the whole fight. But within the context of the story, this is Nero hitting the newest peak of his power, and him being able to beat Vergil so easily in the gameplay reinforces the idea that Nero is now much stronger than he was at the start of the game. And I think that's really cool.

Image from trueachievements.com

In terms of presentation, DMC 5 is a really pretty game. It has some of the best looking facial animations in any video game that I have played. The game uses the same graphics engine as the Resident Evil games (at least, from Resident Evil 7 onward). And any game using the RE Engine is going to have good looking faces. The main characters look incredibly stylish in general. Which is the whole point of the franchise. Devil May Cry is all about looking cool in everything you do. And the animations on the weapons look cool too. Everything is highly impractical and not realistic in the slightest, but that doesn't matter because the weapons are REALLY COOL. Honestly, that's the whole vibe of the franchise. None of it is practical or realistic, but everything and everyone is REALLY COOL. This also applies to the voice acting and sound effects. The English voices are surprisingly good. You can tell that everyone involved in the voice acting were having the times of their lives with their given roles. And in what might be the biggest and funniest coincidence ever, Dante (Reuben Langdon), Nero (Johnny Yong Bosch) and Vergil (Daniel Southworth) are all voiced by former Power Rangers. And considering that Power Rangers is another franchise built around the "Rule of Cool" it honestly makes sense why actors from there would show up here. After all, Devil May Cry is as close as we're gonna get to R rated Power Rangers. Or maybe Power Rangers is as close a we're gonna get to family friendly Devil May Cry.

Oh, boy. It's time to talk about the music. DMC 5 has an outrageously good soundtrack. I've already mentioned that the entire reason I sought this game out was because Bury the Light was a fantastic song. All four of the main playable characters get a song associated with them. Nero gets Devil Trigger, V gets Crimson Cloud, Dante gets Subhuman and Vergil obviously gets Bury the Light. And a unique feature of the game is that the music is dynamic. The better you do in any given fight, the more instruments join in. Do well enough and the lyrics kick in. And all four of these songs are bangers. The music in general is like a mix of punk rock and heavy metal. There is some playful irony in the fact that the most aggressive and "angry" sounding song is Subhuman, which is Dante's theme, despite Dante being by far the most cheerful and "jolly" of the four main boys. Crimson Cloud is the most "down to Earth" of the songs (at least in comparison), which fits for the calm, manipulative V. Devil Trigger meanwhile is an absolute ear worm that sets the tone for the whole game well. And Bury the Light is just one of the best songs to come from any video game ever. It is the kind of intense power metal anthem that you listen to while working out or doing chores. It makes you feel MOTIVATED. My compliments go to Casey Edwards, the music composer for this game. Also, fun fact about Nero's song! The female vocals in Devil Trigger were performed by Casey Edwards' sister. That's oddly wholesome for a song called "Devil Trigger." There are other songs in the soundtrack, obviously, but these four are the standouts.

Image from trueachievements.com

Overall, Devil May Cry 5 is somehow both a love letter to everything that came before it while also being a relatively good jumping on point for newcomers. It's got cool combat, cool music, cool characters, cool graphics and is just a cool game in general. Do I think it's for everyone? No. It's cheesy and bombastic like a Shonen anime and the controls take a while to get used to. I like the cheese, but that's because I normally play very dark and serious games. DMC 5's over the top shenanigans are a breath of fresh air for me. And now I want to play the other DMC games. And that's the main thing about this game. If you like Devil May Cry, you will like this game. If you like DMC 5, you'll like the rest of the franchise. But if this game doesn't win you over, nothing else will. I give Devil May Cry 5 a grand total of 5 stars out of 5. "Jackpot!"

Devil May Cry 5 is the property of Capcom. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the official release.

Bloodborne, mysterious, macabre, masterpiece. A very bloody review.

So let me ask you a question. Have you ever wanted a high quality action horror video game based on the works of classical horror authors like Bram Stroker and H.P. Lovecraft? One that has you fighting against grotesque monstrosities with weird and unusual weaponry? One with a deliberately vague storyline that is open to multiple meanings and interpretations? Well do I have the game for you! Because today, we are reviewing Bloodborne, an action-horror game that meets that exact description. Bloodborne, for the unaware, is part of From Software's Souls Borne franchise. In fact, that's where the "borne" part of the title comes from. The "souls" part comes from the first two games in the series, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Other games in the series include Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. I have already reviewed Sekiro, and figured I would tackle the rest of the franchise while I'm at it. So let's continue the Souls Borne review series with Bloodborne.

Image found on wikipedia.org

So what is Bloodborne? It is, as previously mentioned, a Gothic Horror action roleplaying game developed by From Software and published by Sony as a Playstation 4 exclusive. It was released in 2015 and received an expansion pack titled The Old Hunters in 2016. The game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, whose prior success with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls led to him being considered a bit of a legend in the video game community at large. A quick content warning before we continue. Bloodborne is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and thus it is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Additionally, the game can potentially delving into some disturbing subject matter. So reader discretion is advised. Though to be fair, the game is called BLOOD borne. There's going to be blood in a game called BLOOD borne. In fact, almost half of all the collectibles in this game have the word "blood" in their name. Blood Vials, Blood Echoes, Blood Stone Shards, Cold Blood Dew, Pungent Blood Cocktails, and Beast Blood Pellets are just a few examples of all the "blood" themed items in this game.

The story of Bloodborne is a little bit strange in how it is told. Like all games in the Souls Borne series, the story is not told through traditional cinematics. It is told through the flavor text of collectible items, through environmental details that you may or may not notice while playing, and through optional conversations with the few friendly characters you can potentially meet. Bloodborne itself is a story that wrapped in heavy symbolism and double meanings. The game is almost a decade old and people are still discussing and debating its lore and meanings. I've seen the game be interpreted as anything from a metaphor for the afterlife, a cautionary tale against the dangers of unrestricted science experiments, to even a tragedy about the struggles of womanhood and childbirth. Which one of these interpretations is correct? The answer is Yes, because Souls Borne games tend to be open ended enough for multiple equally valid interpretations. The only thing that everyone can agree to is that the game's aesthetic and "vibe" is heavily inspired by the likes of Bram Stroker, the man who (among other things) created Count Dracula, and H.P. Lovecraft, the man who (among other things) created Cthulhu. So lots of unspeakable truths lurking in the shadows, lots of ordinary people hiding terrible secrets in plain sight, and as previously mentioned, a whole lot of blood. What's impressive about Bloodborne is that it somehow manages to justify the existence of game mechanics through its lore. Everything, from multiplayer to enemy placement to even the player's ability to retry failed battles has some kind of explanation in the lore for it.

So let's start at the beginning of the game. You play as a customizable, but mute foreigner who has come to the fictional city of Yharnam in order to receive treatment for an unknown disease. Yharnam is basically Victorian Era England, but cranked up to eleven. And this city is famed for its miraculous healing medicine, capable of treating any illness or disease. The medicine was created and distributed by a religious organization known simply as the Healing Church. There is just one problem with the miracle medicine. It's made with blood. Not just normal blood either. But Old Blood. What is the Old Blood, you ask? I can't really say without getting super deep into the lore, but all you need to know is that the Old Blood gets a little funky when you overindulge in it. And it's described as being highly addictive in nature. To quote the description of the Pungent Blood Cocktail; "In Yharnam, they make more blood than alcohol, as the former is more intoxicating."

Your character wakes up in a clinic after receiving a blood transfusion. Step outside and you will find the city of Yharnam in complete and utter chaos. Angry mobs armed with torches and pitchforks patrol the streets, upper class citizens barricade themselves in their homes with warding incense, and werewolves prowl the backstreets and darkened corners of the city. The angry mobs are quick to accuse you of being a werewolf, and any werewolves caught by them get crucified and burnt at the stake, for those classic "paranoid witch hunter" vibes. You are free to explore Yharnam from here. Though in typical From Software fashion, you can run into an outrageously strong werewolf within minutes of the game starting, and while you can defeat it if you are good at the game, you are intended to get killed by it. Upon dying to this werewolf (or any enemy, really), you are teleported into a safe zone called the Hunter's Dream. There you meet Gehrman the First Hunter. Gehrman is an elderly, retired werewolf hunter who bestows upon your character the title of Good Hunter and gives you your first real long-term goal to work on. To quote Gehrman himself, "Just go out and kill a few beasts! Don't think about it too hard. All you need to know is that this is for your own good."

Image from neoseeker.com

From here the Good Hunter is handed a Trick Weapon and a gun. The game starts for real here. So let's talk gameplay really quickly. Bloodborne is first and foremost an action game. Combat is fast, fluid and leaves very little room for error. The Good Hunter can have two different weapons in use, one for each hand. You can perform fast, light attacks with the Right Bumper, or slower but more powerful attacks by pressing the Right Trigger. You can use Left Trigger to parry and deflect enemy attacks so long as you are holding a "defensive" weapon in your left hand. This is just standard From Software controls. Unique to this game are guns and Trick Weapons. Guns are exactly what they sound like. Ballistic firearms that can be used to attack from a safe distance. But more importantly, guns are how you block and parry enemy attacks. Basically, if you shoot an enemy right before their attack hits you, they will be stunned and the Good Hunter can perform a devastating technique known as the Visceral Attack. Visceral Attacks will straight up kill weaker enemies in one go while removing a massive chunk of health from bosses and other Hunters. There are also special weapons called Hunter Tools, which function as this game's version of magic spells. Hunter Tools can shoot homing lasers, replace your dodge roll with a short-range teleport or supercharge your Trick Weapon with arcane energy, among other things. Both guns and Hunter Tools use up a resource called Quicksilver Bullets, which can be collected from any defeated enemy that had a gun or used magic. If you run out of Quicksilver Bullets, both your guns and your Hunter Tools stop working. 

Trick Weapons are a little bit more complicated, but they are easily the most iconic part of the game. By pressing Left Bumper you can transform your Trick Weapon into a different form, which changes the move set, combos and damage type of the weapon. While there are only about 30 collectible weapons total, because every weapon comes with an alternate form, in practice the weapon total is closer to 60. Trick Weapon transformations are effectively this game's equivalent of Dark Souls' stance change system. In that game, you can choose to hold a weapon with either one hand to free up a slot for an extra weapon, or with both hands for stronger attacks. But it is a lot more visually impressive to transform a weapon over just choosing how you want to hold it. And the weapons aren't magic or anything. They designed each weapon so you can see all the moving parts and how they connect to each other. All the grooves and gears and interlocking mechanisms are on display. Some of the transformations are simple. The Saw Cleaver starts as a folded blade with a serrated edge, and all transforming it does is unfold the blade for extra reach but slower swings. Other transformations are incredibly stylish and grandiose. Like the Threaded Cane, which starts as a simple cane, but once transformed it becomes a bladed whip covered in razor-sharp thorns. And you can transform your Trick Weapon mid combo. But everything, from swinging your Trick Weapon to shooting with your gun to dodging, consumes stamina. Stamina regenerates as long as you are not attacking or dodging, and the more stamina you have, the more you can keep doing those actions without pausing.

The Good Hunter can be upgraded using a universal currency called Blood Echoes, which are dropped by all defeated enemies. Blood Echoes can be used to buy items from merchants, or to upgrade your stats (more on those in a moment) and weapons. You drop any and all Blood Echoes on you if you die for any reason, though if you are quick enough you can get back to where you died originally and get your Blood Echoes back upon revival. Again, this is standard From Software fare. But what's unusual is the Blood Gem system. Basically, as you upgrade your Trick Weapons, you open up Gem Slots, which allow you to attach a Blood Gem to your weapon. These gems can do anything from boosting damage to adding additional effects like poisoning foes or giving the Good Hunter gradual health regeneration. The only other game (at least to my knowledge) that features the ability to modify weapons like this is Dark Souls III, which was made after Bloodborne. The last main mechanic that is unique to Bloodborne is the Rally. Whenever you take damage, if you attack the enemy that just hit you fast enough, you can heal and get some of your health back. If you do just right, you can completely negate all the damage you just took. This ability encourages you to keep pressing your advantage and fight as aggressively as possible. The Rally is probably my favorite part of Bloodborne's combat and I wouldn't mind seeing it get brought back in a future From Software game.

Now's let's talk stats, since those are just as important as your weapons. The stats themselves are fairly simple, at least by From Software standards, and they do more or less what you expect them to. Vitality gives you a bigger health bar and Endurance gives you a bigger stamina bar. Strength improves big heavy weapons like the Kirk Hammer and Whirligig Saw, Skill improves small lightweight weapons like the Threaded Cane and the Blades of Mercy. Arcane powers up your Hunter Tools while also increasing the chances of enemies dropping extra items upon defeat. The only "weird" stat is Blood Tinge. Blood Tinge boosts the power of gunshots. This includes your guns and any projectile fired from the Reiterpallach and the Rifle Spear, since these are the only Trick Weapons with a ranged attack. But why is the "make guns better" stat called Blood Tinge? The reason is that technically, from a lore perspective, this stat isn't the "make guns better" stat. It's actually the "make blood in general better" stat. Because Quicksilver Bullets are not normal ammo. According to the their flavor text, they are made with metals pulled directly out of the human body. The Good Hunter even has a neat but mildly disturbing ability where, by pressing "up" on the D-Pad, they can sacrifice a portion of their own health to make a fresh set of Quicksilver Bullets. Personally, there were only three fights in the whole game where I was desperate enough for the extra ammo, but the option is there right from the beginning. And indeed, two late game Trick Weapons called the Bloodletter and the Chikage coat themselves in crystalized blood when transformed. These weapons are intended for Strength-Blood Tinge hybrid builds and Skill-Blood Tinge hybrid builds respectively.

Oh, right, builds. A term you'll hear not just in Souls Borne games, but any video game that has adjustable statistics. The term is so widely used by gamers that most won't even bother explaining what it means. But I know some people that don't even play video games that read this blog, so for them, I'll offer a brief explanation. A build is a combination of stats, weapons and items that enforce a specific fighting style in your character. A Good Hunter with high Strength and Vitality is going to fight differently from a Good Hunter with high Skill and Arcane, for example. As previously mentioned, you can spend Blood Echoes to upgrade your stats. Each upgrade gets gradually more expensive. It might start with a few hundred Blood Echoes per upgrade, but the price can easily reach into the thousands or even millions by the end of the game. So while you can max out each stat and make a Good Hunter that's good at everything, such a goal is unrealistic and it is more cost efficient to specialize in one or two stats. Each Trick Weapon scales off of at least one stat, though the rarer weapons require investing in multiple stats to get any real mileage out of them. Ludwig's Holy Blade, for example, demands that you have an almost perfect split between Strength and Skill to use. Some weapons need only one stat to work with, like the Rakuyo, which needs only Skill. The advantage of the "pure" stat based weapons is that you don't need to invest as many Blood Echoes into your stats for them to work, making them a cheaper investment overall.

Image from rpgfan.com

Bloodborne also has multiplayer, though I have admittedly not played around with it that much. I prefer to play these kinds of games solo. But anyway, you can either summon a friend for Jolly Cooperation or invade another player's world (aka their version of the game) and pick a fight with them. For Player versus Player fights, the game always pairs you up with a player with similar Blood level to yours. Blood Level is a number that shows, at a glance, how powerful your character is. 4 is the lowest, 544 is the highest. Every time you upgrade a stat, your Blood Level increases by one. Several years ago, a bunch of nerds on the Internet decided on the "meta" level, which is 120. This Blood Level was your best bet for getting good fights with other players, since most people would be nearing the end of the game while at this Blood Level. By that point, players would have access to (almost) every Trick Weapon, gun type, Hunter Tool and have the stats needed to use most of these items. Ergo, Blood Level 120 is the most "fair" level for player vs player combat. But more importantly are messages and co-op summons. Basically, you can summon friendly players into your world to help out against a boss you are haven't defeated yet. While it is true that summoning a friend or two will give all bosses extra health, as long as your friends are competent players, every fight in the game will be easier overall. The way you actually summon other players into your world is a little bit esoteric, but this is a problem with every Souls Borne. Basically, if you want to be summoned to help a rookie out with a boss, you need to make a summon sign. You then need to wait patiently for another player to find your summon sign in their version of the game, and they need to click on it. And if you want to do the summoning yourself, then you will burn through a secondary currency called Insight for every person you summon. If have zero Insight, then you can't summon at all, even if you found another player's summon sign. I'll discuss Insight in more detail later, because it is a fascinating concept.

And finally, messages. You can leave messages on the floor for other players to read. You cannot type anything out yourself, however. You have mix and match pre-written phrases to get your meaning across. While these messages can be helpful hints like "Hidden Door Ahead" or "Large Beast, therefore, Try Fire" the community naturally uses this system for dumb jokes. The result is that in addition to helpful messages, you also get messages like "Lover Ahead" in front of literally any female character in the game or "Try Jumping" in front of bottomless pits. Honestly, the messages are my favorite part of Souls Borne multiplayer, because it's a total coin flip. Either a good Samaritan gives you genuinely good advice that helps you through a tough level or boss, or a goofball haves a laugh at your expense. And if a Souls Borne game doesn't have people making messages that are equal parts helpful, funny and stupid, is it really a Souls Borne?

There's also Attire, collectible outfits that change the look of the Good Hunter. While they do provide defense bonuses against certain kinds of attacks, the damage mitigation is low enough to not be worth worrying over. The only time that Attire really matters is if you are going through a level or fighting a boss that causes status effects, like poison or Frenzy. Wearing Attire that resists that status effect means you can stand in its presence longer before taking damage. This is especially important for Frenzy, because if Frenzy activates you lose 75% of your maximum health. Which in practice means that getting Frenzied is an instant kill, because if you get hit while Frenzied, you kind of just die. And obviously, if you have less than 75% of your maximum health, Frenzy will kill you by itself. Thankfully there's only one real enemy that inflicts Frenzy on you, and said enemy can only be found in three places in the game. But anyway, as long as you are not dealing with something poisonous or something that can Frenzy you, you are free to wear whatever Attire set you want. Go full Fashion Souls if you desire.

The last gameplay thing I want to discuss is how healing items work. So normally, in Souls Borne games you have three healing potions that refill automatically when resting at a checkpoint, with the ability to unlock more as the campaign progresses. What the potion is called varies from game to game, but the general idea stays the same. These refilling but sparse potions encourage you to wait until the last possible moment to heal, out of fear of wasting a heal before reaching the next boss. But in this game, you heal with Blood Vials. You can carry up to 20 Blood Vials on you, though once used they are gone forever. Most enemies drop Blood Vials in addition to Blood Echoes upon death, so can get replacements relatively easily. The downside is that if you run out of Blood Vials while fighting a boss and then die to said boss, instead of being able to challenge the boss again immediately you have to go back to a previously cleared area and kill all the enemies there in order to restock on Blood Vials. Which also has the coincidental effect of giving you more Blood Echoes, which can then be used to upgrade your character to make the next boss fight attempt more manageable. While I like both styles of healing, there were times in my Dark Souls III playthrough (which I started right after finishing Bloodborne) where I wished I had Blood Vials again. Because the levels in that game are so long (at least the ones I've seen so far) that I feel like it's easier to run out of healing items before you even reach the next boss. With Bloodborne, the generous nature of Blood Vials combined with the Rally made it very easy to get to each boss with plenty of health remaining.

Okay, let's talk about the lore. Apologies in advanced if I get any information wrong. From Software games are infamous for cryptic and mysterious stories. But anyway, you remember that Insight stuff I mentioned in the multiplayer section of the review? Well, Insight does a lot more than just allowing for Jolly Cooperation. It is a measure of how much knowledge about Yharnam that the Good Hunter has collected. It goes up every time you see a boss for the first time, every time you talk to a friendly character, every time you read a lore note. But in addition to representing knowledge, it also represents madness and insanity. The more Insight you have, the weirder and more bizarre the game becomes. Certain enemies start using strange magic spells that they don't use normally. You start hearing the sound of a baby crying faintly in the background. And if it gets high enough, you will start seeing gigantic, horrifying monsters known as the Great Ones who were previously invisible. One of the many themes of Bloodborne is the idea that knowledge comes with a price. As you learn more about Yharnam, you learn that is not just a simple werewolf infestation plaguing the city. The real problem is somehow even worse. Mild spoiler warning here.

Image from rpgfan.com

So several years before the start of the game, a bunch of nerdy scholars from the College of Byrgenwerth (Yharnam's most prestigious academy) made a discovery. Gods were real. Sort of. They found the Great Ones, alien creatures who were so powerful and so wise that the only word that could accurately describe them is "godly." The scholars of Byrgenwerth became obsessed with these Great Ones, and they aspired to become as powerful as these cosmic beings. And when they learned that a pregnant Great One named Kos (or some say Kosm) was sighted at a fishing hamlet, the scholars launched an expedition to study her. There was just one problem. Kos was dead. It's unclear if Kos was already dead by the time the scholars got there of if the scholars murdered her as part of a cruel experiment. Either way, the scholars desecrated her corpse and extracted her umbilical cord. And then they slaughtered the entire hamlet to keep the knowledge of their sins secret. As the scholars learned more about Great One biology, they more they realized that the human body cannot physically handle the power or wisdom that Great Ones have at their disposal. So they split off into several smaller factions, each with the same goal of trying to bring humanity up to the Great One's level. They just did it in very different and very horrifying ways.

Laurence the First Vicar founded the Healing Church and used the Old Blood, which is the blood of Kos's offspring, to create miracle medicine. Unfortunately, Laurence and his followers became the first werewolves due to their proximity to the Old Blood. Micolash the Nightmare Host created a secret society called the School of Mensis that tried to make their own artificial Great Ones by performing occult rituals and human sacrifices. When the experiments failed, Micolash resorted to surgically attaching stolen eyes to the inside of his body, because natural Great Ones have extra eyes and Micolash figured that the extra eyes was the secret to their power. Queen Annalise stole a portion of the Old Blood for herself, and used it to turn her entire family into immortal vampires called Vile Bloods. But despite her vampiric transformation, she was content to stay in her castle while the rest of Yharnam burned around her. And Headmaster Wellam was disgusted and outraged by the depravity of his peers and retreated back to Byrgenwerth, turning the college into a makeshift fortress. But everyone who used the Old Blood in any capacity is doomed to one day become a werewolf. Heck, even the Good Hunter is doomed to this fate. The blood transfusion they received at the start of the game was done with Old Blood. And this is the canon explanation for why the Good Hunter always comes back after dying. The Old Blood coursing your veins will not let you stay dead, for a Hunter must Hunt, even in death. But the funny/tragic thing about the lore is, despite every faction trying to become more like the Great Ones, the Great Ones themselves barely acknowledge humanity in any capacity. The majority of them are indifferent to humanity's plight. Because one of the biggest inspirations for Bloodborne was H.P. Lovecraft, who popularized the idea of villainous creatures that are dangerous not out of deliberate malice, but cold indifference. Lovecraftian monsters view humanity the same way humans view wild animals, both for better and for worse. Unlike Lovecraft's monsters, the unknowable horrors in Bloodborne can be wounded or even killed by a sufficiently well-equipped Good Hunter. In other words, you can go from hunting simple werewolves to hunting alien gods. 

In case it wasn't obvious, Bloodborne is one of the darkest and most depressing stories in all of fiction. No one is having a good time in Yharnam. This setting is equals fascinating to learn about and disturbing to live in. If you have ever heard of the term "Grimdark" Yharnam is a peak example of Grimdark in action. Grimdark, for the unaware, is a term in storytelling and media analysis that describes a cynical setting with no hope, a setting that is meant to serve as some kind of cautionary tale. Usually with the lesson being "Don't let real life society turn out as bad as this fictional society." And the worst/best part of it is, there is very little the Good Hunter can do to help the people of Yharnam. By the time the game starts, the atrocities committed by the Healing Church, the Vile Bloods and the School of Mensis have already caused so much damage that Yharnam is doomed to fall no matter what. In fact, there's a grand total of six named characters who even have a chance at living through the whole campaign, and that's dependent on player intervention. But you can still bring the likes of Laurence and Micolash to justice, right? Well you can, but by the time you meet them they are so far mentally gone that slaying them is akin to putting down a sick animal.

But now let's discuss the main highlight of Bloodborne, the bosses. This is quite possibly the best lineup of bosses in any From Software game, at least of the games that I have played. Literally the only bosses I don't like are the Chalice Dungeon bosses, but I don't mind the Chalice Dungeon bosses because the Chalice Dungeons themselves are optional and not required for progression. Their main purpose is to be semi-randomly generated bonus levels that you can play through to stock up on Blood Echoes, Blood Vials and Blood Gems quickly. Most of the bosses here are basically just buffed up rematches against bosses from the main campaign, alongside some unique bosses that I admittedly don't feel as polished as the main bosses. But there's a lot to like here. Take the two first bosses in the game, Father Gascoigne and the Cleric Beast. The former is a rogue hunter not unlike your character and he uses similar equipment to yourself. The latter is a giant werewolf with a lopsided arm. These are the first two bosses available at the start of the game and they both set a good precedent for what you can expect going forward. And generally speaking, most bosses fall into two categories. Humanoid bosses that fight similarly to the Good Hunter and giant-sized bosses that fight with monstrous flailing, with very few exceptions to this rule.

But in terms of difficulty, Bloodborne is interesting. From Software have developed a reputation for making challenging games that push one's skills to their limit. Miyazaki himself has said that that without struggle, victory is hollow and meaningless. As such, the franchise openly prides itself on its high difficulty. Generally speaking, normal mode in a From Software game would be equal to a hard mode in any other franchise. For a frame of reference, I have already played Dark Souls II, Sekiro and Elden Ring prior to playing Bloodborne. And honestly the game has a good sweet spot of difficulty. It's harder than Elden Ring (which allows you to get comically overpowered very easily) but easier than Sekiro (which I still consider to be the hardest game that I have ever completed). I honestly don't know how I would compare it to Dark Souls II because the last time I played it was three years ago and even then, I never finished it. I have recently started playing Dark Souls III, which I'd say is more or less even with Bloodborne. All of this is to say that Bloodborne is by From Software standards, a fairly intermediate game. If I was reviewing the base game by itself, I'd say it's overall a pretty smooth experience. Most bosses don't take more than three or four tries to defeat, and most of the more annoying enemies are all in optional bonus levels called Chalice Dungeons, which can be safely ignored if you don't care about 100% completion.

But this is not a review of base game Bloodborne. We're doing the DLC while we're at it. The Old Hunters DLC pack (which is included for free in the Complete Edition) adds in five brand new bosses and associated areas, alongside a handful of new guns and Trick Weapons. And the DLC bosses are by far the toughest challenges in the entire game. Based on my experience, the base game bosses take about three or four tries on average. Some, like the Cleric Beast and Father Gascoigne, only took one try. The Old Hunters bosses all took about nine or ten tries before I defeated them. The exception to this was the Orphan of Kos. I legitimately lost count how many times that I died to the Orphan. My total playtime for the whole game was a little bit over 80 hours, but I can promise you at least 20 of those hours were spent on just the Orphan of Kos fight. The Orphan is by far the hardest boss in the game. Even when I did defeat it, I was all out of Blood Vials, Quicksilver Bullets and had less than a quarter of my health bar remaining. It was brutally challenging. But it was still fun, despite it all. In fact, in terms of boss design and lore, the DLC bosses are among the best in the whole game. Anyway, the DLC takes place in the Hunter's Nightmare, a personalized hell designed to punish the Scholars of Byrgenwerth and their various successors for the crime of desecrating Kos's body. It is here that you learn the dirty little secrets of Laurence's Healing Church along with every other faction leader. Honestly, the DLC adds in so much content that elevates the whole experience. Old Hunters takes Bloodborne from a "good" game to a full on masterpiece. So if you can get the Complete Edition, that would be the best way to experience the game as a whole.

Image from rpgfan.com

Actually, you want to know how good Old Hunters is? One of the first bosses in the DLC is Ludwig the Accursed. Ludwig was a character mentioned frequently in the base game item descriptions. Heck, one of the Trick Weapons is literally called Ludwig's Holy Blade, a name that implies that you are using a weapon that belongs to a more accomplished Hunter. Ludwig was described as a paragon, a champion and an inspiring leader. A true hero that all Hunters aspired to be more like. And you get a chance to meet Ludwig in the Hunter's Nightmare. He has been twisted and deformed into a grotesque horse-like monster covered in misshapen limbs, driven completely feral by the curse of the Old Blood. Ludwig's monstrous form is sickening to look at, and his pained growls make you feel pity for him. That is, until halfway through his boss fight. Once Ludwig takes enough damage, he becomes lucid and starts fighting with a greatsword that glows bright blue with moonlight. His whole design unfurls from a chaotic mess with no recognizable anatomy or body plan, into something that actually somewhat resembles a real man. A deformed man to be sure, but a man nonetheless. This transformation turns what would be an instance of putting down a sick animal into an honorable duel, letting Ludwig end his life as the hero he once was and face death with dignity. Not only does Ludwig have the most iconic design and theme song of any boss in Bloodborne, the sword he uses once he becomes lucid is the Moonlight Greatsword (pictured above). This weapon is a sort of mascot for From Software. It is their pride and joy. It is their Pikachu. It is their Mickey Mouse. Every From Software game will find a way to include the Moonlight Greatsword, and having Ludwig be the original owner of such a legendary weapon makes him far more impressive for longtime fans of the Souls Borne franchise. And once defeated, you can use the Moonlight Greatsword for yourself.

In terms of presentation, Bloodborne is a very nasty game. Though this is by no means an insult. The character and monster designs are meant to be weird and bizarre at best and absolutely vile at worst. The Trick Weapons are by far the coolest looking weapons in any From Software game, and it is obvious they put a lot of thought and effort into making the weapons look like somewhat believable pieces of machinery. Attire is also stylish, with lots of fancy hats and long trench coats with the occasional robe here and there. It matches the time period that the game emulates immaculately. Speaking of, Yharnam is my favorite location in a From Software game. It's Victorian Gothic architecture and fashion gives it a unique "vibe" that not a lot of games go for. And of course, there's the blood. Blood splatters with every hit, painting the environment with a thick crimson hue. Heck, the longer you fight, the more bloodstains appear on your character's clothing. If a fight drags on long enough, the Good Hunter might become absolutely drenched in the stuff. But the violence here feels tasteful, since this is ultimately a story about the misuse of alien blood, and a story about blood is pretty much required to show the spilling of it. Like, you can't have a vampire story where the vampire doesn't drink blood. That's the whole point of vampires. But I digress.

The only downside on the visual end of things is that Bloodborne is locked into running at 30 frames per second. This is fine, and the game holds a stable frame rate from start to finish. Except for the fight against the Loran Dark Beast. The Loran Dark Beast is a Chalice Dungeon boss, and thus it is not required for 100% completion. And it's a good thing too. Because the Loran Dark Beast is the worst boss in the game. Not because it's hard or has dangerous attack patterns, but because the PS4 literally can't handle this one boss. It is a large "monster" type boss that moves around quickly, has bounce physics applied to its fur and is covered from head to toe in electric sparks. And as it turns out, the behind the scenes graphics engine has a hard time keeping up with a large, fast, furry monster covered in lightning. The frame rate drops so low that at times, it feels like a slide show. This is the only instance of the game suffering from frame rate issues. Honestly, if it didn't have fur or electric sparks it probably wouldn't hurt the frame rate as much. Thankfully, this is a skippable boss not required for progression, but if it was mandatory, it would definitely sour my experience with the whole game.

Voice acting and sound effects are top notch. Highlights of the sound design include subtle things like the sound of footsteps changing based on the material you're walking on, being softer on rugs and carpets and "clunkier" on hard surfaces like stone or metal. I also like the mechanical whirring and clicking of the Trick Weapons as they switch from one form to another. Obviously, the sounds that monsters make vary between horrifying roars to disgusting gargling. I only listened to the English voice acting and cannot speak for the Japanese voices, but the English voices fit the game's vibe perfectly. Highlights of the game's vocal talents include Micolash's insane occult ramblings during his boss fight, as well as the Healing Church Hunter Alfred's passionate (albeit disturbing) speech about avenging his martyred mentor. But if I had to pick a favorite voice role, it would be for Gehrman. Voiced by Allan Corduner, Gehrman presents himself as a feeble old man bound to a wheel-chair. This is a façade, he is far more powerful and Insightful than he lets on. And rarely, while in the Hunter's Dream, you can catch Gehrman talking in his sleep. And his half-asleep pleading for someone, anyone, to bring the Hunt to an end is one of the most depressing lines of dialogue in any video game I have ever played.

On a more uplifting note, Bloodborne has some of the best music in From Software's catalogue. The Hunter's Dream music is a hauntingly beautiful melody that sounds both peaceful and melancholic, serving as a respite from the horrors of the Hunt. Mergo's Lullaby is a simple music box tune that sounds sinister and foreboding. All of the bosses (except for Mergo's Wet Nurse, who gets a remix of Mergo's Lullaby) get a full orchestra to announce their arrival. And all of the bosses related to the Healing Church get bombastic Latin choirs which have lyrics that (when translated into English) retell the story and lore of those characters. The best song would definitely go to Ludwig the Holy Blade. It starts off like a messy and chaotic war chant, reflecting the decrepit state you find him in. But when Ludwig becomes lucid, it transitions into a graceful waltz. It even uses cymbal clanging to represent the clashing of swords, further solidifying the feeling of an honorable duel. A fitting song for a hero's last stand. 

Image from rpgfan.com

Generally speaking, Bloodborne has earned its reputation as From Software's magnum opus. Out of all the Souls Borne games I have played, I consider to be the best so far. As long as you have Old Hunters. That DLC turns a good game into a great game. Again, the Complete Edition is probably the best way to play the game. But even ignoring the DLC, this is still a fun romp through a werewolf infested fantasy version of Victorian England, and that's a good enough sales pitch to stand out on its own. But anyway, in terms of what game is best for newcomers to Souls Borne, I would say it's a tie between this game and Elden Ring. The only truly bad things I have to say about this game is that Loran Dark Beast exists and that as a PS4 exclusive, not everyone will have the ability to even play this game. But overall, I give Bloodborne 5 stars out of 5.

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