Get ready for a brutal experience.

Never before have I been so completely in love with a game, while at the same time detesting the very essence of it. It’s a concept that’s relatively new to me, and for the first time, I’m starting to understand the whole “my husband hits me, but I can’t leave him cause I love him” mentality. That’s basically what Bloodborne is: the video game equivalent of the abusive, alcoholic spouse that you can’t just can’t bring yourself to leave.

I suppose a little background is in order for the non-gamers, or those that don’t traditionally dabble in masochism as a form of release, sexual or otherwise. Bloodborne is a PlayStation 4 exclusive that came out in 2015 by Japanese developer From Software and their faithful steward Hidetaka Miyazaki, who would be something of a Japanese Tim Burton if Tim Burton enjoyed feasting on severed heads in front of schoolchildren. The game takes place in a twisted, Gothic nightmare, where all manner of creatures bare distorted flesh and possess an unhealthy, Guns-N-Roses like appetite for destruction. You play the role of an unnamed hunter, who for reasons not entirely known, is out to rid the world of an infection that has taken over the town, effectively turning all of townspeople and animals into deadly and grotesque beings.

The story is intentionally vague, doling itself out in brief cut scenes and incredibly sparse conversations with local denizens, who have locked themselves in their houses for as long as the night of the hunt shall last. But story isn’t why you come to a From Software party. If that name sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve happened across the Dark Souls series, the spiritual prequel to Bloodborne. See, From Software has something of an edict that states that pretty much all other game devs are pussies, and that games shouldn’t be the effortless walk-throughs that they have become. Think about it, whether you like single player adventures like Uncharted and God of War, shooters like Call of Duty, or Western RPG’s like Fallout and Mass Effect, you probably can’t honestly say that you experienced any sort of challenge from the single-player experience (multiplayer is obviously a different story). And granted, those games are designed to focus much more on the story than certain other games, so they have something of a responsibility to make the game easy enough for people to progress to the next part of the story, but when you look across the gaming spectrum as a whole, you start to realize that almost every major franchise these days sacrifices challenge for the sake of story, possibly a negative off-shoot of gaming’s incorporation of cinematic elements over the years (looking at you, Metal Gear Solid).

Get used to this image early in the game. You will see it many, many dozens of times.

So From Software decided, “Enough holding the players hand. We’re not making something that people are just going to breeze through and forget as they pop in the next game to breeze through and forget. We’re going to do something nearly unheard of in gaming today: we’re going to make them acquiesce to our demands, not the other way around.”

And boy, does Bloodborne ever demand.

This is a game that requires you to pay attention to every split second of what’s going on on-screen. If you try to rush through an area, you’re going to get killed. If you casually mash buttons as enemies attack, you’re going to get killed. If you want to look around at the architecture of the game in an area you’re not familiar with, you’re going to get killed. And when you get killed, it’s a pretty big deal. See, Bloodborne does have save points, but they might be anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours worth of gameplay removed from one another. It is completely common to spend a solid half hour exploring an immense castle, or one of the many labyrinthine sewer canals, only to encounter an enemy with the wrong approach and find yourself very quickly slaughtered. Oh, and when you die and go back to that save point so very far away, every single enemy you killed will return, just waiting to be patiently decimated again so you can make the ever most minute of progress (this doesn’t apply to bosses, however).

Speaking of bosses, they’re absolutely brutal. Check out this video of me getting my ass handed to me by just the second boss in the game. And this was after a solid dozen or so tries.

Bloodborne also has an in-game currency of sorts in the from of souls. You use souls to upgrade and purchase weapons, armor, consumables, etc. And yep, if you guessed that when you die, you lose all of your souls, you’d be right about that to. The game does give you an option of sorts to retrieve all the souls you just lost, but even that has a kicker, in that you only get one chance to do so by making your way all the way to the creature that killed you and effectively killing that same creature. Die trying to retrieve them, and their lost forever.

By this point, you’re probably thinking, “wow, that game sounds stupidly difficult and not at all fun, and at times, you’d be right. But see, Bloodborne has a way of making you stick around, even when you just spent 30 minutes clearing an extensive area, using multiple healing potions and bullets along the way (the game only lets you carry 20 of either at a time, though you can replenish them fairly easily as you kill monster after monster; the game does at least give you that much). I’ve been trying to identify exactly what it is that keeps me coming back, and I’ve whittled it down to a few basic components: gameplay, level design, combat, and a remarkable sense of fairness.

“What’s that?!”, you say? “This game sounds like the exact antithesis of fair!”, you say? Well, that’s where I have to disagree with you. Look, I understand that there’s a good chance this sounds like the last game you’d ever want to spend your precious free time on, and several months ago before I undertook the challenge, I’d have been right there with you. I’m not traditionally a gamer that likes or even appreciates difficult games. Most of the time, it seems as though the developers are out to piss you off just for the sake of doing so. Bloodborne is different, though; it may be one of the most excruciatingly difficult games out there, but each time you die, it never feels cheap. The enemies are always in the exact same place every time you play through, and in designing the game this way, the developers reward you for spending time with the game; for patiently making your way through the levels, soaking in the gorgeous, disturbing visuals as you anticipate that enemy around the corner you’ve slaughtered dozens of times, still requiring patience and finesse to defeat it, even when you know exactly what the enemy’s going to do.

Finally got that bastard. Can’t even count how many times it took.

As of the time of my writing this, I have only defeated exactly two of what I imagine are roughly 10-12 bosses in the entire game, and it has taken me a solid two months to do so. I can legitimately see this being an experience that takes me a solid year to make my way through, allowing for other games here and there along the way. And that’s another great aspect of Bloodborne; that you can spend anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours at a time, and all of the time you spend will be satisfying. Because of the way the game’s structured, you don’t have to binge through it like your favorite Netflix series; it’s perfectly fine to get pissed off, remove yourself from the game for a day or three while you play something else, then come back to it and get enthralled with it’s mechanics all over again.

So yes, Bloodborne is my abusive, alcoholic wife that relishes in slapping me around the house and calling me a bitch. And I just can’t help coming back for more.

Bloodborne, why can’t I quit you?

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