Bloodborne kicks off with your hunter led on a gurney, and just throws you in with very little; no way to defend yourself, no blatantly obvious goal. You only have the look you made for yourself, your fists and the class you picked. Tutorial messages litter the floor to help you learn the controls as you wander about, and then it shoves you off into the wild, to be eviscerated by a werewolf looking beast. Upon your death, you return to the Hunters Dream, Bloodborne's hub area, where you can finally pick a weapon, get your bearings and set off on your adventure proper. Very little is explained to you though; you're not sign posted on where to go, so you're left to wonder the slowly decaying, almost gothic looking town of Yharnam. Fighting off the inhabitants and wildlife as you go, heading into areas unknown with a sense of wonder and trepidation, often getting lost and discovering a new enemy, ranging from insane villagers to giant beasts to anything in between, that is keen to make it known you're not welcome here.
You'll have to use all you available skills to take down these nightmares. Using the firearm with L2 to parry attacking enemies, then R1 whilst they are stunned to perform a visceral attack which will cause massive damage. Chaining together combos with R1 and R2, to create an almost entrancing dance of death, as weapons slice through foes and clang off surfaces, will get you through the earlier parts of the game, but then you'll run into tougher enemies; enemies that don't care or get interrupted by your combos. Some enemies will be unable to be parried or stunned with your firearm of choice either, making you adapt and learn new tactics to combat these horrors. Learning the basics of Bloodborne's combat is the key to your survival, as is learning when to attack and when to fall back so you can use a healing vial. You will feel yourself learning patience, feel that skill cap growing as you go, then getting a bit frustrated at yourself because you died to a dog or a random crow. Death is punishing in Bloodborne, but not punishing enough to ever become truly frustrating.
Upon death, you will lose your Blood Echoes, which are gained by killing enemies as you explore Yharnam. These are what you use to level up and buy various items from within the Hunters Dream. However, if you can return to the area where you died, you can either reacquire them from the ground, or you may have to kill an enemy with glowing eyes that has picked them up. Die before you get back to them though, and they will be gone for good, so you have to balance the risk for the reward. Where the recovery can get a bit more difficult is when you die to bosses in the arenas as these are, usually, the toughest test of the area you've been exploring. Thankfully the bosses never absorb your Echoes into their bodies but it's obviously harder to recover them when you have an angry furry vicar rampaging around, trying to kick you out of her cathedral. The bosses however are one of the most enjoyable parts of Bloodborne.
Normally placed at the end of each area you explore, they act almost as a test of your skills that you've been honing up until that point. They hit hard, they hit fast and at times can appear unrelenting. You'll feel a cathartic release upon defeating them, with each fight being treated like it's the final one of the game. Music blares, bosses screech, claws clang off of walls and maws bite and rip at you, each boss feeling more hectic than before. The uniqueness of the bosses means you will never be fighting the same type of fight more than once in a row, with some bosses even change styles and type mid fight, just to throw an extra curveball of difficulty in there. After successfully defeating each boss, you will be rewarded with a good amount of Echoes, a lamp to go and spend those Echoes back at the Hunters Dream and a chance to sit back and take a breath.
Lamps are your checkpoints in Yharnam, giving you a brief respite from the horrors the world is making you carve a path through. They are a rare luxury though, so you cannot rely on them to bail you out if you get stuck in a sticky situation. Finding one is a breath of relief; it allows you to regroup and teleport back to the Hunters Dream to spend your Echoes on either levelling, items or new weapons and armour. The way Bloodborne slowly drip feeds you lore makes you want to keep pushing forward, to figure out what's going on as you explore Yharnam and the areas surrounding it, making lamp discovery vital to your progression. The locations all vary in styles and atmosphere too; one minute you're navigating through a town that looks like it was ripped out of a gothic England, then later on you'll be exploring a long forsaken castle, left to become a ruin covered in snow with its secrets locked away inside behind its now crazed inhabitants.
Not all things are rosey in the garden of Yharnam, though. You will notice at times, the frame rate will drop and it'll feel like you're playing a fairly fast, but choppy slide show. There will also be the odd time where you will notice the loading times will seemingly get a little longer, most noticeably when you loading in and out of the Hunters Dream area. The layout of Yharnam itself can be a little overwhelming too, with many paths leading into dead ends that can only be opened by finding specific shortcuts, or taking you to areas that you may not quite be ready for. But persevere because, as mentioned before, you're not really told where to go or what to do, which leaves you free to explore its beautiful, if slowly decaying world. You could find hidden items and find the aforementioned shortcuts to help navigate through areas quickly as the lamp checkpoints are few and far between, and help mitigate the loading time issue if it arises. You may even stumble across a NPC who may be a friend, or may be a foe; Yharnam is filled with little cubby holes and alleyways, just begging for you to explore them.
Bloodborne is not a game that will be for everyone. Indeed, for myself, it took me a long time to get around to playing and a few hours before I finally clicked with what Bloodborne was trying to get me to do. It'll crawl under your skin, keep you playing for that next lamp, keep hoping you'll find a little secret. It'll keep you on edge when you're playing, keep you focused when you're in a fight and punish you for being too cocky. The almost horror like aspect to Bloodborne becomes secondary; the world that is built, combined with the style, gameplay and need to know a little more about what is going on in the world is what will keep you coming back for more.