Bloodborne: 10 Complaints Fans Are Already Sick Of Hearing

3. "The Combat Is Sluggish"

Also known as the "But I pressed the button and he didn't move!" response, which nigh-on everyone on the planet has either thought to themselves or heard their friend spout after suffering a defeat. It's as old as Mario's hat is red, never has it been uttered with venomous vitriol as when playing these games. The thing is, nowhere in the footage for Bloodborne or the Souls games will you find anything resembling 'fast-paced combat' on the level of something like Devil May Cry or God of War. Yes what's on offer in BB is very much a sped-up version of what Dark Souls perfected (unless you played a two-handed character, in which case you're already used to evading rather than blocking), but it's very much still the same waiting game of picking, choosing and learning all the animations all around you. 'Sluggish', 'unresponsive', 'delayed' etc. are all labels for this system of animation priority; something that forces you to adapt and learn when to get stuck in, and when to back off and wait your turn. The Souls series established this idea of not playing these games like anything else, and as Lords of the Fallen proved last year, perhaps these action-RPG Roguelike (or whatever we're calling them) titles need to be thought of as their own genre to truly understand them.