Bloodborne: 10 Ways It Succeeds Where Dark Souls 2 Failed

2. It Forces You To Play Differently

Maybe it's something that's just quintessentially 'how you play Souls', but it became far too easy in those games to simply lock onto a foe and rotate round them, attacking only when their animation means they're forever swiping at thin air. Thankfully, although many thought Dark Souls 2 would force you out of this thinking whereby you're essentially exploiting the game's weaknesses, instead it gave you more melee-focussed bosses and enemies to cement it. Come Bloodborne and this very notion of combat is out the window. As mentioned earlier blocking has been removed so you're forced to play like the dual-wielding classes of DS2, which is to say perfecting enemy attack patterns and dodging to gain ground at just the right moment, as oppose to 'turtling' yourself behind their kneecaps and hoping for the best. It's a sensation that extends to general exploration to; no longer will you ever feel safe exploring new areas again, which is the quintessential ingredient missing from 99% of horror titles out there too. Knowing you might be about to be ambushed by a horde of ghouls is quite the palpable fear, and you'll have to hone your reaction times far more than ever before to get anywhere near comfortable - a word that came to epitomises the Souls II experience in retrospect.