Extensive Bloodborne versus Dark Souls 3

[Kurf]

So after more than a month of release, Dark Souls 3 has already developed its thriving PVP community and preset Dueling areas. The game is living and there's constant PVP action, albeit the Cooperative play is significantly weak in areas that have low PVP traffic. The game's Online seems to be almost entirely centered around Invasions.
But how does this latest Souls release compare to the highly regarded Bloodborne of 2015?

ONLINE

As mentioned before, Dark Souls 3's PVP community is definitely strong compared to the Cooperative community more focused on farming bosses than helping players through areas. The variation is lackluster however, with players following their favorite metas and shaking their heads at anything not considered "OP", usually revolving around spamming the same attack over and over (see Washing Pole sprint R1).
Bloodborne however swapped the large weapon pool for multipurpose weapons. Instead of seeing weapons in PVP completely limited to their fast moves like Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne's PVP revolved around utilizing the many different attack moves to catch opponents off-guard thanks to the Visceral system and the ability to transform your weapon. The PVP however never caught on as strongly as it seems in Dark Souls 3 due to the massive annoyance of 20 quick-healing items, but healing in Bloodborne is arguably superior to Dark Souls 3, allowing players to punish players for healing in their face with sidearm parries.
WINNER: Dark Souls 3

GAMEPLAY

Bloodborne revolutionized the way Souls players approached encounters by introducing the Transformation and Regain system, which rewarded aggressive players and provided fluidity to combat. The quicker dodge system allowed easier timing of enemy attacks and a more aggressive playstyle, providing very little consequence to pressuring enemies. The way you could seemlessly switch from a weapon's normal state to its transformed mid combat without disrupting the action thanks to a special attack was well received and made fighting more intense and fun. Dark Souls 3 completely ditched a fast combat system for the slower style of Western combat. While there are weapons that benefit aggressiveness, a lack of regain system provides consequences for pressuring enemies and the tedious roll system interrupts fluid fighting as it switches from Bloodbornes long-reaching dodge R1's for short, stunning R1's to stop pursuing foes. The lack of poise in Dark Souls 3 is outrageously laughable when an enemy won't stop swinging and completely stunlocks the player should they get close, not to mention making Ultra weapons and Heavy armor very disadvantageous compared to faster counterparts. The poorly designed Equipment Load system completely locks players out of their favorite sets to combine with a viable build should they wish to comply with the community's preset level Meta. The diversity of armor and weaponry is definitely welcomed, but not when most of it is locked off unless you pump your Vit stat into levels that completely neglect actual stats you use for combat. The defense is also horribly confusing, feeling more like Calculus than a straight-forward system you can jump into and get.
WINNER: Bloodborne

ENVIRONMENT AND LEVEL DESIGN

Face it, when you first warped onto the High Wall and saw the intimidating towers of Lothric Castle, you felt a gulp of saliva audibly travel down your throat. Sadly, that's about the only time in the game that'll actually occur. You'll go to that Castle, but you'll never truly go to that Castle. You'll more just experience 20 minutes of its unfinished interior and be done. When you finish slashing and cutting your way through the High Wall, you'll look back and remember that Lothric and Winged Knight and that'll be it. For the most part, you're just beating up extremely squishy copied and pasted enemies on a linear path to a Bonfire that all and all takes around 30 minutes to do.
Ever since Dark Souls 2, From has steered away from the iconic verticality of Dark Souls and Demon Souls, ditching the appraised spiral design and shortcut routes for tons of Bonfires and a linear pathing that doesn't encourage exploration. It seems all the hardest enemies are placed in the areas you'd figure to explore, allowing for an easier playthrough to be played directly without checking every pathway. The only area that truly felt like a Dark Souls area was the Cathedral, its moving bridges and layered floors truly encouraging exploration.
Bloodborne's levels come right off the bat allowing multiple routes to take on the same encounter. The beautiful aesthetic horror of Central Yharnam is captivating and roaming mobs truly feel surreal. From the burning ruins of Old Yharnam to the run down Fishing Village, Bloodborne's levels are unique at every turn, and rewarding of exploration. Checking the right little turn or figuring out the right puzzle can result in handsome rewards. The constant re-occurance of alternate paths to a large encounter truly make the game enveloped in a sense of finding creative ways to take out groups of enemies. From the very beginning you're met with wide enemy variety from the basic Yharnamites to Brick wielding giants and Werewolves.
WINNER: Bloodborne

LORE AND STORY

Bloodborne strayed from the overused "Life is bad, go kill yourself to make it a little less bad, but it'll get bad again" motto of Dark Souls. In Dark Souls you first awakened in a cell, a knight from Astora soon dropping a key and telling you to make your way out. He was then found later and told you some ancient prophecy that a bunch of stick wiggling nerds told everyone, so clearly you should go fulfill it right? In reality, no Dark Souls game has truly given you a motive to fight for. If you give up, and just sit back, what do you truly lose? That's real life, and the real life sucks. There's no way to make it better, everything you do only makes it worse, from ruining the lives of others to either setting yourself on fire or not paying the electricity bills and leaving the world shrouded in darkness. There's nothing to gain, no reward for winning. Dark Souls also has a horrible tendency of less story equals better lore. While the grand collective theorist community is great and the imagination driving lore makes for personal head canons, the severe lack of anything in Dark Souls 3 is just plain lazy. From the very beginning of Dark Souls, you learned there's a curse and the first flame is dying, so you must go re-ignite it that way you can go visit your favorite merchant without being stabbed to death by Undead goons. Then in Dark Souls 2, some lady in a dress told you to go kill some poor war veterans, and you did, and then you sat in a stone chair and presumably died. So how did Dark Souls 3 decide to take the route? Well you woke up from a grave because the flame was going out again. Then you killed some guy who commited seppuku and walked into a Demon's Souls copy of the Hub. Surely this Firekeeper will finally give you a motive, something to fight for, something to keep hope. Nope, just says go reignite the flame. It feels less like you're a person and more like you're just some electrician who gets called to the same retirement home over and over.
Bloodborne is the polar opposite of Dark Souls, offering story and lore at every corner. In the very beginning you can clearly figure out from dialogue and descriptions that the Cathedral experiments with blood and so on and so forth and they goofed up and it all went wrong. Not to mention the crazy mind boggling theories of what is real and what is not with the whole Insight business gives the community more extensive arguments over story. The motive is also very clear, escape this Nightmare. Unlike Dark Souls, what you do actually makes the world a better place, or at least the world you're in. You're fighting through all these monstrous foes and far from innocent bosses so that you can escape this horrible nightmare and reawaken in peace. You have reason to keep going, knowing that soon enough it'll all get better.
WINNER: Bloodborne

TL;DR: Dark Souls 3 is alive PVP wise, but Bloodborne has more aggressive combat and an accessible story along with better enemies and areas.

[Kurf]

EDIT: Grammar ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
If anyone spots anything iffy tell me.

[stompie5]

You could've saved yourself a lot of time if you just said you like bloodborne better.

[Kurf]

Originally posted by stompie5:

You could've saved yourself a lot of time if you just said you like bloodborne better.

I actually like Dark Souls 3 a lot better because having a nice comfy shield to hide behind was better than frantically dodging in panic. But Dark Souls 3 is undeniably unbalanced, short, and lackluster in unique areas. I think the longest I spent on an area was an hour in the Cathedral exploring. A game with Dark Souls combat and Bloodborne lore/level design would give me an orgasm.

[stompie5]

Originally posted by I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

Originally posted by stompie5:

You could've saved yourself a lot of time if you just said you like bloodborne better.

I actually like Dark Souls 3 a lot better because having a nice comfy shield to hide behind was better than frantically dodging in panic. But Dark Souls 3 is undeniably unbalanced, short, and lackluster in unique areas. I think the longest I spent on an area was an hour in the Cathedral exploring. A game with Dark Souls combat and Bloodborne lore/level design would give me an orgasm.

B...but you declared bloodborne the winner 3 out of 4 categories :O

[Kurf]

Originally posted by stompie5:

Originally posted by I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

I actually like Dark Souls 3 a lot better because having a nice comfy shield to hide behind was better than frantically dodging in panic. But Dark Souls 3 is undeniably unbalanced, short, and lackluster in unique areas. I think the longest I spent on an area was an hour in the Cathedral exploring. A game with Dark Souls combat and Bloodborne lore/level design would give me an orgasm.

B...but you declared bloodborne the winner 3 out of 4 categories :O

I still have faith that From will get it together and balance the gameplay. In my opinion it's significantly worse than Bloodborne in its current state, but with improvement it could become a more stylized game. In Bloodborne, playstyles weren't as varied because everyone dodged at the same speed and everyone pistol spammed or became cauliflower man. Dark Souls 3 has potential because you have Dex builds, Str builds, Magic builds, Tanks, and Glass Cannon dragon boyos. It's just that 99% of playstyles currently aren't viable because of the "Meta". The only metas I recall in Bloodborne was the Cannon and Rifle spear which were both swiftly balanced, unlike From's current take on Dark Souls 3.

[odinigh]

Originally posted by IT'S THE CURRENT YEAR:

I liked BB way more than this. This only has online in favor of it, mainly because BB was barebones.

Yeah, BB was about 10x better than this.

[EsotericEgo]

Bloodborne = 30fps (if you're lucky)
DS3 PC = 60fps

DS3 Wins.

Next?

[Kaizen]

In short..
Bloodborne sucks
Souls doens't

[odinigh]

? Framerate doesn't mean anything next to gameplay or design. Or anything else that's actually important.

[Varit Rockatansky]

Dude... You wrote like too much.

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by odinigh:

? Framerate doesn't mean anything next to gameplay or design. Or anything else that's actually important.

That's your opinion, but some of use have higher standards.

Don't serve me a meal on a dirty plate and tell me the food is top quality.

[Lugez]

Bloodborne was far more polished and seemed to have more direction. Dark Souls 3 feels like Bandai reminded Miyazaki that he had one more Souls game in his contract and he had to oblige.

[Kaizen]

Bloodborne has: something like 3 sets of armor, a small handful of weapons, stupid victorian setting, strays from the Souls fomula, feels like a fast paced action game, virtually no PvP,.. and guns

No thanks.

[Kurf]

Originally posted by Gameo:

Bloodborne has: something like 3 sets of armor, a small handful of weapons, stupid victorian setting, strays from the Souls fomula, feels like a fast paced action game, virtually no PvP,.. and guns

No thanks.

I mentioned the armor and I do agree that it was lacking in Bloodborne, but on the other hand most of them were absolutely bad to the bone. When I first equipped the Hunter's set, my ego inflated tenfold. I didn't actually find any armor to replace my Knight Set in Dark Souls 3 until I was almost done with the game because most of the sets were ugly.
Also that "small handful of weapons" is more unique and surprisingly more various than Dark Souls 3's weapons. There's like 10 weapons that are actually good in DkS3 and 100 that are just weaker copies. Every weapon class feels the same. Also I personally feel the Victorian setting is much better after playing the Medieval setting for so long, it gets old real fast. That's why Dark Souls 3 is the final Dark Souls, not because it provides any real conclusion but because the Medieval setting is just so sickening to the stomach now. And if anything, Dark Souls 3 is the one that strays away, it feels more like Dark Souls 2 where Bloodborne feels more like Dark Souls and Demon Souls. I also really love the fast paced action of Bloodborne, it makes fights not last 20 minutes long. The guns also added a complete new depth that allowed you to punish healing and stop spam. It kept the fights intense and the pressure on. You are right in the PVP department though, BB had some pretty garbage PVP.

[Kurf]

Originally posted by Varit the Unkindled:

Dude... You wrote like too much.

The title DOES say Extensive

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

Bloodborne = 30fps (if you're lucky)
DS3 PC = 60fps

DS3 Wins.

Next?

Having 60 FPS in a game never justified me liking it more than a game with 30 FPS. I never understood the obsession with FPS.