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.

[Cooman]

30 fps 1080p, vs 60fps 4k....

I'll take dark souls 3 ty a fast paced game such as bloodborne looks ♥♥♥♥ at 30fps.

I played it and own it, but in this day and age 30fps in any sort of game like that, or shooter etc is just terrible

[stompie5]

What evidence? People complaining on forums? People who did not program the game saying poise is set to 0? I'm not so quick to jump on the bandwagon. Until I see someone actually involved with the game development says something, I could care less about what people say about poise.

[Gameo]

Regardless if poise is in the game or not, it doens't do a damn thing useful or someone would have figured it out by now.

[Cosmonaut Cartilag]

Bloodborne is currently the better souls game comparing the two hopefully a DLC fixes :( Unlikely tho

[Ivraas]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ocoo:

30 fps 1080p, vs 60fps 4k....

I'll take dark souls 3 ty a fast paced game such as bloodborne looks ♥♥♥♥ at 30fps.

I played it and own it, but in this day and age 30fps in any sort of game like that, or shooter etc is just terrible

There is a high price for playing in 60fps, cheaters, bugs, and yeah... broken patches :D
The last few patch completely broke the game for me, massive fps drops out of nowhere, no one is testing these patches before release.
Not to mention you must have pretty expensive PC to play in 60 stable fps, with no stutter etc.
So yeah, i prefer 30 fps over that.

[Cooman]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ivraas:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ocoo:

30 fps 1080p, vs 60fps 4k....

I'll take dark souls 3 ty a fast paced game such as bloodborne looks ♥♥♥♥ at 30fps.

I played it and own it, but in this day and age 30fps in any sort of game like that, or shooter etc is just terrible

There is a high price for playing in 60fps, cheaters, bugs, and yeah... broken patches :D
The last few patch completely broke the game for me, massive fps drops out of nowhere, no one is testing these patches before release.
Not to mention you must have pretty expensive PC to play in 60 stable fps, with no stutter etc.
So yeah, i prefer 30 fps over that.

a £500 pc can run this,at 1080p 60fps.

[Kurf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von stompie5:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

Considering the shortness of the game (I beat every single boss in 15 hours on my first run), PVP is the only way I can get my money's worth. But complaints about PVP in Souls games has always been overpowered spells or stupidly high damage Ultras. But now that poise is turned off, the new complaint isn't just weapons or Spells, it's the fact that the literal game mechanics are broken.

Until someone who has actually worked on the game says poise is broken, I will not acknowledge poise as a problem and will not hold it against the game. I get the argument, I really do, but ds3 is a new game with a new playstyle. All of the souls games had their flaws.
Also, DS3 is a big game, but you know how to play souls games and was able to rush through it. I don't think that is the games fault.

I didn't rush DkS 3 at all. It's just the enemies were so mediocre that exploring was more of a chore than a fight. That and exploring an area took all but 7 minutes because there was barely anything to explore. They also tried to enforce a shortcut system but it doesn't matter when there's a bonfire every 50 feet.

[DamZe]

BloodBorne is the better game, no doubt about it! DS3 was just a shareholder obligation for FROM, the real magic was in BloodBorne. But I ain't buying an underpowered PS4 so I can play one game, because that is the only game in the PS4 games library that I am remotely interested in, plus 30FPS is hard to swallow when you are PC gamer with a high end system.

[Kurf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DamZe:

BloodBorne is the better game, no doubt about it! DS3 was just a shareholder obligation for FROM, the real magic was in BloodBorne. But I ain't buying an underpowered PS4 so I can play one game, because that is the only game in the PS4 games library that I remotely interested in.

True that. The only reason I played Bloodborne was because I got a PS4 for free so I decided why not. Personally I think it's worth every penny, but spending $400 on a console just to play one game isn't. Justifying a PS4 for Bloodborne is pretty hard unless the person is also going to buy other PS4 games.

[Deadly.Crystal.Lizard]

yet here i am, 100 hours in and still enjoying ds3, while i played through bloodborne in about 30 hours and will most likely never touch it again.

such is the nature of opinions.

[Kurf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DeadlyCrystalLizard:

yet here i am, 100 hours in and still enjoying ds3, while i played through bloodborne in about 30 hours and will most likely never touch it again.

such is the nature of opinions.

Well you have to consider Bloodborne is significantly harder than Dark Souls 3 and plays in a completely different style, so it's a turn off for some.

[Cooman]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DeadlyCrystalLizard:

yet here i am, 100 hours in and still enjoying ds3, while i played through bloodborne in about 30 hours and will most likely never touch it again.

such is the nature of opinions.

Well you have to consider Bloodborne is significantly harder than Dark Souls 3 and plays in a completely different style, so it's a turn off for some.

harder? really..

starting axe is probably one of the best weapons in the whole game, no need to even bother looking for armor or weapons. super small levels.

pretty much just a "mash r1" game, especially with the unlimited amount of healing, and healing regained through attacks.

[Kurf]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ocoo:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

Well you have to consider Bloodborne is significantly harder than Dark Souls 3 and plays in a completely different style, so it's a turn off for some.

harder? really..

starting axe is probably one of the best weapons in the whole game, no need to even bother looking for armor or weapons. super small levels.

pretty much just a "mash r1" game, especially with the unlimited amount of healing, and healing regained through attacks.

It sounds like you never actually played Bloodborne. The Axe R1 is weak af, and the Saw Cleaver is much better if you're into mashing R1. I don't see why you shouldn't bother looking for armor, since most areas require certain armor sets to make easier. Bloodborne doesn't have "super small levels" either, they're like twice as large as Dark Souls 3's areas. Not to mention the enemies are actually difficult, so they'll take longer to do compared to the copy and paste Deacon spam in Anor Londo, which by the way is one of the smallest areas ever.
The Regain system doesn't mean R1 Spam>All. It means if you take a hit, instead of running away go back and land a few hits to get that health back.

[Gameo]

Here we go again... "the game is easy for you so you've never played it'
lol, yeah that won't get old fast or anything /s

[Deadly.Crystal.Lizard]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von I N T E N S E C H U G G I N G:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von DeadlyCrystalLizard:

yet here i am, 100 hours in and still enjoying ds3, while i played through bloodborne in about 30 hours and will most likely never touch it again.

such is the nature of opinions.

Well you have to consider Bloodborne is significantly harder than Dark Souls 3 and plays in a completely different style, so it's a turn off for some.

i did not really find it much harder, but then again i do not see ds3 as being an easy game either as some say it is.

there are still things i like about bloodborne, namely the soundtrack(being one of my favorite game soundtracks in general) and related to that, the presentation of most bosses in the game and the moment you get kidnapped and face the eerie music of jahar ghul for the first time. there is also the doll and the hunters dream in general as well as the lore to some extend.

apart from that i was bored out of my mind with the game, I hate the art design, the constant grey cheap instagram filter over each and every scene, the bland level design and most of all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ coffins and gravestones all over the place. like everywhere. like they had to spend the last few hundred dollars of budget somewhere and just plastered those coffins and gravestones onto each ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level. it looks so incredibly cheap.

lore is somewhat interesting, but the game never managed to get me interested in finding out about it ever, which was a huge disappointment since i loved piecing things together myself in dark souls rather than watching some youtube video about it.

next off the gameplay was a huge turnoff. fast slashy slashy combat with near invincible dashing moves, all armorsets are near identical coats and weapons variety is almost nonexistant. in theory there are enough weapons to say its varied, since they have different stages and i liked the idea of transforming weapons, but ultimately non of them really appealed to me, since the gameplay was not varied enough to give me any satisfaction when using something else apart from r1 most of the time. i liked the saw cleaver and thats about it.

most of that is subjective obviously. but i personally would not spend 60$ on that title again if i had the choice. would be a waste of money. maybe for 30.