Bloodborne (and other from software games), to all of you that don't like them.

I am super new to the Soulsborne games, and From Software in general. I only started playing Soulsborne games in January of this year, so I'm a little late to the party. The first game I played, and am still playing, is Bloodborne. I've since beaten dark souls 1 and 3. I gotta say, I love all the games, but Bloodborne is probably my favorite. 

I had the same frustrations that all players who start their first From Software game experience. I died a lot. I couldn't tell you how many times I've been killed in Bloodborne since I've started, but you know what? I don't care. The reason I'm writing this is because recently I've been browsing Amazon and other places to buy Bloodborne (cause I only have the digital release, and I want to have a physical copy at some point) and I was curious what the people who have rated this game, or any other soulsborne game, low ratings are saying about it. It made me laugh to read that a vast majority of them were rating the game really badly because of things in the game that I think are brilliant.

Obviously the biggest one you're probably expecting is that the games are too difficult. A lot of people would even say unfair or cheap. I have to respectfully disagree. I would equate this to if an average person were to go into a boxing ring with a professional boxer. When they got their butt kicked by the boxer, would they come out of the fight claiming the boxer cheated or was unfair? Well, they would probably not say anything since they'll be unconscious, but when they eventually wake up, if they were to say that, most people would look at them and say "What did you expect? You fought a professional boxer."

I use this analogy when I'm talking about Bloodborne because this is a game that has a set difficulty level, meaning that, at least your first time playing, the game is the same difficulty for everyone. Just as a professional boxer will have the same peak level of performance regardless of who they fight, Bloodborne is the same for all players. Why then, do people criticize the game for its difficulty while others praise the game for the same level of difficulty? I think the answer lies in personal perception/patience (or a lack thereof).

One thing that people complain about in regards to the difficulty is the open-endedness of the level design, meaning that the game is not clear where you should go at any given moment. I absolutely love this, which is interesting because if you were to ask me 5 years ago, when the game came out, if I loved that kind of gameplay, I would have likely said no. One other thing that frustrates people who first pick this game up is the lack of a map system in the game. This forces you to learn the level design by memory. Goodness, isn't that awful? Sarcasm is kind of hard to convey in written form I realize. No, it's not awful because this map is constructed in such a way that, for the most part, it's not to difficult to remember the level design, and in most cases, you'll remember the enemy placements for one reason or another. I have most of Bloodborne's levels and it's enemy placements memorized, save for a few, because the game does such a good job of constructing the levels in a way that is memorable for the player. There are exceptions, like the Nightmare Frontier, which is probably my least favorite area in Bloodborne, mostly because everything looks the same and it's difficult to find where you are at many points in that level. The enemies and boss in that area are great, but the area itself is not for me. In fact, if I don't have to fight Amygdala, I prefer to just skip him so I don't have to run through that area again. 

I'm sure there are a plethora of other reasons that people dream up to say why they don't enjoy the Souls games in general. I think there are legitimate reasons, and I also understand that these games just aren't for everyone. Honestly, if you don't like them, that is totally fine, but if you don't enjoy them, just leave the rest of of us in peace and let us enjoy them. You already know that if you talk to a Souls fan and you bring up the fact the games are too hard, you're just stoking a fire. In my humble opinion, these games certainly are hard, but once you get used to them, they generally aren't. There are some parts of each game that still get me every time, but for the most part, they are fairly manageable, especially if you're doing plot crucial bosses only. 

So, yes, I love the Soulsborne games (save for DS2, but that's a different story) and I'm happy I finally was able to get into the franchise, because I certainly think I would be in the complaining boat if I was still in high school. I didn't use to like difficult games, but Soulsborne have shown me a new part of myself, which is super fun. So if you don't like the games, that's fine, but that doesn't make them bad or poorly designed. There are areas of every game that are more poorly designed, just like every game ever created, but for the most part, they are very well crafted and fun. 

Artorias is unfair and not fun to fight.

 I know the title makes it seem like I don't like Artorias, which is not necessarily true, but I'll explain.

I love the Souls series. I didn't start playing them until this year when my brother convinced me to try Bloodborne in January. I've sinced played all of the Souls games, but I've only beaten Bloodborne, Dark Souls 1 and Dark Souls 3. Dark Souls 2 infuriates me and I haven't gotten around to beating Demon's Souls yet, so stay tuned on that one. Dark Souls 1 is my favorite game to replay of the Souls games, not including Bloodborne, simply because I enjoy the areas of the game more than the other games. Dark Souls 3 is my favorite to play, but traversing the game to get to the bosses is not super fun, since I don't enjoy most of the areas of the game, especially early on. 

Anyway, that's not my point. What i wanted to talk about today was why I don't like Artorias's boss fight, although I like his character overall. 

Now while reading this, especially if you are a huge fan of Artorias, you'll probably think that I'm a whiny crybaby or that I should "Git Gud" or whatever else you want to say against me. I think that Artorias's boss fight is generally well designed, but there are several issues I have with his fight that you may or may not agree with when you read them. Full disclosure, I know he's perfectly possible since I've beaten him before, so don't say I'm mad cause I can't beat him, since that's clearly untrue.

#1: His hitboxes on several attacks are much bigger than they should be. I'm mostly talking about his jumping stab slam attack he does when you have some distance between you and him and his stupid sword charge attack where he stabs his sword toward you and steps forward a few steps. There have been several fights I've had with Artorias where he will jump in the air and stab the ground, and well before he lands, I will dodge forward and get behind him, and despite the fact I'm standing behind him and no part of him touched me at any point in that animation, I still get hit, and if he's buffed, almost definitely one-shotted. This attack generally isn't a problem to get out of the way of, but there have been several times it hits me when I'm clearly out of the way, which when you watch the footage just looks dumb. Then the bigger problem, that stupid charge stab attack I mentioned. I can swear that despite the fact he's using a sword, his sword must grow some kind of extra extension to the end of it that extends to the side of the sword, since that attack will hit you often even if you dodge to the side as he stabs. Most times I get hit by it, I never touched his sword at all, but I still get nailed, which also could result in a one-shot if he's buffed. This is a problem that also plagues Dark Souls 2, which I will admit is much more present in that game so I won't compare Artorias to anything in that game since he's better designed than most if not all bosses in DS2. 

#2: His buff is unfair. I'm not saying this because his buff hits too hard, since that's the point of buffs, but I think it's unfair that he gets to use the buff so early in the boss fight. This essentially means you have to deal with his buffed attacks for 80% of his fight because that's about how much health he has when he buffs himself. Couple that with his narrow windows for allowing you to heal, and you'll see my problem here. I know this is an early attempt to create "second phases" which became staples of the series later, this one just doesn't feel fair to the player since he hits so hard for so much of the fight, and couple the hitbox issues with that, the issues get compounded. 

#3: He's too fast for DS1. The Sanctuary Guardian also suffers from this a little bit, but Artorias can and will stunlock you with most of his attacks. Plus his most overpowered attack where he swings his sword upward with no warning and backflips backwards will do at least half your healthbar, not to mention it will also knock you over, and before you get up, he'll most likely do his front flipping slam attack to finish you off, so basically, if he catches you with an attack you can't see coming, you're gonna get killed. That's fair isn't it? 

There's a few more nitpicks I could say with Artorias, but I will just leave it here. I love his lore, I love his placement in the DLC, save for the fact I have to kill him every time I want to attempt my favorite DS1 boss, which is Kalameet, and I love most of his fight, but those issues are so glaring that they make my blood boil whenever I play this game. I played it 3rd, so Bloodborne and DS3 spoiled me with the superior speed and movement, and I don't have Artorias nostalgia from playing the game a long time ago, which is probably why a lot of people applaud this fight and call it near flawless all over the place, same with Ornstein and Smough. Overall, good fights, but far from perfect and nowhere near my favorite in the series. 

Blue Gender, a pretty good anime.

So no one reads my blog posts, and so I don't mind just throwing some thoughts down on something that I want to talk about but don't really have anyone to talk about it with. Maybe one day this blog post will go viral, but I highly doubt that, so I'm going to talk about an anime from 1999 that no one remembers, but one that I watched just recently. This anime is called Blue Gender.

My history with this anime goes back to when I was a little kid, about 15 years or so ago, so I was probably around 5-7 years old. I was a huge fan of Dragon Ball Z as a child. My oldest brother would watch it and I thought Goku was the coolest guy ever, and plus he had a kid who was my age (Goten) and I thought that was super awesome as well. So he hooked me on the show and my parents got me some Dragon Ball Z movies to keep my little self entertained. On those movies, as well as other DBZ VHS tapes that we owned, there were some trailers at the beginning of the tapes, and I don't remember all of them, but I remember YuYu Hakisho's (I think that's how you spell it) trailer, and I vividly remember Blue Gender's trailer.

When I saw the trailer as a kid, it freaked me out, but I also thought it looked super cool. If you haven't seen the teaser trailer for the show, you should check it out on youtube, it's pretty freaking cool. I didn't have any way of watching it at that point in my life, and my parents certainly would not have let me watch it as a kid, and so I just kind of put it in the back of my mind. I never forgot the name of the anime though, and so recently I had the name resurface in my mind, so I decided to find the trailer I watched and sure enough I found it. I then decided to just watched the anime, and I gotta say, I really liked it. Full disclosure, I'm not a huge anime watcher. I'm not against it by any means, but I don't watch it a ton. I've seen DBZ, Deathnote, Hunter X Hunter, Naruto, parts of Trigun, and some of Bleach, but that's nothing compared to my friends who are avid anime watchers. So yeah, I like anime, but I don't watch it a ton. However, I just decided to give this a go, and I'm happy I did. 

This will be largely spoiler free, at least till the end, but I'll mark that clearly for you in case you get curious enough to watch the show yourself.

For the plot summary I would highly recommend watching the teaser trailer I mentioned above as it does a pretty good job of making a brief introduction to the plot and 2 major characters in the show, and it's pretty freaking epic. Here's a link to the trailer if you're interested. 

https://youtu.be/oaioI9zySt8

Anyways, for those of you who didn't watch the teaser, or want some more info or something, here ya go. Yuji Kaido was a normal guy who had as normal of a life as you could have in 2009, however, he and several others were diagnosed with a strange new disease that scientists couldn't figure out what to do to cure. They dubbed it "B-cells" and since scientists had no cure for the B-cells, they decided to allow those who were infected to choose if they wanted to get put under suspended animation until doctors and scientists could figure out a cure for it. 

Suddenly Yuji awakes to giant creatures attacking him and he was being defended by strange people in giant mech suits, reminiscent of Gundam Wing. The leader of this party is Marlene Angel, and she and her team have been tasked with taking Yuji and anyone else who was asleep that haven't been eaten by these giant insects that the humans call "The Blue" to a space station called "Second Earth." Yuji learns that he's been asleep for 22 years, as it is now 2031, and the Blue have been ravaging the earth for several years before he woke up. The anime is largely about Yuji coming to terms with his new world and shows his and Marlene's growth as characters. There are some fun twists in there, and the ending, while not amazing, did have a fairly satisfying conclusion and definitely made the anime worth watching as a whole. 

So, to talk about the content in the show more specifically, since this is a show about people fighting lots of giant insect creatures, there is a lot of death in the show. Some of it is fairly graphic as well. Be prepared to see dismembered limps and people being impaled. The worst of it is largely not shown, but it's left to the imagination what is going down. The action is very good though. There are some sequences that might look awkward by today's standards, but that's due to the style and limitations of the time more than anything. The animation for the most part is pretty stellar and there were only a few moments where it distracted me with how awkward running animations, facial animations and things like that. 

The characters are all pretty great. There is a fairly large cast as you move throughout the entire show, but it focuses largely on the two leads, Yuji Kaido and Marlene Angel. Yuji is a kind-hearted man who struggles with the fact that he's woken up to the earth being in this hellish state, but he has a genuine desire to help others especially those still stuck on earth. As the series progresses, you see him grow and change as he learns to fight against the Blue and tries to integrate himself into this new world. 

Marlene is a soldier who was taken to Second Earth when she was 10, and she showed extreme promise as an excellent soldier, and she became a force to be reckoned with, being very adept at fighting the Blue. She's initially very cold to everyone and everything, since she doesn't want to get overly attached to something that she might lose 2 seconds from now. As the show progresses, and as she and Yuji start to bond however, you start to see her change for the better. She's a great character and probably my favorite in the show. As for the others, I'll let you watch the show and see them yourself. You won't regret it I promise. 

In addition to the warning above about the sometimes over the top violence in the show, there is a fair bit of sexual themes in the show. Largely, these are more implied than shown, but since the humans of second earth believe that they could be dead any moment, they will engage in sexual interactions to relieve stress. Like I said, it's not usually explicitly shown, but there is some nudity in the show. It's fairly easy to see coming and skip if you don't want to see it though. Also, the end credits show Marlene walking through water naked, and you can see her breasts. I honestly don't know why in the world they decided to make that the beginning of the end credits, but they did. Kinda bugs me since it doesn't really match the tone of the show, or Marlene's character really at all, but, be aware of that. I don't watch ending credits anyway, so I didn't pay attention to it. 

Ok, now that I've gotten all that recommendation stuff out of the way, here it is Spoilers from here on out!!! If you don't want it spoiled for you, then don't keep reading for crying out loud. Go watch the show and then come back and you'll know what I'm talking about here in this section. 

Good, now that I've got this lengthy spoiler warning above me now, I have some things to say about the show that I either want to discuss, or were bugging me. 

The first thing I want to talk about is something that more comes at the end than anywhere else, but there is way too much needless death in this show. There are lots of impactful deaths in the show that broke my heart, or at least made me feel emotions for the characters. However, they do not hold back on killing every non-vital character, with few exceptions. The early ones I'm fine with cause it's good world building, in that people die every day, and it's just something these people deal with on a day to day basis. However, in the last episode when Yuji and Marlene return to Earth with some volunteers and they take the soldiers with Armored Shrikes into that tunnel that led into the Blue's nest, what in the world was the point of that final encounter with the ultimate blue? It just seemed like a ham-fisted attempt to let Marlene and Yuji to have another moment of comforting one another about the deaths of comrades, and comrades we know nothing about mind you, and have one more moment alone together before Yuji goes and consults with the earth about the future of the human race. This battle was unnecessary, and the extra deaths were unnecessary. 

Also, on a similar note to that one, what was the Earth's point in even making that ultimate blue in the first place? It couldn't have been to kill all the humans, since if it wanted to truly do that, it could have just created like 50 of those things and overwhelm the Shrikes, since they had enough trouble killing 1 of those things. It doesn't make sense for it to try to kill Yuji, when Yuji was trying to find answers for his existence, and the Earth seemed willing to let humanity have a rebirth on the planet and live peacefully alongside the B-cells and stuff like that. As much as I liked the last episode, this was the weakest part of it for me. 

Another bit on the needless death point, this one is less needless death but more of an anticlimactic death, but it's with the character of Rick, who is voiced in the English dub by Sean Schemmel funnily enough. Rick is introduced after Marlene and Yuji make it to second earth, and he's got the hots for Marlene, which Marlene initially reluctantly plays along with because Yuji has gone a bit crazy at this section of the show. Rick is a bit of a creep, and he comes onto Marlene way too hard when he's first introduced into the show, but over the course of the show, he's shown to be a fairly likable character and is certainly a very loyal and dedicated person when it comes to combat and helping his comrades. However, in the finale episodes, I forget which one, Rick is tasked with getting a girl who appears later in the show to safety after a bunch of Blue invade Second Earth (long story). He's on this little speeder bike thing if I remember correctly, and at a certain point he stops in this corridor. I don't remember the reason, mostly because I was just shocked by what happened after they stopped. Out of nowhere, a Blue shows up and just devours Rick. It was such an anticlimactic death, which the show does have a lot of, but for Rick it didn't seem appropriate. He was too good a character in my opinion to just kill off in that cheap and lazy way. It is shocking and unexpected when it happens though, so I gotta give credit there, but it's not a good kind of shocking. It's more like the first time you play Dark Souls and walk into the Capra Demon boss fight. Or for a more relatable example, it's like waiting for a package to arrive and when the doorbell finally rings, and you open the door, just to find a bag of dog poo that's been set on fire. Horrible examples, but you get my point. It wasn't very well done in my opinion. 

However, I just gotta say before I forget that probably my favorite moment in the show, and one of my favorite moments in any show ever is the part in the first episode when Marlene is taking on that Blue that attacked Yuji, and the Blue breaks half of her mask off. I think I like this moment because it's so cool in the trailer with the music, and the moment just shows off how bad*** Marlene is for just dodging the attack and casually gets her mask torn in half and doesn't seem fazed by it. Super awesome. Also that moment is met with silence in the actual show, which I think makes it just as cool. This was just a little tangent, sorry. 

I'll finish the second part of this post later, but just so I can get this out there, go and watch this show if you haven't already. It's good and worth the watch.