I want to play Bloodborne because quite frankly it looks really cool. I’m told the game is going to be way too difficult for me. I usually play games on standard or easy difficulty. Should I even bother? Is this game even going to be playable to a noob like me?
The souls games, and Bloodborne in particular, can be hard and frustrating.
But with the right mindset everyone can beat them.
You don’t need perfect reflexes, you don’t need to learn super complex combos.
You do need to realize that (at least in the beginning) you are not super strong compared to the enemies you encounter.
If you start the game for the first time and run into a big group of enemies, you WILL die.
Then you learn to not do that and try to aggro one enemy at a time.
This goes for many more situations.
At first you won’t know how to approach some of them and you will die. And sometimes you will die twice and lose your hard earned resources.
This can be frustrating. And sometimes the camera was a bit buggy or your dodge didn’t work the way you thought it would.
But most of the time you could have done something different to avoid death.
And FromSoftware is quite good in giving hints what that is.
If you die in similar situations, there is usually a way to approach them differently.
That also goes for bosses.
And then there is the big open secret, you can simply level a bit more than absolutely necessarily to make souls games significantly easier.
If you only need to hit the boss 20 times instead of 30 and you survive his 3 hit combo and can heal back up instead of dropping dead after 2 hits it becomes way more manageable.
This is not necessary, people beat those games with base level running around naked with giant clubs, but not in their first run.
Use items, upgrade your weapon, level up your character, and the game will not be so grim.
But be prepared to not be able to rush through all the content without being challenged or using your brain.
Oh and if you choose to play Bloodborne (my first souls like and still one of my favorite games of all times) just enjoy yourself.
Every weapon is 100% viable.
For the first run the Saw Cleaver (R1-L1-L1) and the Axe (long R2 in two-handed mode) are slightly easier than the pimp cane, but again, every weapon is viable.
Just have fun with it, the games are classics for a reason.