Overview

Bloodborne is an action-RPG developed by FromSoftware, Inc. and SCE Japan Studio with Hidetaka Miyazaki of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls fame acting as lead director.

The game was originally announced to be released on the PlayStation 4 on February 5, 2015 in Japan and February 6, 2015 in North America and Europe. However, on November 12, 2014, Sony delayed the game's North American release to March 24, its European release to March 25, and its Japanese release to March 26.

Gameplay

Bloodborne plays similarly to the Souls games which came before it. Notable changes, however, include a faster pace to combat, foregoing the shields used in the past games in favor of a second weapon, such as a pistol, in the off hand.

Another new feature are so-called "trick weapons," which are capable of switching between two forms on the fly. An example of these is the Threaded Cane, which can switch between a cane, as the name implies, and a whip, at the player's control.

Reusable healing items are also dropped from Bloodborne, as the main source of healing are items called Blood Vials, which are primarily taken from corpses of enemies throughout the game, similarly to the various moon grasses seen in Demon's Souls.

Story

Bloodborne is set in the city of Yharnam, once famous for a fabled remedy that could, supposedly, cure any ailment. Now, however, the world is under the siege of a beast plague, which infects, and transforms humans into terrifying creatures.

The player is a human infected with this plague, who must traverse the ruined city of Yharnam and its many terrors, and attempt to find a cure without losing their own humanity in the process.

Chalice Dungeons

Another new feature in Bloodborne is the Chalice Dungeon, an optional, procedurally generated dungeon set beneath Yharnam. A chalice dungeon is generated when a player brings a special chalice item to it, and once generated remains the same for the rest of the playthrough, although chalice dungeons can be shared with others.

Some of the features of the Chalice Dungeon include:

• Chalice Dungeons spawn Bosses that the player must face in order to progress, it is unclear as to what bosses the dungeon will spawn on generation
• In order to co-op in a Chalice Dungeon, both hosting and joining players must have created a dungeon of that chalice at least once.
• Only the "Root" variants of Chalices provide completely procedurally generated dungeons, regular Chalices only provide fixed dungeons.

Chalices:

Pthumeru Chalices

Hintertomb Chalices