Celia Wagar's CritPoints

If they were to make a sequel to bloodborne, what improvements or new features would you want the developers to include?

Make the blood vial use animation longer.

Assuming Joseph Anderson is correct and the new blood vial system exists to force you to fight through enemies on the way back through the stage instead of running past them, then it might make sense to have a blood meter of some kind that fills up as you kill enemies, granting blood vials in a manner similar to bonus humanity in the original dark souls. This avoids having to spend souls on blood vials, and side steps random drop chance, not to mention keeps with the theme of the game. Probably not a perfect solution though, as it still allows/forces players to grind (and not even as effectively, given you can’t drop a huge number of souls on bloodvials, though you could have that as a backup) vials back up before challenging an area.

The real design goal here is to have players spawn with all their vials, since that’s what they use to get through the level, and want to kill every enemy, by tying progression to enemies in some way. The obvious solution is to gate progression until enemies are dead, like devil may cry, except that doesn’t fit the tone of the series. A less obvious solution is to make enemies better roadblocks, like in a lot of classic 2d games, such as castlevania or ninja gaiden. This way getting around them is as risky, or a riskier, proposition than fighting them straight up. Trouble is, that’s hard to implement in a game that is specifically designed to have longer drawn-out combat. Because enemies don’t deal damage on contact, you want players to hug up next to enemies sometimes, not get hurt slashing at them due to hitbox oddities, and enemies to have actual startup to their weapon swing animations so they’re fair.

Maybe one solution is to start players off with 10-15 vials and an empty blood meter on spawn unconditionally. This being true even if they warp. Then have it so killing enemies in the level fills up the blood meter, and instead of pressing up to regain silver bullets, they press it to convert blood meter into vials. Could upgrade your vial/meter capacity over the game.

The hunter’s dream is destroyed in the first BB presumably, so just have levelups/warps at the damn lanterns. Also resting to reset the level/vials. Teleporting to another area to perform common functions like leveling up is a terrible idea. I know they want to have the whole homey feeling of the nexus, but it’s a pain in the ass.

Link the damn world together. I loved the forbidden woods skip in 1.0, even if I permanently hard locked my game using it. Also don’t allow warping from anywhere to anywhere for the first half of the game.

Have more effects tied to insight. Have new enemies appear, new enemy attacks. Have them pop up around 5 insight, more at 10, and so on.

Remove the frenzy causing mini-mother-brain enemies completely. I’ve never been able to beat one without getting frenzied, I’ve lost a ton of souls to these enemies. They don’t feel fair at all.

Skip on the chalice dungeons, reintegrate the enemies into the main game, or flesh them out into more their own areas instead of being cookie cutter reassembly of parts. I know the design goal was to make something replayable, but that just doesn’t work.

Perhaps Chalice Dungeons could take the role of the side areas you normally explore, and be set up more blatantly as side quest things available to you during the main game, with a lower bar to entry and more obvious rewards for entering them.

Beast Blood pellet’s effect should drain more slowly.

More areas should match central yharnum’s interconnectedness, use of enemy patrols, and in some cases enemy count.

Unlock Caryll Runes sooner, and don’t put their device in an optional area. I honestly missed it until late in my first playthrough.

Do something to differentiate sets of armor. Maybe have weight be directly tied to the armor you’re currently wearing rather than a character stat. So you can have light armors that make you faster, heavy armors that make you slower, and your overall speed is determined as an average of these. Avoids hitting the endgame where you can wear heavy armors like they’re nothing that happens in other souls games. Don’t make the weight differences too much. Add actual damage resistance to the heavy armors too so they don’t suck. Keep poise based on weapons/attacks, so characters still get stunlocked easy in PVP and by enemies.

Have an undizzy-like combo system like reverse-poise where a meter fills up as you take hits in a combo, then once it’s full you’re allowed to cancel your hitstun into a roll/quickstep. Heavier armor makes the meter smaller or fill faster.

Am I the only one who found the rope molotovs to not be very useful? I don’t really understand their intended function honestly.

Have brainsuckers drop insight if they suck one out of you. Also do something about the stunlock effect Joseph Anderson mentioned. Probably let you roll out of their special knockdown.

The Blood Tinge and Arcane stats were disappointing in my experience. Especially because the various spell items had such high stat requirements, but weren’t very useful.

Might make sense to have a higher QS bullet max and to limit parry range/effectiveness. Parries are kind of messed up in every souls game though. They’re high risk/high reward, but extremely polarizing since you can shut down enemies doing nothing but parries. Might make sense to only have specific types of attacks be parryable in a future game, so you gotta watch out for those ones, and normally defend against the others. QS sidearms kinda suck for normal use.

Don’t have anything as confusing and poorly connected as bloodstarved beast to the upper ward, to vicar amelia. I got lost there in replaying (bought the expensive key first time, was better experience).

Have an actual beast transformation this time, tie it to consuming too many blood vials, add drawbacks like frenzy. Add another mechanic to heal beast buildup.

If you could make the next 3D castlevania how would i play like? People often say it should be like dark souls but, what about platforming? Or do you like how they did in the “Lords of Shadow” games?

I would normally answer that seriously, Dark Souls is 3d castlevania. Like, Castlevania 3’s emphasis on commitment to attacks and enemy placement plus SotN’s non-linearity, but you got me with the platforming bit.

I don’t think lords of shadow is related to the series in any way.

I mean, I’d make it play like dark souls except you can jump with the interaction button, and instead of shortcuts being blocked off by one-way gates that become two way when you open them, they’d be blocked off at junction points between paths by obstacles you can only clear with a power up.

Powerups would probably include double jump (press jump again to divekick), a charge superjump, slide, dash, free movement underwater, wall kick, and backdash. In retrospect, there actually aren’t many powerups that let you clear obstacles.

Additionally would probably have subweapons instead of items, and those would be fueled by hearts (with the actual heart economics adjusted to make sense). The dagger and firebomb would stay in their existing roles, but made more powerful relatively (axe replacing firebomb perhaps). The Dagger can hit at a range, where the firebomb/axe can hit for more damage and be thrown in an arc (maybe have a feature where holding the item button down displays the trajectory of the weapon before you throw it by releasing the button). Holy water would be added, making a large AOE on the ground that stuns enemies who pass through. Cross would fly parallel to the ground, be a bit larger than a person, flying to the target, then back. This should allow it to hit multiple enemies on the way. Could also fly a set distance, then fly back once it reached that distance or hit a wall. Does not care where the player is when flying back, always returns the direction it came. Stopwatch stays the same, or is nerfed accordingly. Would probably only allow you to hold 20 hearts at a time, and add a stockpile up to 90-200 for extra hearts.

Maybe an estus flask or blood vial equivalent on triangle, since that worked really well for dark souls, and castlevania never had as good a health or healing system. The old games had hidden chicken, which is a basic knowledge test, the newer ones let you heal in menus, which is lame.

It might make sense to have enemies deal damage on contact, and knock the player back more. These would allow them to block the player’s path more effectively, which is part of what made classic castlevania enemies work so well. They were simultaneously a threat and roadblock, so getting past them was as dangerous as fighting them directly. Dark Souls enemies are easily ran past in comparison.