I’ve been a fan of the “Souls” series of video games since the first one, “Demon’s Souls” was released. So when I first heard that they were releasing a sister project, “Bloodborne,” that was going to take the familiar gameplay and put it into a gothic horror setting I was ecstatic. I was guarded in my optimism though, being unsure how well they would be able to adapt from dark fantasy into horror. So let’s take a look at how they pulled it off.

As a spin off from the “Souls” series, it should come as no surprise that the story of “Bloodborne” is cryptic. However, “Bloodborne” takes that to a new extreme; the player character wakes up in a Victorian city called Yharnam after receiving a blood transfusion with no memory of the preceding events and is told to find something called paleblood. None of the other characters that the player runs into seem to understand what this means either. The bulk of the story is never directly related to the player, and instead must be sought out in notes scattered around the world and in the descriptions of items the player finds. Without spoiling too much, as the story progresses much of the gothic horror is revealed to be something of a mask, hiding a horrid Lovecraftian truth.

Visually, “Bloodborne” is resoundingly good-but-not-great. The actual design of things is fantastic. The city is appropriately brooding and full of spires and vaulted arches and the monsters resemble something Clive Barker might have created if he had worked on the classic Universal monster films of the ’30s. There are plenty of nice small touches, like a character’s coat billowing upward as they fall. However, there are a few problems. Some textures feel a little drab and lifeless, some objects tend to clip through others, and there are a few models that don’t quite match up to the quality and realism of the majority.

“Bloodborne” is a bit stingy with its soundtrack. While most characters and boss monsters have their own themes that play when they are near, most of the time there’s little to no background music. That’s a shame, considering how beautiful and lush the soundtrack actually is. However, the sound is such an important part of actually playing the game that it makes sense that the music is reserved for special occasions. Throughout most of the game, the player will be relying on sounds to tell them what kind of monsters are nearby and how many of them there are.

To say that “Bloodborne” is hard would be an understatement, but anyone familiar with the “Souls” games can tell you that that’s par for the course. The player character is almost sure to die several dozen times over the course of the game, but the game design takes this into account and instead makes death just another mechanic rather than a “game over” like in most games. The main focus of the game is combat, and it pulls that off excellently. The weapons feel like they have a real weight behind them rather than just being props. The character is in a desperate situation and the game is sure to convey that to the player.

A few minor visual problems aside, “Bloodborne” is a marvelous game. I was a bit hesitant since other games I’ve played that attempt to mix action and horror have tended to fall flat in terms of horror, but “Bloodborne” suffers from no such problem. I think the moment when I realized just how much I loved this game was when I noticed that a monster was wearing its own flayed skin as a priestly garment. If you have a PlayStation 4 on which to play it, I cannot recommend “Bloodborne” highly enough.

A note for parents, though: This may not be a good game for your child. “Bloodborne” is rated M for Mature, the video game equivalent of an R-rated movie. Often video game ratings are a bit more harsh than movie ratings, but that is definitely not the case here. “Bloodborne” is full of graphic, disturbing imagery and enough blood to make Quentin Tarantino jealous. It even realistically renders blood-spatter, and your character will get absolutely drenched in the stuff. The bottom line is that if you wouldn’t be comfortable with your kid watching a marathon of all the “Saw” movies, then you probably don’t want them to play this game.