For a guy that makes a lot of noise about BLOODBORNE being his favorite game on any given day, it will shock my readership to know that I had, to this point, not played THE OLD HUNTERS . At the time I played BLOODBORNE , I was engaged in a strategic initiative called "At Last!: Playing Every Soulsborne Game, In Order, During 2020 Lockdown," so I had to move on and worse games, like DARK SOULS 3 .
This Halloween (in need of a spooky one as I had completed my one-per-October playthrough of all the RESIDENT EVIL REmakes last year) I decided to dust off the ‘Ole PS4, find a micro-USB cable (Jesus…) for my DualShock 4, and get after the DLC (THE OLD HUNTERS) to the best game of all time (BLOODBORNE).
THE OLD HUNTERS picks up where BLOODBORNE left off (if you call a DLC that must be started midgame "picking up where BLOODBORNE left off" which this writer does for brevity). TOH manages to up the ante with a set of title-card bearing areas and a suite of boss fights which are a pitch perfect continuation of the base game. Three of these boss fights in particular could be considered the best in the game, and one of these is perhaps my favorite of the entire Soulsborne catalog.
The boss fight with Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower is a duel par excellence. This fight is to BLOODBORNE what the Knight Artorias fight is to DARK SOULS. While they are dissimilar to each other in many nuanced ways, each boss expresses a perfect, mechanical matchup for the player vis-à-vis the play conditioning that the player has experienced heretofore. As another ‘Hunter,’ Lady Maria is nimble, aggressive, and moves at a pace in-line with the player’s own avatar. Her moveset contains reach not typically available to the player avatar, which encourages maintaining a close engagement range and finding the parry window in order to avoid falling behind or being bullied off your spot. This emphasis on spacing and asking the player to carefully study the boss who is, by virtue of her form being similar to the player’s own, very readable. These are the elements that make the best Soulsborne boss fights. Being able to return to an all-time favorite through this DLC and experiencing not just more of the game you loved, but a level up in many regards, further cements this as a true modern classic.