It's Simple Math: You're Probably Not Good Enough to Beat Bloodborne

The wonderful thing about Tokyo studio From Software’s games — the reason they’re beloved by such a widening swathe of gamers — is that they fly in the face of a decade’s worth of design assumptions: that successful games, especially financially successful ones, must be these inviting, cosseting, mechanically anodyne things.

Speaking as a deep admirer of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2, it’s with great pleasure that I’m reading a statistically irrelevant number of people managed to beat the PAX Prime show-floor demo of From Software’s upcoming ego-collapser, Bloodborne, at the conference earlier this month.

According to DualShockers, who attended the show as well as a stage event during which Bloodborne producers Masaaki Yamagiwa and Marketer Yasuhiro Kitao broke down the demo’s play stats, just 20 people managed to beat the final antagonist, of some 3,500 people who tried (slightly more than half of one percent).

That percentage crept up slightly at the Tokyo Game Show last week, says DualShockers: 40 people succeeded, out of 1,250 attempts, or 3.2%.

Writes DualShockers’ Giuseppe Nelva:

As I mentioned when I posted my video, journalists and industry professionals that had exclusive access during the first two days did abysmally, with only one managing to kill the Cleric Beast.

Unfortunately that one wasn’t me, as I did get to the final boss, but didn’t stop to grab enough potions for healing along the way. The result is that I got killed before I could drop under 80% of its life bar. It was exhilarating.

Here’s video of the demo at PAX. Nelva advises you can cut in line to the 33 minute mark if you want to see a few of those elite, supernaturally gifted 20 players taking the thing out.

Bloodborne arrives for PlayStation 4 on February 6 next year.

Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com.