1. Hunter's Tools like Executioner's Gloves and Accursed Brew with high arcane can erase bosses. The S arcane-scaling Kos Parasite is one of the most fun weapons in the game and does hella damage.
2. Simon's Bowblade and Chikage are both fun, high damage, bloodtinge-scaling weapons in their two handed form. There is a Cannon build with Whirligig Saw glitch that is possibly the most OP in the entire game!
They are boring to use, the tools are just like spells, imagine you are walking with fireball and homing soulmass and spamming them all time in the game, plus you have to go out of your way to put points into arcane and spend your bullets on the tools, so you are also giving up on parries most of the time.
It wares off quickly and becomes boring especially when you realize melee is just way better since you will be having more fun changing weapons too.
As i said bloodtinge weapons as a hybrid is alright but you are essentially playing for the weapons not for the build, making an exclusive bloodtinge builds is either not viable or simply not fun enough, you will be spamming long range gun shots all the time, the best way is to mix it with melee, thus making it not a real build variety and a thing for weapons.
Yeah whirligig is the most fun weapon but it doesnt scale with bloodtinge so its not about the build, the glitch breaks the game and makes it simply unfun, if you like standing there and doing infinite damage to the boss you might as well skip it, whats the point, where is the fun.
You mean the weapons, not the builds. Yes, the weapons themselves offer more variety, but considering there're 26 weapons only (and 120 in Dark Souls and 308 in Elden Ring), it's still a lot less in terms of variety
The weapon variety is still the lowest in the series, Dark Souls and Elden Ring both have way more weapon variety.
Bloodborne weapons are more unique, not varied.
Also most BB weapons are just 2 basic Souls weapon, only few are weird like the whirlgig.
Hunter axe is simply an axe and a greataxe.
Ludwig holy sword is a straight sword and great sword.
Kirkhammer is a mace and a great mace.
So you simply just press a button to make change weapons, thats like putting a mace in slot 1 and a great mace in slot 2, congrats now you have the weapon.
Elden Ring has soo many weapons and thats without the DLC, sure some overlap but to say BB has more variety is straight up false.
And we dont need to talk about the magic system.
BB has 12 tools, aka magic, half of them are lame.
ER has more than i can count, a lot of them are cool and unique, the variety is through the roof. Magic build in ER and Souls is actually playable and fun.
I did a run in DS3 as a pyromancer, it was the most fun run i did.
DemonScar, with blackflame magic, lighting bolts, rapport and fireball. Dark lothric sword in hand for melee, chime for buffs, it was extremely versatile, it was the run where i realized im using the gameplay to its maximum potential, you feel you have tons of tools on your hand to deal with everything. Compared that to my first run in the game where i simply had dark sword, shield and roll roll R1 R1 it was night and day difference.
Souls/BB/ER issue is that magic builds and alternative playstyles are bad in NG, but they shine in NG+, since you collect the tools, well ER first run did it the best, but still NG+ allows for more stuff.