BLOODBORNE given Feb '15 Euro/NA release date, deemed worthy of own thread by ilxor

Oh, and something else I noticed about this game that is particularly perverse is enemies that seem to be gone but have some invisible sliver of health that takes you by surprise. That seems to be more of a thing in this game than the others. Related, those brainsuckers suuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Iirc they have a lot of poise (or at least hyperarmor when trying to grab you). So you're conditioned to most enemies getting stunned to at least some degree, and they just stand there and suck your brain.

More game trolling: returning you back to Hyperloop Goal or whatever, by way of Unseen Village, only now there are three (!) aggro NPCs out to get you. Very funny, (not) Dark Souls.

There's so much to explore in this game, but compared to the perfectly connected level design of Dark Souls, and (iirc) smooth progression of DS3, this game is a bit more chaotic in its design. Lots of warping around, back and forth, to hidden areas, new levels, new parts of new levels, etc. And the dark areas are really dark, too, even with a torch.

The One Reborn more like the One Got Its Ass Kicked.

Amygdala boss down! Second try, too. Giant sword helps. Also, none of its attacks seemed to land on me, except for the one where it jumped up and ... landed on me.

similarly just had a run of beating bosses after vacuous rom. or maybe it just felt like that after two years of hitting those spiders.

Goofy Celestial Emissary down! Are those supposed to be ... aliens? Eh, might as well be. Then I went back to fight Marytr Logarius, and I came pretty close to killing him a couple of times in a row but was too sloppy/impatient to seal the deal. I think he tops Rom (so far) for biggest waste of blood vials. Anyway, he seems like the sort that when I fight him next, with fresh thumbs, I'll take him down pretty easily.

They're cute!

I remember Logarius' final phase flying skulls taking some time to figure out (maybe dodging forward through them helps?).

I remember Amygdala being pretty easy, but there's a chalice version in a much smaller space that's another story. There's a chalice Rom too, but that was actually easier due to pillars that you can hide from the meteors behind.

Stupid Logarius. I know he's optional, but I really feel like taking him down before I move on. So far, so not good, though.

And ... done. Went through all 20 of my blood vials.

Micolash was a pretty silly boss, especially for late game. Clearly that whole sequence was heavily indebted to Blade Runner, but it would have been much more interesting/intense if he was chasing you rather than the other way around, which was ... yeah, silly.

It is this point in Nightmare Mensis that I realize that, no, having a bunch of insight is *not* a good thing, since it apparently makes frenzy *worse*. And frenzy sucks. I guess I should go spend it down before I face those frenzy monsters again, ouch.

Yet another secret I have no idea how anyone discovered. After you take out the giant frenzy brain it falls to its apparent death and you never have to worry about it again. So how in the world did anyone discover that if you go *back* to an earlier part of the level you can find a new elevator down that leads down into the pitch black abyss (OK, this I can imagine someone discovering at some point), but *then* *also* discover that within the abyss is the giant frenzy brain, now harmless, and *then* that if you make a specific gesture learned much earlier in the game, and *then* just stand there making the gesture for 30 seconds or so, then you'd be rewarded with a cool rune? I suppose when it comes to games, any of these games, that I just constantly underestimate the OCD diligence of dudes just trying everything, for hours and hours, just to see what would happen. As a mostly casual gamer (or whatever you would call someone that finishes games, even tough games, but still happily leaves them at 50% incomplete, forgoing all the 100% BS) it does bum me out a little that so much time and effort could be put into designing these cool secrets, even huge hidden levels of the game, that I literally would never have discovered without a guide.

A similar example is the chalice dungeons, which are clearly designed to be optional, and yet apparently don't scale with you. I wonder if they would all or mostly be too easy for me now late-game with a +10 weapon and a lot more experience/HP/etc.? I guess I'll check them out at some point, maybe before the DLC. I think I'm getting to the end of the main game.

By the way, spending down my stupid insight was key to making it past the frenzy monsters, who suddenly didn't kill me in three seconds.

Not saying I would have figured any of this out without a guide, but it probably went something like 'hidden gesture that seems to tie in with the cosmic alien lore must be good for something' -> 'that giant brain must have fallen somewhere reachable' -> 'giant brain is not attacking? try gesture'.

I think I remember people trying that gesture in lots of places to figure out its purpose.

Did they do that with any of the other gestures, too? Dark Souls 3 had a gesture that unlocked something secret once, right? Did the first one have one, too?

I was trying to remember -- maybe the closest thing was curling up and waiting for the crow to take you back to the Asylum, even though that was a prompt and not a gesture? So I guess BB introduced the idea, and DS3 re-used it.

which is the one where you are supposed to sit down or something before a dragon statue? DS3?

Hate u Josh for playing this, I actually resumed my save last night and got duly murdered.

Wet nurse down! OK, glancing at a guide now, it appears I have one more optional boss I left behind (near the celestial alien boss), then the final boss(es), which would put me on NG+. Which means I need to get that optional boss and hit the DLC before I wrap things up.

I think you have only the hardest bosses in the game left then, but you're a pro now so you'll be fine :)

lol, of course they come after a run of pushovers.

I just destroyed Ebrietas, that's what happens when you go back to something you skipped/missed now that you're a leveled up +10 jedi master.

!!!

Well GOOD for you. Ebrietas gave me more trouble than any other boss in the game.

I can see that, because it can more or less one-shot you. But if you can make it through that hit/charge, then you can just ("just") heal, get in and whack its head, and repeat. I guess the key is to have enough health to survive its undodgeable attack. Same with the guy with a cage on his head, for that matter.

So tell me: Is this just Dark Souls but with a Transylvanian skin, or is there more to it than that?

It's 95% Dark Souls, with a few different mechanics and a totally different impenetrable mythology that combines Gothic horror and Lovecraft but still basically skews Dark Souls for all the sense it makes (or doesn't make).

Like, Dark Souls is essentially a horror game itself. I haven't played Sekiro yet, but that one is the one that seems significantly different.

it is.

Sekiro pips Bloodborne and DS1 as my favourite SoulsBorne game, they perfected the block/riposte mechanic with that iteration and the medieval Japan setting rules

I started in on the DLC, and it's basically troll-a-saurus, doubling down on everything. Gatling guns! Giant beasties! More hunters everywhere! More flaming boulders! More fights in the dark! I just killed some giant blob thing in a cave and I literally have no idea what it looked like. My favorite thing in these games is when the enemies turn on each other, though, and there's a lot of that here, which is funny.

Oof, Ludwig. Now *this* boss is no pushover. I've managed to get it halfway down its second stage so far, but only with the help of Henrietta. It seems that the second/sword stage might be easier than the first, so as long as I don't panic I might be OK. Reminds me a bit of the twins that gave me a ton of trouble in Dark Souls 3.

Ooh yeah. I think I may have had to use the weapon you find in the dlc colloquially known as the 'pizza cutter'.

Ha, I have that one, but I've been using my Ludwig's Holy Sword, which hits like a truck. I guess it can't hurt to try a different weapon, but the moveset of that "pizza cutter" bladed wheel seemed awkward.

It is, but the L2 buzzsaw is basically "hold to apply damage".

The Holy Sword was my main not-axe too, it's the perfect combination of fast weapon and big weapon. Also thematically appropriate to use vs Ludwig.

OK, beat the mutant horse monster. When I googled for hints I learned there is a different, second NPC you can summon, one that does not rush straight into death, this one wielding said pizza cutter. (I guess in theory you can summon both NPCs for help?!) And of course this game being what it is, after the briefest of breathers when you beat him, you are almost immediately fighting two pretty OP NPCs, one that may have the holy blade as well, the other with massive ranged magic attacks. Ugh, joke's on me, Bloodborne. I'm glad I'm not doing this on NG+, so I guess still advantage-me.

And now Lawrence, double ugh. For some reason there's not even a summons, and his hit boxes and damage are huge. Fortunately, he seems to be optional. And I'm not sure I want to opt to go through all my blood vials.

Got those other alien things down in the Research Lab, not too bad. I was curious so went back and tried a couple of dungeons for the first time, and boy, am I overpowered for at least the first couple. Like, one-hitting ostensible bosses, which is admittedly fun. What purpose were these dungeons supposed to serve here, btw? Just for extra gameplay fun? Leftovers? I sometimes feel the DLC is just a dumping ground for cool stuff they couldn't finish in time for the main game release, too, awesome though it is. Like, at what stage does DLC development even begin in a game's production? Concurrent to main game? Only once main game is done and they've moved on? I don't know what to make of the fact that the DLC here, as with DSIII and DS1, is cooler than some stuff in the main game.

There are two kinds of chalice dungeons, dev-made ones and procedurally generated ones. The main point (besides just more content) is to get more powerful blood gems than are available in the main game, but that only really matters if you're doing pvp.

The dev-made dungeons are kind of like a pseudo-dlc, in that you need to keep doing them to get the materials to progress, and there is a unique boss at the end.

I think the dlc is always better because that you know how to play the game by then, and have decent stats/weapons?

I opened up the shortcut in Old Yarnham, but had to brute force my way through the house of screamers. I barely got out alive, what's the advice on dealing with getting rushed by loads of enemies (I even have trouble with the big crows)?

The best bet is always to bait them out one at a time. Few enemies follow you more than just a little set route, so just pop your head in then run out again and see who/what follows. Or hit them with a pebble and kite them to you one at a time.

I opened up the shortcut in Old Yarnham, but had to brute force my way through the house of screamers. I barely got out alive, what's the advice on dealing with getting rushed by loads of enemies (I even have trouble with the big crows)?

So if they're already after me, the only thing to do is to book it and try to find a chokepoint to funnel them into? I probably need to level up my endurance to really do that, too.

If you do end up fighting more than one enemy in these games, it's best not to lock on. You'll have an easier time hitting more than one and dodging their attacks.

In this game, like all the Souls games, fighting more than one enemy at a time, no matter the enemy, is kind of asking for trouble. Even a couple of crows can take you out, if you're not careful.

Incidentally, I just took down Lady Maria on my first try! I think it definitely helped to have played a couple of Dark Souls games first. In those games, keeping your distance and attacking strategically is often the best bet. In this game, getting in there aggressively is the best bet. Lady Maria seemed to be like a combination of the two approaches (though as a human-like player she's pretty susceptible to aggressive play, like viscerals and stun locking her, which is how I won). Lawrence the Vicar, on the other hand, seems to be more of a stand-back sort of boss, plus some random AOE and aggro. I still haven't bested him, even after figuring out how to summon. I think I read somewhere that he is the least completed boss in Bloodborne, but that could be because he's optional and/or somewhat secret.

I reached BSB yesterday and actually came close to being him on my first try, got him down to a third of his health and then he had this weird seizure that lured me in too close whereupon he's punched and ate me.

Second attempt was a comedy of errors, I stepped into the fog, applied fire paper to my weapon, and as I scrolled to antidotes in my quick item, accidentally changed weapons, extinguishing the fire.

Ha, there have been plenty of times where I've wanted/needed to take an emergency blood vial but ended up, like, throwing a pebble or molotov instead.

First Vicar done. I had a feeling today was the day, and came super close the first time. It was only after I died that I realized I had all the wrong runes equipped, including the one that allows you to summon. Oh well. Next time I was better equipped and kicked its butt with the help of the NPC. Very satisfying when you *and* the NPC make it to the other side of the battle. Back to the DLC. Fishing Hamlet is super moody and cool so far.