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

The Souls games are about dying - every feeble creature and majestically grotesque monster and crumbling castle in those games is a manifestation of death in its many scary and sometimes beautiful forms. But Bloodborne? Bloodborne’s more about killing.

The rhythm and style of the combat is different, you see, even if it might look broadly similar. In Souls you’re usually on the defensive - you walk into a room with your shield up and can take a few hits before reacting. That just does not happen in Bloodborne. You don’t even have a shield. When something hits you, you have to hit back, and quickly, to regain health.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/03/16/dark-souls-death-bloodborne-killing

http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/bloodborne/news/danish_blood_donors_offered_free_copy_of_bloodborne.html

Giv dit blud!
I would do this in a second

i don't actually want to know anything more before i play, but i can't look away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GtcEBBs4rE

i want a positive critical consensus and two freaked out ILXor reviews
and then i'm buying the fucking system god help me

i can't remember the last time i was so hyped for a game, honestly

argh i refuse to watch videos!

Downloading now, it's gonna take days. No more videos or links for me until Thursday (the first chance I'll get to dig in).

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/03/bloodborne-review-die-die-again/

glowing reviews so far

Yeah, it's looking good. Common complaint seems to be loading times. 40 seconds after dying? Jeez.

Anyway, psyched.

early reviews obsessively positive:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/bloodborne/critic-reviews
i'm hoping the long loading time complaint is addressed by the patch?
Jordan, you are gonna be the guy who determines how my bank account looks in April.

downloading now!

so ready for this

Jordan, you are gonna be the guy who determines how my bank account looks in April.

ha, that's a big responsibility but i will let you know.

it took massive willpower not to start this before work today, there should be some sort of award.

i'm hoping the long loading time complaint is addressed by the patch?

apparently not yet, but soon:

http://www.justpushstart.com/2015/03/bloodborne-long-load-times-will-be-addressed-in-the-next-patch/

hm, will def wait for that to come to fruition

played the first hour. as good as I hoped. one of the character classes is "waste of skin" and has terrible stats haha.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-24-is-bloodborne-the-best-game-ever-or-just-the-second-best

my local gamestop has closed! and amazon is sold out...

i am going to have to go *out of my way* to buy this :(

gross

I DIED

it's 2015! digital never sells out :)

lol, i had dismissed that option because i am fastidiously husbanding my HDD space but of course that is precisely what i will do in the circumstances. of course, now i am going to have to WAIT for this to download. ugh could this be any more inconvenient.

played the first hour. as good as I hoped. one of the character classes is "waste of skin" and has terrible stats haha.
― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Tuesday, March 24, 2015 2:20 PM

i almost went with that but chose "a violent past" i think lol. game is awesome so far

"you're better off dead!!!"

have not played dark souls. have not played dark souls 2. think i might buy this today.

will i hate it/myself/you all? are DS/DS2 required playing before?

dark souls in some ways will give you bad habits because the controls are different. i'd say dive straight in.

agreed. the general approach of these games is similar enough that some skills transfer over, but they're different enough that each one has a learning curve. i sucked at all of them in the early stages.

Amazon and/or UPS fucked up my delivery and it got pushed back to the end of the week. Decided to just go to Gamestop and pick it up and that reminded me why i never go to Gamestop. Dude tried to get me to sign up for or buy like four other things at the register and then I get some smug ass response after I politely turn them all down. Gonna load this up and try to forget about how badly I hate everything right now.

im so tempted to go out and buy a ps4 right now

are DS/DS2 required playing before?
― GGGOAT: greatest goat game of all time (Will M.), Tuesday, 24 March 2015 21:21

no this one is different enough to be its own thing, mostly just shares the control scheme.

couldn't get the summoning to work. is password required or is that just if you want to limit it to specific ppl

I thought it was just to limit (or prioritize?) but who knows at this point.

well goddammit i think i may have bought this

played for about an hour last night, fell instantly into the familiar souls rhythm of nervously moving forward, dying, inching a little bit past the point where i died before, dying, repeat infinitely. those mobs can really fuck you up quickly!

it's impressive how familar it feels but how different too - i played exclusively nimble melee characters in DeS/DaS but not having a shield is taking a bit of getting used to, as is the altered parry/riposte mechanic.

these games have the most amazing atmosphere of mystery and tension which i don't think you could achieve in any other medium.

Which weapons did you guys pick? I went with the rod and the pistol.

I DIED a few times before work this morning. :)

went with the axe + pistol, kinda regretting not taking the cane. i got as far as the two werewolves, while also managing to (i'm sure) miss every shortcut. and i definitely keep trying to two-hand and accidentally healing. loving it so far.

went with axe and blunderbuss. the merchant will start selling the other weapons for not unreasonable prices after a certain point early on. might need an item for that to happen?

i played through and beat what i thought was the first boss last night. looking around online today though, it looks like i missed an optional one.

game's great so far. can't wait to get back to it.

will say that FROM really ain’t so hot at graphics optimization though, huh? the game looks good, but not so good it should stutter like it does on PS4 hardware. and the character creation tool is still comically antiquated. minor quibbles though. these things are basically trademarks of the series at this point.

ha, my girlfriend tried to help make a character that looks like me and it went horribly awry. basically the more parameters you start to change, the more you look like hideous mutant. i find it endearing though.

the stuttering sucks, how do you not iron that shit out of a console exclusive before release? i don't even usually notice that kind of shit. i just haven't played any games on ps4 that have had this issue. well except ac:unity

also saw lag during co-op which can hopefully be fixed in the network/server? the online stuff seems really buggy across the board

i went with axe/pistol and my char came out looking like 70 yr old kyle maclachlan

http://media.kotaku.foxtrot.future.net.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2015/03/PitifulMagnificentAsiansmallclawedotter.gif

havent seen any lolfedora messengers yet, did see a top hat one

http://i.imgur.com/lxMCS50.gifv

eh

http://i.imgur.com/lxMCS50.gifv

NEXT GEN

praise the buns

sack

so far i seem to be an order worse at this than the souls games. i played a couple hours total and have literally got nowhere. i have the axe and pistol and my guy looks like the british librarian from buffy

was there an ilx password decided for co-op??

Arcane is a viable build in Bloodborne. You can do serious damage with some of those hunters’ tools like the Executioner Gloves etc. And the cap is 99 so you can keep pumping points into arcane and adding damage.

DS2 had Scholar of the First Sin but it wasn't a huge jump in quality or anything.

There are big calls to remake Bloodborne, mostly cos it's 30FPS, but I don't think it looks bad at all?
If I were in charge I'd maybe tone down some of the overall clutter, especially in places like Central Yarnham where the amount of coffins and other debris confuse my eyes a bit. It would be lovely to get some proper depth definition on that, really increase the atmosphere etc.

The fps discussion drives me insane. Sure, I can tell the difference now, but it doesn't matter once you start playing. Looks great, plays great.

I previously managed to get up to Micolash and Martyr Logarius in BB, both of which felt like walls, and then ER came out and it felt like a natural place to put it down.

I don't know whether to carry on with this playthrough and just beat it (I understand I'm fairly near the end game anyway); but I'm tempted to just start again from scratch, daunting as that is. I feel like I might gain a lot more from a second playthrough now that I know what I know.

yup, i don't get the FPS stuff either - I can barely tell

I could really do with mothballing my PS5 for a while. Gaming really has gone from being a casual hobby to a several-hours-a-week habit, and I find myself switching on the PS5 most nights by default as soon as I've finished dinner.

I shelled out for Ableton recently and I keep telling myself I need to get stuck into learning how to use it but Baldur's Gate beckoned every night and I haven't even used it yet!

Yeah, I got a Zoia. I have the same obsession going on that I had for games. Making synths that track with violin and guitar, making audio triggered synth drum sounds. I feel weirdly sheepish about how much of lockdown I spent playing From games. I’ll play Elden Ring DLC sometime but not this year I don’t think

I had a go at the Challice Dungeons last night in the hope I could get some upgrade materials and I'm afraid I don't really see the appeal. Maybe I don't really get what they're for other than grinding, which seems dull to me.

I made the mistake of ignoring them when I played the game, so that when I finally dipped in out of curiosity it was pretty silly, beating bosses in one hit or whatever.

It seems at first to be tedious in comparison to the main game, and it is, but the repetitiousness of it starts to appeal like “many hands of bridge” or “many crossword puzzles”. The bosses escalate in difficulty precipitously and become challenging/fun, the rewards are worth it, and once you get into the gem farming part of it it becomes extremely addictive

In a sentence: cursed blood gems offer a big upgrade and a minor debuff. They scale to impossibly high levels of power, and if you get one with an “easy curse” (ATK vs Kin down, or the minor stamina debuff) then stacking these gems makes for wonderful results.

You can also acquire upgrade materials (incl blood stone chunks) so any weapon you desire is maxed out. It’s definitely more of the code-divey “enjoy your combat” kind of play, but very much worth delving into.

The basic progression to attempt to murder the Pthumerian Queen is a big challenge and worth pursuing. You’ll have to fight a much upgraded Amygdala again which sucks but aside from that it’s very pure gaming enjoyment

I was after the Blood Stone Chunks in fact. Im not entirely sure I understand how the various rituals work. I have loads of the materials but I can only seem to create certain types or altar(?) or something(?) Eh...

Anyway, I seem to be doing this because I'm bouncing off both Logarius and Micolash. I think I can probably cheese Micolash but Logarius is NAILS. The other tough fight I can't do is that Cainhurst Crow NPC.

Is it fair to say that Bloodborne is maybe the hardest of the Soulsborne games overall? I haven't played DS2 enough to find out

DS2 has the annoying feature of tying iframes to a stat (adaptability), or at least it used to. So the early game was tough because you barely even have a functional roll, lol. But other than that I'm sure BB is tougher. But really it's just a question of getting used to the rhythms of each game, right?

I remember Logarius taking many tries. But Micolash is the gimmick boss who runs away from you, right?

Yeah that's right. My sense of direction is appalling so I end up running around the labyrinth house and getting decked by skellingtons a lot

It's worth learning about how Chalice Dungeon generation works so that you can generate any dungeon you desire. It is esoteric and confusing, I still don't fully understand it. Once you've unlocked the capacity to generate any possible dungeon, you can consult online databases of glyphs and find gems and items and armaments and anything you want. You'll also face some insanely hard enemies.

My last play through, I was focusing on an Arcane build. I had three weapons that I used. A fire-based Saw Spear, a bolt-based Saw-Cleaver, and a physical-based Church Pick. The best gems for these involved generating a cursed (you have half-health) 5-level root dungeon and descending down to the bottom and killing a Pthumerian Descendent. He would drop, usually, a level 19 or 20 gem; ideally, I wanted a level 20 "Cold Abyssal Cursed Blood Gem", one that paired maximum damage boost (either fire, bolt or physical) with a manageable curse (either stamina debuff, atk vs. kin down, or durability). There are many found glyphs that created optimal conditions for this endeavour, listed online. I would make it to the bottom, save outside the arena and killed him and save-scummed and reloaded and killed him again, over and over, until I got the gem I wanted. It was a highly enjoyable chore. I killed that Descendent 200 times at least. Immediately after getting my first useable Abyssal gem, my weapon went from flimsy to ironclad, and the game became much more manageable.

Cainhurst Crow NPC.

Oh shit, is this the one in the cathedral later? I don't think I ever bothered with him. Whatever guide I was following I think essentially warned that no matter how good or strong you are, it's basically a long slog of a fight.

Yeah, a crazy NPC who Eileen the Crow has trouble with (you meet her outside rather dishevelled). He heals constantly, has quickstep and I think has ranged attacks too

I keep coming back to this, often starting a fresh game just to refamiliarise myself with it. And also to see if, having beaten Demons Souls, Dark Souls, Elden Ring and a good chunk of Sekiro and DS2, I might have improved at playing this.
No. It's still really really tough. Or at least the start of the game is. I'm surprised more players don't just give up before Old Yarnham