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

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??

YALLDIED

What level are you? Read something saying that being within 10 levels helps.

21 and currently stuck at old yharnam

Same!

Since Elden Ring it's become a big part of the fun for me. It goes so deep in that game that I'd be tempted to say it challenges Tolkien. And there's a whole cottage industry of YouTubers (some good, some bad) who are into (over)analysing these things.

But yeah, it's just as easy to play these games and enjoy them without doing all that archaeology / detective work. For me it is satisfying to pick up an item and realise the body you picked it up from belongs to the person described in the item description etc...

In a lot of ways the ambiguity of it all adds to the sense of loneliness coursing though all the games.

In my current playthrough I'm back where I previously dropped off in my first playthrough: I have to beat Martyr Logarius and Micolash.

Not sure who to tackle first. I remember Logarius being especially tough.

That said, I'm having a really rough time with Micolash too.

Every online guide seems to say that he's a pushover, but they don't mention he's usually flanked by respawning skeletons who have a fair bit of range and need several hits to die.

Both the skeletons and Micolash are often able to 2/3 hit me. And I'm forever getting caught up in Micolash's Augur attack. And that's just the first phase. He takes so many hits that I keep having to stop and fight the skeletons again, who move about a great deal and lead me into his attack.

And then there's the crazy mazy level. Apparently there's a method to tracking Micolash down, but I can't figure it out. I've been known to run around for ages trying to find the guy in the second phase.

A real pain. Perhaps am I under leveled? I don't think so...

I think that attack can be parried and that there's a route to herding him, but it's been soooo long.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/49lrwo/guide_micolash_host_of_the_nightmare_solo_melee/

And I remember Martyr as a very hard fight my first time through, really had to learn how to deal with all those moves. I don't remember much of the fight besides the flying should skulls, but I can picture the runback so it must have taken many attempts, lol. No shame in watching it on YouTube to learn the moveset when you're not under pressure!

idk how much I posted about it here, but: when I first played this game in 2021 I kinda hit a difficulty wall at a certain point, switched over to DS3, and later Elden Ring. Lockdowns were eased but the effects were still there. Coming back to BB in 2023 I had a completely different outlook about how-to-play-it-- specifically, I was more into farming than I was before. Chalice Dungeons appealed to me and I spent a lot of time playing through them, hunting for gem upgrades, practicing certain boss fights and improving my playstyle.

By the time I made it to the DLC the game felt, well, "balanced" (easy, in fact, by From standards) and I did in fact beat the Orphan on my first try (having lightly spoiled myself about which elements he was weakened to in which stages, and kitting myself out accordingly).

I was still fascinated by gem farming and in February 2024 I was spending two to three hours a day repetitiously beating the same bloody Pthumerian over and over again to roll the dice on some wonderful Abyssal Gem with the right benefits and the right penalties. Then I went away to travel for work, decided I was done with gaming, and-- aside from a few half-hearted hours here and there playing this or that-- I haven't played games since

*I mentioned lockdowns because I had a pretty heavy jag of gaming through Covid-addled years of 2020-2022, which bled into post-Covid years as "a habit I needed to kick"

My Souls story mirrors yours, fgti. I picked up Bloodborne as a returning gamer some time in 2021. Got so far but tapped out when Elden Ring came out and I've more recently come back on a new playthrough.

I'm intrigued by the idea that Chalice Dungeons can be... good?

In this playthrough I've barely touched them. All I can think is, why would I want to run through a bunch of non-descript underground corridors when I could be playing the game for real?

That said, the Dungeons seem to be designed to be played concurrently with the main game - a way to level up without having to do endless grinding. I'm towards the end of the main game now and I'm really wishing I had put the time in so I had a few extra weapons and blood gems at my disposal. But now I'm way overleveled for those early dungeons and the drops aren't really worth it.

I don't think I did any chalice dungeons before I finished the main game, then I gave them a shot after I realized there were some unique bosses in the non-randomized ones (and also probably wanted some decent gems when I was doing pvp and duels, which was short-lived but I have fond memories of).

That said, the Dungeons seem to be designed to be played concurrently with the main game

That rings a bell (no pun intended), if you do them all at the end they're super easy for awhile, until reach the end game ones.

Micolash you just have to chase. Ignore skeletons. Don’t try to hit him until he ends up in a room. He’s more of a puzzle boss.

Logarius is hard.

Old Hunters DLC is peak from software.

There are some good tips on Chalice Dungeon play— which ones to hit, and when, and what to look for— it helps tailor your weapon and gems around your character stats and desired outcome. You can play fair or start using the resources of “fun found dungeons” that mainline you toward valuable gems and so forth.

Toward endgame you’ll be diving Isz over and over at ridiculously hard levels to murder bosses that drop (iirc) the tricked out Abyssals, as you try and find the right positive traits and the right negative traits.

The unique bosses are low-key fun— some of the hardest bosses in the game are down there. Amygdala a second time in a small room is exceptionally punishing. There’s some demon (I forget the name) that is just extreme punishment. By the end of my time with Bloodborne I was able to manage most bosses in no hit scenarios and the DLC became extremely fun to just blow through like a demigod

Oh I’m thinking of the Abhorrent Beast. The Defiled Dog is a fuck of a fuck as well

The basic concept about gem farming is that “cursed gems” will offer a boost as well as a penalty— but the boosts are much stronger (and stackable), and the penalties can be mitigated. Get a couple cursed gems with high “beast damage” and a penalty against “kin damage” and you have a beast destroyer. Reverse it for a kin destroyer.

The farming feels fairly distant in tone and spirit to the main game… but it’s enormously engrossing once you get into it. It feels like practicing scales so you can play the concerto (or some other less awful metaphor)

Finally beat Micolash. Honestly the guy gave me so much trouble, even compared to other bosses.
Not helped by often having to chase him around for several minutes until he'd go in the room. Eventually figured out how to dodge/prevent his attacks and also deal with his skeleton aids.

Great, now on to Ebrietas. Not too difficult in the first half, but then she one-shots me in her second phase. It's one of these bosses who you can only beat by getting close, but doing so means certain death. Very tough. Maybe it's time to try Logarius again. I just don't like having to run past all the shrieking ghost ladies, they put me on edge.