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

I guess I'm about halfway through now. Just beat Rom. Feel confident in saying this is Demon's Souls/Dark Souls 1 great. Miyazaki's peculiar genius shines through. I've only read a little bit about the second half of the game, tried to avoid spoilers, but I've gathered it goes into some weird places. Really looking forward to it. I was a little disappointed initially about the scaling back on weapons and armor, but it's not really bothering me. Though I've never been of those dudes who beats the game 8 times and PvP's into eternity. Interested in seeing how the meta game evolves for those guys.

yeah i just got that boss on 2nd try solo! agreed about weapons, i usually end up sticking with one in the other games anyway, halberd or whatever, and this seems to have the basic melee ones covered. biggest complaint so far is the framerate and horrible glitches. after installing the update i summoned for the woods boss and my game went to 1 frame per 10 seconds as i entered the fog, almost thought it froze entirely. apparently the summon wasnt affected as i could see the health meters depleting. it finally unfroze for the last 30 sec of the fight. had to msg the guy to apologize, i wonder if it just looked like i was standing still? anyway fix your damn game, fromsoft!!!

first three bosses were easy to beat with circle strafing and judicious use of terrain btw
curious to see if i've figured something out or if they're gonna catch me soon

anybody wanna do a chalice dungeon with me?

I'm down if you're around tomorrow. What's yr PS4 name?

it's my ilx name. check in and we'll go a'hunting. Haven't done it yet so i'm curious to see how it plays.

how about now?

Yeah, I added you

cool, i'm starting now. What's the process?

I ran out of BB time today, but next time, if it's one of the non-randomized dungeons that you start with, I think we can just ring our bells. Still have to be within 10 levels I think.

For the random ones, this seems helpful (first time I've gone to reddit for anything useful):
http://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/31bdln/how_to_coop_in_chalice_dungeons_explained_in/

i'm like level 26?

ah, that wouldn't have worked anyway then, i'm around 54. but i won't have time to play for a couple weeks so i'm sure you'll be caught up by then.

right now i'm stuck at bosses in three separate areas, which hasn't happened in any other Souls game (usually i would just be stuck on one boss at a time). not mad at it though, it's nice to be able to switch it up and go get frustrated somewhere else.

also, when i rang the small resonant bell yesterday i would be summoned instantly, but had much worse luck summoning players to my world. i wonder if that's just down to people not trying to help out like that?

i am stuck at bosses at FOUR different areas: a bobbling witch with an increasingly incensed sketchy homunculus, the undead giant in the first chalice dungeon, a giant electric wolf skeleton and a lycanthropic she-wolf penitent in a church. I'll have to get back on this train later tho'; work is calling.

im at 67 and stuck at 2 bosses i think maybe more. the people i summon just end up dying. did get invaded for the first time in the nightmare area and won

not been able to play this much recently but put a few hours in yesterday and took out the blood-starved beast on my first attempt. there are few greater feelings than taking down a souls boss first time, especially since it's always tempered with the certainty that you're going to get wrecked by another boss a little further down the line.

the witches might be my favorite one so far. pretty chill.

i'm starting to get a handle on Logarius, but won't have time to play for awhile.

that guy is awesome, really hard though can't beat him. i hate ebrietas, think i'm over 20 deaths on that so far. worse than smough/ornstein?

Those guys that grab on to you and suck on your head leaving you nearly dead and down a few Insight can get fucked forever.

theres a few enemies that do grab and drain attacks like that but those guys are the worst with their fucking tractor beam

Yeah, the ones that shoot out the white orbs that wrap you up. Caused me much rage in the Upper Cathedral.

also the bad santas with their sacks of dead ppl that go into a super saiyan rage after u hit them a few times

yesss. they're so scary when you run into them unexpectedly in the woods or wherever.

apparently the way to go is to backstab them when they're charging up, but i'm usually at too safe of a distance when that happens.

god i hate the keepers. i was cruising along then hit those guys and got stuck being killed by two of them for about an hour until i figured some tactics

took down vicar amelia and the witches last night, got locked up in scary bad santa jail for a while, explored through the forbidden woods. this game is so, so good.

I'm about where you are BG, those snakehead mofos are causing me some grief at the moment

though I did feel a bit sad slaughtering the luminous mushroom guys

its hilarious how insider-baseball the talk on these threads gets so quickly

nothing funny about our times in the bad santa jail and the sadness of slaughtering luminous mushroom men.

shoutout to another enemy i hate, those big fireball shooting things, they look like silverfish/centipedes. gotta hand it to from, this game is pretty vile n disgusting

i thought the witches were covered in barnacles at first, which was weird and revolting enough, then i realised they were covered in eyes. eurgh

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-petite/devastatingly-challenging_b_7021582.html

lol at "bad santa jail"

lonnnnng piece at gamasutra on the design of bloodborne and the souls games:

Maybe because I've studied Demon's Souls with such care, I've gotten good at memorizing right angles. So I pumped my fist with ferocity when, in Bloodborne, I discovered the first shortcut: Journeying deeper into that first area, I stopped and said, "The lamp is around that corner." I went around the corner. I opened a gate. There was the lamp (the warp / spawn points in Bloodborne are lamps). It felt great. I felt such a ghostly pat on the back at this moment. No, the game isn't a villain trying to trick me — it's an old friend keeping me on my toes.

That's the word I'd use to describe these games: friendly. These games have uninviting atmospheres and their enemies can crush you: The game is comfortable showing its real face to its best friends. We're the game's best friends. Not two hours into my first experience with Demon's Souls, I knew I'd found a weird best friend that trusted and respected my opinion and my intuition: I was the only friend who could figure it out.

i really enjoyed it - ymmv depending on your tolerance for tim rogers' writing tho

cool, didn't know he was writing there, will check out.

but man. videoball is a great cautionary tale for why video game companies are so tight-lipped about projects until they're almost done. my hype for that game peaked like a year or two ago. (i'll still probably buy it, but damn)

i have my own cannon now, feelin pretty pleased with myself

darkbeast paarl down on my first attempt. classic nailbiting fight - i ended up finishing him off with a sliver of health of my own left and no more blood vials.

the choral music and general vibe of unspeakable eldritch horror in yahar'gul really give me the heebie-jeebies.

why has videoball been in development so long? it doesn't seem like it's that huge of a project yknow

I missed Paarl when I was in Santa jail and now I don't think I can fight him 😕

:(

I think he's in a challice dungeon at least.

you can just go back to the lamp in that area

The lamp's extinguished. I think that's a boss you have to take when you get carried away to jail. Not there when you revisit.

Also, I know it's considered best to go in as blind as possible, but if you want to get the full ending, get those umbilical cords. Not at end game yet myself, but worth googling that.

i just went back for paarl in late game. you just have to go to the chapel lamp instead

finished the game, did the full ending. i looked up the other 2 endings and liked those better so fyi don't feel obligated to get the "true" one

i think i'm about three-quarters of the way through? i managed to take down the shadow of yharnam and rom spaceknight the vacuous spider first time each but amygdala is proving a bit of a challenge. i've spent a lot of time stabbing him in the crotch with my holy sword though.

i love the way the game gets creepier and more unhinged as you work your way through.

finally got through Rom (having the Tonitrus helped a ton), and did Paarl on the first try (i think that's the first time that's happened so far, although the witches were pretty quick too).

i'm still on my millionth try for Logarius, although i helped someone else beat him so i know it can be done.

I've just switched on my PS4 Plus or whatever they call it. It's a different game with online access and MVP etc. I had been accruing a lot of insight both as a score and as Madman's Knowledge which I suppose I will now use up.

i just found out about the memory-leak issue and now i'm wondering if my relative success against bosses is less due to my hard-won l33t skillz than the fact my opponents might have been nerfed by me leaving my ps4 on standby between sessions over a few days :(

ouch. glad i will get to enjoy the loading times fix due to my slow progress.