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

I think I more or less have a quality build, with high strength and slightly less high skill, and hard-capped vitality with a hint of extra endurance, which seems to be doing the trick, but I haven't yet committed to either the saw blade or Ludwig's holy blade, both of which seem to good for certain things. Now I'm at the point where I can upgrade one of them to a +7, but I'm not sure which to go for first. I also had a fire gem in the Ludwig for a bit, which gave it fire powers, but I *think* (and yeah, these things are inscrutable, at least to me) the trade off was losing any strength scaling. So I took off the fire gem, which is a bummer, because a fire sword was cool. I'm still not convinced how much the higher resistances of various outfits matter much, either. Kind of like Dark Souls, what you're wearing only seems to matter a tiny bit, or at least much less than a good defense, and any particular benefit might really ultimately boil down to a tiny extra sliver of life, which can be helpful, when you need, but is hard to notice otherwise.

I've got to admit, as someone that plays exclusively offline, I appreciate the challenge of some of these NPC hunters. Exploring Nightmare World, for example, I hit that early point where an aggro NPC attacks me, and I was shocked when, in the middle of the fight, a second aggro NPC joined the fray and killed me. On a subsequent attempt I managed to whittle down the first NPC quickly before the other guy attacked, killed the first NPC but then, while battling the second NPC, panic rolled off the bridge into what appeared to be a poison swamp. I quickly grabbed a couple of items then homeward boned, but when I returned it seemed, at least for now, that that second NPC might have been killed offscreen or is otherwise AWOL. Or maybe I just haven't advanced to the exact spot that triggers him?

I should also note that despite all the game left to play it feels like I'm already at a place where souls don't matter much, as I'm probably leveled enough. For that matter, unlike the DS games you don't accumulate tons of extra stuff to sell (which you don't need to do, because souls don't matter much), nor do you get that many weapons, nor do you end up buying many supplies, because although souls don't matter, at the same time the store is really expensive.

The cool supplies are in the insight-based store (up on the ledge), right?

Dunno! What makes them cool? But for that matter, insight seems harder to replenish than blood echoes.

Lead Elixir enables poise in BB, that can be fun against hunters. Others are mostly useful for pvp, like the invisibility elixir and the one that stops people from healing.

Beast blood pellets are used in speed run strats mostly, you can take down most bosses in seconds if you do it right.

Otherwise it's upgrade items and materials needed to reach all the chalice dungeons.

But yeah, I think insight is finite in an offline game, but online you can get it from pvp and helping people with bosses.

Iirc Humanity is a lot more available in online Dark Souls, too, but again iirc there were plenty of places to harvest it in the offline game, not least because you actually need it to summon even NPC help and kindle fires, etc. In Bloodborne you don't need it, per se, at least not more than 1, to level up, but making you spend a finite or hard to come by resource at a store for special stuff seems kind of dumb mechanic to me. I guess some enemies do drop madman's knowledge or whatever it's called.

That's honestly an element of these games that I *don't* like, these sort of pointless tasks necessary to do important stuff. Like, you have to go to the distant Tower of Blargh to get the magic rock to allow you to buy magic shoes to ... climb ladders or whatever. I suppose on paper it's kind of perverse and funny, but in practice it's just a pain.

Ooof, that Martyr boss in the castle is tough.

minor spoilers for cainhurst area: there's a secret right after the boss fight, check the faq before you leave

lol I have to beat him first, but I think I'm putting that off, because there's no way I'm beating him with less than, say, 20 blood vials, which makes him less of a priority.

Found (or rather, fell onto, lol) the Upper Cathedral Key in the Unseen Village, so spent a bit of of time there. I'm sure the designers found it very funny to send you an ambush of 4 (I think?) powered-up werewolf monsters, figuring you might have gotten a little complacent and needed to be put in check again.

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.