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

I think ignore the monsters, just run around and look for the real witches (not the fake ones, just the ones that take damage on the boss health bar)?

I remember lots of running, iirc counterclockwise?

I cheesed her by using up all my insight (bit of a waste) but it means the soot enemies don't spawn. Still managed to die somehow though!!

I'm a bit confused now. The guide I'm following went a bit beserk and decided to run past a bunch of stuff to acquire some weapons earlier than normal, and I couldn't be bothered. Anyway, I know you're meant to get to Cainhurst Castle by running towards a blue headstone in Charnel Lane because that's what the dude did in the video. But how on earth would I know to do that without a guide? Also, apparently it only works once you've gone through the Forbidden Woods and done some stuff at Iosefka's Clinic. It does confuse me how anyone would be expected to know all this stuff without a guide.

PS I thought it would be funny to try and hit Iosefka through the door at the start of the game and she got cross with me and won't talk to me any more. I wonder if I've killed her or just pissed her off some.

Oh god these Forbidden Woods are a nightmare. I got so lost, killed a whole bunch of enemies and then a bloody great hammer thing tied to the trees swung down and pushed me off a ledge! That's so evil. I couldn't even dodge out the way

From does like to hide a large & cool (but optional) area in ways that most people might miss on their own. I like to think it's for the sense of discovery for those who find it, and getting people to talk & share info outside of the game?

I do hate getting lost in those woods, maybe my least favorite level, great boss though.

Ah so the Castle is an optional area okay

They're a pain, but I generally like From's wooded levels. That and the requisite Spooky Village.

Cainhurst features 1) a totally obscure point of entry and 2) a total PIA (optional) boss that requires an annoying run. But you can always come back later.

So I've all but stopped following this guide now because the dude started gaming the system and hacking through sections faster than I could follow. So now I ended up getting a tonsil stone and ended up in that creepy lecture building with all the gooey students trying to grab me and got to the Nightmare section. But I thought better of it and just decided to go back to the Forbidden Woods, somehow managing to run very quickly through the part where I got lost and killed last time and managed to trigger the shortcut! Whew what an evening! This game is a million times more threatening when you don't know what's going to happen next

Out of interest, have most people here completed this game? If not, where was the bit where you gave up?

I'm about to face the boss at Cainhurst Castle and I've a feeling the difficulty level is going to ramp up.

I'm not exactly sure what else there is to do really: I've managed to get to the Nightmare world beyond the Lecture Building but the enemies there are really tough.

I managed to get into the back of Iosefka's Clinic but didn't get to fight her as I'd already killed her through the wall.

I guess I could go deeper into the Forbidden Woods but there are SO MANY SNAKES! Goddamn!

Yeah the difficulty level has certainly shot up. It's weird that in this game it's never obvious what the consequences of the decisions you make are going to be, for example sending different NPCs to Iosefka or Oedon seems to bring out counter intuitive outcomes.

I finished it, and if I can do it, anyone can!

Awesome DLC, iirc.

I'm really enjoying it to be fair.

Something else I wanted to know: is there an easier way to tell what clothes I should be wearing? In the shop it doesn't tell you how the ones you're looking at compare with he ones you're already wearing.

It doesn't show how your stats would change? No matter, clothes don't matter much in BB except for style points. In the Souls games, they're a bigger deal as far damage reduction and increasing poise at the cost of weighing more.

there are some marginal benefits to choosing outfits best suited to particular enemy types iirc, for example some sets are better suited to countering poison or rage

Looks like I permanently(?) rage quit at Ebrietas, which is an optional boss I know but w/e.

This pretty awesome looking From-inspired Pinocchio (!) game is taking a big gamble that it gets completed before the rumored "Bloodborne" remaster and/or sequel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzE4WBKs98o

Against all odds I've managed to make it to Byrgenwerth. No trouble beating the shadow bosses since I summoned two NPC helpers and buffed my weapon. There's a very difficult NPC here I'm having difficulty doing any damage to.

I've decided to do this than try the boss at Cainhurst.

Okay now onto the dreaded spider boss who I came SO CLOSE to killing but now I have no more Beast potions or anything like that

Rom's not one of the worst ones in my experience, just stressful because of the many spiders and the regimented thing of having to spend time running away from the big attack every so often

Logarius is like you have to be similarly quite patient and cautious when he's all over the place early on, but then if you're brave and parry him a lot in his last phase you'll massacre him

Rom I recall being a pain in the ass, but I can't remember why. I had trouble with Logarius, too, but he's optional, so I just came back a bit later and had an easier time with it.

fuck a vacuous spider

― Keith Moom (Neil S), Sunday, April 19, 2015 8:56 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

that said, Rom is much easier if you summon some help, which I would highly recommend

Yeah, there are two fellas you can summon, however I didn't realise it used Insight each time. I'm starting to run out of resources

Ohhhhh, that explains why I was sometimes able to summon companions, and when not!

Yeah and the doll stops chatting to you if you have no insight. I just worked this out

Okay Rom is seriously pissing me off now. I'm doing doing everything online strategists are telling me, summoning NPCs to help, but I'm low on Insight, don't have any bolt papers or beast blood, and somehow she managed to OP me just when I've got her really low. It's those falling ice crystals. Usually I can run away from them but sometimes they just somehow home in on me even when I'm running too speed

if memory serves, by this point in the game it's possible to get a lightning infused mace, to give you perma lightning power.

lol I clicked on this thread thinking it was the Succession thread and chat about Rom and Logarius seemed to make sense until I tried to actually read it

Xp is that the tonitrus? Yeah I was wondering if it's any good against the spider but my axe is like +7. I've tried both but still get merked

I killed Rom with the Tonitrus.

Rom took several goes. I was ready to give up: Had no Insight so couldn't call NPCs to help, no Beast Blood, and was getting tired of farming for HP each time I died. But I finally beat her. Definitely the hardest since Gascoigne and I was shaking for a good minute after I did it. Whew!

Not started Yarhagul Unseen Village (or whatever it's called) yet. Had a go at doing the Eileen Crow NPC battle up at Grand Cathedral and.... no. Way way too hard. Apparently you were able to cheese that one in the early days before they patched the game.

Thought I'd have a go at the first Chalice dungeon. Not exactly sure what the point of them is, but seems I'm quite overleveled for it so it was a nice change from the tough difficulty I've been up against lately.

Anyway, I know I'm boringly blogging my travailes across a game that people finished six years ago, but what the hey.

Eileen Crow is hard, I may have skipped her after watching a video that showed she was a fight of attrition that took foreeeeeever.

I did the same thing with Chalice Dungeons, waiting until I was overleveled, and after more or less one-shotting a couple of bosses decided against it.

Nice! That's usually how it goes, summons and buffs are really a way of brute forcing the fight without having to really learn it. And by the time you do learn it, you don't actually need them.

The chalice dungeons get harder, I guess the idea is that you dip into them as you progress, but no one does that, they either do them at the end or at the beginning. You can get way stronger gems for your weapons than in the main game, but that only really matters for pvp. There are some unique bosses too, if you want more after the main game.

XP it's not actually Eileen I'm fighting, it's another NPC with a similar name (Bloody Crow? Something like that) but they're part of Eileen's story. She's dying on the Cathedral steps before the fight starts

What I've liked about this game so far, is that I always get a little bit further each time. But just a little bit. And then I get so far and think "No that's enough. I'm done. There's no way I'm going to be able to best this part". But the next time I pick it up, I'm ready.
It's not like, say, Witcher 3 where there's just this constant state of progression, of moving constantly through the game, of relentlessly pursuing the next quest or the next chapter in the story and getting hooked on that.
In a way, it's games like Bloodborne (and maybe to a slightly less extent Death Stranding) which could finally be seen as the antidote to social media-induced attention span deficits. It's still very hack'n'slash of course, but there's a point a few hours in where your shoulders relax, your grip on the controller becomes less tight, the monsters stop making you jump (well, sometimes), you stop getting too worried about dying all the time, and it just starts feeling Zen about the whole thing.

I cannot believe these Forbidden Woods. I feel like this is some kind of game design high-water mark. Everything is so natural, so clever, disorienting without being confusing, I'm just amazed by it all.

My first foray into the Woods, I was unspoiled, I just picked my way through, murdered everybody, missed the shortcut I could've opened, went into SnakeLand without issue. I was murdering these small snake moments and saying to my bf "these guys are such pushovers, I feel weirdly ominous about how easy they are". Found the larger snake moments and found it unchallenging.

Then I ran into a RE4-knockoff dude who immediately summoned three little snakes that boxed me in and I died in two seconds.

My second foray in, I scanned a couple spoilers, realized about the shortcut (and the Cannon), and grabbed them accordingly. Slipped off a ledge and was face to face with two RE4 dudes. Dodged away fearfully and slipped into a crevasse. It was pitch black and everything was giant snakes and I was killed immediately. I love this game so much.

I loved the woods.

I do love the Woods and I hate them too. fgti is right though - it doesn't feel like a level that's been designed by game developers. You can get utterly lost in them and yet once you memorise the way, it's easy. They do seem to go one forever though and I'm sure there's lots of stuff I've missed

It might be the area with the most stuff I missed, somehow. Like, I seem to recall needing/wanting to go back to get something later in the game, and then finding I somehow missed a hardly secret but easy to miss cave with a poison/fire spewing snake hydra thing.

I find it strange that someone can say they "enjoyed" somewhere like Forbidden Woods. I don't think there's any level in this game that I can say I found truly enjoyable. In fact I'm not even sure I actually enjoy the game at all in the same way as, say, Witcher or God Of War or Death Stranding.
I find almost every minute of it oppressive, heart-racing, gnomic, dingey, and hopelessly frustrating. But also there are those short punctuated punch-the-air moments of victory which make it all worthwhile. It is, indeed, a spectacular, formidable game with some eye-popping level designs. At first I bemoaned that what I really wanted was Castlevania in FP, but that's exactly what it is!

XP from Forbidden Woods onwards was the point where I stopped feeling like I had to kill every monster I came across and just start running till I got where I needed to go. I'm on Yahargul Unseen Village with the bell ringing women, so quickly I found that killing monsters is often fruitless because they'll just respawn until you find the bellringer

Yeah, that's a pretty common From trick.

I mentioned it on the other thread, but in a sense DS2 is the only one I've found sort of "fun" so far, specifically *because* it is so half-assed, sloppy/lazy and not fine tuned. The other games always feel like perpetual high stakes tightrope walking, but that's partly what makes them so compelling.

What I liked about Dark Souls was the Ico-esque "theatre of architecture", the way the world folded in on itself. I was nervous that other From titles wouldn't have the same appeal but Bloodborne has it, albeit on a level-by-level level.

What I don't like in From's game design is the Duke's Quarter's style of build, where things are weirdly rectangular and repetitious... the two chalice dungeons I've beaten are extremely disappointing in this regard.

I was not enthralled by The Witcher's plot, although it sounds as if I'd like the short stories/novels etc. The level design was fine, my favourite moments in that game were exploring the extreme parts of Skellege, floating from island to island, randomly running into the "hardest enemy" on some remote island and extremely dying, I like that stuff. With From games I think I liked things when they're twisty and ambiguous and it feels like you're poking around. Toxic blowdarters and Bridge Of Hell aside, I loved Blighttown, for example. Nothing in Bloodborne has satisfied me like the Undead Burg and outlying regions but I'm enjoying it so so much. Iosefka killed me twice now so I've decided to let her live and I'm going to Cainhurst

Love that post about the Woods. <3

I admit they weren't my favorite - I can still picture the entire Dark Souls world in my mind's eye, but something about the woods always resisted being figured out and I would still get turned around on subsequent playthroughs. I like the perspective of appreciating that as an achievement, since they are supposed to be dark & mysterious woods after all.

DS3 also has some great twisty levels in the classical sense...maybe the poison swamp is that game's Woods (but more annoying, obv)?

I accidentally killed Iosefka through the door so I didn't get to have the battle with her on the other side

I have decided I’m not strong/good enough for Cainhurst yet so I’m doing some of these stupid chalice dungeons til I get to level 70

Bf is online shopping for strengthy weapons on my behalf, he thinks I should get a whirligig saw

I could never figure out how to best use the whirligig saw. There were some videos I saw of people using it to absolutely destroy enemies, and bosses in particular, but I could never get the timing right. Or the same damage that my other upgraded weapons got.

Looks like we're in about the same place fgti. I just encountered Darkbeast Paarl without expecting it. Got him down to about half his HP before he merked me. I haven't done the Cainhurst boss yet either.

I like being beckoned a few times before a boss fight so I get some harmless practice before taking it on solo. Murdered Amygdala w freinds a few times before taking it on myself. Cannon is such a good cheese! Once a boss’s final form arrives, swap your fire arm, trade health for bullets, use a marrow, boom boom dead.

I didn’t understand until now why it seemed like a trip to the Dream would result in arbitrary bullet gifts, or vial gifts, and other times not at all, and now I get it. (Auto-reload from what you got in storage. Wish I’d known about storage. I had lots of antidotes I could’ve used.)

I’ve decided to experiment playing in a beastly way, I’m enjoying it so far.