Having to farm Vials hurts the flow of the game for me...
I'm pretty far into the game (I think), and I'm starting to die a bit more. The section I just passed was pretty horrible. Reminded me of my feeling when experimenting Lost Izalith or Blighttown for the first time. To those who are done, if I'm here... (spoiler), What % have I done so far? I don't mind knowing at all. Spoiler
Lecture Building
I for one find very little at fault with the game. One little thing though - I have never been invaded. Maybe because I mostly summon right before entering the fog door?
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento...
I just cleared the Unseen Village yesterday. The difficulty really ramps up at Rom. The early comments/concerns about this game being too easy were premature and absurd.
Necronopticous wrote:I just cleared the Unseen Village yesterday. The difficulty really ramps up at Rom. The early comments/concerns about this game being too easy were premature and absurd.
That's my take on it. I've been bouncing between a few areas to see if maybe any are more approachable. I got to the boss of unseen village but was quickly rekt. Messing around with lecture hall (and what lies beyond), and may go check out that castle area once I grow sick of that. Unseen village reminded me a lot of the chalice dungeons, which is OK, but was hoping for something more exploration with suggested horror vs non-stop action. Basically dying non-stop now, and very little drops blood vials. Maybe in a later patch they'll address the drop rate on vials or maybe some kind of bonus where you always start with 5. That said, I haven't been using any of the runes that regen your health and/or give HP when you get visceral attacks. Can't see them helping too much in a boss fight.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
I beat Rom on my 2nd attempt.. I had absolutely no trouble avoiding the falling ice-spikes when I first fought it, but later on I've noticed that if you're too far from it, they will more likely hit you. Almost seems like you have to keep medium-range. I avoided the spikes by just running.
Yeah they can go either way. Sometimes you can dodge them by basically doing nothing at all, other times they'll one shot you from full health even if running at full speed/chain rolling. It would seem you got pretty lucky with that particular attack. Good job handling the rest of the move set with so few attempts, though.
There's an amazing strategy for beating rom that just involves the flamesprayer. My real problem with this boss is that by the time you get to the third phase it is really a crap shot whether you win or not since you can easily get hit by three things at once and instantly die.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
I remember thinking that the ice spikes are aimed in a way that the game checks where you are running and spawns the rest of them to fly that way (also called predicting). I remember doing a lot of U-turns while running, and somehow I just got a very good grip on how the attack works and just kept dodging it. Hmmm really weird, I have to look into it, but I've never found him problematic.
EDIT: Hey apparently I was correct! From twitch speedrunner comments: "The homing ice chunks only home in on the direction you were moving when they were cast at you"
just finished my first playthrough. the difficulty curve is really strange. the first three bosses were pretty tough. every other boss fight was pretty simple until i hit the final boss. learning him was a bit of a wall.
NG+ seems pretty ridiculous. enemy levels seems to be jacked way up. i don't know if i'll bother, or start a new character and try a different build.
CMoon wrote:Basically dying non-stop now, and very little drops blood vials. Maybe in a later patch they'll address the drop rate on vials or maybe some kind of bonus where you always start with 5. That said, I haven't been using any of the runes that regen your health and/or give HP when you get visceral attacks. Can't see them helping too much in a boss fight.
There's a nice little loop i found at the beginning of the game where you can get about 18-20 blood vials in a few minutes of work. warp to the great bridge. run forward kill the dude with the brick (2), run forward kill the two werewolves (6), come back and drop off the lip on the left side of the bridge (across from the house. run down the stairs, go left, run down the stairs and kill the 2 brick guys (4). go down the elevator (dont forget to send it back up) kill the guys on the bridge or let the flaming boulder kill them. kill the brick guy (2) who pushed the flaming rock. run up the stairs and kill the two monster dudes with their backs to you (4), run up the stairs and lamp back to the dream. rinse, repeat.
I'm almost done with my first playthrough. The only bosses I have left to clear are the final one, the TLB, and a handful of the chalice dungeon ones. Aside from that, I unknowingly screwed myself out of some covenants/sub-quests, so I'll be sure to experience all that in NG+.
Overall, I'd say this is the easiest "Souls" game I've played so far, and the only one I haven't played yet is Dark Souls 2. I decided to stop leveling up once I hit 60, and yet I still feel like I'm over-leveled. The apparent difficulty is neither good nor bad really; on one hand a higher level of challenge would feel more rewarding and add a bit more length to the game, but on the other it makes it less of a drag to experiment with new builds and makes the game more fun to replay. Maybe it would be better if the bosses were a bit more challenging to fight, since the majority of them are push-overs which I've cleared on the first try, and the harder ones only take a few retries (only to become mostly push-overs themselves once their attacks are figured out). And no, I did not use guides to help me with the bosses, nor did I summon co-op partners.
While I feel that some of the design changes are a step back (not being able to rest at lamps, vials instead of estus, co-op/PvP system), there are also a good number of new things I prefer (guns instead of shields, dashing while locked-on, more streamlined upgrade system, charge attacks). I also like that armor is more cosmetic, so now I can just wear what I like, instead of stuff with good stats but unappealing looks. Although the multiplayer matchmaking system is definitely less than optimal, the gameplay changes/additions make the PvP matches themselves a lot more fun to engage in imo (though I've only played 6 matches so far). To elaborate on the estus vs vials issue, I wouldn't say that estus is necessarily better, rather that it merely "sucks less". To be honest, I don't think any Souls game has done it right for my liking. I would much rather have all major healing items disabled during PvP matches. Speaking for myself, players being able to use healing items during PvP just causes the matches to drag on for way too long.
A couple of other things: this game has a lot of optional content, and most of it feels really easy to miss. Related to that, I know I mentioned that I missed out on some covenants and NPC sub-plots, but the NPCs in Bloodborne felt much more empty and boring than in other Souls games. My opinion on the latter might change after NG+, but it felt like the characters in other Souls games had way more personality and were easier to find/talk to, which added a lot to the story/lore of the settings.
Overall though, I'm enjoying Bloodborne a lot. But Dark Souls is still my favorite Souls game so far, mainly because it's the one that reminds me the most of King's Field.
Cuilan wrote:
Overall, I'd say this is the easiest "Souls" game I've played so far
Wow! Very different impression on my end, but maybe I'm just remembering those games fondly. Maybe once I understand what's going on in this game it won't seem that hard.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
Spanky wrote:I just got this today and I can't wait to start playing it! dark souls was great, 2 was ok and demon I just started playing.
Might sound crazy, but I really suggest finishing demon's before playing bloodborne. BB changes a lot of the game mechanics in a fundamental way it may be REALLY hard to go backwards. If you remember how in God Hand you could cancel one dodge into another? I'm not quite sure you can do this in BB, but a lot of the game isn't about hitting enemies as it is about dodging and weaving through their patterns. This IS not what the souls games are, and I'm rather glad I'd pretty much finished up with those games before this game came out because the door back to the souls games might have closed.
Worth mentioning here, I bought this about a month ago as a final love letter to dark souls.
Finally, wanted to talk about about chalice dungeons and why you shouldn't ignore them like I did. First off, they tend to cough up some really nice bloodgems (er whatever the weapon upgrades are called), and if you play through to the point where you've hit a wall, you will probably have already found a could other chalices. I decided to check out the Hintertomb dungeon only to realize that it is just as easy, if not even easier than the pthumeru upper levels. I avoided the chalice dungeons because honestly I found them less interesting than the main game; however they exist specifically as a way to make your character stronger. As I've come into the final act of the game and hit a wall against a few of the last bosses, the Chalice dungeon does offer a way to grind up a bit.
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
Well, I finally beat the game today. I seem to have gotten the bad ending, of which I am not surprised since I did not spoil myself on anything. I'm starting to look stuff up now that I've completed a playthrough and I can't believe just how much optional stuff that I missed. Really looking forward to my second go. The only question is...to level 4 it, or not to level 4 it.
wow, bergenwerth is a short area huh. it's now definitely moving towards full on lovecraftian unspeakable horror though, which I like.
fwiw i didn't have much trouble with rom, it took me three tries. the three hunters in the unseen village are a different story however, they're really kicking my butt. for now i'm just ignoring them and running to the boss - which is also kicking my butt. i find it hard to dodge the attacks when locked on, but hard to keep the camera in a good position when not. this seems to be a perennial problem for me when fighting big bosses in this game.
i also feel like i must have been missing quite a few npcs and story segments. i've met vry few npcs in general but also, *SLIGHT SPOILERS*, it seems like there should be some explanation for how different the gaol area is when coming to it from the rom fight as opposed to being captured and taken there earlier in the game, and why the hunters are there etc. i'm sure there will be a lot for me to discover on subsequent play throughs.
I am getting ready to finish the game. I'm mad that I wasn't able to Spoiler
save the hooker, since she was vital in getting the "proper" ending.
So, I'll just have to get one of the bad endings. Spoiler
I wanted to save her, but I must have missed my time window. Next playthrough, I'm going to have to pay attention to exactly WHEN I should save the villagers.
I REALLY hope they add some DLC sections, because the game does seem short. This last castle is really nice. I hope they add maybe one or two more. That would really flesh things out.
Also, for such a short "Souls" game, I'm surprised at how easy it is to completely miss the 2 optional areas. I mean, getting the Orphanage key....you can totally miss that. Same with the castle invitation.
Last edited by evil_ash_xero on Sun Apr 05, 2015 12:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.
well it's not like the return trip to the asylum, the painted world, the great hollow, ash lake or the dlc areas were signposted in dark souls - so that's not too surprising to me.
evil_ash_xero wrote:
Bloodborne seems extra short, if you miss those areas. That's why I mentioned it.
Are you doing the chalice dungeons?
Randorama wrote:ban CMoon for being a closet Jerry Falwell cockmonster/Ann Coulter fan, Nijska a bronie (ack! The horror!), and Ed Oscuro being unable to post 100-word arguments without writing 3-pages posts.
Eugenics: you know it's right!
Interesting that there's such a game-altering bug in the game. Though I don't think it was a major factor in my experience, since I'm pretty sure I didn't play it in multiple 12 hour+ sessions. Maybe just once? Anyways, I think the biggest factor is character builds and the use of specific weapons/strategies. I know that starting with the strength class + hunter axe can make a difference early on in the game, especially when combined with lots of vitality. And there are other techniques that can give you the upper hand against most enemies, such as baiting them into charge attacks from spear-type weapons which can easily stagger them.
Speaking of bugs, I encountered one that resulted in the premature death of an NPC, which kind of pissed me off. Bloodborne seems to suffer from similar collision detection issues as Dark Souls, where some creatures/corpses (particularly smaller ones) would randomly fall through the floor and outside of the game world. I don't remember something like this ever happening to me in Demon's Souls.
Getting further in the chalice dungeons, and yeah they're starting to get kinda hard. I'm interested in seeing how far I can go at my current level. Still haven't challenged the final boss(es).
Regarding the game's longevity, I think it's ultimately the same as every other Souls game: it's all about the PvP. I know not everyone is into that though.
evil_ash_xero wrote:It'll really piss you off, if you get to the end, and realize you missed out on the true final boss.
It didn't piss me off at all since I plan on playing through the game multiple times anyway, but if you've only got one play planned, you probably should at least look up this one thing. The locations aren't exactly obvious.
So I decided to go for it with the level 4 game. I'm doing quite well so far. I downed Paarl last night which was super satisfying. Currently stuck on the Shadows. Very tough with the low HP & damage output.
Man, even though this game is supposed to be about the action, it's doing a really good job at being a horror game, especially in old yharnam.
Plenty of hidden pathways too: I got lazy during one of the attempts at the segment where you have to dodge the guy with the Gatling gun, so I attempted to jump down one of the ledges. I ended up falling near a hidden building where I found charred armor and a rifle spear!
dark souls was great, 2 was ok and demon I just started playing.
