melmer

Bloodborne (Dark Souls 2 successor (Dark Souls successor (Demon's Souls successor)))

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If you go searching for advice for this fight, it's really unhelpful as you'll find tons of posts of "He was the easiest fight in the game, just parry him a dozen times and he's dead."  Every one of those people beat him because he glitched out on them and they didn't realize it.  Apparently in a very long play session (many, many hours) there is a memory leak that eventually builds up enough that it fucks up enemy AI, and completely wrecks bosses because they can't use 90 percent of their movesets.  It's most obvious with Logarius because if it happens to him, the attacks he has left are the least dangerous ones he has. 

I'm pretty sure I don't have that glitch and I mostly parried him. He did lots of magic attacks but I just focused on avoiding those. The last 10% of health took me half the fight though heh. He's really good at getting out of the way of your attacks and the sword storm thing I don't know what to do about. I could see why people would get stuck on him.

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I was really disappointed to hear about this glitch. I'm not sure if I beat him legit or not anymore. I feel like I need to start over just to be sure I didn't accidentally cheese my way through. :(

 

I'd say it's pretty easy to tell.  On his moves:

 

Did he cast a very fast, short range exploding skull in your face?  And about halfway through the fight did he start planting his sword in the ground to summon a swarm of flying swords to pin-cushion you?  If yes, then you fought him legit.  If no, then his attacks were probably bugged. 

 

It might be that I'm terrible at that fight, but the angst I found online from other people and the dozen messages on the ground of "bring a cooperator" makes me think that he's a nightmare for most people solo.  If he had like 20 percent less health, and did 20 percent less damage, he might be one of my favorite fights in the entire series.  Many of his attacks do 30-50 percent of my health (level 61 with 29 Vitality), so there's just no room for error. 

 

I love the area he's at the end of though:

 

Cainhurst might be one of my location in the game so far.  Super creepy, you have to pay close attention to find the ghosts.  Then they surprise you a second time with the old rapier guy pretending to be a janitor.  The entire process of getting there is super creepy, with finding the summons in the mad scientist's lab, a ghost carriage, a frozen castle with giant mosquito guardians.  Everything about it is just fantastic. 

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That's really interesting. I took out te martyr on my second attempt. No glitch, the magic attacks he used clicked with me and I had no problem. However I really struggled with The vacuous one. Mainly because of my impatience - I refused to kill all te adds, until I did and succeeded.

I am getting FUCKED in NG+. I feel severely underleveled and vicar - who I aced on NG - is wrecking me. I don't have the damage to burn her down, and I dnt have the vitality to last more than 2 hits. Also the trash up to her is owning me.

What level where people who finished once? I'm currently 89 with 2 bosses down in NG+.

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I had more than 29 vit, probably closer to 35. Probably made a big difference.

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I had more than 29 vit, probably closer to 35. Probably made a big difference.

Yeah I'm currently sitting at 30. I might have to grind for souls, fortunately it's easy to get around 30k going up the stairs towards the vicar. I managed to lose 200k, which I was rather upset about.

I also don't instant kill things that I parry, so i probably am under levelled. Maybe I should do some chalice dungeons (although the stuff to make them is kinda hard to come by.)

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Yeah, he was using all the attacks you outlined. That makes me feel better.

 

For those having trouble with the magic sword in the ground attack just target it and fire your gun once. One hit and the sword goes away.



And if you're grinding for souls the best thing to do is to go to the last boss you fought and ring the small resonant bell. It's free to help people, dying doesn't make you lose blood echoes, and if you win you get a huge chunk of em. If you go back to the Cleric Beast or Gascoigne you'll likely be helping NG+ players though so watch out.

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Even though this game plays very well I think I might prefer the combat in Dark Souls. You basically don't have to manage your stamina in Bloodborne, you have to worry significantly less about your heal timing, if you get cornered you can spam dodges and usually be okay and because most enemies stagger in one hit the combat can get pretty button mashy at times. I think that means the game deemphasises your tactical decision making somewhat. When you die in Dark Souls it's probably because you made the wrong decision, not because you weren't dexterous enough to pull it off whereas in Bloodborne it's just as likely to be the latter.

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I'm going to be really curious to fight the Martyr with my Arcane build and see how that goes.  The Arcane build has felt stronger to me every step of the way.  I did it with my Str build last night, because I wanted

 

that sweet sweet wheel.  Which now that I've got it, I don't know what to think about it.  My Hunter's Axe feels superior in almost every way.  But on the other hand, I can clobber the shit out of things with a wagon wheel.  And there's a big upside to that.  Also, carrying the cannon in one hand and the wheel in another is a pretty badass look. 

 

And really, not much matters more to me in a Souls game than being stylish.  You can't murder well if you don't look good doing it.

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Danielle and Phil's latest episode where they fight BSB is pretty great. You can hear Phil's soul leaving him between the beginning and end of the montage.

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Why are there no Mimicks in Bloodborne? I charge attacked every single chest I found, only to be disappointed when a health bar didn't appear and take a shitton of damage. 

Old habits huh?

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I just finished this kind of by accident, I didn't expect that to be the last boss and I'm a little annoyed as I wanted to do more exploring and thought I'd time for it. Anyway it was a good game. I don't want to go crazy about it yet as I'll need to let it stew for a bit and check out the wiki and all the delicious spoilers I've been avoiding for two weeks but my initial take on it is that it's a necessary departure from the old formula pulled off well and yet probably still not as good as Demon's Souls. It does a better job of avoiding the problems both Dark Souls games had with empty padding areas and some of the level design is staggering

(I desperately want to believe those shortcuts in the woods are geographically plausible and hell mend anyone who manages to prove otherwise)

but I did feel a lot of the bosses just looked like angry big mops in comparison to the more varied designs from the other games.

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hy are there no Mimicks in Bloodborne? I charge attacked every single chest I found, only to be disappointed when a health bar didn't appear and take a shitton of damage. 

Old habits huh?

 

Mimics are a pretty classic dumb D&D fantasy trope and would feel pretty weird in Bloodborne's setting, I think. I wasn't really expecting to see one (but I still hit almost every chest I see).

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I've been a bit disappointed that there isn't something like a Mimic.  Like, even if it wasn't exactly a mimic, some sort of trap that gets you excited, but then crushes your dreams. 

 

 

I started another new character last night, because that's what I do with these games.  It takes me forever to finish my first playthrough because I keep wanting to experiment.  I used the Forbidden Woods skip to get to Cainhurst quicker than normal.  The Witch of Hemwick was already one of the easiest bosses, but once you know how to backstab, she's a joke.  Every time she appears, you can Charge Attack, Back Stab, then get another hit or two in before she disappears.   I wanted to get to Cainhurst to get the...

 

 

Evelyn and the Reiterpallasch, so I could have a pistol in each hand :)  Absolutely no advantage to that, but it looks cool.  Bloodtinge seems like such a worthless stat, since guns do little damage, I was curious about trying to make a build around it.  Eventually I'll get the Chikage once I can tackle the Martyr again, since it's the only melee weapon that scales with Bloodtinge. 

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I also finished the game today (didn't do any Chalice Dungeons). I wasn't as into it by the end as I was in the early to mid-game which is too bad. The last proper area is one of the best in the game, but I think the combat was starting to get repetitive for me at that point. Maybe I overlevelled vitality or something because it just got really mashy and scrappy. I also ended up missing the deeper systems and more varied loot of the Souls games more than I thought I would. I miss it because it makes you think about how to tackle an area in a more interesting way. You spend way less time in menus in Bloodborne. On the surface that's a good thing, menus are boring, but that menu nagivation actually represents problem solving that you're doing. I'm not going to say Bloodborne is mindless but it's less of a thinking person's game.

Now, for the bosses. If you ask me there's only one bad boss in the game (name starts with an "R"), and as far as bad bosses go it's not even that terrible. On the other hand I didn't think any of them were exceptional and the same goes for the accompanying music. A bit of a let down in that regard.

The Cthulhu monsters don't do much for me visually so I guess that automatically makes them less memorable for me than a boss like Sif. I preferred the bosses in the first half of the game, Shadows of Yarnham was alright, I like Cleric Beast visually and Father G was probably my favourite overall. I didn't mind the two gimmick bosses, the Witch and "Kos, some say Kosm", but they'll hardly rate on a best boss list. The fight against Gehrman was probably one of the best in the game, it's pretty intense and looks fantastic, but as I was fighting him I mostly kept thinking "I hope I don't die because then I might have to go grind vials for 40 mintues".

I never had to, I beat him on my second attempt, but for me that's both good and bad. Personally, if it's a good boss I enjoy fighting it multiple times and mastering the fight but a) the game is less conducive to that because you can't use a shield to figure out the moves and B) mastering a fight is going to suck because of the grinding. That goes for all the bosses in the game, I suppose they were less memorable because I didn't master any of them and all my victories felt really scrappy. I traded a lot of blows with bosses in this game, because you get away with it, but it's not as satisfying. Blocking an attack feels better than tanking it.



As for the areas, the game has some fantastic ones and the one bad area is not even that bad all things considered. All the issues I had with Dark Souls II's level design are fixed here. Shortcuts everywhere, even though they do get a little predictable and I think that the ability to warp from the start once again diminishes the world somewhat and lets them get away with more dead ends. There are so many pretty areas, I think Hemwick Channel might be my personal favourite. A slightly more varied colour palette would've been nice though. Also:

I was hoping the game would surprise me a little more. Aside from the eye of sauron in Nightmare of Mensis it doesn't throw you many curveballs. I don't want to understate the quality of the level design, because it's done to a fantastically high standard, there's just nothing in Bloodborne that compares to say Sen's Fortress or Anor Londo. I'm not saying the game should've had a trap focused level, I just don't think the areas are quite as memorable despite being very well designed. The last thing I have to say about the level design is that while the world is still contiguous, you don't get the same sense of it I feel.

The thing Dark Souls did was to not only connect the world, but to show it to you constantly. Anywhere you are you can probably see two or three different areas you can go to. In principle the same is true in Bloodborne, but because the world is so big, the game is so dark and there's so much geometry you won't be able to make out nearly as much. Again, that doesn't mean the design isn't hugely impressive it just means I think Lordran is still the king.



Finally I think the NPCs are bit of a letdown. There's not as many of them and there's not as much to them.
I don't know why I'm so negative in this post, I loved the game believe it or not. Haven't decided if I'll do a base level run yet, seems like it'd be tougher than in the other games, and less interesting because you don't have that many options in terms of gear.

 

edit: oh also, the reuse of certain enemy types is another small letdown. Enemy design is actually a highlight of the game, but some show up way too much.

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What is Danielle's non-Thumbs twitch account?

 

You probably mean this:

http://www.twitch.tv/patriciaxhx

 

And then there is this:

 

 

I will probably never play this game but I'm enjoying the gameplay videos quite a bit.

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Cool thing I just read about and would never have thought to do:

If you do the "make contact" gesture for half a minute in front of the giant frenzy brain you drop down into the "abyss" you get a rune from it!

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Urgh! I thought it would be something like that. I even walked away to make a cup of coffee. Nothing happened though.

I thought it was obvious since there was a petrified bloke standing in the position who had probably been there a long time

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Oh, well that's quite the hint. I missed that.

edit: wait, are you talking about the place where you learn the gesture or the spot I mentioned?

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So, totally beat Djura in Old Yharnam by INTENTIONALLY having him jump attack toward me right off of his stupid tower. I'm so tricky.

 

Also beat BSB, but I did it like a baby because I summoned Alfred as I've honestly grown tired of dying and enjoying no progress over the last few days. Now I can at least bash my head against chalice dungeons.

 

Edit: All of the sudden, progress is raining down around me. Got captured by the notorious bag guy, but after a few fatal attempts at taking them out now I've got their number. I've nearly cleared out the whole area there, but got killed while exploring one last corridor trying to open up another shortcut. That said, the area has a ton of good loot so even if I don't manage to reclaim the blood stain I'll still be pretty happy with what I got.

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I let myself get captured in my NG+ run (since it never happened in NG) to try Dark Beast Paarl at a more appropriate level. It's a good fight. I had to make good use of lock on and turn it off at the appropriate moment.

 

I settled on the tactic of dodging under it, turning off lock-on, then bashing it's head in before it explodes to give me time to go HAM while it had no electricity on it. Compared to the first time when I basically just cheesed it by swinging my sword a few times, it was pretty intense, if I missed the stun and it exploded, I lost like 7/8 of my HP.

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Different bosses, powerful items, fun. 

 

I like them, I've not done many thought because the mats required to do them aren't common (and I don't want to run through the same one more than once). 

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I like them, I just was wondering if there's anything unique about them. When you say powerful items, is it just gem stones? Or is there something more? Do the levels ever end?

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