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

[JonCole]

I've been casually watching some Bloodborne LP's and the ones that edit out the load times are default 2x better than others. Can't wait for that shit to go away (or at least reduce significantly).

 

Also, lol re: hand lantern. Totally ditching that shit for slot 2 hunter's torch.

[Bjorn]

I've been watching ENB's videos (I'm up to ep 4) to digest some of the lore, item descriptions and conversations that I may not have paid that much attention to the first time through.  I'm just sticking them in a small window in the corner as I work.  Have definitely learned some things I missed, particularly from item descriptions. 

[JonCole]

God, ENB is great. I had only heard of him before but I decided to watch him on a whim. I couldn't be bothered to read all the item descriptions like he does, but man do they add to an otherwise sparse, intangible story. I'm trying to watch videos from one zone behind the one I'm currently in as not to immediately spoil anything, but also eventually make sure I backtrack if I missed anything big. Still want to give myself room for discovery, but the game feels a lot more complete with his lore stuff.

[Bjorn]

Oh shit, I forgot to mention the thing that almost made me nope-out last night while playing.  As you approach the top of the tower in the Nightmare of Mensis...

 

there are those bird dog hybrids, birds with the head of a dog and dogs with the head of a bird.  I hate the dogs so much.  I hate dogs in all games.  And the birds, while not deadly, make that infuriating sound.  I rounded a corner and saw the hybrids and just turned the fuck around and went back to where I had been.  Fucking FromSoft "We took two things you hate and mashed together.  You're welcome!"  I had to have a little moment before I could go back out and murder them. 

 

I also learned in that same area that some enemies will actually fight each other!  If you aggro the pigs and lead them into the shadow guys, they'll just beat the piss out of each other. 

[Griddlelol]

Holy shit, the hunter's tool beast howl or whatever (the aoe knockdown) is fantastic. You can stunlock people affected by it indefinitely as stamina regens while you use it allowing you to continue pummelling them before they even stand up.

[eot]

Oh shit, I forgot to mention the thing that almost made me nope-out last night while playing.  As you approach the top of the tower in the Nightmare of Mensis...

 

there are those bird dog hybrids, birds with the head of a dog and dogs with the head of a bird.  I hate the dogs so much.  I hate dogs in all games.  And the birds, while not deadly, make that infuriating sound.  I rounded a corner and saw the hybrids and just turned the fuck around and went back to where I had been.  Fucking FromSoft "We took two things you hate and mashed together.  You're welcome!"  I had to have a little moment before I could go back out and murder them. 

 

I also learned in that same area that some enemies will actually fight each other!  If you aggro the pigs and lead them into the shadow guys, they'll just beat the piss out of each other. 

I thought that was neat since

the crows kinda sounded like dogs to begin with

 

Also, you can use backups to avoid grinding vials when you're up against a hard boss. I might consider doing that since it just feels like a waste of time.

[Bjorn]

I thought that was neat since

the crows kinda sounded like dogs to begin with

 

*mind blown*  I'll bet that was intentional.  A whole bunch about their design makes sense now. 

 

 

Also, you can use backups to avoid grinding vials when you're up against a hard boss. I might consider doing that since it just feels like a waste of time.

 

Pretty early on there are a couple of farming areas where you can get 12K-20K echoes in just a minute or two, which is probably faster than reloading a save at that point.  Depends on how many consumables a fight is burning. 

[osmosisch]

*mind blown*  I'll bet that was intentional.  A whole bunch about their design makes sense now.

The best moment with those is

at a certain point there's a bunch of dog-headed crows pecking at something so you kill them and then...the crow-headed dog they were messing with gets up and attacks you.

I cracked up so much.

[JonCole]

I beat the Witch of Hemwick! As it turns out, I just need to vigorously attempt to parry with almost every fodder dude with no regard for my quicksilver bullets and I actually do okay. With all the echoes I got from her plus finally burning a bunch of coldblood, I leveled to something like 38 and now I have 25 STR which is making my attacks so much more potent. I think I'll take another crack at Amelia tonight. 

[Bjorn]

Decided to try and push through to a Depth 4 dungeon before finishing the game to get a couple of things only present in the dungeons. Rom is a tedious fucking fight. Good lord. He's not that hard, just tiring. He might be the worst fight in the all the Souls games for me.

Also, yet another thing I learned, there's a hidden weight/stamina system. After the discovery about the Hand Lantern, people started checking other gear, and stamina regen is definitely affected by at least what weapon you have active in each hand, and maybe other gear as well. It potentially gives a bit more value to the two melee weapons that have guns built into them, as you could give up your left hand gun completely. Although I've rarely felt like bottoming out stamina is what's killed me (unlike DS1 and 2), so it's probably not that big of a deal.

[eot]

I don't think Rom's that bad, but it might depend a lot on your weapon. If you unlock the camera and use the L2 attack on the 2-handed Axe for example you can hit the spiders' backs without having to flank them. My least favourite fight in the game is The One Reborn, it can hit you through walls, it's too big to see all of its tells, the vomit attack is bullshit, the frame rate is bad, I don't like anything about that fight.

[Bjorn]

Ha, I thought TOR was one of the easiest fights I just danced around it's feet, beat the crap out of it, and it died. But I've only fought it once. Probably one of those cases where I'll get wrecked when I fight it again.

[Korax]

I beat TOR by running up to the balconies and doing drop attacks until he died. At least, I think that was most of the fight. I helped with that fight afterwards and might be remembering things I did in co-op.

[eot]

Ha, I thought TOR was one of the easiest fights I just danced around it's feet, beat the crap out of it, and it died. But I've only fought it once. Probably one of those cases where I'll get wrecked when I fight it again.

Yeah, if you have enough Vit you to survive its attacks its not too bad, but I had no fun trying to do that fight cleanly and that's usually how I end up judging them. Plus I really don't like how it looks.

[Griddlelol]

I found rom to be the hardest fight. It constantly temps you to push your luck and ignore the adds since they take so long to kill. But keeping them alive was a recipe for disaster for me.

I didn't even know you could go up to the balcony in the TOR area. I just pummelled on his legs until he dropped his head, then put the smack down on that for loads of damage.

Stamina feels almost bottomless to me. If I push my attacks until I can't hit any more, I'm still able to dodge out of thre before the enemy gets a hit in (usually).

[Twig]

I fought the dude at the castle last night.

 

i got #rekt ):

 

Not sure how to even go about approaching this fight yet, but I only really gave it two real shots. He dropped his sword and that's when shit hit the fan for me both times.

[Bjorn]

The Martyr is the only boss I haven't been able to solo yet. Have fought him with three characters, and had to pull in help each time. The sword can be targeted separately, and is destroyed by any damage to it, so a single pistol shot will take care of it.

If the Martyr shows up in a dungeon like Rom did, that might be the end of my dungeon crawling.

[Twig]

a single pistol shot will take care of it

 

Haha so I shouldn't waste all my bullets on the cannon, then. GOOD TO KNOW.

[JonCole]

AHHHH AMELIA IS DEAD AHHHHHHHHHH

 

i'm so happy :(

 

I don't know why but it felt so easy this time. Maybe it was just a matter of resolve, or a matter of stats, or a matter of using fire paper + Arianna's blood but I took her out in what felt like a minute. So satisfying and I'm so happy to be moving on.

[Twig]

Haha, yes, beating Amelia felt soooo good for me.

 

I beat another boss, though! Parry parry parry. Was actually pretty easy once I got the timing down. O: This might be one of the bosses I take the time to help people out on. I liked the fight, at least. Love that rune that gives me bullets for VAs. :3 

 

Also now I have 53 insight and

I saw the big amygdala-lookin' dude for the first time and it freaked me out 'cause I only saw tentacles on the corner of the screen and I was like oh shit

 

But then it didn't do anything...

 

Can I kill it?

[JonCole]

Haha, yes, beating Amelia felt soooo good for me.

 

I beat another boss, though! Parry parry parry. Was actually pretty easy once I got the timing down. O: This might be one of the bosses I take the time to help people out on. I liked the fight, at least. Love that rune that gives me bullets for VAs. :3 

 

Also now I have 53 insight and

I saw the big amygdala-lookin' dude for the first time and it freaked me out 'cause I only saw tentacles on the corner of the screen and I was like oh shit

 

But then it didn't do anything...

 

Can I kill it?

 

I think I heard somewhere that there are three different runes that give bullets for VAs, so you can get something like 6 bullets per VA. Bullet factory for a bloodtinge build, I guess.

[osmosisch]

The Martyr is the only boss I haven't been able to solo yet.

I took him down in 2 goes with the kirkhammer, though admittedly I was like level 90 at the time. Same for the Rom fight. TOR and Ebrietas are the ones that give me the most trouble.

[Bjorn]

Ebrietas was another one that I sailed through.  I was probably about 90 for that fight.  So far the only other boss besides the Martyr who has been a brick wall for me is the Bloodletting Beast, a boss unique to the dungeons.  I still haven't beat it, finally gave up and just finished the game last night.  I had assumed my open chalices would close going to NG+, but they don't!  So the Beast is still waiting for me down on Depth 3. 

 

I have no idea what's going on with this story!  Spoiler is for the *secret* ending:

 

So you turn into a baby Great One at the end, and the Doll raises you?  Obviously the whole game was building towards the birth of a new Great One and people/hunters can turn into monsters, but I missed whatever connected that to a hunter being able to actually become a Great One.  There were hints about other humans ascending/evolving into a Great One, but that seemed far removed from what I was doing?

 

The Gehrman fight was great, brutal but great.  It took me a few tries to get the parry timing down.  Some of those scythe attacks were straight up bullshit.  When I dropped him, it was actually pretty straightfoward and I finished with like 13 vials left AND THEN ANOTHER MONSTER APPEARED    That ended up epic though.  I burned through all my vials, the rest of my bullets, all my molotovs.  The creature was down to just a sliver of health left, and I was down to not being able to take another hit.  I had a half dozen throwing knives, so just started unloading.  The fourth knife killed it \[T]/

 

I'll probably write up some more thoughts about the game in its entirety, and how I feel it compares to the other Souls games, when I've reflected on it some more.

 

I did fire up DS2: SotFS for a bit and created a new character after finishing Bloodborne.  It was like slipping into a comfortable old pair of pants.  Slower combat, stamina management, fat rolls, all those colors! 

[Twig]

I think I heard somewhere that there are three different runes that give bullets for VAs, so you can get something like 6 bullets per VA. Bullet factory for a bloodtinge build, I guess.

Oh damn 6 bullets.

[Twig]

Wow Rom was easy... Maybe I was over-leveled?

The spiders were so passive and barely did anything and easily dodged when they did. Only thing I had to watch out for was Rom's wacky wriggling and the big AOE stomp he did.

 

Also haha Byrgenworth was like ten minutes to explore I guess.

 

I killed that dude in the chair for being a jerk and making me fight Rom but maybe I shouldn't have. He dropped a cool rune, though! Higher chance of enemies dropping items is something I like.

 

Area after that is cool-lookin', though. O: O: