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

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Do blood stains persist through visits to Hunter's Dream? Do they persist through exiting the game?

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Do blood stains persist through visits to Hunter's Dream? Do they persist through exiting the game?

 

Yep, they persist until you die again, near as I can tell (whether in stain form or purple eyed bastard form). 

 

 

Father Gascoigne? What an awesome name. Does he look anything like this?

 

That hair is almost as scary as he was.

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Has anybody done any co-op or invasions (or been invaded) yet?  I thought about seeing if I could get help for the Gascoigne fight, but after biting the dust three times to him, my pride kicked in and I was bound and determined to do it myself. 

 

Also, apparently there are NPC summons in the game?  Chatting with someone on Facebook this morning, I was told that before some of the bosses there are notes that actually act as NPC summons if you use the bell on them. 

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Oh man, the sudden relief upon completing the loop in the first area was so amazing I just sat there for a little while breathing deeply. I managed to beat the first boss after three tries and then I started laughing from the release of tension. After that I had an uncomfortably long period time when I didn't die before stumbling upon Father Gascoigne who destroyed me. If I wasn't before I'm definitely hooked now. My next goal is to get a better handle on the parry/counterattack system because it's freakin' sweet when I manage to pull it off.

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Has anybody done any co-op or invasions (or been invaded) yet?  I thought about seeing if I could get help for the Gascoigne fight, but after biting the dust three times to him, my pride kicked in and I was bound and determined to do it myself. 

 

Also, apparently there are NPC summons in the game?  Chatting with someone on Facebook this morning, I was told that before some of the bosses there are notes that actually act as NPC summons if you use the bell on them. 

 

I've tried PVP a couple times, and been destroyed. I was never that good in previous Souls games, and the increased combat speed makes things even more bonkers.

 

I have, however, done a decent amount of co-op. Most of it has been helping people with boss fights. I'll hang around the arena and co-op the fight three or four times before moving on. I haven't done much summoning myself, and the few times I have the other player has died within the first couple minutes and I just go on to finish by myself.

 

If anyone is having trouble and wants to see how well the password system works, I'll definitely be on tonight. PSN name is LordKorax if you want to add me. I saw somewhere that the characters need to be within 10 levels of each other, and I'm forty-something right now, so that may be limiting, too.

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Yes, Father Gascoigne is the worst. I finally beat him by spamming molotovs in the last phase. He's really the "YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO USE THE GUN" fight if you haven't already.

Also, I didn't pay enough attention to a certain item description that would have helped me beat him.

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Upgrade material update: A badge from one of the bosses allows you to purchase basic Shards, and there's at least one more material above Twin Shards: a Blood Stone Chunk. I've definitely found enemies that drop both basic and Twin Shards, so those are probably farmable if you want to take the time, though I haven't really had a problem finding them naturally.

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I managed to break my weapon before I had been given the ability to repair it

 

You probably would have thought that you couldn't do that, but I can because I'm the best at video games

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I got beat around by Gascoigne a handful of times so I decided to grind some blood to buy a couple of the weapons and see if I liked any of them more. I actually still ended up liking the axe the most, though the sword that converts into the hammer is kinda cool (though I just don't know how to be effective with that slow hammer). I also managed to level up to 20, which seems like it should be more than enough for the second boss in the game.

 

Incidentally, I ended up triaging my inventory a little bit and noticed something interesting in the flavor text of a certain item. Potential spoilers for Gascoigne -

 

I got a music box from a little girl that's holed up that wanted me to look for her mother. In the description of the item, it mentions that her parents were Viola and Gascoigne. She told me to use it to convince her mother that I am legitimately looking on the girl's behalf, but I'm thinking that maybe also has some effect on that boss battle, though I've yet to experiment with it.

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FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK THE FORBIDDEN FOREST

 

Hit the first real brick wall in quite a while. The Forest itself isn't too bad, but the boss is a bitch. What's nice is that the addition of even a single co-op partner makes it much easier, and three players is a cakewalk. What's not nice is that after helping others a few times, it took twenty minutes to get help myself.

 

The area after that is brutal, too. Not many enemies, but they can fuck you up real good. I need to get better with the parrying.

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I managed to break my weapon before I had been given the ability to repair it

 

You probably would have thought that you couldn't do that, but I can because I'm the best at video games

 

I'm actually impressed by that. 

 

 

So tonight ended on a weird note.  I've been slowly exploring all the branches out of the Church Ward.  I found a pair of mad hunters who needed put down.  I was about done for the night, but wanted to finish them off first, and thought I had spotted a way to separate them before they killed me the first time.  Went back, worked like a charm, killed them both, figured I'd poke around the area before warping back to the lamp and quitting.  Found a new enemy I'd never seen before, tall guy with a sack, and....(this may be a significant spoiler, as it was definitely a surprise)

 

I almost had him dead when he unleashed a combo on me that just ripped me apart in three hits.  But instead of waking up next to my lamp, a cut scene played of burlap sack man dragging me into a cell and dumping me there, then shuffling off.  Now I'm sitting in a cell, in some place I've never heard of, actually kind of low on heals because of tweedle dee and tweedle dum the mad hunters, soooooo, holy fuck I think I'm in a bad place! Kinda felt like I got kidnapped by a cross between slender man and santa clause.

 

 

I also summoned my first help tonight, actually for help against another mad hunter (the guy in the abandoned village).  I summoned a fucking lord who escorted me through the whole level without me having to do shit, and then we roflstomped my third boss.  The game went from hard as balls to a cakewalk with a good companion. 

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So i've kind of been experiencing Bloodborne vicariously through youtube let's plays to get a PS4-less Bloodborne fix, and i'm seriously surprised to see how much From stripped down the character stats, it is so streamlined from Dark Souls 2's dozens and dozens of core and derived stats. (Which i will argue were actually an incredibly well balanced and well thought-out set of systems, but i know a lot of people found them extremely confusing.)

 

Also, the soundtrack in Bloodborne is seriously good.

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How good is the story/lore in Bloodborne? I usually don't really care for lore in games, but I've seen some Dark Souls let's plays that got me interested with the very subtle way the story, which is pretty much your character discovering the lore that involves all those other weird characters you're fighting and interacting.

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I'm glad to see the face customisation is just as brilliant as it was in the Souls games:

 

HGlT0hM.jpg?1

 

Batbscreencapgl.jpg

 

fantastic. (source)

 

I'm still waiting on my copy. Here's hoping it comes soon!

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How good is the story/lore in Bloodborne? I usually don't really care for lore in games, but I've seen some Dark Souls let's plays that got me interested with the very subtle way the story, which is pretty much your character discovering the lore that involves all those other weird characters you're fighting and interacting.

 

Pretty good, I think?  It's obtuse as you'd expect.  I'm finding it more engaging than the Dark Souls 2 story. 

 

 

Oh, I forgot to mention I accidentally trolled my someone in co-op last night.  The very first time I got summoned into someone's world was in the abandoned village.  I wanted to go into someone else's world to take on the mad hunter there with someone else as I had already been killed by him twice (this was before I summoned the lord into my game).  I was helping this guy clear out the area, it was obviously his first time through.  And there's a secret path with some goodies on it you need to drop down a couple of ledges to get to.  He was looking at the ledge, trying to figure out if there was a way to go down, so I was just going to go by him and show him how to drop down.  But I accidently walked into him and nudged him off the ledge, killing him.  Whoops!

 

:getmecoat

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I almost had him dead when he unleashed a combo on me that just ripped me apart in three hits.  But instead of waking up next to my lamp, a cut scene played of burlap sack man dragging me into a cell and dumping me there, then shuffling off.  Now I'm sitting in a cell, in some place I've never heard of, actually kind of low on heals because of tweedle dee and tweedle dum the mad hunters, soooooo, holy fuck I think I'm in a bad place! Kinda felt like I got kidnapped by a cross between slender man and santa clause.

 

This happened to me, but a little later on. I think every instance of those enemies can do it, and they're in a few different areas.

 

I looked it up to see what was going on, and that area is somewhere that you eventually get to towards the end of the game, so everything is going to be much harder. If you leave the cells, you can find a curving stairway leading up. It goes up to a landing that leads to some other rooms, and further stairs up to a more open platform. There's a lantern on that platform that you can light and use to warp out. Just run past all the enemies and get the hell out.

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How easy do they make it to go around helping people? I really enjoyed that aspect of DS2, as it was a good diversion if I needed souls, or was stuck on a boss. 

 

I refuse to summon people though. Solo all the way. 

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Bought a PS4 against my better judgement

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Played both Dark Souls games with kb/m D:

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How easy do they make it to go around helping people? I really enjoyed that aspect of DS2, as it was a good diversion if I needed souls, or was stuck on a boss. 

 

I refuse to summon people though. Solo all the way. 

 

Super easy, you have two bells, a summoning bell and a be summoned bell.  Ring your be summoned bell, and you get hooked up with someone who rang their summoning bell. 

 

Now, they did make one change that is mindboggling bad to me.  It appears to me that you show up in their world where ever you are in YOUR WORLD.  So you might spawn in and have no clue where your summoner is.

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I haven't yet reached the first boss, but coming from experience with only Dark Souls, I'm finding the drop-based healing resources a really baffling change. Recharging on death meant you were never permanently punished for failing in Dark Souls, but the way Bloodborne works means as soon as you have trouble you'll have to farm for them. I might just dump a bunch of souls blood echoes  into buying dozens of vials so I never have to worry about it again.

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I don't really understand that criticism of Bloodborne specifically because 1) you can buy vials cheaply at the vendor at your home base, which is an extremely low barrier of entry 2) practically every other enemy drops either vials or bullets, meaning as soon as you learn how to beat the very lowest rung of bad guys you can farm as needed.

 

Even when I'm cranking through vials as I'm throwing myself at a boss again and again, I haven't found the need to buy a single vial and if I did I could always sell extra bullets or farm a small area of easy, predictable guys.

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Part of my annoyance with them is definitely from dying on the bridge with the two werewolves and being nearly out of vials, and assuming I had to beat the first boss before the Hunter's Dream opened up. I discovered that wasn't the case at the end of my session last night and upgraded my cane and bought some rad new armor, so perhaps it won't matter long-term.

 

But: Even if it's easy to deal with, it feels like a strange regression in a game that is otherwise all about streamlining the fiddly uninteresting mechanics out? I just don't (yet?) see any interesting possibilities opened up by using this system instead of Dark Souls-style healing.

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I think that having vials (and bullets) be consumable is interesting because it allows for a way to make blood echoes more persistent, in that you can spend extra echoes on something or sell them if you just need a few more echoes to afford something. I think it makes the game less punishing in the end through flexiblity. Whether you think making it less punishing is a good thing or not is fully up to you, but I like it.

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From has experimented with expendable health restorers before. Demons Souls had various types of Moongrass, which healed different amounts. Dark Souls only had the Estus Flask, but Dark Souls 2 gave you a Flask with changed mechanics (starts at 5 charges, reinforcing the Flask gives one extra charge, no bonfire kindling) and a variety of Life Stones.

 

I had a similar shortage of Vials when taking on the first boss, and was worried about the threat of grinding, but it hasn't been a problem since. Practice using the dodge-step to do hit-and-run attacks. Minimize the danger of losing health, and when you do get hit, get back in quickly and smash them back to regain that health. Another thing I've noticed with the Regain system is that even after an enemy dies, as long as they haven't gone ragdoll yet, weapon collision will still restore health. If you can manage an extra swing during a death animation, you can get back an extra chunk of health.

 

In addition to just wanting to get better at the stun/parry attacks, the boss of the Forbidden Wood drops a rune that restores 200 health with a successful visceral attack. As long as I can manage to improve my parrying skills, my need for Vials will hopefully decline.

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