Dark Souls & Other Souls-Likes

I think it's the way PS4 handles update files. When 1.02 came out, mine started a new download queue but it started at 2.6 out of 2.7, like it had already downloaded 2.6. That's because it had. 1.01 was a day one patch that added multiplayer, and it was indeed 2.6 GB

So, I've been looking into the lore more closely. It's really twisted and macabre and amazing.

I prefer it to the previous games.

So apparently there's a bug/memory leak that causes boss AI to go dumb if the games been running for a long time Reddit thread

Glad I haven't done huge sessions of playing so far, this would ruin my first playthrough D:

I'm trying to make sense of the difficulty in Bloodborne as I just started playing. I basically slaughter everything in the first area, then I tried taking on that big guy with the axe and got killed.

So I avoid him and move on, then there's that thing that was bashing on the door, I ignored him and moved on but he later appeared behind me and I only just about noticed him in time, however he went down quite easily, I managed to do that thing where you shoot to stun them and then attack. For some reason I missed the tutorial messages so I forget what it's called.

Then I found some giant enemies, there were 3 of them and they killed me. Was I going the right way? It's been an interesting experience so far!

Sounds like you were going the right way, but you can avoid those 2 werewolves since theyre a pain in the *** and right before the boss fight. If you go back by the fountain, theres a couple coffins leaning up agains a spot where theres a hole in the fence to drop down. I think it was by the house where you can hear people inside laughing or w/e. Follow the paths around, kill 2 ogres holding bricks and go thru a dark house which leads you up some stairs on the other side of the wolves and you skipped them. Also, before entering the house, keep follwing up the stairs and you can open up the gate by your lamp to warp back to the dream. Makes for a shortcut to the boss when you keep dying to it. Think I finally killed it on my 4th try

I've glitched a couple times and got stuck on terrain, the latest time I was fighting father gascoigne and got stuck on a grave, getting me killed.

Well I guess you could say he...sent you to an early grave.

God damn you!

So I must apologize to this thread. This whole time with Bloodborne I never posted something that should have been posted at the announcement trailer. Only thing I could do it post it now. Yes it will be late, but I feel the game deserves it.



How did I not post this earlier. The place even looks like old London and has werewolves. I'm so sorry...

So I haven't been doing the new parry, you know, shoot and then R1 but blimey is it easy to carry out and makes killing easy.

Seen this sort of "review" of bloodborne:


Will buy it soon for my collection that has been stagnant in growing the last 3 years.
I love the lore about the "old ones". Even more so if it is that good implemented.

can anyone explain the little chalice dungeons a little bit or link to a guide

can any level person help you with them? I just got the first one so I'm not really sure whats going on in there

I'm kind of curious about this myself, I seem to have the ability to do something with chalices but I didn't know what to do with it or if I use it, will I have wasted it?

Also kinda stuck on where to go next, any pointers? I beat the blood starved beast and then I think I saw somewhere that I should be heading down what I guess resembles the pit in DS2, where you have to drop down all those wooden planks.

Then when I got to the bottom there was this thing that bound me with some sort of magic and had a leech thing attached to it which sucked up all my health.

For anyone waiting on the guide (for whatever reason, I like books I guess) here are some images of them printing it:

Wish I pre-ordered the book,... not sure why amazon is the only place to get it. But on second playthrough

Beat Bloodborne this weekend. Cleared a handful of the early/mid Chalice Dungeons, screwed around with PvP for a few hours, farmed some decent blood-gems, then went and got the “True Ending”.

All in all, clear time on first play through was 43 hours, should have been around 30-35 but I did a lot of stuff mentioned above.

Its a great game with some major flaws/design decisions that I didn’t like. (like the hub and loading screens) There were some major glitches.. like the elevator glitch in Forbidden woods where if you fell down the shaft and landed on the switch, you died but the elevator would go up anyway. Upon respawning the elevator shortcut no longer worked. They never patched that…

I would say I enjoyed this game a lot but it wasn’t nearly as deep and endearing to me as Dark Souls. Visually it was quite stunning but I didn’t feel it was as difficult or nearly long enough. But then, I wanted a 100+ hour game..

I’ve already started a new play though.. not NG+, brand new. Doing a Waste of Skin, zero leveling, zero weapon enhancement, Threaded Cane play through. (Weapon is hitting Father G for 30 a swift attack..)

I guess i’m a masochist.

My take/review

The Good:

The bosses. The art style. The combat felt more fluid.

Favorite bosses were easily the last three. Hardest "Boss" was the hunter you have to fight for a side-quest. Without giving away any spoilers, he was the hardest enemy for me. Overall, these were some of the best bosses and mini-bosses in the Souls series.

Visually this game is stunning. Fighting through hordes of enemies to get covered in their blood. The lighting of said blood and the environment around you really made you feel like you were part of this world.

Combat is much smoother. Some of this is due to better frame-rates but it just feels smoother than the previous games. I felt very free and agile the entire time.

The Bad:

Too short, too linear. Lack of build variety. Lack of meaningful magic. Less meaningful covenants. Full of glitches. PVP is mostly terrible.

I finished this game in 43 Hours and even that was longer than it actually would have been had I not farmed, played some pvp, or did chalices. Most Souls games are 60+ hours and this one should be cleared in 30-35 for any souls vet.

This version is also not as open as previous titles. (Other than DS2 which was even more linear). You could explore a couple of areas that were off the beaten path but in general it was a pretty straight forward game. There is not nearly as much exploration as previous titles. In earlier titles I could wander off in any direction and potential end up in an area I shouldn't be in. This lead to some interesting early strategy for previous games.

The lack of build variety is pretty obvious once you get farther in the game. All of the weapons are very viable but there are a few that everyone runs around with because of their almost perfect movesets. There is also no real reason to invest in strange builds because other than extremely late-game, Arcane and Bloodtinge are near useless.

This also extends to magic. There are "Tools" in this game that act as spells and while some of them are useful, they largely miss their mark. Tools use QS-bullets and those are more important for staggering/parrying than wasting on a spell that can be dodged. There are a few cool ones though, but largely not enough to invest in them other than base requirements for the early utility spells. Maybe they will change this in the future. Actually banking on this, hoping they change the weapon buff tool to scale better, the way Blade of the Sun scaled in DS.

There are no real "Covenants" in this game. There are three, but nothing to gain by being in any of them. (Without spoiling, you get an item for joining each one, but no other benefits)

Game is still riddled with Glitches that they need to patch and i'm sure they will.

PVP is a joke compared to previous Souls games. Fights between good players last so long that someone eventually jumps off a cliff to end it. Invaders get a 30% HP penalty and then both parties can spam their Blood Vials (Healing) the entire time. That's right.. all 20-25 Blood Vials can be used in PVP.

That isn't the worst of it though.. There are only two zones where PVP is actually Viable. Sure, you can invade or be invaded while trying to call a co-op partner but thats not real PVP. There are no more random invasions and creating any kind of an "Arena" is going to be a pain outside of password protected Chalice Dungeons.

The Neutral:

Chalice Dungeons and Co-op. I didn't find this as hard as DS.

Chalice dungeons are a great idea and some of the coolest and hardest bosses reside amongst them. This is also where you find the best blood-gems. That being said.. after the first few they become extremely boring and repetitive. I hope they keep patching the game to update them because there is a ton of potential here. I was hoping they would be like a beefed-up Sen's Fortress from DS, but they are not quite as challenging to get through terrain wise.

Co-op is fun but unnecessary. It seemed that anytime I called someone to help me they died pretty quickly and I was just soloing again anyway.

I listed the fact that I didn't find this as challenging in this "Neutral" section because it might just be a byproduct of the fact that I have played Souls games before. that being said, it did not seem to be nearly as difficult as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. Some of this might be the pacing, some of it might be the fact that you can dodge just about everything, but I was hoping for a little bit more of a challenge from the main content. (Chalice dungeons are much harder the deeper you go)


All in all, I liked this game a lot. One of the best I have played on the PS4 so far and easily the best "Exclusive". If I had to give this a numbered rating I would give it a 7/10 with potential to be a 9/10 that everyone is claiming if they make some slight changes to the main game and make the Chalice dungeons better.

I'll probably pick it up the same way I did with the Brady Games guide for FFXI. It will stay in a nice box and never be opened and stored as a "Collectible" until I'm poor and need to sell it to a pawn shop..

From the pictures above, it looks really good.

Maybe it will let us know what to do with the

not sure about the stone. but

Ya, I was aware of this. Just hoping there is actually something more useful for it. Has to be something more important considering how "hard" it was to find.

I don't want to discredit your review at all, but, I will say that Bloodborne is very far from linear, and isn't really that short.

The level design is beyond the level Dark Souls went, it really is.

There are like 2 or 3 major area groups you can completely miss if you don't access them. I don't know if you used the wiki to get all the information yourself, but for me personally, I played this game completely blind, and missed around 2 major area groups my first playthrough that I discovered my second time around.

After I've got the overall feel of what Bloodborne brought to the table, I do think some things are lacking. I didn't personally experience the incredible number of glitches left in the game, I had only a single glitch in both of my playthroughs and that was because of a very large beast rushing towards me, me dodging, and them ending up on top of a bench, where the AI then tried to find it's way back towards me but ended up walking off over the railing down into nothingness, a minute later dying.

One of Bloodborne's major flaws is weapon variety, and PvP. However, I do have to praise them on the weapons they designed, because they were very well done. I have a feeling that they might have slightly made this game with the intent of expanding it with DLC, which, I can't really blame them for. They're at the point now where they're known, and they are trying to find a balance with sticking to their honest roots and giving good quality material to their fans, and being game developers by making money from their product.

I don't think they have DLC ready... I personally believe that once they finished the game by the deadline, they then started on DLC maybe a month or so before the official release date, which is fine, because that means DLC will be ready in 3-6 months from now, instead of a month or two.

I can see both sides. Dark Souls was a very broad theme, it aimed to be, both it and Demon's Souls. The countless number of soldiers that died before you even lived, their weapons and armor scattered throughout the land. You reach a corpse, a warrior, slightly submerged in water, in a lake where you once fought a Hydra. You examine his corpse, and salvage his armor finding not only more about the armor, but the story that it carries. These weapons, these helmets, shields, all of these things carry a story, a burden, an sacrifice, of someone that once carried it before you left. It's almost like you're carrying part of their soul, to remember them by, even if their name was lost forever.

Bloodborne was designed around a theme, and Miyazaki took a huge risk here doing it. I think overall this intent is clear, and I love the work put into the game. The loving details of horror and blood and all of these nasty themes, all of the details in the areas, the enemy design... it was handled very well. I think every part of this game had passion put into it, but there are shortcomings to it as well.

My final major complaints for Bloodborne:

• Lack of weapon variety
  

• No merchants, or blacksmiths scattered throughout the land to assist you
  

• There should be more ways to be invaded, even if you're someone like me who really just wants to play the game, there is still value in running into 1 or 2 players during a playthrough who invade you and threaten to send you back to the lamp, possibly even risking losing your echoes from dying before being invaded. Even though I'm not someone completely interested in the PvP, there should still be a way to please that audience, even though they've made attempts to try to eliminate some of the cheese/exploitive gameplay styles.
  

• A way to warp to different lamps without having to return to the hunter's dream felt like it really needed to be there. I get why it's not, they want the hub of Demon's Souls, but I think there should of been a way at least at some point, like in Dark Souls.
  

• No estus flask really caused problems, and yea you could farm up 120 blood vials, but they eventually run out especially in NG+. Now in NG+ you earn enough souls where you can easily just buy vials and never have to farm at all, but I didn't like having to stop what I was doing just to farm up so healing items. I think there should have at least been 1 item that had 1-3 uses that healed you up just as much, just so you had at least something to push you forward.

However with that said I think this is their best souls game, as far as the general gameplay goes, not PvP or lore, that they've made so far. I honestly do, and I really do love Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but Bloodborne has a lot of fun to it. It really has a lot of rewarding experiences, at least to someone like me who struggled a LOT on bosses. I don't think the game is perfect but you really can feel a lot of the passion put into this game, and for someone like me, me being able to feel that makes the game that much better.

Nothing makes me hate a game more than the obvious laziness of leaving something in, because there are more important things, like online play. Completely ruins the experience when they simply don't care.

My opinion on the weapon variety complaint: Every weapon in Bloodborne is viable. Every single one of them is viable with a fleshed out and mostly (Kirk Hammer/Holy Blade straight sword) unique moveset. Hell, Kali still uses her axe she started the game with.

This was absolutely not true in any previous game. Yes, there were many weapons in a category. However there was always one within that category that was clearly superior than the others due to better base damage and/or scaling. Move sets were copy pasted onto each one, with few exceptions.



PvP is fun. It's frantic and dirty and everything I wanted from PvP.

A lot of people get angry about the healing spam, but it was even WORSE is Demon's Souls. 99 Darkmoon Grass >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 25 Blood Vials, if anyone is actually wasting rune slots for that in PvP.

All weapons are viable. You don't get back stab fished for days. People can't poise through your attacks so light weapons are viable again. No single weapon is so powerful it completely outshines the others.

My only issue is how borked the matchmaking is. I'll be extremely pleased when PvPers can match up with ease.

Arena's are meh. Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 area's weren't that great. There are far more interesting area's within the game to fight in than an arena.



Chalice dungeons are pretty awesome and challenging the further in you go. Especially one you start cursing them. I don't have much experience so I can't go into them too much as of now.

Also, the lore, as I understand it, is filthy and disgusting and horrifying.

I love it.

The hunter you fight in that side quest is extraordinarily easy if you lure him out of the room he is in.

I wouldn't say Bloodborne is any more or less linear than previous Souls games. There are plenty of optional bosses and areas. It's just the game is indeed a lot smaller than the first three souls games.

The build for Arcane and Bloodtinge were obviously made more difficult to do, because they were abused in previous Souls game, see Soul Magic and Pyromancy. That said, it's still extraordinarily easy to beat many bosses with just your gun, using the right gun, high bloodtinge, and Bone Marrow Powder. Arcane build is harder to do, but Bloodgems allow you to tie it to your main weapon eventually, regardless of main weapon, so it's still quite viable. They basically just decided to make magic the least optimal way to go about things, rather than the most optimal/easiest.

I actually never encountered a glitch, other than the common knocking an enemy through the floor/wall that is in every souls game so far.

In previous souls games, good PVPers just brought ***tons of itemized Humanity with them to heal. There were way more ways to heal. It's just easier to heal in Bloodborne, because healing is faster, therefore more noticeable because people can easily do it.

it really is great and horrible in all the best ways

Not really Bloodborne, but I feel compelled to put this here. >.>

"Quick update, the books will be delivered to Amazon from this Thursday through next Monday. Please disregard any notifications claiming that you'll get the book in May or so. Also, all pre-orders will be fulfilled, too, so don't worry.

Thanks again your patience. We'd love for everyone to get their hands on this guide sooner than later, and we have to admit, you guys have been waiting for too long now. Please, just bear with us a few days longer now."

:< almost! Also kinda feel bad for them, but From Soft really love using them as their guide writers, I just hope that this delay doesn't sour their relationship for any future games.

Bloodborne stream! <3

http://www.twitch.tv/kalilaviolette#5311