You can afford to take it a little slower at the beginning, like you might in any Souls game, but the game will progressively disabuse you of that as you go on.
Be aggressive, for sure, but be tactical about it. Drawing enemies out, taking advantage of your terrain, and watching for tells and openings work as well as ever, you just need to stay on your toes more.
All of the beginning weapons are great and viable, but hunter axe is generally considered to be the most reliably powerful and useful for beginners and veterans alike. The transformed version has excellent range, and itās good for poking enemies from safety while youāre trying to wrap your head around the game. Donāt let it become a crutch though! Iām doing a faster character now and i practically had to relearn the game because of how much the axe carried me through my first time.
Level ups are less important than usual, and upgrades are more restricted, so donāt be afraid to dump souls blood echoes into vials, paper, cocktails and other essential items. When you do level itās smart to prioritize vitality and your weaponās strongest stat first; endurance isnāt as important as usual in Bloodborne.
Use all the madmanās knowledge you find right away. There are a couple of cool surprises associated with having high insight, and unlike humanity, you donāt lose any when you die. Thereās a drawback to having high insight, but you probably wonāt deal with it until late in the game and you can just spend it for good items (or co-op!) when the time comes.
A few days ago, I decided to finally return to Bloodborne to do the one thing I had left undone (beat Laurence). But then I found myself starting a new character so that I could try some different weapons (such as the axe, which I have never used previously).
I donāt know whether I will play through the whole game again, but let me know if you want to coordinate any co-op.
I am closing in on the ending (I assume) so the biggest advice I would give is be aware that the difficulty curve in the game is almost inverted. I had more trouble during the first quarter or so of the game than I had in just about any Souls game, but it has been rather smooth sailing for a good while now.
Everyone said to spend echoes on vials and stuff rather than levels; I am uncertain about this. I used my echoes early on to buy better clothes as I needed any extra defense I could get, and there was some times early on when my vials started to dip lower than I liked before I figured out a good vial grinding run that I did buy some, but for the most part I spent my vials on levels and I think it helped me a ton. Each level raises you base defense and you are rather fragile for a while.
There is a parry check or two early on in the game that suck if you are bad at parrying (I am bad at parrying) but afterwards it doesnāt really come up if you donāt want it to.
So I ended up playing the beginning part of the game today because all these tips got me hyped.
Tip of the year award goes to @bib, turning the lights off really set the mood.
Other tips were helpful too. I went with the axe, and that R2 really is something special.
I just finished Dark Souls 2 last week, and I have to say that this game is much harder so far. But DS2 felt weirdly easy most of the time for me, with the exception of the DLC. Iām WAY more afraid of dogs in Bloodborne, for one thing.
Itās interesting, the way FROM amped up the speed and aggression in this game. Itās going to take some getting used to! But Iām digging this so far. Iām into this victorian horror theme.
I am at what appears to be a very strict point of no return andā¦ the door at the top of that tower has never opened up. This prompted me to go look up what I didnāt stumble upon on my own andā¦ well, itād probably be easier to mention what I did stumble upon. It is funny, I thought I poked around a good amount but I missed just about every NPC or slightly hidden area. I think Iāve missed three or four boss battles. I think I may have set the brightness too low, that is my excuse and I am sticking with it.
So thatās what Iām doing tomorrow or Friday, checking out all that I missed and am possibly over-leveled for.
Frenzy may be my least favorite mechanic in any of these games as holy fuck does it get absurd near the end. Getting near an enemy resulting in the meter filling up to max with no way to stop it beyond popping sedatives is straight unbalanced, which means there must be some counter to it I never stumbled upon.
bear in mind: it canāt actually kill you if youāre at full health. the enemies that do it are few and far between, you are expected to burn resources on them. preferably vials because theyāre cheaperā¦
thereās a rune that helps a lot, i forget where it is thoughā¦
It actually can kill you at virtually full health, due to it also at times causing your health to start dropping while exposed to it. Trust me, I took on one of those giant brain enemies that afflict you with it and it started to drop me down from full health a few seconds before the meter filled, killing me.
Also trying to get past that giant brain was taking most of my vials each attempt, so I gave up on it.
Despite having played Bloodborne through in its entirety previously, I just discovered that thereās a charge attack. Itās very helpful with the extended axe.
Which reminds me of the time that I learned that itās possible to jump in Dark Souls, right before finishing the game.
check your armor too, the regular ol hunterās set has great frenzy resist
fwiw i think if it was easy to mitigate it wouldnāt be as cool of a getting fucked up by Forbidden Knowledge effect so i may be more ok with its implementation than most people
Frenzy is a fantastic flavor mechanic IMO. The Winter Lanterns are kind of like the Mind Flayers in Demonās, but in Demonās it doesnāt take too long to learn to dominate them like anything else. In Bloodborne they never stop being terrifying.
I also love how on my first playthrough I only ever got brief glimpses of them. Itās forbidden to stare and reckless to fight ā the wise approach is to run quickly past and stay away. At a distance, they vaguely look like some kind of brain creatures and it took me until looking up their model on the wiki to fully realize what theyāre made of.
I mean, with those winter lanterns (I assume that is the right name) if I hit them from as far as possible with a poison throwing knife and immediately run away it is still impossible to avoid maxing that meter out. I kinda like the giant frenzy brain thing near the end of the game as a unique take on an environmental hazard, but jeez Iād really like if there was simply any way to deal with them at all even with it was very hard or limited.
