Despite the monotonous execution I still like the chalice dungeons and wish we had gotten a patch that diversified their room types. Enjoyment probably assisted by associations made between them and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, which was basically a collection of chalice dungeons turned into a videogame.
Defeated chalice dungeon Blood-starved Beast (all 27,258 HP of it (help))
Defeated two Abhorrent Beasts (doesn’t work as a boss with tons of HP)
Defeated Loran Darkbeast (won with no blood vials left and being literally one or two seconds away from being killed by its dumb AoE attack (the second non-video search result for “loran darkbeast” on Google is a forum post with the person saying they’ve spent two weeks trying to defeat it))
Didn’t die immediately to Micolash’s laser flurry upon falling into his chamber; in fact, he never got the chance to even pull that shit off (thank you for your moral support, viewers)
Today:
Soothed Ebrietas’ temper with my axe; secured a great Isz chalice
The building Amygdala leaps from, holding nothing other than a circular room and a lamp, became a little more interesting when I realized it’s a folly, which is pretty appropriate architecture for a nightmare.
Tenuous, but the state you find Iosefka in on the operating bed, and her attire, made me think this time of Bernini’s sculpture, Blessed Ludovica Albertoni – a similar expression of pained, writhing ecstasy.
It is very hard to come back to this game without restarting it. I bought the expansion and I’m trying to play it with a character just past Rom but my skills have left me.
soo i finished this last night, after facing gehrman a couple of times and getting beat the hell out of i distracted myself with the chalice dungeons until i got to the point where you have to fight rom again… decided that was not really the best use of my time, and decided to just focus on getting gud enough to actually finish the game and it was… surprisingly easy? doubly so for moon presence, which along with vicar amelia and the witches are the only bosses i beat on my first attempt. (not counting the chalice dungeon bosses for which i was extremely over-leveled)
a few closing thoughts: endgame aesthetic spoilers below if i happen to be only the second to last person to finish this game on here… too lazy to keep tagging
even though it ended up not being too much of a challenge, i really liked the Gehrman fight because of how different from everything else it felt. i mean, i guess it is essentially just another hunter battle, except the wide-open, bright setting really changes things up. it also just creates something that aesthetically feels very different from all the other boss fights, with both you and your enemy dashing around taking swipes at each other it felt more like a gentlemanly duel than a grueling fight to the death.
For some reason whenever i encountered other npc hunters in the game, the battles always felt really desperate and pathetic. it’s just so brutal how they charge up to you and start attacking as soon as they see you. i have to admit i have not really been following the narrative hints well enough to really understand why all the other hunters in the game hate your guts, but it feels like a much more visceral hate than you get from the larger bosses, who just sort of lumber around in their gigantic beastliness as they unleash hell on you… they’re either grotesque or kind of wondrous and graceful, and are animated emotively, but fighting them doesn’t really … feel emotional? I don’t know if that makes sense. Like they don’t seem particularly interested in not dying. But with the hunter fights I always had the feeling that it was a me-or-them type of thing. It’s just so sad and weird that all the people in the game who are most like you just immediately try to kill you on sight. I don’t know if that is deliberate, but the whole Gehrman battle definitely felt like it was designed from the ground up to feel almost… gentlemanly in a way? I don’t know, I really appreciated it at least.
The moon presence felt really undercooked by comparison. I dig that it is sort of supposed to look like a further-transformed beast (I think?), and really liked the gimmick of the attack that does an insane amount of damage but then gives you a huge window to rally it back. I felt like that could have been exploited a bit earlier in the game, though.
Oh and finally in the end credits when the music box tune (i think?) started playing, my cat, who i named my hunter after, and who has never taken any interest in any sound emerging from any television, walked right up to the monitor and sat down in front of it for a minute … that was… creepy…
My impression of the Moon Presence’s basic, fairly unchallenging design is that you’re intended to defeat it on your first encounter. That might have some narrative significance according to shifting power dynamics (after all, you bypassed Gehrman); it might also be the game easing back once you’ve overcome one of its most challenging bosses – giving you some room to breathe while also surprising you with a post-final confrontation.
I go between thinking Gehrman is maybe a little too tough and appreciating how the fight feels like a fulfillment of what Miyazaki wished Gwyn had been: a final, cumulative test of how well you’ve grasped the mechanics that still allows some leeway for strategic approaches (whereas Gwyn was kind of like, “Do you know how to get close and parry/riposte forever”). Even with my criticisms, though, I think – between BB, Demon’s Souls, and the Dark Souls trilogy – it’s unquestionably far and away From’s best effort at crafting a demanding final boss with emotional range.
A comment elsewhere got me thinking about how much of Bloodborne’s horror, or at least its fundamental aesthetic, is dependent upon fecundity. Dark Souls’ narrative reaches towards the chilled, stony voids of entropy, but Bloodborne’s details and farer planes stress a sustained, multiplicative presence: the incandescent fungal growths covering every surface in the Isz chalice dungeons are a parallel to the willful beings you encounter elsewhere – great and small unknowns that reach out from extraterrestrial points and reinforce a cosmos baroquely teeming with life. The horror of Bloodborne is an unavoidable vitality or lifefulness – the hive of bees intramurally nested within your house (an example all the more apt considering the tombstones you find split apart and revealing ligamental carnage).
[quote]Vermin, found hidden within filth, are only seen by League confederates, and are the root of man’s impurity. The League has assumed the task of finding and crushing all vermin.
Perhaps there is some mercy in the madness. Those who wish to see vermin can, and those who choose to are provided with boundless purpose.[/quote]
bloodborne is slowly working its hooks into me. I started a few months ago and struggled to connect with the opening zone, but I’ve just reached old yharnam and I can feel the game’s colour pallet seeping into me. not saying anything new here but it’s a beautiful game! one little thing I love is after spending an hour or so in the deep red/purple/yellow/blue of yharnam, coming back to the hunter’s dream and looking up at the huge pale moon and pale blue sky. it’s like stepping outside from hot, stuffy room into a cool summer evening.
Started playing this game for the first time yesterday. It’s really a jarring transition just coming off of demon souls (never played any of the dark souls) but I think I like most of the changes? It definitely manages to have a different feel. Seems like a lot in the direction of fast aggressive combat which suits the whole power-hungry beast thing pretty well. Seems a bit more difficult too but I’m also an idiot who played through an hour of Yharnam punching enemies to death before I realized you have to get weapons in the hunters dream.
