Bloodborne October/November Book Club

no mathematical anachronisms!

I demand all fantasy games set before high middle ages to lack the concept of zero

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Thatā€™s the spirit

so like two months later I finally turned my PS4 back on, guys. the first thing I did was die to a werewolf running back to BSB, losing all my souls again. I basically expected this. at this point I had no antidotes, 5 blood vials, and zero inclination to turn on the game for the first time in a long time just to go farm this shit up. so I said fuck it, lets go, and I ran back to the boss. all I did was stand in front of him the entire time. I got him to phase 2. he poisoned me in one attack. I said ok. I decided that anytime I dodged one of his swinging attacks that lunged him a sizable distance across the room, Iā€™d use a blood vial and then go charge after him again. anytime I dodged something that wasnā€™t that, Iā€™d attack until I had no stamina. if he didnā€™t do a charging attack in the time it took the poison to kill me, then Iā€™d die. it actually worked. I ended with no blood vials.

he gave me an amount of souls equivalent to probably a fifth of the amount Iā€™d lost in this area. maybe even less. he gave me an item that I donā€™t know what to do with.

I went back to the safe haven church thing. I went to an area Iā€™d sort of explored earlier and cleared it out. I reached a locked door. I turned back. I went back to the church. somehow I found an elevator Iā€™d never seen before. maybe it wasnā€™t accessible before, I donā€™t know. I went up it and killed a lot of dudes in wheelchairs. I got another badge, though I forget what badges do. I found another locked door. I went back to the church again, to go to the one other area that I recalled being available to me. I knew this area had a locked gate, but I also knew I had a new fancy badge. who knows. I went out of the church. I killed one of the ghost-ish dudes with a cane. then another enemy appeared who I had never seen before, who I knew was not in this area before. he instantly killed me. I respawned in some new area. so those souls were gone.

this area is full of dudes like the guy who killed me in one hit. I killed a few of them. somehow I ended up at a giant electric bone dragon boss, even though there was no fog gate. I basically did zero damage to this guy before dying. those souls are gone. this felt like a curious situation, so I dialed up the interwebs for clues. they tell me this is some kind of end game area that I should not be anywhere near. there is an exit somewhere, apparently. can I find it in time?!?

I would try to kill this bone dragon boss, but Iā€™ll just lose all my blood vials and I donā€™t have access to a whatever this gameā€™s bonfire things are called, so thatā€™s kind of a dangerous proposition.

the true dark souls starts here.

Yeah, Bloodborne owns

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Yaharā€™gul is beautiful and ideally encountered I think as you have, in a bewildered state of mind.

It isnā€™t an end-game area, though.

well, it sort of is, but your encountering it now isnā€™t unusual

Sort of, yeah. Iā€™ve never thought of stuff prior to the nightmares as end-game really.

Rom is the breakpoint between mid and end-game in my view. Thatā€™s borne out by a lot of details ā€“ NPCs progress into their final plot phase as soon as you beat him, for instance. I donā€™t see Frontier as being part of the endgame since itā€™s designed for a +6-ish weapon (conspicuously nothing drops chunks there).

The part of Yahargul youā€™re in isnā€™t end-game. In fact you wouldnā€™t be able to experience what you experienced in the end-game at all, so it is a misnomer.

Iā€™ve got lots to write about Bloodborne, not least because of the peculiar way Iā€™ve been experiencing it: I donā€™t own a PS4 (yet) so I play the game at a friendā€™s, who happens to live in another country, so Iā€™ve been experiencing the game in two-day bursts every six months. When I last left the game Iā€™d just offed Ebrietas (who looked a lot harder than it actually was to me) and was exploring chalice dungeons and leveling before going back to Logarius (who is really hard for me), and all in all Iā€™m nearing the end. Iā€™m going back in march and hopefully itā€™ll at least be the end of Logarius.

Does anyone know how clipping the environment works? Sometimes it stops an attack, and sometimes it doesnā€™t. It doesnā€™t feel wrong midgame, but I canā€™t think of the rules for what constitutes a light clip and what constitutes something to stop an attack entirely.

the geometry is pretty precise, it depends on the weapon youā€™re using, at what point of your swing you clip, and so on

Iā€™ve been disappointed that itā€™s never been as strictly enforced as it was in Demonā€™s Souls; I loved being forced to change weapons to fit a narrow hall. Similarly they enforced blunt/pierce/slash strongly in Demonā€™s. I miss just aching for a decent spear.

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fuck this guy seriously

heā€™s easier if you just forget about him until you return to that area later in the game tho

i think i maybe found him the easiest boss in the game? took him on q early too i think. a lot of the bosses i found easy seemed to just suit my play style.
iā€™m generally really bad at these games but got through a lot of bosses in this first attempt, while find a lot of the non boss game harder than any other souls.

really? that was the only one where i felt like i was doing battle with the camera system more than the actual enemy. i guess if you are used to playing without locking on it wouldnā€™t be as challenging. lots of other bosses were hard, but i donā€™t think any of the others were as consistently difficult to dodge or hit

yeah it was just unlocked swinging at the back legs w/ the heavy attacks from ludwigā€™s blade (aka playing souls w/ a bastard sword)
i generally found playing through the game w/ ludwigā€™s blade unsatisfying though, feels way like the low stagger for most enemies makes it really easy to just tear through most things. i need to go back and play the game w/ some more skill based weapons. (probably use a guide to get blades of mercy as early as possible)

Paarl is quite clearly a lady

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No, itā€™s still infuriating half of the time because your sight remains largely obscured by a gigantic mass of shuffling bones and fur and itā€™s weirdly difficult to gauge the range of your attacks even with long weapons. My first time with Paarl wasnā€™t too bad but the Loran Darkbeast variant in the chalice dungeons just drives home the cameraā€™s gross inadequacies by stretching out the fightā€™s length

Chalice Flaming Watchdog fuck was one of the most infuriating boss challenges ever. Amygdala felt like a step down aside from scale.

That one Medium-Size Darkbeast guy is scary too, always keeps you on the ropes.

I liked that one, I thought it was a good application of spectacle while still leaving exploitable weaknesses. It felt like a good Monster Hunter boss.

I got slammed into place at the Abhorrent Darkbeast because ouch.

Fighting Rom in a supply closet was also a stupid idea