Gaming Bloodborne & Souls Series Discussions

[T-hug]

Well it's not out here until Friday ^.~
The pain is real!

 

[BORTZ]

Well it's not out here until Friday ^.~
The pain is real!

:C Now im unhappy because you have to wait. I know how much you want this.

PS are you getting Scholar or the first sin for PS4?

 

[T-hug]

Probably not I already finished Dark Souls II on PC but maybe one day when there is a drought on. I expect to be playing BB for the rest of the year or at least until Arkham Knight is out.

 

[BORTZ]

Nice nice, one of my friends is getting it, so I might as well, just so he has someone to play with. Im getting him into Destiny and hes getting me into Souls. I look forward to your BB streams yo.

 

[obs123194]

is the pre-order bonus worth it?

 

[T-hug]

is the pre-order bonus worth it?

Doubtful it's just a couple of skins for the summon signs.

 

[obs123194]

if that's the case i'll probably wait for this game to go on sale.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

http://imgur.com/a/lTIwy

My character so far. The pics at the end are what I stopped at for today. I got a top hat

 

[T-hug]

Looks awesome I still have 2 and a bit days to wait ugh!
Might be able to sneak a few hrs today though if all goes well

 

[emigre]

My copy arrived today.

Probably won't get to play it until tomorrow.

 

[T-hug]

I played a couple of hours today, went with Military background for the added strength, chose the Hunting Pistol and the Heavy Axe and am in love with the game already. The first area is the same as the alpha I played but it looks so much better and performance is vastly improved. Can't wait to sink some real time into it tomorrow.
One thing I noticed though is it does feel easier than the alpha, I was one shotting groups of enemies today, literally killing the whole bunch with a single swing of my weapon.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

I played a couple of hours today, went with Military background for the added strength, chose the Hunting Pistol and the Heavy Axe and am in love with the game already. The first area is the same as the alpha I played but it looks so much better performance is vastly improved. Can't wait to sink some real time into it tomorrow.
One thing I noticed though is it does feel easier than the alpha, I was one shotting groups of enemies today, literally killing the whole bunch with a single swing of my weapon.

Yeah, most of the enemies in the first area are pretty easy to kill by themselves, it's not until you face a giant group of them that it becomes a bit more difficult Though using the heavy axe, you have an insane wide sweep attack that can stun lock most of the enemies which makes it fairly easy.

 

[SamAsh07]

God I can't wait to die! My local store is getting it on Saturday ordered the Nightmare Edition as I LOVE Quills.

 

[emigre]

Spent forty minutes playing this. Shit is good.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

God I can't wait to die! My local store is getting it on Saturday ordered the Nightmare Edition as I LOVE Quills.

I was so upset to see the US wasn't getting the Nightmare edition

 

[T-hug]

Don't invade or summon in woods: http://kotaku.com/revision-latest-cb-20140919152421-bloodborne-players-1694072501

 

[GameWinner]

I'm almost out of here. First stop is GameStop...

 

[emigre]

Decided to have a proper play today. I beat the fuckers around hte fire. I beat one of those wolf dog things. Than the other came up to fuck me up. Those fuckers take a decent number of hits.

No matter how many times I die, I still want more. Trying to be cautious is working ok for me.

I've finished Hotline Miami 2 and I'm moving onto this. I'm a sucker for pain.

 

[Nathan Drake]

I've been watching my roommate play this game for the past couple of days, and I gotta say, I'm impressed. This is all from the perspective of somebody watching more than playing, but some things I've noticed:

- The combat is significantly faster than the Souls games. For the most part, it just isn't nearly as methodical, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Unlike in the Souls games, there's no guarantee that you'll meet your death when entering a new area simply because the enemy placement is a mystery and a curse, as it's easier to properly react to an enemy suddenly appearing around the next corner.

- The game is beautiful and creepy to behold. The world just looks interesting. As well, some of the enemies are really, really creepy.

- Progression is well done. There isn't much experimenting trying to find a path you can actually survive on as is kind of a staple of the Souls games. Instead you are basically guided from place to place, with certain items acting as keys, paths to harder areas only being accessible at the beginning from traveling through the areas that are a lower difficulty. This does present some linearity, but that isn't so much a bad thing when the Souls games only tricked you into believing they weren't linear, at least on a regular New Game. There is one major exception, and that's the Unseen Village. I'll detail below in case this is considered to be a spoiler:

Spoiler

As some of you may have already found, suffering death by a Death Dealer after beating the Blood Starved Beast, but prior to beating Rom the Vacuous Spider, you get dragged off to the Unseen Village, a place that is actually one of the final areas in the game. This place seems really difficult when you get dragged there with Death Dealers that can probably kill you in between one or two hits depending on your defense and HP, but it's worth exploring this early because of some available items and the ability to get Twin Bloodstone Shards right then. Plus, exploring now comes with another perk:

Spoiler

once you actually come back when you're supposed to after killing Rom, not only is the first lantern you used to escape made unusable for the rest of the game (you enter from elsewhere), but all the enemies have been replaced with significantly stronger opponents, with the area directly below your escape lantern from before instead being graced with a trio of strong hunters.

If you do manage to survive the Unseen Village prior to returning at the appropriate time, you can beat a boss that shouldn't be impossible then that will open a gate back into Old Yarnham, which is an alternate escape route to using the lantern, but you can't actually get back into the Unseen Village from it due to a drop down point leading to the boss area.

- There is even a nice bonus area besides the chalice dungeons:

Spoiler

On your way to the Forbidden Woods, there is an alternate path that can be taken that will have you killing a couple of hunters as you descend. Eventually you're taken by a large, scary ass beast that will drag you off into a place called the Nightmare that gets its very own teleport tombstone in the Hunter's Dream. This place may as well be dubbed the land of poison as a large part of the exploration takes place in a poison swamp that will continuously raise your slow poison gauge until you're slow poisoned as long as you are in it. This place isn't that difficult combat wise, and the enemies aren't exceptionally strong or fast by any means. The only truly hard part is the boss, Amygdala, which is the giant thing that drags you to the Nightmare to begin with. Even then, its patterns are surprisingly simple and easy to work with. All you get out of it is another chalice, but if the chalice dungeons are your bag, it isn't a bad deal at all.

All in all, I am impressed by the game in many respects. The lack of weaponry is a little disappointing, and the fact that there are only a handful of armor sets is a little disappointing as well. In the end, guns are only really good for staggering for a critical visceral strike, as they lack the power and convenience to be a viable main weapon. That means no matter what, you'll be running around likely with a strength focused build using one of few weapons that everybody else will be using (most notably the axe). In the end, customization does take a hard hit in this game compared to the Souls series, which is honestly a bit of a downer but not a deal breaker.

Now, the main criticism: LOAD TIMES HOLY FUCK THE LOAD TIMES WITH THAT BORING LOAD SCREEN. Out of everything this game does right, load screens are not one of them. If you die frequently for awhile, you'll find out exactly how bad they are. Load screens are at least fifteen seconds long, and you are greeted by a lengthy load time whenever you use a lantern to travel, as well as whenever you die. I get why they're long, but they're just so boring too. With the lack of equipment and different items in this game, you don't get any item information like in the Souls series. You just get a big black screen plastered with "Bloodborne" in white letters. They suck so much. I guess they're incentive to get good at the game.

On another note, the storage seems to suffer from some bugs. Most notably I've seen my roommate's items disappear into an abyss rather than his storage more than once. Last time it happened prior to the most recent, I at least had a minor explanation, but this last time, for no reason I can discern, he bought a large number of blood vials just in case (you can easily afford to stock up later in the game), and they simply didn't go to storage. The game said he had blood vials in storage, but they weren't there. I can't say what triggers this bug or why it happens, but simply be wary and periodically check to make sure your storage is actually functioning properly.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

- Progression is well done. There isn't much experimenting trying to find a path you can actually survive on as is kind of a staple of the Souls games. Instead you are basically guided from place to place, with certain items acting as keys, paths to harder areas only being accessible at the beginning from traveling through the areas that are a lower difficulty. This does present some linearity, but that isn't so much a bad thing when the Souls games only tricked you into believing they weren't linear, at least on a regular New Game. There is one major exception, and that's the Unseen Village. I'll detail below in case this is considered to be a spoiler:

Agreed on everything but this. Bull. Fucking. Shit. The game has 0 guided progression sans maybe a few areas in the beginning, and unless your friend was following a walkthrough of some kind, it lacks any kind of linearity. Will spoiler an example because spoilers.

Spoiler

For example, take right now. After beating DarkBeast Paarl, I was completely lost on where to go. There were no signs, no "guided paths", nothing that told me that I got a "password" for a particular door passed Vicar Amelia when I bet her or whatever, I didn't even notice that pathway to that door was even a thing until I asked a friend (who puts like 3x the amount of hours into Souls game than I do) who told me where to go, only after having him tell me he was completely lost as well for a good 2 or 3 hours.

And now, after beating the Shadow of Yharnam boss(es) and clearing the way after that, I'm completely lost...again, after I explored a good selection of both areas before and after. I found another boss that I do pretty much 0 damage to, so that's not right, and now I have no idea.

I'd also like to tell you your assumption about the lack of weaponry, while it's in no way the same amount as the Souls games, there are a good 20 or so around that are quite varied and with each being viable weapons for the game, which can't really be said for the previous souls games that only ever really offered a ton of weapons with the same exact movesets. I dunno about you, but I'd much rather have 20 different weapons with different movesets than 100 same-y weapons with the same movesets (and usually with shittier scaling).