Game comes out for PS4 tomorrow. Anyone else here getting it? I loved the Souls games but haven’t followed this one much at all. No idea what it’s about or anything about the gameplay. Should be interesting. Heard there are really long load times which sucks ass.
Extremely excited. If I could, I’d be taking the day off tomorrow and playing all day; as it is, I’ve already notified family and friends that tomorrow night is Bloodborne night. So I’ll be back with a report on Wednesday morning 
Welp, this ain’t no The Order 1886 seconds.
Reviews are stellar.
Looks like a Darksouls clone to me though, I guess it’s a hella of a good clone!
Dark Souls clone? It’s by the Dark Souls devs!
The Ultimate clone.
I wonder if Sony’s gigantor marketing will push the series and genre (is it a genre now?) into more mainstream territory. My guess is: probably. Though I hear the game is still very much a souls game. No catering to the masses in terms of game play mechanics or narrative cohesion. It’s still a clusterfuck that require s a wiki for anyone who isn’t a veteran.
Good on Sony for not messing with the vision.
Waiting for kid to hit the sack so I can start playing.
Started it last night, though I didn’t get far at all. It’s great.
In most ways that matter, it’s very Dark Souls. The combat is mechanically the same, but it feels different - the pace is faster, I guess, but the main thing is that there’s no shield and usually a larger number of enemies bearing down on you at once, so you can’t just turtle up, circle clockwise, and wait for an opening. You have to make your own openings.
They’ve also keyed healing potions to a different button then other types of consumable items, which - while it takes a lot of getting used to - is actually great. In past Souls games, consumables other than healing items tended to get ignored because I always wanted to have instant access to healing if I needed it. In Bloodborne, I’m already adopting consumables - Molotov Cocktails, hooray! - as a standard part of my toolset.
The aesthetic is really great - dark fantasy blended with a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vibe, and the environment - at least in the first area, which is as far as I’ve gotten - is incredibly rich and interesting.
Difficulty has been modest so far, but since I’m still in what is obviously a tutorial area I’d not have expected it to be that difficult. I still died once to a random dude with a hatchet when I let my concentration wander for a second, though, so it’s definitely a From Software game!
Played for a couple hours last night. Random observations:
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Definitely a Souls game.
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Still trying to break my habit if hitting the shield button, since there isn’t one.
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The graphics are nice, and everything looks great, but I struggle to see paths/doors/enemies in the environment due to the limited color palette (at least in this area). It’s also a bit harder to play on a smaller TV
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I’m still in the first “town”? or whatever it is and so far the run of the mill villagers are pretty easy. I’ve gotten killed by some big ogre looking thing a couple times.
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I haven’t used the gun much yet. It has limited ammo and doesn’t seem very powerful (at least at the beginning, shocker lol). Hopefully there is a way to get unlimited ammo because I’d like to experiment with it a bit.
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I like that the bullets “travel” across space before hitting you. It at least gives a chance to dodge. In alot of game bullets seems to just warp across the map.
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I’m having a HELL of a time finding my way around. I’m desperately looking for the second Lamppost in the opening area but just can’t see it. I feel like I must have walked by it because I’ve covered ALOT of ground for there to not be a lamp/bonfire to save at. Having played the last 3 games I feel like I’ve got a pretty sense of how far apart to expect them but I just can’t find one in Bloodborne beyond the first one.
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I picked the Cleaver and the Pistol. I like the Cleaver alot. Very cool animation as it switches from short to long. Whip stick thing sounded cool but it didn’t sound powerful. What did you pick?
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I picked Military Veteran. Not sure why. What background did you choose?
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I REALLY need the strategy guide to ship. Lol. They said they added 100+ pages and updated it for some day one patch stuff so I don’t mind waiting. They do a great job on the Souls guides. Being almost 40 with 3 kids and a career I don’t have the time required to figure these games out from scratch so I get the official hardback Guides for the Souls game. Great books and I use them mainly for the maps. They are very high quality and look nice on my bookshelf. Well worth the money if you are considering it.
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I felt like the initial werewolf battle was Videogame-gimped. I was easily kicking its butt with no weapon but then it stopped losing health because you have to die at this fight. Lol. No biggie.
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For some reason the bloodstains of other players are showing up but when I click to watch them or whatever they don’t play. Anyone else having this problem?
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Load times. Holy shit.
So far a good game. Taking a bit to draw me in but the Souls games were like that too. Hopefully I can put in some time to really figure it out this weekend.
PM me if you want to swap PSN names and team up on something. I’d like to try it out.
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Re: the gun - I discovered by accident that the gun has what is essentially a “parry” function. If you shoot something at close range and you time it right as they’re going for a hit - the same way you’d have parried with a shield in the Souls games - it will sort of stun them and you can absolutely crush them with a follow-up. The timing is really tricky, though. It seems like that, plus drawing attention from a distance, is the function of the gun more than actually dealing damage (at least, that’s my first impression).
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I can’t find the second lamp either.
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I picked the cane/whip. It is very, very fast, especially on the cane setting. Most of the run-of-the-mill villagers I can beat to the punch easily. The whip setting has massive reach; one-on-one against any enemy I’ve encountered I can just back up and whip them from well beyond the reach of any of their attacks. Thinking about starting over just to try something new. I went with the Endurance-heavy background (“Troubled Childhood”), just because nothing frustrates me more than running out of Stamina.
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I actually AM a little annoyed that the guide wasn’t available on Day 1. I have plenty of patience for difficult sections or challenging fights, but relatively little patience for not knowing where to go next. That’s the reason I stopped playing last night, actually; it was already 10:30 and I had no idea where to go and looking stuff up on the Internet always ends in me getting spoiled to something inadvertently.
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I am having the same problem with not being able to see the bloodstains of other players. Do the notes come across OK for you? They do for me?
I’ll definitely send you a PM later with my SN. Not sure there’s an easy way to match up with a specific person, but we can give it a shot.
Notes work but not the stains. I’ve seen a few ghosts running around but haven’t been able to activate a stain. Weird.
Did you find the Hunters outfit/armor? I stumbled on it all the way down in the sewer. Pretty decent upgrade and looks cooler than the starter clothing.
There’s also a set of armor available for sale at the well in the Hunter’s Dream. (Hey, why not? You can’t upgrade any of your stats till you fight the first boss.)
(Also, healing items, molotovs, and bullets…and once you hit whatever the trigger is to open the house, there’s a storage chest you can put this stuff in, so you can avoid ending up with no blood echos AND no useful items.
And you can upgrade your weapon in there too (upgrade items are apparently only uncommon, not stupd-rare.)
If you’re willing to take a hit to your health, you can generate additional bullets by pushing up on the D-pad.
I did axe + blunderbuss. The axe is very hit-or-miss for me. When it works, it’s a thing of beauty. Sometimes though, I swear it just goes straight through the baddies, misses them by a millimeter, or leaves them with 1 hp. The blunderbuss seems awful though - it can’t hit anything without a lock-on, and they have to be close enough to hit with your melee weapon anyway.
There’s supposed to be an item in the sewer somewhere that will unlock the other starter weapons for sale in the HD. I need to go look for that.
The bloodstains only rarely working seem to be a known bug.
edit: the first few times I died it was due to those weird patrols in the first area. I’m all but certain I’ve cleared the area behind me, then I end up dodge-rolling into reinforcements and getting slaughtered.
Played about 3 hours last night. I’ve never played any of the Souls games prior to this.
I’m glad I at least read reviews before hand regarding the die-to-learn mechanic, or it would have been an insta-return to the store. Of the 3 hours last night, at least a full hour was death-reload screens. Toward the end though, I finally started surviving and progressing to live long enough to do some limited exploration, and made it to the Treebeard boss where I quickly died I christen this game 'Bloodhog Day".
Some questions I have…can the bloodsouls be banked at all? Or if a store item is 1000 souls then I am required to get the full purchase sum in a single run? Same with leveling up, am I expected to collect the entire leveling sum needed in a single run?
Are the upgrade shards a fixed limited total to find, or do they also randomly drop? By upgrading my starter axe am I limiting myself later by wasting them now?
I had no idea that I needed to get to the first boss checkpoint before my “upgrade doll” and house unlocked. I was deliberately avoiding the boss for a long time, when I could have been earning upgrades instead of wasting souls dying constantly because I had nothing to spend them on. Bad intro level design.
The pistol seems anemic and useless, I hope it upgrades into something useful. Supposedly it stuns enemies, but I’ve yet to see that happen, they usually take the bullet to the face without a flinch and continue killing me in one swipe.
These are early-game gripes, but I’m having a blast so far, really loving it now that I’m surviving most of the trash-mob battles. That hooded ogre though still insta-kills me every time, I’ve tried about a dozen times and can only land about one swing. He pinwheels with the axe, so dodging around him is useless since I still get cut down :(. Think I’ll try cheesing him with a bunch of molotovs.
You can only bank blood echoes indirectly - by buying items, or there are items that drop that give a bunch of echoes when used, but until you do, aren’t lost when you die.
The house can unlock before the doll does. I’m not sure what the house’s trigger is. Maybe making it into the sewer?
Upgrade shards seem to be a rare drop, rather than a fixed number. I’ve gotten them from enemies on a second pass-through, at least.
The guns stun enemies if you get a hit in during the enemy attack animation, or in the case of bosses, after a certain number of hits on specific lock-on locations. The pistol does less damage than the blunderbuss against trash mobs, but it’s faster and stuns bosses better.
You may want to hit him with oil before the molotovs.
That street was a painful education for me, I had several moments of “woohoo, I cleared the patrol!” and the second patrol then lands on me :). There is also a lone guy with a rifle that kept killing me from the shadows, I now go out of my way to stomp that guy every time I go out. The rifle/gun guys are now pretty easy though, if you weave up to them like Remo Williams, they usually don’t hit you.
My worst moment…I had about 3500 souls from running in the sewer, climbing up a looooonnnngggg ladder just to do a treasure check before warping back home. I get to the top of the ladder and run diagonally off the ledge and plummet to my death. :rolleyes: Then I put my cranky self to bed, tomorrow is another day.
Did some research - you DON’T have to kill the first boss before you can start raising stats. You just need to find an item that gives you insight. First one available is called “Madman’s Knowledge.” Can drop off the rats, or loot in a few places before any of the bosses, if you explore.
They’re not souls! They’re blood echoes!
Ok. Killed those 2 werewolves and the first boss. He was pretty easy. The next lamp post is right after killing him.
Man, fuck the Cleric Beast.
I think I must be missing something. He slaughtered me like nine times before I gave up last night. I don’t think I ever got him below 7/8 health. What am I doing wrong?
cleric beast
Same here. I think I’ve managed to get him down to about 50%, but inevitably get pinned or stun-locked or something and crushed to death with multiple hits I can’t avoid. A couple of times, he picked me up and slammed me multiple times to the ground, I’m assuming I must be able to break out of this hold somehow, but googling doesn’t say. It’s automatic-death as far as I can tell, traditional “hold breaking waggles” of various sticks and buttons do nothing 
This Beckoning Bell thing…how do you turn it off? A couple of times I apparantly summoned people into my game, and locked them and myself there. One time I was clearly pissing off the other 2 guys, because the bell seems to disable the lantern and I couldn’t warp back to go spend my souls. I was trying to leave and they were jumping around swinging at me clearly pissed that I must have been doing something wrong? Nothing I can find describes how to turn off that Bell function once you activate it 
I couldn’t use my warrior badge item to warp back either, it was disabled by the bell.
After some more playing and googling…trying to summon other players costs 1 insight point, which locks everyone into the instance until you kill a boss, or die. Not summoning, trying to summon. If you are in a weird area or no one enters to answer your summon, or your internet hiccups, you still lose an insight point. I’ve burned up all of my insight (about 6 points I think) trying to summon people, and can’t earn more because you need to bank 10 to get a different bell to join others to enable gaining more insight. So the system actively punishes the players that need the help from others, and rewards the experienced that don’t need the help but just want to farm. What a shitty-ass system :mad: Not good enough to hoard 10 points by yourself without any help? No co-op for you.
venting