I beat that dude on my first try no sweat. The secret is to roll around him and dubsteak tacos.
A part of me, a tiny part, but a part nonetheless, kind of hopes a bird poops on you. 
I can’t beat him. I just can’t. I think I’ve got a mental block. I’ve even figured out that
You can stun him by shooting him in the face, though it only works sometimes and there’s no consistent explanation for when
And I’ve gotten him down to about 20% health two or three times. But then he jumps at me, I back into a wall, and it’s curtains.
Gah!
Here’s the best advice I can give based on what worked for me:
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The shooting in the face works well. I’m finding that the window to “stun” mobs in this game with a quick shot is much wider than in the Dark Souls games. That dude telegraphs his big punches pretty clearly. Get right up next to him and pull your trigger (I have the pistol) right as his hand or whatever is getting ready to hit you. The shot is almost instant. The second you shoot him hold the R2 button and hit him with the super charged melee swing. That takes ALOT of life off him.
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As soon as you land that big hit, or if you fail and GET hit instead, immediately turn and hold the O button to run across the bridge to the other side, hit your potion to get your life back and reattempt the same move.
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I also didn’t have a whole lot of trouble just dodging to his right as soon as he swung atme to start his combo. Even if he hit me I was still able to get behind him and hit him with a few stabs with my cleaver.
This guy reminded me alot of the very first real boss in DS1 (after you get through the opening area and get dropped off by the bird). That giant demon on top of the castle wall. The strategy for him was to drop off the tower and chop him, run all the way across the bridge to get some space, then run all the way back when he attacks you. Same idea here. Get distance between you and him when you need a breather.
I did go back to the house and upgraded my cleaver once before I fought him I think but it didn’t make much difference.
Don’t overthink it. Just take your time and it’s not too hard.
I’ve seen it reported that it’s significantly harder to stun some bosses with the blunderbuss rather than the pistol (5 hits vs. 2, for example.)
I had a breakthrough last night, a successful bell-summon brought in 2 people who helped me beat the Father Whatsasmutchit boss. This opened up the Cathedral and Old Yarham zones and now I’m kicking ass and chewing bubblegum. I quickly found a lot of Madman Mask drops scattered about that soon brought me up to 10 insight points.
I also stopped using the axe, and switched to the spear saw. This made a huge difference, the axe was way too slow to fight many enemies, the spear has a great distance poke that lets me control the battles much easier.
Wow, are there some creepy baddies out there. 
Heh…wait till you get to 15 insight.
What do insight points do? I haven’t figured that out yet.
Since I’ve been through the learning-curve abuse…
There is a separate bird-bath store in your hunter realm that sells a variety of stuff via insight points. It’s outside the middle of the 3 doors in the house at the top of the hill. You must have 10 unspent points to activate the store, or else it is just an empty bird bath. This store is the only(?) place to buy the “join others in co-op” and “pvp with others” summoning bells.
Insight points are also spent to ring the summoning bell to bring co-op players into your instance to help fight bosses.
So how is everyone doing?
This game is awesome, but wow, it’s really very hard (even by From Software standards). Even in Dark Souls, which to me was the hardest of the games until this one, I didn’t die nearly as often to random mooks as I am here. I think that’s a function of the absent shield function - in the Souls games, I very rarely even used a shield for bosses or “big” enemies, but being able to throw one up in a pinch against a horde of enemies saved me quite a lot.
I got hung up for a long while, but in the last day or two something finally clicked for me and I’ve been plowing forward. I don’t know where everyone is so I don’t want to get into a lot of details, but I’ve killed three additional bosses beyond the Cleric Beast and the Parry Tutorial (Father Gascoigne). I think two of them might have been optional; at any rate, both ended in dead ends. I’m still using the threaded cane as my primary weapon - once it’s upgraded a bit and you level up Skill its reach and spread make it extremely useful.
Old Yharnam might have been my favorite area in a video game ever. Incredibly difficult until I figured out a few of the tricks, but it still requires constant attention at every moment. Needed NPC help to kill the boss (I am ashamed), but what can you do?
Two things I’ve stumbled upon that I’ll share here (in spoilers) in case anybody is trying, like me, to play without a Wiki as much as possible.
First, as your insight increases, enemies get stronger and gain abilities, and new enemies sometimes appear. Specifically,
You will eventually encounter a dude with a sack over his shoulder - I met him just outside Oedon Chapel but I’ve seen him in other places. He’s tough but killable… except, don’t kill him. Let him kill you.
Also:
Starting from the Chapel lamp (right after Father G), there are three paths: forward, left, and right. The path to the right is locked when you get there. After you kill the boss in Old Yharnam (at least, I think that’s the trigger), this path opens up. It leads to a tower that as far as I can tell is not very interesting… except. The tower has a pathway that encircles it at three different heights. At the lowest height (at which you enter), the pathway is broken at the back of the tower, such that you can fall down to a lower level. If you follow this around and enter the bottom of the tower, you’ll find yourself in an area with a bunch of wooden platforms. You can drop from platform to platform to the bottom of the tower and find some cool stuff. But that’s not the most interesting part. About halfway down there is a very small platform with a double door on it. Getting to this platform is really tricky; it’s easy to miss and I fell to my death about six times before I got it. But if you hit it and go through the doors, you’ll find something REALLY interesting.
Other than unlocking the doll and being a form of currency, Insight is a difficulty slider. More difficult enemies appear and some enemies get more attacks the higher your insight gets. As the night gets later (= you kill more story bosses) worse enemies also start to appear, but you can catch glimpses of the weird shit with higher insight.
This game is basically H.P. Lovecraft as shit
Once you unlock Chalice Dungeons, you can farm insight indefinitely without doing online.
Edit: Insight also has a minor effect on stats. I believe your “beast” stat gets lower and your frenzy resistance also gets lower the more insight you have.
Highly recommend this spoiler. There was a helpful player note on the walkway that allowed me to do it in only a couple of tries.
I’ve made it through a substantial chunk of the areas so far, past about 7 bosses I think. I’m now backtracking a bit to unlock shortcuts and some skipped sections before moving on.
I’ll note that I’m doing very well with everything except bosses. I’m level 50, and I have yet to get even close to killing any of them by myself, I’ve been through them all so far with co-op help. I also tried the first of the Chalice Dungeons, doing fine, until the allegedly simple beginner boss stomped me flat without me getting more than a hit or two in.
Great game, but trial-and-error patterning boss battles are not my cup of tea, I have the same complaints about Metroid and Zelda style bosses. It’s quite fun when I can do a co-op takedown of a boss though.
I am assuming there is a boss or some way out of the endless snake woods (“Forbidden Woods?”), but I can’t find either. I’ve unlocked the shortcut at the windmill back to the starting lamp, and I opened some gate somewhere, but at this point I’m just wandering absolutely aimless around the forest. I’ve killed every damn thing in it so I’m not even dying… just can’t find the exit. HELP!
Gargoyle, I soloed the Cleric Beast (but it took me, conservative, 25 tries), Father Gascoigne, and the Witch of Hemwick. Summoned NPC help for the Old Yharnam boss and most definitely for the Cathedral Ward boss. Haven’t beaten the boss in the Hidden Village - keep getting stomped flat - and as noted, can’t find the boss of the woods. The game definitely seems harder than either Dark Souls edition to me.
storyteller…
I know there is a tiny hidden path to the left in between a couple of the dog cages early on, above and to the left of the first mini-village. It takes you down through some caves and poisonous water ponds, and up eventually to another exit/boss. Have you been through there?
Otherwise, I’m lost in the forest also, I keep dying somewhere in the dark maze of spitting-snake-ball monsters.
I hadn’t been there, but I have now. That particular shorcut blew my mind in terms of how carefully the world’s geometry has been planned out. I don’t want to spoil anything, but did you fight/kill the person along that path? Did you find the invitation and the area it unlocks? Because I did - and it’s an incredibly difficult area. I can’t even get fifty feet past the starting lamp.
I HATE the forest, where I remain. I finally found the boss, but it was completely by accident - wandering through the woods and suddenly the Yharnam gank squad was upon me; I died in about six seconds. Since then I can’t even find my way back to the fog gate, and as I get more impatient and frustrated I’m dying faster and more frequently. I may need to break my own role and google for a map.
I’m not sure if anyone else is still checking this thread, but it’s like therapy for me, so:
BREAKTHROUGH!!!
Found the boss gate in the Woods, summoned NPC help, beat the boss, then spent a very cathartic 40 minutes or so ringing the small resonant bell and helping other players kill the gank squad, too. Also got past the Hidden Village boss. I think I’m starting to get the hang of things now - running in full Eileen the Crow garb with +6 Blades of Mercy; I’m killing a lot of stuff before it can even get a shot in on me. Pressing on to what appears to be the next critical path area - Brygnworth, or something like that - though there are a ton of alternative paths to consider.
Love this game, but man, screw those Woods.
Bumping one last time to say:
Well, I finished it, after a fashion. Knowing that I would most certainly play through a second time - and that I’d build my character stronger on the second playthrough with the advantage of knowing what’s coming - I skipped a fair bit of optional content in the latter half of the game. I also chose an ending that, from what I can tell, caused me to skip the last boss of the game (maybe even skip 2 bosses?). I never did find the upgrade material needed to max out any of my weapons; got two of them to +10 but where the hell are the blood rocks? Ah, well, google will be my friend and guide for playthrough #2.
What a great game. Incredibly difficult but never impossibly so. Can’t wait to get home tonight and get started on a bloodtinge build. Hope everyone else enjoyed / is enjoying it as much as I did/am.
At this point I think I’ve run in to a couple of boss walls…I’ve spent a few sessions ringing bells for help with no answers (Martyr boss on the roof of the castle, and the spider boss in the lake at Byregenwyrht). Oh well, it will come.
I unlocked the student acadamy, where an amazing quick farm can be done for lots of blood echoes and bullets, so it’s giving me some easy level-ups.
Damn that Bygenwrtthe…jumping fly demons, head suckers, and a hunter that tears me to shreds. I had a fun time trying to kite the hunter into the fly demons in hope that they would fight each other. Nope, they’re buds, they go way back, they flashed a little masonic handshake and ganged up on me. Not sure if the frenzy, lasers, bullets, whips, or claws did me in, but it wasn’t pretty
I eventually killed the hunter by dragging him back near the lantern for some cathartic AI exploitation cheese.
This is the worst thing in the whole game. I tried this about three hundred times. Summoned help, no dice; half the time the guy I summoned died even faster than I did.
Eventually I started using the Flamesprayer. With high arcane and upgraded to +6, if you get lucky you can kill the spider before he even disappears the first time, which means you avoid all of his stronger attacks. That’s what happened for me, anyway. I’m dreading getting back there on playthrough 2.
I managed to kill Rom the Spider, woo It took about 6 tries. Blood vials were the big constraint…getting in with a few whacks, out without getting hit, and healing for another go were tough without running out of vials. I finally had some good luck and finished him off with 4 vials left.
And then the game gets even harder? Yeesh :eek:
Well… not exactly. For me, at least, the difficulty peaked with Rom, if you consider only the critical path. From here on out, the main storyline is fairly linear, and of the bosses that remain to you most were relatively easy even working solo. There are a couple of chokepoints, but nothing unbearable. That said, after Rom a number of optional areas become available/feasible and they are quite difficult; there are two bosses I haven’t beaten yet even on my second playthrough, and I haven’t even really touched the Chalice Dungeons at all.
I will say this: my second playthrough has been wiki-assisted, and I’m astounded by how many things are hidden in this game in fairly out-of-the-way places. I wish there had been someone on my first playthrough who could have given me certain key tips without spoiling the game as a walkthrough would have. Accordingly, if you’re interested, here’s some stuff players might want to know about the late game, presented without plot spoilers:
In the area immediately following Rom:
You will eventually encounter a large platform with multiple enemies on it. You’ll know it’s the right platform because when you get midway across it, something starts blasting at you with incredibly powerful attacks. On the right side of this platform, toward the place where you get on it, there is a broken railing. Drop down and follow along. This will eventually lead you naturally to a key that unlocks the door at the top of the Healing Church. Behind that door is a whole new area, including two bosses: one utterly trivial, and one the hardest thing in the game.
If you’ve found the shortcut from the Forbidden Woods to Central Yharnam, you probably already have the Cainhurst Summons key item.
Take it to Hemwick Charnel Lane. In the very large field where the Executioner enemies wander around, there’s an obelisk. Approach the obelisk. This will take you to a new optional area. This is a GREAT area, full of excellent gear, cool lore stuff, and access to two of the three available Covenants. The boss of the area is a gigantic asshole, though. Also - very important - when you arrive in this new area the first enemies you encounter are REALLY hard to kill. These enemies are NOT reflective of the overall difficulty of the area. From the starting lamp, run straight ahead, not fighting anything; bear left until you find a door, and open it to get into the main area. The enemies outside will not recur inside.
Eventually, you will fight a boss enemy that spends the whole battle babbling at you. Right after this enemy is an area that I don’t know how anyone ever found without a guide.
From the lamp after the boss, go up two flights of stairs to find an elevator on your right. The elevator goes down a long way. About halfway down, you can roll out of the elevator into an unremarkable window. This leads to a lot of good loot, including the one and only +10 upgrade material in the whole main game.
And finally - note that the following spoiler contains major endgame information, access at your own risk… but it pissed me off not knowing this the first time through:
The actual final boss of the game can only be accessed if you do something fairly unintuitive involving seemingly useless items you’ll find along the way - and some of those items can only be obtained in very specific ways. If you do not do this, you will still “beat” the game but cannot fight the final boss. If you want more details, let me know.