Bloodborne - Demon's Souls Spiritual Successor's Spiritual Successor

It took me an embarrassingly long time to discover the first weapons and I spent quite a few lives beating my head against the second group of enemies using my fists.

Right off the bat, I think this might be my least favorite of the series if only due to the limited color palate and very cluttered level design.

The starting area is probably the hardest in the Souls games. Such a great game if you stick with it though. I didn’t get a chance to play tonight but am looking forward to the weekend!

I’ll keep with it for a while, at least. I know very little about the game itself, so I’m looking forward to playing it (relatively) blind and then listening to Bonfireside Chat.

I think it’s From Software’s best game.

Yeah, I had the same criticisms. They are somewhat allayed when you get out of the city and into the forest areas. It gets less cluttered in the forest, but the limited color palate still made me confuse shiny objects for drops/pickups sometimes.

And just to warn you, eventually you will get out of the forest and back in the city again. Luckily, you’ll be more enamored with the gameplay by then, if you’re like me, and won’t mind it as much.

Is there any benefit to picking up the DLC if I’m still early on?

Not especially. The DLC is really more endgame content

I’m starting to warm to this a bit. Managed to take out the Cleric Beast on my first attempt. Maybe it’s because it’s not so visible on the UI (or maybe because I hadn’t unlocked the ability to level up) but I have less of a fear of dying and losing my souls. Or blood echoes. Or whatever.

But damn, those load times.

Seriously: fuck these load times. If I end up shelving this game, that’ll be the reason why.

I stumbled across Father… uh… Gas Can? and I think that’s where I’ll stop for tonight.

Good luck! He’s tough without any aid.

Bloodborne has by far the most optional areas/bosses when compared to other Souls games. And a lot of the bosses are relatively easy to access when you know the routes. When I replayed the game in NG+ I went through the game surprisingly fast because I skipped everything and just did what is required.

From the start just go directly to Father G. After killing him, buy the hunter crest to unlock the gate to the main cathedral to kill Vicar A. It is now night. Head for the mage college with the three Shadows boss in your way (probably the longest section as it is two large areas). Kill the spider. Welcome to the late game after only 4 boss kills! Rush through the hidden city to kill the boss. Congrats, you now have access to the final area with 2 bosses to go.

An SSD helped for me, but it’s still pretty bad.

Technical issues like that make it hard for me to call it their best game. Though I don’t know which other one I would choose at this point. They’ve never really brought it all together to make a near-perfect game.

Didn’t a patch make loading times significantly shorter? I shudder to think what they were before that.

That’s good to hear! I was playing without having installed the patch as I didn’t want to wait for 8gb to download first and let that go overnight. I’m curious to see if there’s much of a difference.

How 'bout that, everything’s on the Internet. I guess it’s about 30-40% faster.

Oh come on!

It’s still a shock coming from PC. Can’t do anything about the 30 fps either, but at least your mind gets used to it.

Hey, it was either play it without the patch or not play it last night at all.

Yeah, the frame rate is probably the strangest bit about this game for me. It’s the first time I’ve played a Souls game where it wasn’t solid and smooth.

Fair enough, glad you got a chance to play. But the angry gamer who we find out later is doing it wrong is the worst type!

Three lashes with the threaded cane for your sins.