Still here. Cleaning up minibosses here and there. Not sure I’ll bother to finish off the last couple of Headless, as I don’t care that much about the sugar replacements they give. Finally got through the second Seven Ashina Spears guy by turning his buddy against him and semi-cheesing him with firecrackers. O’Rin was a pushover with perfect parries, go figure. And the guy who hangs out under Isshin’s old spot, no problemo, really. He didn’t like my flamethrower at all.
Now just the ol’ D of H to contend with before going in for the big win. Got through the first of his three bars, but this is gonna be a difficult one, I can tell. He’s totally a Bloodborne boss, just like everybody says.
Although you could make a tough drinking game out of how many times the word “shinobi” appears, so.
Whew, this guy kinda sucks, not gonna lie. He seems beatable, I guess, but there are a couple of attacks that seem pretty unfair. There’s an arm sweep that comes at the end of a sweep, stomp, sweep combo that really obscures what the hell is going on thanks to the fire effects which hits when it seems like it shouldn’t, but that’s a minor issue compared to his unblockable attack, which has an extremely small windup for an attack that uses his entire, house-sized body and does an absolutely massive amount of damage. Maybe this is another “don’t lock on” fight, but if you’re anywhere in the vicinity of the front 90 degrees of him when it goes off, you’re not gonna dodge it.
Whew, did it. Man, that guy was pure Camera Cancer. The unblockable, it turns out, can just be jumped over, although far too often (as in, at all) I found myself in some kind of uncancelable attack animation from hammering on the attack button (RIP my RB button) and unable to jump. It was always a slash upward and to the right, I noticed, with arm outstretched. I could never dodge the Big Flame Slam and had to rely on the fire umbrella the two or three times it came out that I wasn’t close enough to him to just keep attacking through it. The real awful attack continued to be that sweep, stomp, sweep, during which his tracking was absolutely ridiculous. Dodge, dodge, dodge to the right.
Well, I did it, anyway. It’s over. Now on to the last one.
God, it is so annoying having to fight G every time I want to fight I. And no auto-skip on that damned cutscene, either, ugh. Not to mention how every time I try to mikiri his thrust I just dodge into him and end up getting hit with it anyway.
Got to phase 3(4?). Oof. That’s enough for one night. By the time I finish this guy fully 25% of my playthrough time will likely have been spent just on him and DoH.
I didn’t think about Jizo statues. My problem with relying on consumables is…what if I still fail and next time I don’t have it? So I just try to make myself work with renewable tools. I am able, sometimes, to get through both G and the first phase of I without using a single gourd swig. The only true opening I see from phase 2 on is the spear slam, which I can pretty routinely dodge behind and take advantage of, but it’s dicey.
Still, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Yeah its always a risky gamble that you’ll waste it. I figure once you’ve learned enough patterns and moves from the enemy then its ok to start wasting them when you are close. There’s also the suicide pill which is a tricky tool that may be helpful.
Here’s my DoH run. You can find the G run on the same account.
I’ve never been tempted to do NG+ on any other From game, but I’m sort of tempted by it here. Get a different ending, maybe. I believe I have, from simple exploration, two items necessary for one of the endings, but I have no idea how you go about getting to that ending. Maybe it branches off from that choice (which I didn’t realize was a real choice) I mentioned above? I don’t know. I found one of them through the old woman, but I got the other one before I even found her pointing the way to it. I love how cryptic you can be with these games.
This is super not fun. And what’s making it super not fun is G, and what’s making G super not fun (aside from weird inconsistencies like sometimes I can block his big strike after he deflects me and sometimes I can’t, and how sometimes I’m inexplicably facing the wrong way to block something even though I’m locked on) is his unpredictable unblockable. I can never tell if he’s going to pull out the thrust or the sweep in any given situation, and the windup is super small, and then whoops there goes half my health bar before I even get to the real, actual boss. And the timing on his standing thrust is bonkers, I don’t think I’ve ever countered it successfully, just end up dodging straight into him and getting hit with it. This was a very strong contender for my favorite From game up until this moment, but this weird forced miniboss that I can sometimes beat without spending a gourd and sometimes get fucking owned by because of weird timings and a huge personal pet peeve of drawn out stagger animations the player has to cancel on their own is kind of ruining it for me.
G was my favorite boss to this point, and I love I as a boss, but this amalgamation of the two is not doing it for me.
Edit: Ugh, I was seriously within one or two hits of beating him just now when I got fucked by the dodge catching on his jump (also twice I missed getting hits because the camera unlocked during his jump). These are things that annoy me to no end. Not that something doesn’t work, but that sometimes it works and sometimes it costs you half your health bar.
There should be tells for those attacks. It may help to watch replays of your fights to see the action without the stress. But yeah at this point you’ve got your skills and it’s down to the luck of the attacks that makes the difference between success and failure. It’s only a matter of time now.
Well, here’s my (semi-cheating) tip for you: make a backup of your save and go all out on consumable items.
That way, if you do go through the whole lot, you can roll back to your old save game and use them all over again. For what it’s worth, I didn’t even end up using the old save file. It’s not really cheating, is it, right guys? Right?
So go nuts on attack sugars, confetti (they let you do chip damage, immensely useful) and Divine Grasses or Jizo statues for later phases. By being aggressive and with items, I think I could beat G in less than 30 seconds.
You have been using firecrackers, right? That’s like the most useful tool in the game! You can use it to give yourself a healing breather and it’s a guaranteed 2-3 free hits IF you circle around behind the stunned enemy before hitting him.
And uh, I guess getting the hang of lightning reversal is an enormous help, since it’s like 5-6 physical attacks’ worth of damage, plus 2-3 free hits. It basically becomes the boss’ biggest weakness.
For some other (usually mini) bosses, but it never occurred to me to pull them out here. At this point I now have no spirit emblems or sen left, and I don’t really feel like going anywhere to grind them out, either. I’ve been close enough to smell victory twice now and would have actually pulled it off if the camera wasn’t so shit. Why is the camera always so shit.
He’s only pulled out the lightning slam a handful of times. Twice I tried reversing it like I did with G back when, but both times I just ended up shocking myself somehow. The effects on the screen are so intense I can’t even see what’s going on during the move, but I did read elsewhere that the move is supposedly finickier in this fight than the earlier one, so I’ve not been bothering much with trying for it. If you fuck it up that’s a huge portion of your bar gone.
I dunno, a few runs through the red soldiers should get you enough sen for all the spirit emblems you’ll ever need. Maybe you should take a break. Not having to do it more than once is also the point of the backup… “trick”.
“By being prepared, a true ninja shinobi wins the battle before it has started.”
-Sun Tzu or some shit
Oh man I hate those guys. I avoided fighting them for the most part. Is there some trick to them? Never seemed worth the considerable hassle, even one on one.
I had over 250 spirit emblems before DoH. Can’t believe I have only 2 now!
Hmm, you can start from the bonfire where the shackled giant used to be and go in the direction of the castle. You’ll get them from behind and you can stealth most of them.
I had to grind for a while this way to get the last skill points for the platinum.
I ground in BB and DS2/3 maybe even in 1 I can’t remember, I’m gonna avoid it here! I have 12 attack power (I think?) and 18 vitality. It’s gonna be that or nothing.
Camera was up to its usual shenanigans, but by now I’m almost unconsciously compensating for them. I did die once, but that empty vessel isn’t showing up in the UI for some reason.
Mid-game G is definitely still my favorite fight. That one felt the closest to a movie swordfight of any of the fights in the whole game.Hard but not too punishing of mistakes, unlike some of the attacks here that were just incredibly brutal. Long but not overlong like this one and DoH sometimes felt. Well. Curious about the other endings. Haven’t started NG+ yet, not sure I will or if I’ll just start over…or just look them up on YouTube, hehe.
