Yeah, firedog was as far in as I went (it was an okay fight I guess, compared to fatties who just got hosed terribly by endgame offense). I think what I'm going to do this afternoon is beat up Spoilerclasm because the scythe you get from that fight is absolutely built for my character and the only other things I can use it on outside chalice dungeons would be frue final or NG+ (and NG+ing Bloodborne doesn't appeal). Supposedly mysterious crying woman in white dress is a boss somewhere down in Pthumeria so I want to at least try and search that out.
Alternately, I could almost immediately get tired of trying to hack through low-level dungeons to get the materials to open ones that would actually give me anything worthwhile (and get at least as tired of the one remaining optional boss murdering me from full HP) and just knock out the rest of the game already. Bit easier said than done, of course. Penultimate boss was excellent, last was...somewhat less so. Full-screen HP->1 attack. Doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing, enjoy having no HP (he can also turn off your healing). Bad form.
I guess there were a lot of things I would've wanted to avoid happening in the ending. My imagination evidently isn't warped enough to call the one that did.
But I don't want to be an alien slug baby! Watching the others on YouTube and geez probably the "bad" ending (where you didn't meet the true ending requirements and skip out on a couple plot bosses at the end) is really the least objectionable. Another From game, another world stuck in a seemingly unbreakable and self-perpetuating cycle of despair. Except I think Yharnam is really the grimmest one they've made. I don't think you can even legitimately save anyone in this game? If they're not crazy at the end, they're dead, and if you leave them in their houses then presumably the monsters just get them. Can't just leave everyone sitting together in Firelink Shrine and avoid talking to them again so I don't make them go hollow, everybody's screwed no matter what. Wonderful.
Probably my general impressions are all well apparent by this point, but for summary's sake:
I'd say that Dark Souls 2 is a more refined game overall; Bloodborne has more warts, but it's more ambitious.
Yeah, pretty much. I'm surprised to find that I actually prefer the former even though Bloodborne is vastly better at a number of things that are usually more important to me. Bloodborne's environments are amazing, that nice DS1 sheen of gloss and obsessive detail is back with a vengeance, and level designs are sprawling, intricate and involved (if perhaps sometimes too long). Combat's smooth, the dodge is fast, fluid, cheap and spammable and facilitates lots of cheap shots with dodging transformation attacks, catering extremely well to the ways I prefer to handle Souls games already. Boss designs are mostly amazing, visually and combatwise, and sometimes almost unbearably tense to fight. New music guys did a fantastic job, and properly righteous noise is a major component of making Bloodborne's boss fights memorable (as it always should be!) Songs aren't always brimming with melodies you'll remember away from the game, but at the least the music's always perfect for amping up the tension as appropriate. Bosses in Bloodborne almost always have some combination of phases/low HP attacks/frenzy states, and battle tracks are composed to shift in tone accordingly as the fight gets more frantic. One of the more bombastic examples, in which From sez "Guys, we know this is only the second boss, but we need to make it absolutely clear that we are in no way fucking around" (minor spoilers I guess):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA614N3IHD4&index=5&list=PLCLeSTzz6trY_Qn_8vMnqO9TbqesAM4x6. We're a long way from Taurus Demon here.
(I'd've happily linked the penultimate boss theme there instead, because it's the only piece of music in Bloodborne that shoots for Sif-like majesty instead of being outright unsettling and terrifying as its principal traits, but it's also a huge spoiler.)
I'd recommend Bloodborne for anyone who's previously enjoyed a Souls game because it is definitely an Experience. Unfortunately, I can't express any interest in replaying it for a number of reasons. It's shorter than I expected, but that's not really a problem since I'd had enough of it by the end anyway (memorable game that doesn't overstay its welcome >>>>>>>>> the likes of Skyrim, thank you very much). Not to say
short exactly, since there's still more to it than Demon's Souls (I had a bit over 40 hours in by the end? But there's a certain fraction of not really necessary ore farming, co-op and dungeon diving in there), but still, it took me about half the time DS1&2 each required the first run through. But mainly I just can't think of anything else I want to do with it. You have an admirable arsenal of moves with any individual weapon (since they all have two forms), but still, the overall number of them is fairly limited, and the only other one I saw that I'd really want to mess around with any is the cool katana (which is a very late drop anyway, so nah). Additionally, the possibility of exhausting non-renewable resources works against what made the Dark Souls formula work so well, and in this case deters me from trying bosses until I figure them out because there genuinely is a distinct penalty associated with repeated death. If something still looked like a problem to me after a couple deaths, I'd usually just resort to summoning someone just to stave off the looming specter of farming up heals. This isn't how I'd prefer to deal with things, but if the alternative is potentially having to waste my time building up inventory again, then I'll take the cheese option. Finding people for co-op is also kind of a hassle sometimes, though--the lack of summon signs means you can't even get an indicator of whether or not there are even other players in your area, and when I found myself wanting to play with someone else, I usually wound up waiting much longer for summons or signs than has been usual for new Souls games in the past.
The drastic shift in focus 2/3 into the game also really soured me on what was left. I don't see how we got from point A to point B, one minute there's a plague of beasthood afflicting a city and the next everything's about space aliens for some damn reason, and though someone somewhere can probably point to a bit obscure lore that proves a connection, this is really more of a problem with tone and mood and makes me feel like I played one game that just happened to cover two wholly disparate stories. Early on the bosses tend to be hunters or clergy that tried and failed to combat a scourge, and fell in the attempt. There's a relateable, tragic human element to this that makes your adversaries more satisfying to fight, something most of the best Souls bosses had going for them too (Astraea, Artorias, Sir Alonne). Vicar Amelia's a pretty great example, not one of my favorite fights mechanically but starkly despairing in exactly the right way. You walk into the cathedral, watch her turn into a monster yet continue desperately clutching her holy emblem in one oversized claw; the arm holding the amulet constitutes the boss's actual weak point and that is a great touch. This human element is largely lost in the latter portion of the game, with rather startling abruptness. Priests accidentally turning into what they were trying to fight is something I can get behind thematically, but cultists operating on a basis of "Turn self into horrible abomination from the stars -> ??? -> profit!" is more of a struggle to wrap my head around, at least in a game that's already given me a more satisfying alternative.
But y'know, complaining about plot in a From game. It was still fun to play even when I was sitting there wondering how the heck the game got to all these strange endpoints from where it started. So it's a cool game with flaws, left a definite impression, personally find it lacks the potential mileage of either Dark Souls game, but one (mostly) enjoyable good run through it is enough to call it a thing worth playing.
Final stats (level 80):
VIT 36
END 26
STR 12
SKL 25
BLD 5
ARC 25
90ish insight
Blade of Mercy +10
Threaded Cane +9
Hunter's Pistol +6
TORCH (Hunter's variety, not that I ever used it for damage. Except for that one time when, um, sorry Arianna, I wasn't exactly aiming for you)
I was wearing the Cainhurst armor at the end because I actually wanted the defense (not that it mattered much, the final boss still combo'd me to death from full HP a couple times). More typically I preferred the noble dress + Crown of Illusions and knight clothes to round things out; doll set, black church and crow set all nice and saw plenty of rotation too.
Number the dead (Cids) time! Boss edition, generally euphemized or acronymed because new game is new. An asterisk indicates I had assistance (this happened a fair bit near the end because I was losing patience with the game).
Everyone already knows Cleric Beast is the first boss: 3
World's worst dad: 0
BSB: 0
Distaff Pinwheel: 0
Walkingdog.gif*: 2
Onsssssse a maaaaaan/why'd it have to be snakes/Notzgul/waytoomanypossiblenamesforthisfight: 0
Electric mayhem: 1
Obligatory spider boss*: 3 (I said Fuck It after the magic barrage straight up murdered me from full HP from across the map)
Pope Gwyn*: 2
LASER BEAMS not as scary as his actual level: 1
Royal alien vanguard*: 0
Stupid piece of shit I gave up trying to kill: 6
Ultra-gross!*: 0 (I'd called in allies for the hunter mob earlier in the zone; both died at the boss, but the headstart was probably still crucial to victory)
Lord Fenrirhat: 0
MWN*: 1
Spoilerclasm: 5
Talkin' about big bad moon: 5
Kind of a small number of bosses for a From game, think even Demon's had more? The average level of quality is higher than usual, though.
Probably 50-60 deaths total counting exploration. I didn't die much during the normal business of traversing a level and went through plenty of them without any casualties at all, so most of those are accounted for by a small handful of areas that were just too awful to handle in any slow and disciplined fashion: descending the well beneath the workshop; Nightmare Frontier; post-red moon Unseen Village; and, most especially, trying to get past the brains in Mergo's Loft to get that final weapon upgrade. Braiiiiiiiiins
Here, have one of the Fenrirest things I've seen in a while:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPvQ-OThPwMAlso, it took me forever to place exactly what BSB's horn-blaring musical motif reminded me of and I finally nailed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUgaw6MyF0k&list=PLB2F7CC7864261450&index=2 (For the Grefters, but in 5/4 time.)
~
I guess I could start PoE now but you guys there's a shinier version of DS2 coming out next Tuesday (and I clearly haven't played that too much already). For reference whenever I get around to it, it sounds like Easy really = Hard? I couldn't make up my mind looking at the character options when I booted it up last week. I was thinking moon godlike something or other? And then I noticed rogues have high starting Perception and the rollover text for that stat said I could catch people lying and SOLD because more dialogue options.
