Bloodborne (PS4)

[Glass Joe]

They were both pussies. There, I said it.

[FuryFox]

There are significant factors for variance though. How much insight you have, which New Game+ you're on, solo or with helpers, and whether you've had the game active for 10-12 hours (including being in rest state)...the last which basically made all the bosses braindead, some memory leak that restricted them to just 1 or 2 moves (maybe patched now?). Logarius in particular would do his easily gun'able melee attack only after the memory leak, and he has like 15 different things he can do.

Rom inside the Chalice dungeons was much easier than New Game+ Rom, though, IMO. Didn't even need to kill all the spiders.

[FirstBlood]

On my third try I somehow got Rom low enough in phase 1 to hit phase 3 right away and I just rushed in and killed him from there.

[Pineapple]

Now that a lot of people are finishing up I'd be interested to hear what level people are when they're completing the game? I just finished at lvl 80 with a Strength build. I feel really dirty reloading saves for trophies at the end but I know I'm going to go through the game several more times so it lessens the blow a bit.

I find it really cool that so many people had so many different experiences with the same bosses. Where in Dark Souls the bosses have clearly defined patterns and set attacks (seemingly at random but they're pretty exploitable), these guys seem to have many more variables (like Fury describes) that determine how your particular experience will be. Which opens the door for even more build possibilities and strats, which to me is pretty awesome.

Unfortunately it seems like the Future Press guide (aka the BIBLE) has been delayed again, or at least it isn't available through any means I've seen, and it was slated to release yesterday. I was really hoping to finish the game just in time to start NG+ with the guide, seeing as how I flat out missed several NPCs and their items (no Blade of Mercy for me!) or invited the wrong asshole to Oedon Chapel who then killed EVERYONE else in there!. And since the Chalice Dungeons require materials to spawn, I don't want to go wasting them if there's a 'proper' progression path. I'm only mid way through the second CD that I started, figured I'd leave that stuff for endgame.

[bbobb]

I was around 120 when I finally beat the game but that's because I was working on the Chalice Dungeons.

I finally took a break and decided to beat the game first after getting horribly pissed off at that goddamn watchdog in the defiled chalice. Need to go back to working on him again but UGH

[Pineapple]

I was thinking it would have gone smoother in some areas if I had leveled more, but I didn't want to grind too much and figured the CDs weren't a great source of souls (at least the first two weren't). But thinking about higher levels makes me wonder if there's a respec option somewhere? I would love to be able to try out different builds without having to go through from the beginning again and get back up that high. I'm at the end of the game now and didn't see an option or item anywhere that would do it, maybe in NG+? I really want to try an arcane build, there's limited options but huge damage potential in whats there.

[bbobb]

No respec option, and the higher level CDs give crazy high amounts of echoes. Once you start doing Depth 3 and 4 the difficulty skyrockets and you start getting a lot of echoes from them.

And Arcane build using Ludwigs and Blood Gems from CDs is pretty crazy good, but the problem is it's an endgame build so when you do it the entire first 2/3 of the game is pretty brutal.

[bbobb]

Time passes with certain boss kills, there's no turning it back. And yes it does get lighter again but it sure as hell isn't a morning stage.

[Pineapple]

No respec option...

...but the problem is it's an endgame build so when you do it the entire first 2/3 of the game is pretty brutal.

Bummer on the respec-ing, I was really hoping they'd include that after how awesome it was in Dark Souls 2. And the last part of what you wrote is the reason I don't want to go that route from the start, seems like it would be needlessly hard. I have 18 Arcane on my STR build which I could bump, but at the cost of things like health which I could have used more of in the first run (I got it to 30 and never pushed past). Ludwig's Blade is what I pumped up to +10 and with 33 STR and 18 ARCane it does crazy damage, especially when I coat it with something, but I'm picturing a character with 40 in both those stats who could just ruin shit.

[bbobb]

If you just killed vicar you're two bosses away, and they're the next two bosses storyline bosses the only optional bosses available to you after vicar are blood starved beast and witch of hemwick. You can't get to the nightmare frontier for a while yet. Just continue the story path by going through the password door.