I pumped stat points into Adaptability and wore light armor to increase the effectiveness of my dodge roll. I didn’t use a shield, instead devoting my left hand to a parrying dagger and occasionally magic. ![]() This time around, I played Dark Souls 2 like it was Bloodborne. Then a couple weeks later The Phantom Pain came out and I lost track of DS2, only to pick it up recently. I hoped that PS4 version of Dark Souls 2 would mitigate those issues and picked it up for some more terrifying, occasionally frustrating hack-and-slash action. The frame rate issues there, plus the mechanics of the area (poison arrows that require dodging) made it frustratingly unplayable.Īfter tearing through Bloodborne (twice, because I wanted to try a different main weapon), I figured that my problem with the series was almost exclusive to the technical issues that plagued the first Dark Souls on consoles. I liked it for many of the same reasons I loved Bloodborne up until I hit Blighttown. Before Bloodborne, I attempted to delve into the series with the first Dark Souls. The developer is the same, many of the mechanics are the same, and the focus on brutal difficulty is definitely the same. But once you start to think of the run to the boss as a quick ~2o second part of the encounter (since it sometimes takes skill on its own) then it starts to have a similar feel.īloodborne is not technically a Dark Souls game, but it might as well be. The process certainly isn’t instant in Bloodborne. Levels are incredibly short and there is literally zero down time between death and another attempt to conquer the level that just killed you. It’s a similar philosophy that makes other games notorious for being hard– Super Meat Boy and Trials HD–work. Setting up a way for players to reach those bosses quickly (and with full health) made retries quick so even failure could feel like progress. Bloodborne is all about figuring out difficult areas and boss encounters are the hardest of them all. And I honestly thought this was a critical aspect of the game design. It isn’t always easy–sometimes very timely rolls are required to get around large monsters in narrow hallways–but a way is there. There is always a path between the lamp and the boss door allowing you to dodge around the enemies that populate the world and arrive unscathed. These “runs” are almost universal for bosses in Bloodborne. Anything that gets in the way of trying the boss again is a frustration, so it is a relief to run to the fight without being forced to deal with enemies along the way. And, like many Bloodborne bosses, fighting him often feels like beating your head against a wall until it finally breaks. Learning to beat Gascoigne means studying his attack patterns and practicing how to counter them. The difficulty of Gascoigne makes the run above all the more important. Mastering that mechanic makes Gascoigne relatively simple (and there’s a hidden item that can assist as well) but for a lot of people, including me, he’s the first major roadblock in Bloodborne. For a beginner, he serves as a bottleneck, forcing players to learn how to parry with your offhand weapon, a mechanic that becomes increasingly important as the game goes on. He’s a highly mobile boss who transforms midway through the battle into a furiously aggressive monster. Gascoigne is the first major challenge of Bloodborne. Every turn, dodge, and trap is etched into my mind from the dozen or so times I ran the obstacle course the first time I played the game. Over a year later, I still remember the path to Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne. Instead, I head for the branch to the left, up another set of stairs, and find my destination: a door made of fog. There’s a huntsman with a shield behind me after I dodge so I still can’t slow down to take in the scenery. I wait to see where he’s going to attack and I roll around him in the other direction. ![]() ![]() At the end of the bridge stands another hammer monster. Once the fireball has passed, I juke around any enemies who survived the blast of flames. If I just start crossing the bridge and retreat, a giant fireball–a trap meant to wreck me–will clear most of them from my path. Past them I find an elevator which takes me to a bridge full of more bloodthirsty huntsmen. I roll around them, only briefly slowing down if my stamina is drained. There I find two monstrous creatures with a hammers where their hands should be. ![]() I veer left again down another set of stairs. He’ll follow me, so I just keep sprinting. He notices me but doesn’t have time to attack. From the lamp, I run straight down the stairs on the left, past a crazed huntsman.
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