It sure is!
It's like the floating door in Duke's Archives, except super obvious.
Archived M2K2 Forum
Dood Trigger™
Finished Bloodborne for the first time. All bosses including DLC and all fixed Chalice Dungeons.
Awesome game. Gotta admit that it took me a while to lose myself in it, probably a combo of series fatigue + still feeling cautious about using my hand for twitchy gameplay. I end up playing in shorter bursts and taking lots of breaks to be safe. Bleh :\
Things I like better in Souls
Things I like better in Bloodborne
Other stuff
Dunno when I'll come back to Souls. I might grab DS3 sometime this year.
Awesome game. Gotta admit that it took me a while to lose myself in it, probably a combo of series fatigue + still feeling cautious about using my hand for twitchy gameplay. I end up playing in shorter bursts and taking lots of breaks to be safe. Bleh :\
Things I like better in Souls
- This game feels restrained coming from Dark Souls 1 and 2 IMO. There aren't many build options or weapons, and the path is super linear and samey. I mean, Bloodborne has a different style of replay incentive with the combat being more technical and all, but limiting the stat builds and routing choices makes the game less interesting to me. Especially thinking about future playthroughs... when DS2 came out I had tons of complaints about it, but I was already planning my next run before the first one was over. In Bloodborne I'm pretty excited about learning parries and other combat intricacies, but not so much about planning where to go and what to grab on the way.
- I miss simple backstabs and shields. Oh, and rings! I need my fast stamina regen and hypermode (is there a rune for those, Beasthood aside?).
- Kinda ties with the first thing, but the loot in this game is so predictable. 90% of the time you just find redundant blood stuff or bullets. Souls games have a bigger/better variety of items, enemy drops, boss souls, etc. Plus with the repetitive layout of certain areas, after a while I wasn't hardcore exploring them anymore, just charging forward.
- I miss simple backstabs and shields. Oh, and rings! I need my fast stamina regen and hypermode (is there a rune for those, Beasthood aside?).
- Kinda ties with the first thing, but the loot in this game is so predictable. 90% of the time you just find redundant blood stuff or bullets. Souls games have a bigger/better variety of items, enemy drops, boss souls, etc. Plus with the repetitive layout of certain areas, after a while I wasn't hardcore exploring them anymore, just charging forward.
Things I like better in Bloodborne
- This game is surprisingly... not trolly... not saying there weren't traps, but sometimes I'm 40+ minutes into a new area and somehow it's still quiet and safe. Except for Chalice Dungeons and maybe a couple parts of the DLC, enemy placement is never too suffocating and even the bosses were pretty straight forward. There just aren't many BS parts in this. Not a lot of cryptic moments either.
- Items sent to storage when you're full! Now that's nice.
- Gameplay is smooth, like the real evolution of DS1. If only DS2 played like this instead of tweaking every little thing to be more of an obstacle. Visceral attacks are really cool too. I also enjoy exploring with the torch in the dark/at night. Seems like that's what they truly wanted DS2 to feel like.
- Items sent to storage when you're full! Now that's nice.
- Gameplay is smooth, like the real evolution of DS1. If only DS2 played like this instead of tweaking every little thing to be more of an obstacle. Visceral attacks are really cool too. I also enjoy exploring with the torch in the dark/at night. Seems like that's what they truly wanted DS2 to feel like.
Other stuff
- I found the Chalice Dungeons very tedious, at least the fixed ones (only played offline). It doesn't help that the loot is mostly ritual materials, so you end up exploring a dungeon with the sole purpose of opening the next one. Would be nice to enter a depth 4 chalice during a main game run and grab some OP gear there, but the way they're structured you can't do deeper areas before you slog through a bunch of others, and by then you'll be so advanced that there's no point anymore. The maze layouts weren't exactly a delight either. Some of the bosses were neat, though, when they weren't literally just regular enemies with an HP bar. I do like how the altars carry over to NG+ so you can enter Lv.4-5 dungeons whenever and farm XP like crazy.
- My current series rank: Dark Souls > Demon's Souls > Bloodborne = Dark Souls 2 (they're all at least 9/10 games IMO)
- My current series rank: Dark Souls > Demon's Souls > Bloodborne = Dark Souls 2 (they're all at least 9/10 games IMO)
Dunno when I'll come back to Souls. I might grab DS3 sometime this year.
The way I understand the chalice dungeons is that you're not supposed to do them all in one playthrough, and stretch them across multiple game loops.
They're repetitive and mostly devoid of interesting loot, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere down in the maze. Bloodborne is the only Souls game with parts I felt were kinda scary since Dark Souls (I).
They're repetitive and mostly devoid of interesting loot, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere down in the maze. Bloodborne is the only Souls game with parts I felt were kinda scary since Dark Souls (I).
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Quote from ryu:
And Ultra greatswords swing now faster it seems
After messing with this some and seeing a couple video comparisons I'd say the Zwei, at lest, works out about the same on the full attack string. The first swing is definitely quicker, the second probably is too or is by default due to the first one, but you do now take a deeper step into the attack gaining a bit more reach but it seems to slow down the third and fourth swings. not that you should be swinging that many times with an Ultra anyway but it is easier to do now thanks to the reduced Stamina cost which is very noticeable and very good. The one hand R2 feels a lot faster than it was, but I didn't use it a whole bunch pre patch so it's hard to say if it's really that much faster but it does feel better.
Overall it's a good change, the first swing coming out quicker is a pretty big deal, typically a Lothric Knight could start their attack after me and win that exchange now it's pretty reliably a trade to my benefit thanks to Poise kicking in or an outright win where I stuff their attack entirely. That and the Stamina reduction makes early game Zweihanding feel a lot better and the larger forward motion means you can initiate your attack from a bit further away and work spacing a little better. Feeling pretty good about taking my first character through The Ringed City after this, getting that first hit in is the hardest part of taking non a new enemy with Ultra weapons, having a little more leeway to pull it off is nice.
One shall stand, one shall ball.
Ok really feeling the Stamina changes to the Ultra Greatswords running around the early portion of The Ringed City. First area alone would have been absolute hell the Zwei still ate stamina like it used to. Being able to get a couple rolls in after a couple attacks is huge.
Really liking the DLC so far. It's especially fun being able to come into a Dark Souls thing that hasn't already been picked apart by everyone, more opportunities to discover why I'm a moron that made a given encounter harder than it should have been lol. :v
EDIT: Boss one sucks dicks
Really liking the DLC so far. It's especially fun being able to come into a Dark Souls thing that hasn't already been picked apart by everyone, more opportunities to discover why I'm a moron that made a given encounter harder than it should have been lol. :v
EDIT: Boss one sucks dicks
If you can't beat it by alternating R1 and circle, people are gonna complain!
Spoilerfree post-DLC opinions
Spoilerfree post-DLC opinions
It was alright. Mostly felt like an endless enemy gauntlet with not that much to explore which isn't what I'd want, but oh well. Final boss was good, optional boss was by far the worst part and drags it down quite a bit. Just not enjoyable at all to me.