HEY! So Megaman is a good game. But it’s got a bit of a reputation for some of those games being pretty hard. Precision platformers with shooting. But you have more options than just “Get Good” to make progress. You have POWERUPS! What’s Iceman weak to? Fire. What’s Fireman weak to? Ice. BIG WHOOP DE DO! -> but hey, that’s good game design. If you have trouble in one place, you can earn an advantage by playing the rest of the game.
HEY! Also, Demon’s Souls is a good game. It also has a reputation for being pretty hard, AND it also has some Megamaning going on. Depending on the order in which you tackle the various worlds, you will be finding fire weapons, magic weapons, and blunt weapons, and all sorts of things that happen to also be the explicit weakness of enemies in the other worlds. And lots of people think that Demon’s Souls was the last of the FromSoftware games to have this sort of Megaman design.
BUT THAT IS WRONG!
HEYHEYHEY! What if I told you that Bloodborne… is a pretty good game. And Like all the soulsborne games, has a reputation for being extremely difficult. But, with careful exploration and patience, this game about aggression and not having any patience rewards you with everything you need to mitigate early game challenges.
Immediately after your first death, you choose your weapons. And immediately the game is offering you huge damage bonuses, so long as you make the correct choice. The Hunter’s Sawblade has the serrated property, which increases all damage against beast type enemies by 20%. The Threaded Cane also boasts the serrated property, but is slower and wider than the Saw Cleaver, so I ultimately recommend the Saw Cleaver weapon to be the first (even though the big axe swing is very good).
People also say that early Bloodborne is difficult because you can’t start leveling up, or getting stronger, until you can survive all the way to your first boss. This is because you must talk to The Doll to level up, and The Doll only activates once you get 1 insight. Insight is awarded for seeing and defeating bosses, but also from the item Madman’s Knowledge. There are 2 Madman’s Knowledge items in Yharnam. One by the sewer rats in the Fishery Warehouse, and another by these oily crows on the bridge leading out of the aquaducts. So if you need to farm Blood Echoes to increase your Strength stat, you can.
You also should be leveling up your Weapon for more damage as well. This requires Blood Stone shards. You need 3 to reach a +1 Saw Cleaver, a total of 8 to reach +2, and 16 total to reach +3. This also is fairly easy to accomplish, as there are 10 Blood Stone Shards to be found around Central Yharnam, and if you’re desperate you can farm Blood Stone Shards from the werewolves on the bridge and the Large Huntsmen in the Fishery Warehouse or the Upper Sewers.
So let’s just assume that we completely suck at the game and need all the help we can get, and decide to boost our damage to the softcap of 25 in Both Str and Dex. At this point, it will only take a dozen or so swings on the Cleric Beast to defeat it.
Now Father Gascoigne is a pretty hard boss, ya? But maybe not as much as you think. For one, Gascoigne in all 3 phases is open to bullet parries. And wouldn’t you know it, the Brick Trolls, the Large Huntsmen, and the Werewolves are all designed to specifically train the player to recognize and learn the timing for bullet parries. They wind up, they start the attack, and your bullet needs to hit on the downswing. Worried about running out of bullets? Also not a problem, because the Wheelchair Machine Gun Man in the hut next to Central Yharnam lantern is almost guaranteed to drop bullets for you.
On top of the parries, Gascoigne’s Third form counts as a Beast type, so we get our 20% Damage boost back. AND we can also talk to Gascoigne’s daughter to get the music box, giving us a few instances of free hits on Father G to boot. Yeah, it still requires good execution, but the deck is definitely stacked in the player’s favor. Use this rotation: Bullet Parry, Music Box, hit-hit, back up, repeat.
Moving onto the Cathedral Ward, our options have been opened wide.
If you decide to head towards Old Yharnam first, we’re being given 8 Molotov Cocktails, 9 Fire Paper, and most importantly 16 Antidotes to help deal with The Blood-Starved Beast and it’s poison. While Bullet Parry seems useful as first (and it can be in phase 1), waiting for the right moment during the poison phases can leave you constantly healing and using antidotes. Instead, Using the fire paper on the Saw Cleaver and running up behind Bloodstarved by dodging forward through attacks will be much faster.
The next boss that you can fight is Vicar Amelia, but killing Bloodstarved also opens up the path to the Upper Cathedral ward, which in turn leads to a Fire Gemstone. Equip this to fight Vicar Amelia, because she is quickly staggered by fire damage, and keeps her from healing. “But You didn’t make an Arcane build!” you cry, Doesn’t matter. The 20% bonus Damage against beasts is plenty to cover my ass. But if you REALLY need more fire damage, you can farm fire gemstones by running the first Pthumerian chalice dungeon and defeating the Watchdog of The Old Gods at the end. BUT don’t fight Vicar Amelia just yet. Explore the Hemwick Charnel Lane to the left of the Grand Cathedral, the scuttle buddies to the right of the Grand C., and everywhere else you can explore. Picking up the treasures in Cathedral Ward, Hemwick Charnel Lane, yields 20 Twin Bloodstone Shards, 7 more in the Hypogean Gaol in Ya’hargul. WAY More than the 16 needed to get to a +6 Saw Cleaver.
After good ol’ Amy is dead, take off that fire gemstone, and it’s off to the Forbidden Woods. BUUUUUUT hold on a moment. Make sure to talk to Patches in the shack, just after the torch-wielding mob, to get a magic space-rock, and take the poison-cave path back to Central Yharnam to get your invitation to the Cainhurst Ball. You will find 5 Bloodstone chunks in Cainhurst, and 4 in the Nightmare Frontier, there’s even 1 extra Chunk in the forbidden woods: enough to get you a +8 Weapon. Don’t forget to find the Augur of Ebrietas in the Lecture Hall. You’ll need that to kill the snobby Vice Principal later. (If this sounds like a bit too much, you don’t really need to do Patches or the Nightmare Frontier.)
Here, if you have picked up all the extra Bloodgems, you may want to buy the Kirkhammer and level that instead. There will be very few uses for the bonus damage to beast type enemies in upcoming bosses.
Shadows of Yharnam: Not much in the way of special tricks for these guys, actually.
The Empty Phantasm Shell adds some Arcane Damage to our weapons just like the fire paper, and wouldn’t you know it, we find it just before fighting Rom The Vacuous Spider, who happens to be particularly weak to Arcane. But beyond that, if you want full Arcane Damage like when we fought Vicar Amelia, you can farm Arcane Gems from the Celestial mob hanging out in the back corner crevasse of the swamp, right next to the second of the two elevator shortcuts in the level.
The One Reborn: this handsome young baby is weak to fire, bolt, and arcane. Guess what’s all around Ya’hargul? THEY. GIVE. YOU. TONS. OF. BOLT. ITEMS. Seeing the pattern here? The Tonitrus if you didn’t already pick it up before. The Tiny Tonitrus for arcane builds, Bolt papers, and the first truly strong bloodgems of the game to boost your physical Damage too. (Though, with all of your extra Bloodstones, you might just want to switch over to the Tonitrus permanently, because it’s basically permanent bolt paper on top of pure blunt damage, and we aren’t going to be troubled by Beast bosses from here on out. There are 13 Blood Stone Chunks in Ya’hargul alone. This means you can either put your Saw Cleaver to 9, or flip to the Tonitrus and pump it up to a +8 weapon as well.)
Next up is Micolash. This is Micolash. He’s a bitch. Don’t be like Micolash. … but actually do be like Micolash. His weakness is getting stun-locked by the exact same thing he tries to do to you. Did you get the Augur of Ebrietas earlier? You should have. Hit him two or three times, use the tentacles to knock him down and regain stamina, do it again. Also, don’t give him any space or he will ask Space to attack and kill you. Space loves Micolash.
After that, there’s only 1 more boss to kill to technically beat the game. There’s no fancy tricks with Mergo’s Wetnurse. The area leading up to Mergo has plenty of bloodstone chunks in case you missed out, and you can even explore enough to find the Blood Boulder and get a +10 max weapon, but that’s entirely optional. They give you a special, full heal blood vial before the fight. Try to get behind the boss. Hit it in the bum a lot, and run in a large circle when things get dark and spooky. If you’re lucky, you will stagger this one too, and the fancy magic shenanigans won’t even happen.
So do you see my point? For all of the mainline bosses, if they have a weakness, Bloodborne provides the resources necessary to exploit that weakness no matter your build. It allows for players who need the extra help to max out their statistical advantage long before the game expects you to be at that level. Beating Bloodborne is not an unsolvable problem or an overwhelming challenge. It’s actually a completely solvable problem with a moderate challenge.
It’s all the extra stuff that makes it an extremely hard game filled with unfair bullshit! Fuck Bloodborne. It sucks. (. . . Just kidding. I’m being hyperbolic in this entire article)
SocraTetris 