I beat Bloodborne and its DLC for the first time

 Hello everyone. I recently finished Bloodborne and its DLC, The Old Hunters, for the first time and wish to talk about it.

Here's the quick summary on my thoughts:

-I really like the combat, aesthetic and vibes of the game. Level design was great.

-The highs of the game are great but the lows are quite low. Compared to something like DS3 which was more consistent. 

-Not a fan of the healing and bullets being more typical consumables. It hurts the flow to take a break to go farm them. Same for Lamps teleporting you Hunter's Dream first.

I did 1 playthrough in a "normal" way where I played mostly blind and levelled up normally, then played the DLC. Then a second playthough for just the base game where I used Chalice Dungeons to level my character's Vitality, Strength and Endurance to 40 in the early game and played to the rest of the game. 

Here's a tier list of bosses and how fun I felt they were:

S Tier (Bosses I absolutely loved and would 100% fight again if the game had a "re-fight bosses" Menu): Father Gasgoine, Germaine the First Hunter, Vicar Amelia, Cleric Beast, Fire Beast

A tier (Bosses I liked and would fight again): Orphan of Kos, Mergo's Wet Nurse

B Tier (Bosses I enjoyed but wouldn't be my first choices for a rematch): Ludwig, Darkbeast Paarl, Amygdala

C Tier (Bosses I enjoyed but I am no rush to ever rematch): Shadows of Yharnam (2nd playthrough), Blood Starved Beast.

 

D Tier (Bosses I kinda disliked either because the fight dragged or wasn't fun in some way): The One Reborn, Micolash (2nd Playthrough), Living Failures. Witches of Hemlock

 

F Tier (Bosses I hated and felt the game would be better with them removed): Shadows of Yharnam (1st playthrough), Micolash (1st Playthrough), Rom the Vacous Spider

 

N/A tier (Bosses I beat but can't judge fairly): Lady Maria

Now for the much longer review of my experience:

I started the game by creating my character. I gave him molten red skin, neon blue hair and green eyes, eyelashes, facial hair and glasses. I tried naming him "Admiral Wolverine LightingBolt" but it didn't seem to fit so I went with "Elden Lord". I woke up in this dilapidated hospital with blood everywhere and this giant wolf monster. So somehow still more welcoming than Arkham Asylum. On my first playthrough, this wolf thing turned my bones into his own personal chew toys. But on my second playthrough, I was on point, dodged all of his attacks and managed to beat the wolf. Proving that with enough skill, luck and persistence, violence can solve any problem.

 

On a side note, when I was doing my first playthrough, I staying at my cousins' place. My cousin is a huge Souls fan who casually does challenge runs of DS1-3, BB and ER for fun using different builds. He's even platinummed several Souls games! During this recent visit, I was affected by Laryngitis and couldn't speak whatsoever. To ease my suffering, he decided to let me play Bloodborne on his PS5.

 

What does this story have to do with Bloodborne? Nothing aside from the fact I felt represented in my mute character😇.

 

After dealing with the wolf (or getting dealt with myself), I ended up in this weird pocket dimension called the Hunters' Dream that acts as the hub for the game that is completely separated from the rest of the game that you have to fast travel to and from. Here, I got my weapons (a saw cleaver and gun), learned I can level up by talking to a woman and can upgrade my weapons and equip gems once I find some resources in the world.

 

I am mixed on this implementation of the hub world. For one, you can't "rest" and lamps/bonfires. You can only fast travel when using them. This often lead to situations where I'd reach a lamp, light it, fast travel back to the Hunter's Dream since that was the only way to heal, then Fast Travel back to where I was. On PS5, this process is a bit annoying but I feel sorry for base PS4 bois that had to deal with the load times😭. My heart goes out to you guys.

I imagine BB does this because you can fast travel from the start of the game. In Dark Souls 1, you unlocked Fast Travel around 50% or so into the game. So the game let you rest and level up at bonfires. I imagine that since you can fast travel in BB, it's more convenient to put levelling up, a shop and upgrades in the same hub now. Still, I feel Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring handled this better where you could still rest at bonfires (and level up in the case of ER) while everything else was at your base of operations. Made the experience flow more smoothly.

 

Speaking of flowing smoothly, the level design. While I can't deny DS1's interconnected first half was extremely cool, I did find it a bit rough when backtracking and exploring. BB (and also DS3) I feel are more fun since they are generally linear with individual levels having multiple paths and shortcuts. This keeps the pace up while still having a fair amount of exploration.

BB tweaks the mechanics of other Souls games. Something that hurts my soul is that you can't easily be a magic or shield boi😢. BB is a far more aggressive Souls game that wants you roleplay a Souls Player that isn't a casual. And as someone who only plays Magic or Shield bois, I had to learn a whole new world.

 

The first change is the concept of "Trick Weapons". Weapons that can swap between 2 modes when you press L1 (the former block button). Essentially giving you 2 weapons in one. One weapon I particularly liked was the Kirkhammer. Its "normal" mode was a regular sword that let you hold a gun in your off hand. But pressing L1 turns it into a comically oversized hammer you have to 2-hand and bonk enemies with. The game lets you carry 2 weapons at a time and has no weight limits.

When I typically play Souls games, I stick with 1 maybe 2 weapons my entire playthrough. I did DS1, 3 and ER with only a Claymore (which often meant I took hits when attacking). I find it a hassle to upgrade multiple weapons and maintain multiple loadouts. BB means I always have at least 2 weapons giving me more flexibility. I am a bit sad Trick Weapons never seemed to return in subsequent Souls games. 

 

The second change is to parrying and riposting/visceral/critical attacks. In other Souls games, you have to parry with your shield. At least, I think that's how you do it. I am terrible at parrying. Aside from Gwen from DS1, I can't parry in Souls games to save my life.

 

BB changes it such that you can shoot enemies right before they attack you to parry them. This resulted in even someone like me able to rack up multiple parries, at a safe distance with multiple chances even if I miss. I am not complaining given how challenging this game is. The only downside is that it requires bullets which you can only carry a max of 20 of.

 

One change I am less happy with is riposting/visceral/critical/backstab attacks. In something like DS3 or Elden Ring, R2 hits from heavier weapons can eventually stagger enemies leaving them open to critical attacks. And some enemies can be backstabbed by shuffling between them and pressing R1. In BB, you need to do a charged R2 to hit an enemy's back and then press R1 to backstab them. I always found inconvenient to set that up on most enemies. Especially with my main weapon being the Hunter Axe. 

 

The third change is to health and resources. You heal using blood vials and shoot using bullets and can carry a max of 20 of them but they only replenish based on how many you have stockpiled. Meaning whenever you run out of them, you gotta go farm them. During my first playthrough of the game, it really rubbed salt in the wound to spend what felt like hours losing to a boss, getting closer to victory, dying and then realizing I'd have to take a break to restock supplies. Made worse with how even the Hunter's Dream isn't immune to the effects of inflation and vials and bullets get more expensive the more you progress. Fortunately, in my second playthrough, my Chalice Dungeon Exploit meant I never had to worry about farming ever again.

 

In addition, Bloodborne has a mechanic called the Rally System. Inspired by the 2003 Hulk Game based on the Ang Lee Movie, whenever you take damage, you don't instantly lose that health. If you attack the enemy immediately after you take damage, you can restore your health. In theory, this means you can recover from any mistake if you are aggressive and skilled enough to take advantage of it. I like this system as it often resulted in me surviving fights a bit longer as I could often heal back some of the damage I took so I could stretch out my Blood Vials for longer. I wish this returned in subsequent Souls' games.

With all that backstory of the mechanics out of the way, I went on with the rest of the game. I am still not sure what's the story or lore of the game. All I knew going into this game was that one Tumblr meme that "Bloodborne is about escaping London".

 

I ran into some bosses. Cleric Beast was an absolute spectacle I loved fighting despite my deaths. Great fight. Father Gasgoine was also a blast. He seems to be designed to teach you how to parry since his first 2 phases are quite easy if you can nail those parries. I did struggle quite a bit as I had a 50% accuracy with my parries but I still enjoyed the fight. His boss run was rather tedious however.

 

Vicar Amelia, in my opinion, takes the cake for the "most epic beast like beast boss that was also a blast to fight". Her sounds and howls were chilling. Her movements were animistic but reasonable to dodge. It was quite the dance where I really felt like a hunter fighting this monstrosity where even though technically I was in the driver's seat, mistakes could instantly be fatal.

 

 My one complaint are her hair? Bandages? They're so long and flowing that they could obscure what Amelia was doing. Add in that the camera also had a tough time keeping up with her (and later bosses) and some of my deaths did feel a bit cheap. 

 

If I had to offer suggestions to improve this, games like Devil May Cry, God Hand and the early WWE games had a camera system that could "leave" the room rather than get stuck against a wall so you always had a full view of the action. In addition, whenever something came between the camera and the subject like a pillar or ropes, that object would become transparent. Letting the player know the object was there without having it block the view.

 

I imagine this probably wouldn't be a 100% fit for a game like BB that wants to have a more "realistic" feel to its environments. Not to mention the horror factor with stuff like enemies attacking you from behind gravestones and stuff. So if the game were to use this, it would probably be used sparingly such as in boss rooms and/or for objects like Amelia's bandages.

Next up was Blood Starved Beast. Getting to him was quite the adventure as it took me across a church with slime monsters, dilapidated ruins where I had to dodge gunfire, and a city full of werewolves. I needed some help from my cousin to find my way around which was embarrassing 😭.

The boss fight itself was…..mixed. I didn’t enjoy the runback even with the shortcut. Blood Starved Beast also felt difficult to visually parse. So I often got smacked and wasn’t sure what was going on. And in his final phase, he secrets poison around him which I had no way to cure so I just had to tank it and hope I had enough heals to last.

 

Points for looking absolutely disgusting and monstrous. This boss nailed the aesthetic as it flails around like some sort of monster deprived of sustenance.

This is where the timeline diverges in this review. Because recall I played this game twice: once at my cousin’s place in a normal way. And once later after I learned the chalice dungeon exploit from him. I used that exploit to boost my Vitality, Endurance and Strength to 40 each. I’ll discuss how the game felt in both normal mode and “easy mode”.

But the next boss fight felt the same in both playthroughs, The Witch of Hemlock was, a D Tier fight I feel. The areas I explored before getting to the boss were more fun. I really liked the “Medieval village and surrounding fortifications overrun by hollows” aspect.

The Witches’ gimmick was that they mostly don’t fight you directly. They tend to remain invisible and summon enemies to fight you while they attempt to trap you with a spell that lets them attack you.

I remember during my second playthrough, my grandfather was watching me play and I got distracted so I got hit by the Witches’ trap and subsequent attack. My grandfather asked me what was going on. I told him “I got distracted so the witch was now gouging my eyes out”. He asked me “if the witch is removing your eyes, how can you see what’s happening?” I responded with “My characters’ eyes are gone, mine aren’t”.

Alright enough stalling and time to discuss the boss. I found it lacking because the fight felt more like it was dragging than I was fighting. It got repetitive running around looking for a witch, getting a few hits on them, then dodging away as the summoned enemies got closer and then repeating. The hardest part was finding the invisible witches and if I took too long, they’d begin to heal/resurrect each other. 

I wish there was a way to more easily see where the witches were or to more accurately predict their locations as it would speed things up.

The next boss however, made me wish for the Witches back.

Getting to the Shadows of Yharnam required going through this creepy and atmospheric forest/swamp (thankfully not poisonous) with snake and pig enemies. It was cool the first time but I came to loathe it because I had to traverse most of it for the runback. I wish there was a lamp closer to the boss.

The concept behind Shadows of Yharnam is so cool. You have these 3 Ringwraith looking dudes. One focused on melee, one focused on ranged pyromancies, and one kinda a mix in this graveyard. As you whittle them down, they power up and get new moves to keep you on your toes.

One notable feature of the arena is the large tombstone you can use as cover and to separate the 3 bois. And this is something I’ve felt is an underrated aspect of Souls’ combat. I remember playing God of War 2018 and more recently Zenless Zone Zero and even if the combat mechanics in these games are more complex than Souls, the arenas often felt same-y. That it doesn’t matter where you are fighting enemies because the environment never plays a role. 

Souls’ games may have “simpler” mechanics (a lot of my fights had me only using O and R1), but they often had the environment play a role. Whether that was using pillars or obstacles to separate enemies, or using stairs/elevation to get enemies to miss their attacks. I feel it makes Souls’ fights feel more memorable and tactical in many places.

Unfortunately, Shadows of Yharnam made it difficult to appreciate the positives. It was a frustrating boss fight because I found it really easy to get swarmed and/or sucker punched by a stray fast tentacle or sneak attack. These attacks did so much damage and it was so easy to get overwhelmed that a single mistake often resulted in my death. Add in the long runback and I really felt my soul being tested.

Most of my attempts were me running around the arena and trying to use the big tombstone hoping the shadows separated enough for me to get a few hits in. I spent more time running than fighting 😭. How I wished I had a shield or even the sun ring from Dark Souls 3 or the Blessed Dew Talisman from Elden Ring as the fights went on long enough and I was so defensive that they genuinely would have been useful.

 I'd rate this boss an F tier because it soured my experience that much. It took several hours of attempts but I finally won somehow. I grabbed my phone and made Siri say “Woooo Finally”. My cousin told me “Shadows and one other boss are the low points of Bloodborne. If you can beat those, then you can beat anything this game throws at you”. That didn’t exactly boost my confidence but I decided to preserve. I was in too deep to quit. Besides, the only other game he had on his PS5 at the time was Fallout 4 and I wanted to wait for the next gen patch to release first.

Funnily, in my second playthrough, I found the Shadows actually somewhat fun. My inflated stats compensated for the issues I had in the fight. Having more stamina meant I could attack and dodge more which gave me more opportunities to weave in for attacks. Having more health meant I could play more aggressively and tank a few of their shenanigans. And having more strength meant the fight was much faster paced. Even though I died a few times, I had fun. This fight went from F tier on my 1st run to c tier on my second.

Next up, I travelled through this forest and mansion. I saw messages from other players that said stuff like “Fear Woman” and “Woman ahead”. They were referring to a human hunter NPC that was harder than actual bosses. She could fire ranged attacks that tore through my health. I only bothered killing her on my second play through since I had the stats to tank a few of her attacks.

The next boss was Rom the Vacuous Spider. Which looked more like a tick. Rom’s kids looked more like spiders than him? Regardless, if I was judging Rom on aesthetics alone, he’d easily be S tier. Dude looks absolutely creepy and disgusting. The arena is absolutely dreamlike. It’s good stuff.

The fight itself however……

Rom is surrounded by her baby spiders that take reduced damage from frontal attacks. You either have to get behind them or bait out their jumping attack and attack their backs when they whiff. The spiders’ jumping attack is a 1 shot on you if it lands on your back. And in later phases, Rom will teleport around, spawn more spiders and summon meteors that can 1 shot you.

I did not enjoy this fight. Even summoning an NPC didn’t do much because the summon would spend too long fighting the baby spiders upfront. I found the best strategy, even on my 2nd play through was to be patient and slowly whittle each of the babies all while watching out for Rom’s later phase attacks. This fight really drags and getting hit with a stray meteor is really demoralizing.

I actually took a break from Bloodbourne to play some Fallout 4. I found out Bethesda finally added mods to the PS5 version. I downloaded one that gave me infinite resources and decided to build the perfect settlement. Only to find I am terrible at building. I realized I have no choice but to return to Bloodborne to seek revenge on Rom for crushing my lifelong dreams of being an architect 😤.

It took countless attempts, but I finally beat Rom. My cousin congratulated me and told me “Bro, the worst is over. Nothing gets that bad in BB ever again”. The game then played a cutscene of the blood moon from Zelda Breath of the Wild then teleported me to a university where the students melted into slimes. Honestly, I can relate. The same happened to me during my undergrad.

After finding student robes so I could roleplay the most unironically fun part of my life, I took a portal which dropped me in a poison swamp with enemies that could inflict frenzy/madness. However, after Rom and Shadows, I considered it a step up so I can’t complain. I found a shortcut and the boss Amygdala.

This boss was massive, could shoot lasers, and took reduced damage to its feet. The goal was to avoid its attacks and aim for its arms and head. And honestly, this was great. My biggest complaints were his acid attacks and the camera but aside from that, the boss was fun. His attacks were reasonably telegraphed and it was reasonable to punish him. I eventually got to the point where I didn’t even need to dodge his ground slam. I could just position myself and do a charged R2 to both avoid the attack and smack him upon landing. Even the run back was fine. I’m happy.😃 

I was lost and my cousin guided me to the Unseen Village (which he earlier had me find by getting captured so I could grind some levels). After navigating through it, my cousin directed me to the side where I ran into a doggo with electric powers. Darkbeast Paarl was fun even if I had a hard time parsing what was going on. I was sorta just running on instinct and it was somehow working. So this is the power of ultra instinct? Although my cousin kept calling me a scrub because I kept summoning for the fight. But hey, in the immortal words of Dominic “Family” Toretto: “it doesn’t matter if win by an inch or by cheesing, winning is winning”.

After a run past some eldrich abominations I can’t describe, I ran into a new boss: The One Reborn. And once again, S tier for design. The massive amalgamation of body parts looks absolutely grotesque. But the actual fight could have been better.

I get he’s supposed to be a flailing mess of bodies, but that often resulted it being painful to get a read on his attacks as well getting smacked by a stray limb. Every attempt also required me to climb some stairs to kill the mages shooting spells at me. Altogether, I’d rank him in D tier. It’s not as bad as Rom but not something I’d say I had fun with.

Next was this really cool castle that I could traverse and unlock elevators as shortcuts. They were a bit annoying to keep reusing but after some of the other runbacks in this game, I’m not complaining. The boss here was Micolash, Host of Nightmares. I remember after my first attempt, I used Siri to speak “get back here shocker you can’t escape from me, I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth” to my cousin who didn’t get the reference.

 

In my first playthrough, I hated Micolash’s boss fight. It was long and if I messed up once, I could be one shot by his magic attacks. And restarts really dragged. But on my second playthrough I enjoyed it a lot more. I had enough health so a few mistakes didn’t immediately cost me the attempt. Though I did still die a few times. Which honestly is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done and should justify legally banning me from Souls games.

Micolash is more of a “set piece” boss rather than a straight up fight. His 1st phase involves chasing him into a room where he summons puppets to fight you. Micolash himself is something of a trick pony where he only has 1 magic attack that is kinda easy to see coming, bait, and punish. The catch is that if that attack ever hits you, it does a crazy amount of damage. So for me, it became a balancing act of learning the intricacies of my axe's combo so I could get as many hits as I could in safely before dodging/sidestepping away because I knew he'd do his magic attack and then repeat. It became a nice if stressful rhythm.

His next phases involve more running before finally being locked in a room with him where he can't run no more. He gets a few more magic attacks. In particular, this one where he shoots multiple tracking projectiles that do a crazy amount of damage and was responsible for many of my deaths😭. Apparently, you can hit him to stagger him out of it but I chose to play it safe whenever he went for it and instead punished his tentacle attacks.

I will complement the creativity and spectacle of the fight. In particular, the dialogue. My favourite line from Micolash was "so can a loc come up in your crib?" to which I made my character respond with "Man, F!%k you, I'll see you at the dream" to which Micolash replied with "Hunter don't hate me because I am beautiful hunter. Maybe if you got rid of that ol yee yee ass hat, you'd get some witches on your d!%k. Or better yet, Maybe Maria will call your cathedral ass if she ever stop f!%king with that vicar or nightmare she f!%king with: Hunteeeeeer". I still don't get the lore significance of that. I should check out a Vaati video on the game someday.

After killing Micolash, this opened up bridges where after making my past giant pigs and shadows of Yharnam getting copy pasted like this is an Elden Ring cave, I make my way past a white woman and up some elevators where I fight the first A tier boss in the quite a while: Mergo's Wet Nurse. The Runback was a bit long but not too painful. But more importantly, the boss was fun. As this sort of multi-armed quad blade wielding graceful creature, The Nurse was as ruthless as she was sharp. Her attacks and combos felt deliberate but also so fun to dodge. I smiled every time I managed to i-frame through her twirl and spread attacks. This is the kind of bosses I love.

 

My only complaint is her shadow phase where the screen goes dark and she summons a shadow clone to sucker punch you. I found no easy way to predict or dodge her attacks so I often resorted to running around to end the clock before returning back to a regular fight. I do like how my axe could sometimes knock her out of her shadow form in some cases.

 

After killing the Nurse and learning my character is passionately pro-choice, I was teleported back to the Hunter's Dream. I walked and talk to Germaine and my cousin told me to choose a very specific set of dialogue options. This triggered the final boss: Germaine the First Hunter. It felt cool to bring the game full circle. The first (roadblock) boss was Papa Guacomole the Hunter. And the Final Boss is the ultimate Hunter. He used a more impressive version of a hunter's moveset and equipment. Including being able to shoot and parry me for a riposte.

 

It felt like a precursor to the Soul of Cinder bossfight from Dark Souls 3 and I am here for it. Unfortunately, I got my ass kicked a lot. My poor hunter never learned to respect his elders and was getting mercilessly bullied by Germaine for that. This went on for quite a while until I rubbed my 2 remaining brain cells together.

 

I went to the Gem workshop in the dream, looked through my options and saw a gem that restores health on successful Viscerals, one that gives extra vials and one that increases my max health. I felt like Sun Tzu. Is this what actually good Souls' players feel they make actually decent builds? I took my new build for a test run against Germaine.......and ultimately got absolutely clowned on. It took a lot of attempts for me to learn which of his attacks are parryable, when to parry them, when to play defensively and when to go in for regular attacks. Using Up to turn my health into bullets and getting a Visceral meant I could keep parrying for way longer. I did burn through all my vials and bullets before I got the W. It really felt like a proper duel where I put everything I had into it.

I got thrown into NG+. I do prefer DS3 and onwards' approach of making NG+ a choice rather than instantly throwing you into it so I can go wrap up some other content.

Regardless, I took a break from the game. Within the next few months, I recovered and got my voice back, played Bloodborne on my own PS5 and used a Chalice Dungeon Exploit my cousin taught me. Then when I visited him again, he told me he got the Bloodborne Old Hunters DLC and invited me to play it. But since my save profile was on NG+ and I didn't want to restart entirely to build my character, I decided to play through the DLC on NG+ (despite warnings from my cousin). I made it to Vicar Amelia and my cousin did something to trigger the DLC and threw me into a new area and handed me the controller.

 

I explored this area that looked like the Cathedral Ward albeit with more snow. I explored all the way to Vicar Amelia's room where I fought a fire version of Cleric Beast (Really cool fight btw. I loved how he crawled after he took a lot of damage). After more traversal, I ended up travelling through these rivers of skeletons and blood and my cousin directed me to lamp. Then I ran into the boss Ludwig.

 

Ludwig is such a great boss. I love how he has the opposite progression of other bosses where he starts out as this wild horse monster and in phase 2, becomes a giant swordshorse using the Moonlight Greatsword. His attacks felt fun to dodge and figure out. Easy A tier.

No joke, this boss took me 5 hours of attempts to beat. But unlike before, I felt oddly at peace. My mentality had shifted and I was somehow enjoying the small incremental improvements I was making. I believe it was the environment. I spent the time chatting with my cousin (we talked about how the Final Fantasy 7 remake was actually a multiverse time travel story rather than a straight up remake. My cousin hated that but I felt it was cool. We talked about how games were getting much larger because storage was much cheaper and companies have no discs to hold them back), and listening to podcasts (RIP to Comicstorian) and watching anime on my iPad as I played (Funnily, I was playing better since I wasn't panicking as much and just going with the flow. I did die once when I was watching Dr. Stone and realized Ryusi was reinventing capitalism so maybe Tskasa was right this whole time😤).

I also had a sense of like "I can beat this guy using my current setup and skills. It is only a matter of time". Which wasn't the case for bosses like Maliketh and Malenia. Like, when I fought those bosses, I straight up knew "I could be max level and still stand no chance of beating them with my current skills". I think it's because while Ludwig hits like a 20ft tall horse monster on crack, there was a rhythm to the fight. That soon, I could recognize the tells of his attacks even with my distractions.

 

Over the hours, I could feel my progress. Before I would die a few minutes in. Soon, I managed to reach phase 2 on an inconsistent basis where I'd die instantly. It was his charge attack that usually got me in. But soon, I got a much better sense of when to dodge and strafe him so I could get consistent damage opportunities.

Finally, I could get to phase 2 somewhat consistently, only to die quickly since for the life of me, I couldn't dodge his sword swings for some reason. I'd always dodge into his attacks with a delay? Took a long time to somehow unlearn this bad habit before I finally got him. And to my surprise, his severed head would remain after being killed and chat with you. 

After enough horsing around, I proceeded on. I came across this door where a guy asked me if I heard a bell? I said yes and he called me a scrub and stopped talking to me. I continued and came to these "bedrooms"? I think. There were these 2 Invader like NPCs that ambushed me. Of these were a melee user and the other a ranged. And honestly, they felt impossible to beat. I ran past them after a few attempts, interacted with a table which turned into an elevator. This took me to an area that looked like the moving staircases from Hogwarts except dark, grimy and more dangerous.

Navigating that took me to a fog wall with the best named bosses I've ever fought. These blue alien looking things called "The Living Failures". S tier name, design and music. In terms of gameplay, they're.....probably D tier. Their gimmick is that some of the blue aliens are melee bois and some are ranged bois. You have to alternate between which ones you tackle. And occasionally, they can summon a near fatal meteor storm that you can somewhat block with the giant tree in the center of the stage.

 

This boss wasn't hard just.....kinda tedious. Most of my attempts were me strafing around, using the same trick I used to beat Germaine to parry and heal and whittle them down in a war of attrition. It did take a me a few hours which was embarrassing, but it wasn't terrible.

 

I remember a comment on the Bloodborne wiki by user "winged_spear_enjoyer:

"Calling this boss "literally me": boring, overused, unfunny, not even true (you are an amazing person who deserves to be loved)
Calling this boss "the four kings on meth": fresh, new, funny, actually true"

 

While this is hilarious, I do have to ask if the Living Failures are meant to work somewhat similar to the 4 kings? That boss was more of a DPS check that penalized being slow. Whereas Living Failures, even once they get their numbers up, are still beatable in a slow war of attrition. Maybe I am missing something.

These guys may have been a failure in life but not in death. As their death puts a lamp right next to the next boss Lady Maria. My cousin warned me to take a break as this boss is considered one of the hardest bosses in Souls and one that would be impossible for me to even chip away at without parrying. I felt insulted and responded with "You underestimate my power".

I beat Lady Maria on my 2nd attempt without parrying.

My cousin was stunned. It turns out, I had the perfect tool to beat her. My Hunter Axe's Charged R2. The way it works is that it swings twice with hyper armour. The first hit does ok damage and can stagger sometimes but the second hit knocks enemies down. This was the perfect combo as I could eat Maria's damage during the first swing and recover a good chunk of the damage through the Rally System, then knock her to the ground with the second hit that would completely heal the damage and interrupt her attacks. 

 

 

Maria didn't have any attacks that I could recall that could stagger me out of my charged R2. Nor was she aggressive enough to prevent the charge on a consistent basis. As such, I didn't have to learn any of her attacks or tricks. Occasionally I might have had to bait out a few attacks and I did make a few mistakes that burned through a fair amount of my vials. But overall, I finally got to be the boss for once. So remember kids, if you ever want to flex on women, just channel your inner Beyblade.

The next part of the DLC took me across this fishing village I ran past because of the abundance of enemies. Then past these spooky caves while I was being pursued by another in-game invader NPC harder than actual bosses. Before I reached a small beach. This 7ft tall newborn "got born" and proceeded to kick my ass. 

My cousin informed me this was Orphan of Kos. The "Hardest boss in any Souls game before Malenia" and I could see why. Phase 1 wasn't too bad. It took me a few hours but I found the safest and most consistent strat was to dodge into his placenta for his charging attacks, get a few hits in and then flee. The i-frames seemed unusually generous for some reason.

Phase 2 is whack and I'm still not sure how I won. He becomes so much more aggressive that the only times I could do damage to him was during his ground slams. Every other attack was way too risky. I also could never dodge his "placenta bomb" attacks and just had to eat the damage and heal manually. I suppose I just got lucky with his jumps and lighting attacks I could roll through.

 

When I won, I slumped back in my seat and took a breath as my earbuds played "Style" by Taylor Swift (Her best song and I will die on this hill😤!) My cousin told me I did it. I beat Bloodborne and its DLC. I handed him back the controller and simply said: "Bro. Check out this one post on the wiki about Orphan:

 

wolf7288
when my wife gave birth to our first child, I had a ptsd flashback to this boss. I instinctively dodge rolled through the table knocking my wife into the floor. I picked up the IV machine (my trick weapon of choice) and drained my entire stamina bar on the newly birthed orphan. unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I could not I-frame the police officers' taser and I'm now serving a life sentence. truly the Dark Souls of child births. My child did not make it. Nightmare Slain :3

    Anonymous
     03 Jun 2023 15:47

    Hold up if you're the dad and you kill it it was never an orphan
    Anonymous
     14 Jun 2023 19:16

    he's an orphan because clearly the father disowned the child the instant he saw it
    Anonymous
     04 Jul 2023 10:15

    Ahahaha this was by far the funniest thing I've read on any of these wikis. Cheers for the laughs!

    MatinArtorias
     07 Jul 2024 12:15

    This is canon event

"

Thank you reading this post. I hope you have a good day and we get Bloodborne remastered and Bloodbourne Kart one day.

I beat Dark Souls 3 The Fire Fades Edition for the first time

 Hello everyone. I recently beat Dark Souls 3 The Fire Fades for the first time and I wanted to talk about my experience.

The super short version of this review is that I really enjoyed my time with this game. Dark Souls 3 might now just be my favourite Soulsbourne game I ever played. Ashes of Ariendal was decent but I was less fond of the Ringed City.

Now for the longer version of this post:

I started off making my character. An abomination with disfigured nose and eyes, neon green skin, golden tattoos and astonishingly blue hair. I called him "Elden Lord" and set him loose in the world as a sorcerer since I loved magic/tank hybrid builds in Dark Souls 1, 2 and Elden Ring. I am not the best at Souls games so typically, I find being a sorcerer gives me a lot more of a safety net. However, I found my poor character's magic was barely tickling enemies and that his starting sword was more effective.

 The weird giant crystal lizard that loved to cosplay Pinwheel and the first proper boss, Iudex Gundyr, took quite a while for me to whittle down with my small sword. They were really fun fights at least. Iudex Gundyr was amazing and I loved the encounter greatly. Even his weird second phase where he turns into a "a giant Cerberus/Venom hybrid" was fun even if I had a tough time visually parsing what he was even doing. I'd love it if Iudex Gundyr had a rematch or second phase that was just his first phase but he became faster and more aggressive.

I looked online and apparently, sorcerer builds struggle a lot in the early to mid game and only start getting good "once you dump 45 points into intelligence". And there would be enemies that would be near impossible to magic my way through. So, with a heavy heart and much sadness, and for the first time in my Souls career, I restarted with a purely melee character in the Knight (excluding Bloodbourne since that's the only kind of character there).

"Elden Lord 2 The Knight" was the long lost twin brother of "Elden Lord 1 The Sorcerer" and a knight and this character immediately starting paying dividends. His armour and health let him tank a surprising amount of damage. Often being able to tank 4-6 direct hits in a row even from bosses. That weird giant crystal lizard and Iudex Gundyr went down really fast this time. Even I was surprised. Guess "Elden Lord 2 The Knight" is who I am sticking with. Another advantage of this boi is that I didn't have to split my level points as much as I would have with my original Knight/Sorcerer Hybrid nor make too many drastic changes to my gear. After an initial (admittedly large) infusion of Strength, Dexterity and Vitality so I could fast roll with a Claymore, my boi is pretty much as decked out as he would be for the rest of the game (hopefully).

I then arrived at Firelink Shrine. And I was confused why it looked so different from the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls 1. I'm still not entirely sure on the story of this game and it feels just as confusing as ever. I probably should have watched some Vaati. You could tell me that Yhorm the Giant is secretly the ex of the Firekeeper and they broke up because Yhorm committed tax fraud which is why the Firekeeper has a special grudge against him or something and I'd believe you.

From what little I got from the cutscenes, apparently, we are still in the fading Age of Fire and it's time for someone to link the flame again. My character in Dark Souls 1 chose to go for the Age of Dark Ending. So either the Link the Flames ending of Dark Souls 1 is canon or somebody else linked the flames while my character was busy hanging out with the snake bois😤.

However, it seems nobody was up to the task for doing it in Dark Souls 3, so 4-5 champions that rekindled the flame previously got resurrected to go rekindle the fire again. For some reason (probably because getting burned to save BlightTown isn't exactly a worthwhile cause), they refuse to. My character apparently was resurrected to try, might have died before and was re-resurrected as a "chosen undead" as the ultimate long shot. It's up to "Elden Lord 2 The Knight" to go toe to toe with the most powerful Gods in all the land (and Wolnir) with nothing but a Claymore and a Dream in the ultimate suicide mission.

Back to the gameplay, Dark Souls 3 seems to move away from Dark Souls 1's "expertly interconnected first half" and something closer to Bloodbourne's "You have a central hub for upgrades that's disconnected from the rest of the world. The rest of the game is a mostly linear affair" approach. And I personally kinda prefer this approach. While it does feel less replayable at first compared to DS1, I enjoy the pacing and forward momentum of DS3. You zoom through areas, killing stuff with far less backtracking. Upgrading and levelling up is in an easily accessible location so it doesn't feel as "tedious" to backtrack through multiple areas to reach a blacksmith. I will complain that having to fast travel back to Firelink Shrine just to level up and then Fast Travel back to the level did start to feel a bit annoying. 

I liked DS1's "just level up at any bonfire" approach. I suppose the reason why DS3 does this is because you can fast travel back to Firelink Shrine whenever you want and wants you to interact with the Firekeeper for lore reasons. Whereas since Fast Travel was a mid game item in DS1, it would be more convenient to level up at bonfires rather than backtrack to Firelink.

Dark Souls 3 as a whole, feels closer to Elden Ring than Dark Souls 1 in terms of combat. Enemies and bosses especially are much faster, way more aggressive with way more combos and varied attacks. Bosses like Gundyr, Pontiff or Abyss Watchers could easily fit as the final bosses of Dark Souls 1. They feel much more complex, varied and aggressive than Gwen. The player character, also feels much more mobile and powerful. I feel I'm rolling and attacking more than I did in Dark Souls 1, about the same in Bloodbourne but less than in Elden Ring. I'm really grateful for the way healing works in DS3 as having 10 Estus Flasks (that I can use while moving) really saved me more times than I could count. I do miss having my Mimic Tear from Elden Ring though😭.

The bosses as a whole in DS3 also feel great and are some of the most fun I had. If DS3 had a "menu to let you replay bosses just for fun" mode, I'd probably use it more than any other Souls game. Even at its worst, I feel the bosses in DS3 are "C Tier". There were no bosses I hated like Bed of Chaos in DS1 or Rom and Micolash in Bloodbounre. Gundyr (both versions) were amazing fights that were a joy to dodge and weave through and learn. For round 2, he moving too fast for my poor character to keep up. He kept sucker punching me with his roundhouse kick. I did have to cheese it by putting more points into Vitality so I could equip a greatshield (and wear lighter armour) so I could block more of his attacks. 

With my 30+ Vigour, I could take a few hits even when I messed up but I do feel I could eventually beat it with my regular loadout if I had more attempts at it. I later saw online you could parry him which blew my mind. I tried for the life of me but I couldn't parry anything in DS3 for some reason 😭. I will complain the runback was annoying.

Pontiff Sulyvahn was the first time I realized my character was a lot tankier than I originally thought even in his default loadout. He could take 4 of Pontiff's hits point blank and usually survive. He could block 1-2 of his hits safely even with his regular Dragon Crest Shield. And his +7 Claymore wasn't doing bad damage. The challenge usually was simply finding chances to safely heal or attack since in my weakened state after taking a few hits, my poor character would die soon afterwards. I actually didn't even realize that Pontiff's shadow clone mimics him which would have helped me so much more. I felt I got lucky in my winning attempt. But now I kinda want to retry that fight with my new knowledge in mind. In any case, amazing boss.

Vordt, Dancer of the Boreal Valley, Abyss Watchers, Lothric/Lorian were also great bosses I'd love to rematch one day. Dragonslayer Armour was fun but his twig dragons kept sniping me which hurt my enjoyment. Aldrich was in a similar position. His fight was perfect minus his arrow attack. It would track and oneshot my poor character. My winning attempt was the only one where he didn't use that attack. Oceiros felt a bit...."janky"? with how he moved around? Yhorm was a fun puzzle fight (that did require me to lookup how his sword worked). For some reason, after killing him, I was instantly teleported to the boss fight with The Dancer without any time to prep. I was able to quickly slip on a Ring of Sacrifice before I went down and lost my souls.

Crystal Sage, Curse-rotted Greatwood and Deacons of the Deep were....fine. Got nothing to complain nor especially praise. Though, I did learn I was right to swap from Sorcerer to Knight. It would have been painful as some bosses like Greatwood's eggs can't be targeted with magic so I would have had to go in with melee as a squishy wizard. And others like Pontiff, Dragonslayer and Gundyr moved way too fast so fighting from range would have opened me up too much. I had much more success making sure my Knight's face was shoved into every boss's knees as this limited them to swinging attacks I could sometimes shuffle around causing them to miss their larger attacks.

 High Lord Wolnir was funny. In my first attempt, I was completely caught off guard by him so I attacked his fingers. I died when I he charged me and I think I got crushed under his ribcage? In attempt 2, I decided to attack his ribcage and I died 4.3 seconds into the fight😭. His runback was absolute torture so I explored the area as much as I could before do attempt 3.

 I even looked at maps on Fextralife to see if I could find another bonfire. It showed there was this area, "The Smouldering Lake" near the bridge before the bossfight and accessible through a ladder somewhere. I searched and for the life of me, I couldn't find the ladder. So I assumed I'd backtrack here later or something. Sadly, in this attempt, I had been ambushed and followed by every skeleton, pinwheel and rat along the way and had to burn so much health and Estus just to kill them all. I wasn't feeling confident in my chances but still decided to give Wolnir a shot. On a. whim, I decided to go after his wrist bracelets and I killed him in 10 seconds. I started laughing out loud after this. My family was concerned and what was so funny. I couldn't explain it to them.

Soul of Cinder was amazing. Another S tier boss and probably the most fitting way to end the game. His first phase feels like he's an amalgamation of every player/build that linked the flames before. He pulls out weapons, moves and abilities regular players could use. I was doing that "DiCaprio pointing meme" as he crushed my poor character's bones with sword, staff, dagger and magic attacks I recognized from Soulsbourne games. Makes sense the final boss would specialize in PVP strats😤.

Unfortunately for just me, Soul of Cinder feels like he was made to counter my 2 main ways of playing Souls Games: Magic characters and blocking characters. He moves, dashes and attacks so fast, with so much damage that I imagine if I was using my typical magic characters this time, I'd get crushed before doing significant image. And while my Tank character could tank 5-7 of his attacks, it hardly felt better. His multi hit combos often required me to block even if I dodged his initial hits. His final combo hit would break through my block so by the time "Elden Lord 2 The Knight" recovered from the guard break, Soul of Cinder would resume attacking. I was sometimes able to dodge away or recover enough stamina to block a bit more but normally this resulted in me eating quite a few hits. And attacking him with my +8 Claymore was often a liability as even 1 attack took so much time and stamina to do that he could recover and hit me back before I could dodge or block.

Initially, I felt he was at his scariest when he switched to a magic staff as he could have small magic orbs following him. I was spooked that those would tear through me that I was worried of approaching him. But after realizing that -1- they did pitiful damage -2- it was easy enough to dodge most of them -3- all his magic attacks were generally quite limited in range, mobility and threat. It was easy enough to get behind him, dodge his magic greatsword swing or Kamehameha and wail on him that I always became excited whenever he entered magic attack mode. It feel the game was taunting me and "Elden Lord 1 The Sorcerer" by having him be at his weakest as a magic user😭.

It took countless attempts but I eventually optimized my game plan. I may not have been to parry him, or block all his attacks, or dodge all his attacks, or even get frequent attacks off on him. But a combination of "shuffling into his crotch to allow certain attacks to miss me", and being careful when to block and dodge to get 1 hit in started to pay off. It took forever, but I finally managed to whittle his health down to 0. I was relieved. I finally did it. I got revenge for "Elden Lord 1 The Sorcerer" (and probably accomplished some other lore stuff idk). Only for him to get up, knock my poor character down in an explosion and enter phase 2. And even worse for me, he was done playing around. Soul of Cinder seemed to remember how I beat Gwen back in DS1 by parrying him and how I beat Soul of Cinder Phase 1 with my "shuffle, block, dodge" strat and took it personally.

Phase 2 Soul of Cinder felt like he swapped to a build designed to hard counter me and get revenge for Gwen. I heard the familiar "Plin Plan Plon" as he switched to a familiar and purely fire greatsword and lightning bolt setup. If it was hard getting hits in before, Phase 2 was rough. His combos were longer, wider and faster. It felt like I needed 3x the 20 stamina I had just to stand a chance. In particular, he had this charge sword strike that broke my block after the 1st or second hit, then did what felt like a 6 hit combo where he juggled my poor character in the air before knocking me to the ground and stabbing me in a massive explosion. It felt like an Anime finishing move. Yet my character would usually survive this with 10% health remaining. Probably cursing his fate at the punishment he just endured.

This was the first time I truly felt bad for my poor character. Even against earlier bosses that gave me trouble, they either killed my boi here quickly enough or the attacks didn't feel too bad visually. But even I was wincing in pain at the ass whooping Soul of Cinder was giving poor "Elden Lord 2 The Knight" with even basic attacks. Poor guy was a punching bag who, after barely surviving what feels like tactical nuke, would get up, chug an Estus and keep going despite probably being in agonizing pain and suffering from 3rd degree burns. It felt like that "I didn't hear no bell" meme personified.

Unfortunately, I feel I played the game wrong. After beating it, I looked through a few videos and saw I missed a lot of stuff that would have helped me in my playthrough. I recruited that one surviving pilgrim but couldn't find him later in Firelink Shrine so I couldn't get the free 5 levels that would have come in clutch. Normally, I don't find much use for boss souls in Souls games so I just eat them. I didn't even know you could transpose boss souls since I missed the NPC despite him literally being on the thrones until the very end. But if I did know, I could have gotten Havel's Ring which would have helped me out so much😭. Even more than that, I missed areas like Smouldering Lake which could have given me more items or levels. Even the Painted world of Ariandel. I didn't even realize it was a DLC area. I figured it was a secret area I needed something later to open. I left when the princess told me to leave and never came back😭.

My only option was to double down on my poor habits, eat as many boss souls and sell equipment to get 32 Vigour and figure out how I could beat a boss that could hit me faster than I could hit him and burn through all my stamina. My only advantage was that I was bulky af and could fast roll. Meaning so long as I was above 80%-ish percent health, I could survive his worst attacks. With 10 Estus and a Sun ring, I could probably win a war of attrition. It's how I beat Lothric/Lorian. However, it felt like Soul of Cinder had prepped for that. He was the 1 boss I kept running out of heals on.

So I came up with a big brain plan. Get good at dodging his phase 1 attacks as much as I could. Then, try and minimize damage on phase 2 and save my Estus for recovering after his juggling combo attack as in all of my countless attempts, I only dodged it successfully like once. And so it went. I threw myself at him in countless attempts. Often eating a few minor hits in phase 1. Phase 2 was rough. I could barely get hits in without getting smacked in return. Yet I couldn't risk trading hits since I needed to save my heals for his juggling combo. It was a dance of me barely shuffling, dodging and blocking, occasionally getting a hit in before running away. My solace tended to be his "Gwen Grab" and "Gwen regular Lighting Bolt" since I could dodge them and it were his only Phase 2 attacks that felt long enough for me to get 1-2 hits in and still have enough stamina to retreat.

I did have the fight bug out on me once. Once I hit him enough, he'd stagger and enter a stunned state giving me a few extra hits in. Once when I did that, he "countered" and did a parry/riposte on me despite being stunned? I survived his parry/riposte (and died later to his juggling combo) but thankfully he never did it again.

It took countless attempts. One particular went started off poorly. I got poisoned. Had to back off and apply a cure. Burned through 2-3 of my "Juggling Estus" before Phase 1 was over. Entered Phase 2. Lost 5 more Estus to a combination of his regular hits and juggling combo. I was more surprised when I ended up getting one final roll + Claymore Strike to defeat him that I let out a biggest sigh of my life. My family nearby were half convinced I had an asthma attack or something.

Poor "Elden Lord 2 The Knight" had done the impossible after a long and gruelling 16 hours. And, in honour of his predecessor from Dark Souls 1 all those years ago, walked all the way back to Firelink Shrine to trigger the Age of Dark ending. Except....that didn't do it? Unlike DS1, you actually have to do some side quests or something earlier on to get different endings? With a sigh, Poor "Elden Lord 2 The Knight"returned to the Kiln of the First Flame. Went over to that bonfire, put the flame on himself. Which honestly probably felt better than the fire the Soul of Cinder was beating him with earlier. He took a seat, watching the weird eclipse thing in the sky as he wondered if this was all even worth it.......

PostScript: Originally, I ended this post here. After all, I beat the game and had a rather poetic ending to my post. But I visited my cousin's place who is a huge Souls fan. Man completes new DS1, 2, 3, BB and Elden Ring runs for fun and uses dex builds😱. How does he play without a shield?

He was showing me how the twin blades are apparently beyond OP in DS3, Chalice Dungeon exploits in Bloodborne and all the boss weapons and ashes in the new Elden Ring DLC. Including the final boss. Shadow of the Erdtree really feels the most anime out of these souls games.

I was talking with him about what I did in my recent DS3 playthrough and his response was "Bro, you missed half the game and all the good content! Get your ass back in there and follow these non-spoiler instructions I made for you!"

My first stop after beating Soul of Cinder was to go near Pontiff Sulyvin's boss arena to find an illusionary wall (thanks to a message that wasn't there the last time I played) that led to a secret area where fought these rat/crocodile hybrids that dropped the Ring that Lauthric had in DS1 that gave me extra health, stamina and equip load. Perfect for me 😇.

Then I went where I fought Wolnir as he showed me that you could attack bridges to make them collapse and climb them like ladders which I never would have seen coming. I followed it to some Demon Ruins and fought enemies that reminded me of the demons in DS1 and that one meme that was like "Gee, there sure are a lot of demons in these ruins. They should have called this game 'Demon Souls'.....wait a minute...."

I came into this valley that had giant crossbows sniping me. But at this point, with my 40 vigour and thicc armour and sun, I could tank a few hits. I ran into this giant centipede that kept knocking me away and was really hard to fight while getting sniped. As I was fighting him, I saw an orange message and went to read it. It said  something "ahh Respite" and as I was upvoting it, I noticed the centipede taking damage from the crossbow so I just waited it out. Easy W there.

I then went into the fog wall that centipede was guarding and ran into the Old Demon King. A throwback to the Demon Firesage from DS1. An easy boss thanks to my endgame stats. I'm not complaining.

Next step was to go to Irythyl Dungeon and take an elevator to where some statues where chilling on a blanket. I had to do the "Path of the Dragon" emote I got from beating Oricalos 10 hours earlier which would teleport me to a hidden area. Again, I had no idea this was the way. I followed this area and was told my by cousin to run past the dragon and just find a way up to plunging attack to 1 shot him. My cousin then refused to give me any more instructions for some reason and told me to play on my own with a grin on his face.

I kept playing. I found Havel the Rock who killed a dragon leading me to wonder what the timeline for this game was given I killed Havel back in DS1 and how much time had passed? But I got his greatshield so I was happy until I looked at its weight. Swapping my current +4 Dragon Crest Shield would put my Equip Load at 103%. There goes my plan to block everything😭.

Then, I came across this weird bell on a raised platform. I rang it and noticed it made fog everywhere and a fog wall in front of me. I wondered if I could walk on the clouds until an orange message reassured me. I did so and followed it to the fog wall. I entered it and kept moving forward until this giant turkey-like creature came and started attacking me, triggering a boss fight. This was rough at first. The Turkey and its rider's attacks actually did over half my health despite my vigour. The worst was its overhead fire attack which I could never seem to avoid.

But after a few attempts, I managed to optimize everything else. I swapped to the Grass Crest Shield to give me extra stamina regen and 2-handed my +9 claymore. I was jump for joy whenever the Turkey would go for his "grounded fire attack" since that gave me 4-5 clean shots on his head and tear off a massive chunk of his health and often give me a chance for a critical shot.

Killing the massive turkey led to phase 2 against the supposed hardest boss in base DS3: The Nameless King. And I believe it. Nameless King seems to follow Soul of Cinder's philosophy of "being super effective against my playstyle". His attacks would frequently punch through my blocking and do nearly 40% of my health per hit. It was hard to find opportunities to heal or do consistent damage at first. And eventually, it became rather tedious to keep having to do phase 1 to take shots at the really fun phase 2.

After what felt like an hour of attempts, I felt like Neo in the Matrix (kinda). I felt that 80% of the time, I could reasonably predict what moves he was doing and would do. Before if I took a hit, I'd try to panic roll or heal away as quickly as possible which only worked sometimes. But now, if I took a hit, I'd "play it out" for a while. Dodging through some of his later attacks with my health at 30% until I'd find myself instinctively healing in between his attacks. Was this how pro Souls players feel? Is this the power of Ultra Instinct?

Sadly, it wasn't 100% reliable. There were times Nameless King would do follow ups to his attacks. Such as a 3 hit version of his basic swipes instead of 2 or add 1-2 extra attacks to his lunging heavy attack and jump attack. I couldn't tell what version he was doing until waiting a bit extra to see what he was doing which made it harder to get hits in with my slow claymore. Most of my mistakes were from this as I'd sometimes land a hit and roll through his follow up at what felt like the last possible millisecond. And others, I'd get an ass whooping. I also could never dodge his lighting AOE attack properly. Suffice it to say, I wished I had more than 11 Estus for this fight.

Adding to my worries was his lighting sword which would drain a bit of my health on blocks which was still one of my main approaches. But despite all that, I was really enjoying this phase. He felt less aggressive than Soul of Cinder with more opportunities to safely punish him. With Soul, it felt like he was made specifically to counter me. Nameless King felt like he took more pauses between his attacks which was made for me. Eventually, my strat was "equip the Grass Cress Shield and 2 hand my claymore and complete phase 1 using 1-2 heals, then switch to the Etheral Shield for better lighting resistance for phase 2".

 My victory was climactic. Nameless King did his overhead attack and I audibly said "checkmate" as I went in for 2 R1s to get that Dub. It was the first boss where I felt I saw my victory was guaranteed and inevitable 3 seconds before the fight ended in such a clear way.

I took a break from the content to look through the weapons I had at this point. I wondered if I had a dagger or spear or something I could use while holding my shield up as a backup weapon to my claymore. Something faster for enemies Like Soul or Nameless King I'd encounter in the future. But sadly, everything I could equip seemed either too weak or required me to put 16-18 points into Dexterity and I was unwilling to level up Dex in the event it turned out to be a waste. So I decided to continue with my Claymore as my only weapon.

Next up was the Ashes of Ariandel. I skipped this area my first time through because the people at the church told me to leave and I didn't know this was a DLC area so I figured I'd have to come back later or something. My cousin showed me where the ladder was so I followed that to a snow village, fought some NPCs, made it through some catacombs with mosquitoes. My cousin told me I could use a torch to undo the bleed buildup since it was being caused by leaches. I pulled a lever and saw a cutscene of a statue moving at the church from earlier. I fast travelled back thanks to the Sword I learned was an infinite fast travel thing now.

The Church held a boss fight with Sister Friede. Her gimmick was Frostbite which kept messing me up. But I managed to brute force through her Phase 1 with 3 Estus remaining. Phase 2 had her 20 ft and lumbering dad step up for a tag team. I initially decided to keep attacking Friede since I was worried she's jump me while attacking her dad and her dad seemed too slow to counterattack. But eventually, after multiple attempts, I learned that Father Ariandel should be my target given his slow lumbering nature and Friede being relatively passive. And that Friede can be backstabbed when she's going for a heal so I got my strat down.

 I eventually completed phase 2 and got a Titanite Slab for my troubles. Not really useful for me at this point since I already had a +10 weapon and wasn't willing to upgrade anything else but I'm not complaining😇.  But the game threw me a curveball. Despite giving me reward and appearing like the fight was over, Friede got up for a Phase 3😱. With only 1 Estus remaining, Blackflame Friede turned my bones into dust and told me to leave.

I considered changing up my stratgedy to better have more healing coming into phase 3. Friede's "invisible attack" in Phase 1 always got me. So I decided it was finally time to learn parrying. Better late than never. But I changed my mind after -1- only successfully parrying her on 20% of my attempts and -2- taking more damage despite doing a successful parry (around 10% of my health) vs a block (around 1% + some frostbite buildup) and -3- my regular attacks would stagger her and I could dodge most of her attacks.

Finally, a boss that rewarded my caveman playstyle. With a fair amount of patience, I could get 2-3 stun lock hits on Frieda in phase 1, bully Father Ariandel in Phase 2 and make it to phase 3 with around 7 Estus left and only a few Frostbite procs. From there, it was a matter of biding my time, waiting for Blackflame Frieda do one of her bigger attacks that left her vulnerable and get my hits in. My winning attempt did almost go poorly with me getting greedy, getting too many frostbite procs and almost dying and running out of heals. Not my best win but a win is a win. Still a fun boss. I'm still sad there are no PSN trophies for the DLC😭.

Next up was the Ringed City DLC. Apparently, you can access this from the Kiln of the First Flame as there is a bonfire that will warp you there. But I missed it on my first run because I figured that bonfire would warp you back to Firelink Shrine. Even my cousin pointed out how dumb my thinking was with "Bro, why would they put 2 bonfires next to each other?"

While I really enjoyed the base game and felt Ashes of Ariandel was fun, I wasn't fond of Ringed City. The area before the Demon Prince in the toxic swamp with the butterflies sniping you was rough. The Demon Princes themselves were annoying as one would always toxic me and then double team me. They were fun and easy to fight solo. It got to the point where I swapped out my armour for something with more poison resistance but had no luck so just decided to use my usual armour with the Grass Cress Shield and 2 Handing my +10 Claymore and hope I'd kill them before the toxic got me.

After an embarrassing number of attempts, I got toxic-ed very early but decided to play it through. It was rough but I killed the boss at the exact second my HP hit 0 from the toxic and I had burned through all my heals. I didn't get the Souls for the kill but it counted as a kill and ember-ed me up. So I just had to return, grab my green souls, get a level in Vigour and continue on.

The next area with the ambushes, 4 giants, giant swamp, witches cursing me, ghost archers and Dragon Slayer Armour and mini Souls of Cinders that would pursue me to the ends of the earth were extremely frustrating to play through. I was half considering quitting at that point. I did fight a dragon on a ledge shooting fire and crystals while hitting the ground but killing it didn't give me any souls but did clear the bridge for my future crossings.

The next bossfight was rough. Church of the Spear summons a real PVP player as a boss and sometimes I got really easy players I could have beaten if I didn't get jumped by the white maidens. Sometimes I got a giga chad that beat me before I even knew what I was doing. My winning attempt was against a player that just laid there and let me get the win. I don't know who you are, but you are my hero and I love you.

This whole section really felt like DS3 was channelling DS2 and I really disliked it. I'm glad I got the Fire Fates Edition at a discount because it would have been demoralizing to pay for this DLC separately. It has the only bossfight in DS3 I've played I'd put at F tier.

Fortunately, the DLC seemed to have realized my pain and decided to make its last section the best it could be to recover. After a weird cutscene where this woman's egg created a sandstorm, I emerged into this grey desert world where I ran into Gael. The guy who trapped me the Ashes of Ariandel Painting in the first place. I wanted revenge on him for making me play the Ringed City DLC. His boss fight was great with 2.5 phases. The first phase had him channelling Vordt with him walking on all 4s and doing really wild sword swings that were relatively easy to dodge, block, shuffle and then punish. His one purple lunge especially, gave me 2 hits on him guaranteed.

Phase 2 has him standing and doing wild sword swings + a magic cape aftertrail that did some magic damage that would damage me through my block. I found it hard to dodge as it seemed to 2 attacks in 1 as I could dodge the sword swing but not the cape stuff. Phase 2.5 had him summoning lighting and red magic skulls. My main approach was to just run away and hide behind cover while his lunging attacks got stuck for a while to wait out the hazards. But he became so fast and frantic that I couldn't visually parse what was even going on anymore with his attacks.

At this point, I felt a bit burnt out. I had played for nearly 4 hours straight by that point intending to finish Nameless King, Ashes of Ariendel and Ringed City in 2 days. Ringed City took a number on me. At that point, I wasn't interested in learning a boss' moveset, getting ultra instinct and winning in a proper duel like I did with Soul of Cinder, Nameless King and Sister Friede. I wanted to win. So...... I decided to give into my inhibitions and commit to the playstyle I was on the edge off. Noticing that Gael's attacks didn't break my block as easily gave me an idea. It was time for my final form.

I equipped most of the Winged Knight Armour Set, Havel's Greatshield, my trusty +10 Claymore that was inseparable and tweaked my load-out until I was at 98.6% equip load. I was ready. Gael may be faster than me, stronger than me, cooler than me, have more rizz than me, but I am chonkier. I aimed to block most of his attacks and only fat roll through like, 2 of them. His lunging grab (since that goes through my block) and his overhead arrow slam and lighting follow up.

One of Gael's tricks is that his attacks are somewhat delayed and not in a consistent rhythm. Making it harder to properly dodge or parry them. But those worked for me. I could hold L1 to block his attack, let go to recover most of my stamina by the time he follows up and then punish. As a bonus, it seems Gael was designed that most players would be moving around him. He has a lot of attacks that swing around to catch players dodging around him and relatively few "get off me attacks". But this meant that me being relatively stationary and shuffling around let me avoid most of his attacks. It didn't take long to consistently get through Phase 1 without using any heals.

Phase 2 was tricky. While I could consistently minimize the damage I took from Gael, I found it hard to punish him. He'd recover relatively quickly and get hits in. Stamina management and timing became crucial as I had to time my blocks to recover enough stamina as possible so when I got 1-2 hits in, I could fat roll through one of his follow up attacks and still have enough stamina for 1 final block. Eventually, I found I had to be patient and punish only his overhead slam or his 2 sweeping combo.

Phase 2.5 threw a wrench in this as he'd now optionally extend his combos. Sometimes his overhead slam would get an extra 2 attacks. Or he'd do 3 sweeps. His magic would do like 5% of my health so I couldn't block forever. God, I wish I had 1 more Estus Flask. His lighting was especially rough. But despite all that, I felt this was the first time I had a build that was generally super effective against a boss on a conceptual level rather than because I was good with my skills or overlevelled. Gael didn't have the kind of attacks like Soul of Cinder that would consistently punch through my blocks and then punish me. So I didn't have to really learn this boss.

Like, I feel I have most of Sister Freya, Soul of Cinder and Nameless King's moves memorized. But for Gael, I feel I only have like, most of his Phase 1 and like a couple of his phase 2 moves memorized. That's how useful my build was.

I won the fight with my save file telling me I beat all this in 23 hours. I enjoyed most of DS3 and Gael ended it on a high note. Too bad I feel I can't accurately judge him because I don't feel I even fought him properly lol.

I platinummed Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Cyberpunk 2077 PS5 and its Phantom Liberty DLC and wanted to talk about it.

Overall, this was an easy (On PS5 at least) if rather confusing game to Platinum. There a lot of missable story related trophies as well as later missions taking several in-game days to unlock. So I imagine for a first time player, it would likely require a second playthrough in order to know where key items and missions are. Fortunately for me, I played the Stadia version (RIP in Peace) back when the game first came out and did a good chunk of the game so I was prepared for this run.

So here was my game plan:

1. Grab a Katana or Knife and kill enemies as I play through the game. When I get 300 kills, switch over to an SMG and get 300 more kills. Then keep alternating between them to level up my Shinobi Skill. Make sure I collect and sell everything I find in order to make money.

2. Prioritize doing Fixer gigs and CyberPsycho attacks (Special side missions that pay a good chunk of money. Save as much money as possible as I will need  ~E$2,000,000  for "Autojock - Buy all vehicles available for purchase").

3. Once those are done or more aren't available, start doing main missions. Watching out for any of the following since they contain a key item for a trophy: "Search and Destroy", "Nocturne OP55N1", "Riders on the Storm",  "The Hunt", "Rebel! Rebel!", "Pisces", "Chippin In", "Psychofan". Everything else doesn't matter how you play it.

4. Once I max out my Street Cred reputation, and have enough money, make a manual save and buy every car. Reload my save and then use the money to buy whatever I need for the following trophies especially:

"Daemon In The Shell - Kill or incapacitate 3 enemies with one "Detonate Grenade" quickhack."

"Rough Landing - While Berserk cyberware is active, perform a Superhero Landing to kill or incapacitate 2 enemies"

"Two Heads, One Bullet -Kill or incapacitate 2 enemies with the same sniper rifle shot."

"V for Vendetta -After reviving with Second Heart, kill or incapacitate the enemy who killed you within 5 seconds."

These require a good amount of money and specialized equipment. "Rough Landing" for example, required me to use a respec, shopping around for specialized Ripperdoc implants, weapons and mods and 15+ tries to do as the groups I did it on would always have one guy survive at 1 HP for some reason.

5. Once I unlock the Phantom Liberty DLC, put the main story on hold and 100% that. This DLC' missable trophies are only related to its endings which you can all get if you make a manual save before the mission "Fire Starter".

6. Return back to the main story, finish all main missions and side quests, then do all 100 NCPD gigs (which was really tedious)  and find all 159 fast travel points.

That last one was annoying because while you only need to drive close to Fast Travel points to activate, there were around 20 I had left despite 100%-ing everything else because they were on parts of the map where there were literally no missions, gigs or content. Though, it wasn't too bad to do. I simply gave my grandparents a photo of a completed map on my iPad and asked them to "find all the blue icons that weren't on my game" and they came through for me.

An important thing to note is that 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077 reworked a lot about how the game worked. Including mechanics like levelling up, crafting and progression. This makes the PS5 version easier to platinum than the PS4 version as many trophies aren't missable now. 

For example, "Master Crafter - Craft 3 Legendary items" on PS4 required you to specifically invest in 4 major skills in the technical skill tree to be able to even craft items. On PS5 however, you can craft whatever right out of the gate as long as you have the items for it. No skills required. So this ends up being one of the easier trophies now.

The only downside I found is that some of the guides I consulted were a bit of out date now. One cool feature the PS5 has is that some games' trophies lists come with a built in optional guide for how to get them. Which I find is great as it means you can help on the game without needing to leave the game. And there was a really helpful section for "Christmas Tree Attack - Complete a Breach Protocol with a minimum of 3 daemons uploaded". The built in PS5 guide told me to search for skills like "Big Sleep" and "Mass Vulnerability" which I couldn't find no matter where they were. Turns out, those were from the pre-2.0 version.  The real PS5 version also doesn't require any upgrades (although they do help).

Overall, this whole experience took me around 70-ish hours in real time and around 65-ish hours on my final save file.  The trophies generally were pretty fun. Many being related to the story often just meant doing certain questlines in their entirety which is how I play anyway. However, the game has a habit of "timegating" certain quests which I felt really hurt the pacing. 

So lets say you complete 2/4 of Judy's quests. It could be quite a while before you receive the phone call for mission 3. It got to a point where I had the final main quest "Nocturne OP55N1" ready to complete by like hour 35 but I still hadn't received calls from River, Judy or Kerry for their quests despite doing literally every side quest (minus NCPD gigs) I came across first in the meantime. The game seemed to roll for Panem and Rogue's quests early this time.

I suppose I could have just manually slept for several in-game days to pass the time requirements for these quests to trigger. But still, I am not a fond of this design from both a casual and trophy hunter perspective. For one, the main story critical path for Cyberpunk (just getting to "Nocturne OP55N1") is relatively short. A player focusing on just main content could easily get to it in around 20-ish hours.

However, some of these extra storylines, some of which do open up extra endings, don't have any indication there is more to them until they happen to pop up. Kerry's for example, could technically "end" after any of the missions and it wouldn't seem out of place. Later missions often open with Kerry even going "Hey V, remember how everything seemed hunky dory and resolved after the last mission we did? Turns out, the situation turned sour. Come and help me". River's last mission comes after the main threat is resolved and he invites you for dinner. It's a similar situation for Judy.

So if you are a casual player that doesn't know how many quests there are and aren't going after trophies, it's not unreasonable to see someone completing the game without even knowing Kerry, Judy, River or Claire's storylines are technically incomplete. And if you do know and are trying to complete them, you have bounce around between unrelated missions or just keep sleeping to trigger them which gets annoying.

I believe the intention is to get players to bounce around different quests and for the setting to feel more "realistic". After all, when a character says they will get back to you, it might actually take some time for them to get back to you. They're not going to instantly have the information you need. But, still, like I said, I dislike this approach. In addition to the reasons from earlier, I also feel it "punishes" the player for not doing their side questing during designated times. Lets say you do some Fixer Gigs as a break from the main story, then do a main story quest you find interesting only for the game to say "Hey, go take a break and do some side quests first". The main mission doesn't take into account what you were doing earlier. I feel it's better for open world games to operate like GTA or Assassin's Creed in this regard where the next mission is available as soon as you complete the previous mission. No mandatory timegating. That way, you can do whatever proportion of main and side quests you want.

The game actually has a solution for this in its Phantom Liberty DLC gigs. Here, the game gives you a general map marker for the next stage in a quest as long as it's "ready" and if the player doesn't interact with it for a specified amount of time, then they get a call revealing what the first stage of the new mission is. This solves the issue for the casual player missing potentially interesting quests just because they don't get a phone call by looking at their maps for new quests. And for experienced hunters as they can directly go to the quests they want. All while keeping the "timegating via phone calls" in some form.

 

The only other significant issue I had with platinumming this game were the NCPD gigs. About 100 "radiant quest"-style activities where you go to an area, kill all enemies and/or retrieve an item and the mission is over. These work fine as activities you can do along the way to more important activities (similar to crimes or Random Events in games like Spider-Man) as they are quick bursts of combat, money, loot and XP. They don't have much story (aside from a data log or journal from the scene of the crime). But having to grind out 100 of them got really tedious. I soon just ran in and grabbed the item and left to start getting them over as fast as possible as I had done everything else. Just making these optional for the trophy would have significantly improved the experience because otherwise the game was quite fun.

As for the game itself, separate from the trophies, I really enjoyed my time. I liked it when I played it back in 2020 on Stadia on version 1.5 and experiencing all the wacky bugs. It was a fun "Far Cry-Like" with how I'd bounce between quests and combat areas, alternating between gunplay, stealth and platforming, and collecting loot to improve my V. And the story and writing were so engrossing and human. Night City, despite being rather static to interact with, is absolutely detailed in terms of world building and houses plenty of interesting quests.

Version 2.0 on PS5 Seems to push further on this "Far Cry-Like" design by downplaying more restrictive builds that lock you into a playstyle and decoupling gear from stats. And in some ways, I feel that was for the better. One big issue I had with version 1.0 and its marketing is that it felt like it was trying to "do everything". It wanted to be GTA or Watch Dogs despite lacking that specific style of  sandbox (even missing car chases). It wanted to be a Witcher or Bethesda style RPG despite lacking the character building stuff of those games. It tried to be like Borderlands or Diablo with its loot system despite it feeling incongruous with the world (though I still enjoyed its attempt here and am a bit disappointed this got removed entirely).

So version 2.0 focuses the game more towards what was its strongest points: its story, and flexible "Far Cry-like" gameplay and its worldbuilding/design. And those elements come together to make an engrossing and fun game despite other games still doing individual elements better. Like, Far Cry, I feel, still has more fun outpost clearing with how other elements of the sandbox can make the experience more wild.  Watch Dogs makes the hacking more interesting by giving you more ways to use the environment such as jumping between cameras to complete missions or bypass certain obstacles in a more puzzle like way (as well as having more interesting car chases). But Cyberpunk 2077's world and mixture of powers and quests manage to the experience more novel.

Thank you so much for reading. My next post will probably be a casual review of Dark Souls 3. See you then.

All the TMNT Games on GBA

 Hello everyone. I recently played the 3 TMNT games on GBA and would like to talk about them.

-1- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles GBA (2003)

This is a licensed game based on the 2003 TMNT show (one I really enjoyed watching a kid and remember often being freaked out by because some of those episodes were dark af. That episode where Don goes to the future especially😳).

The game is mostly a 2D brawler/beat-em-up type split into 4 chapters you can play in any order. Each chapter is a self contained story based on season 1 episodes from the TV show where you control 1 Turtle. For example, Raph's chapter consists of him meeting and befriending Casey Jones while dealing with the Purple Dragons. Don's chapter references that one episode where the Foot Clan had invisible Ninjas and kidnapped Raph. The stories themselves aren't told in an amazing way, mostly being quick stills and text boxes so if you aren't a fan of the show or these episodes, you won't enjoy them as much. I won't complain about this aspect too much here. The poor GBA can't exactly go wild with the cutscenes here. And I did find the game's retellings of episodes I watched as a kid rather nostalgic and charming. The artstyle, sound and aesthetic are accurate to the show and well done here.

When I first played the game and saw there were 4 chapters, I imagined it would just be the same set of levels, maybe some alternations here and there for some level aspects or cutscenes for each of the 4 Turtles. Kinda like the old 16 bit Turtle games. But no. Each of the 4 chapters have different levels built around the different Turtles who have different abilities.

The 4 Turtles share the same basic controls. You jump with A, attack with B. Attacking an enemy with B does a basic combo. Holding B charges up an attack indicated by a meter under the Turtle's health. Releasing it when the meter is yellow does a stronger attack. Releasing it when the meter turns red does an even more powerful attack but takes longer to charge. Holding it until the meter is full "tires out the Turtle" and leaves you vulnerable so there is some risk/reward here. Pressing R does a super attack that damages all enemies around the Turtle at the cost of some of the Turtle's health. Good as a last resort option but not one you want to spam. There are some addition moves like jump and direction attacks.

The Turtles themselves have their own takes on these controls and movesets and their levels are built around that. For example, Leo's controls and moves are more standard brawler/beat-em-fare. So his levels focus more on throwing enemies and projectiles at him. Don can't double jump like the others. Instead, pressing Up + A makes him use his staff to launch himself up. And pressing A when running makes him use his staff to do a long jump. So his levels are built more around doing this type of platforming as well as doing some hacking. Mikey is the only one with a ranged attack (charging his attack until red makes him throw is nunchuks like boomerangs) and can wall jump so his levels often throw more ranged enemies across gaps that you can either take out with the ranged attack or jump to avoid projectiles and close the distance. Raph can climb walls with his sais so his levels have a lot more climbing and verticality.

The chapters are also interspersed with "gimmicks/vehicle" sections. For example, Raph's chapter contains a section where he must do a motorcycle race against Casey while also dodging obstacles and collecting fuel in a 2.5 level. Don has a 2D glider section where he must dodge and shoot down missiles and avoid floating mines. Mikey has a skateboarding section that kinda reminds me of Sonic 2's Special Stages.

The general gameplay and controls do work fine. The game is generally fun but I do find it starts to get a bit repetitive as there isn't much variety. I do appreciate the game trying to mix up the experience and make the Turtles have different moves but I feel it doesn't improve the experience enough.

For one, the game doesn't have many different kinds of attacks or attacks. I understand the GBA is limited with buttons but still. There's no cool counterattack or parry system or any kind of grabs. So most fights do come down to spamming attacks and jumping away from enemy attacks. Which is fun but not very deep.

Secondly, many of the Turtle's unique moves often feel more cosmetic rather than add variety. For example, Raph can climb walls. But the majority of his levels are still the same combat shared by the other Turtles. Climbing walls doesn't radically change how you play the level as Raph. It's not like there are secret pathways or routes you can now find by climbing. Instead climbing just becomes something you have to do as Raph sometimes.

Thirdly, some of the gimmicks often make the experience more annoying and frustrating. Don's sections often make him do that running+long jump platforming which I found was rather imprecise and finicky especially when needing to chain said jumps multiple times over spiked pits. Damage often persists for quite a while and checkpoints are pretty infrequent.

Don and Raph's vehicle sections were also really annoying. For Raph, it's hard to see what obstacles are coming up when traveling at high speeds. Making enough mistakes means you can't then catch up to Casey which means you lose and have to retry. I had to spend quite a while replaying this level, memorizing all the hazards and playing near flawlessly to make it through. At least the section was quite short.

Don's section doesn't have any time pressure but the level is quite long, has no checkpoints and very few healing items. Having to dodge so many mines and missiles at high speed with little heads up wasn't fun.

Interestingly, I found Mikey's chapter the most fun as his moveset is versatile enough to give more variety to the gameplay. Mikey having both a charged ranged attack and close range quick melee means you can alternate them depending on the enemy and its attacks. When you're fighting those big lizard monsters, you can come in close and attack them when they're doing their breath attacks, then jump away when they are doing their melee strikes and attack them from range and repeat. Mikey's platforming sections are more fun as the wall jumps ask you to time your jumps properly to make progress and avoid obstacles and enemy attacks. There are even combat sections that combine these. Like, I feel you can make an entire solid game out of just Mikey's gameplay. It's that good.

Even his vehicle section was quite fun. The pseudo 3D approach worked well in showing you what obstacles were coming, it was reasonable enough to react to them, Mikey has both a short move with the D-Pad and a longer spin/dodge with B that helped with this. Like, if you have to play only 1 chapter, Mikey's is the way to go. I have no complaints. It's short and sweet as well (the whole game is like 2 hours max). I honestly wouldn't mind an entire game that uses just Mikey's chapter as the foundation and builds on top of it.

Overall, TMNT GBA is a decent time waster for 2 hours but not one I would go out of my way to replay. I like the charm, aesthetic and set pieces here but the gameplay isn't the most replayable and it has some frustrating sections.

-2- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus GBA (2004)

Released a year after the last game. TMNT2BNGBA, from my research looking online, is generally considered the worst and most confusing TMNT GBA game. When I first started playing it, I thought the same. But now, I might consider it the best.

TMNT2 retains mostly the same gameplay, sprites, controls, and assets from its predecessor but is a completely different genre. Whereas its predecessor was a straight up brawler/beat-‘em-up, 2 is more of a platformer/stealth/action/puzzle hybrid. I know that sounds weird but hear me out.

Unlike its predecessor, there aren’t unique levels or chapters depending on the Turtle you pick. You progress by choosing a level and then which Turtle you want. Meaning you can play or replay any level with any Turtle.

When you choose a level, you start without a weapon. You do have shurikens you can throw but these do paltry damage and are used more for puzzles in later levels. You then have to use stealth and platforming to get past enemies as it’s very difficult to fight them at this point. Once you find your weapons, you can fight enemies normally and then must find the exit to the level.

When I first started playing the game, I found myself agreeing with many of the criticisms leveled at the game. It’s rather confusing to navigate and it’s not very fun as a stealth game as the stealth is quite basic and becomes a non factor when you find your weapons. Nor is it fun as a brawler as there are fewer enemies in fights because of the stealth aspect. Boss fights in particular are odd because you don't start with your weapons but the pickup for them spawns right above you at the start of the level.  So I was prepared to say this was the worst game here.

But after a while, I decided to try 100%-ing a level just for the fun of it. And that’s when the game clicked for me. The focus of the game isn’t the combat or stealth, but more the exploration/navigation.

Remember back in my review of the previous game where I mentioned the Turtle’s unique abilities often felt more cosmetic rather than novel? This game aims to rectify that. The same level can be played quite differently depending on which Turtle you select. This is most evident on the level in world 2 that asks the player to escape a vertical area in under 70 seconds. Raph can quickly climb the walls. Don can hack a console to bring down a lift and use his Bo Staff to launch himself upwards. Mikey can use his ranged attacks to break open blocks to create paths. This leads to some nice problem/puzzle solving where you have to analyze parts of a level and decide which Turtles to bring in on subsequent playthroughs to 100% the level.

Even the odd weapon pickup mechanic starts making more sense here. All the Turtle's movement abilities depend on their weapon. Starting without the weapon means you must navigate part of the level with your base movement abilities, noting all the areas you can't reach yet, and then possibly backtrack once you do find them kinda like a Metroidvania.

Leo does fare the worst here however as he doesn't have any unique movement abilities. Ralph can climb walls which is genuinely useful here. Don can hack certain terminals, see in the dark with his night vision goggles and use his Bo Staff launch himself straight up. Mikey loses his wall jump from the last game but can glide and has a range attack using his nunchucks. As a result, whenever I play a new level, I like to play as Leo first as the "hard mode" as I must complete the level in the most basic way. Then usually Mikey to get those crystals that require his ranged abilities, then usually Don or Ralph as they can mop up what few remaining crystals are left. The game also gives you a medal for completing a level with each of the 4 Turtles.

I will say that sometimes, this does work to the game's disadvantage. The later levels tend to be more fun being replayed 4 times as they are larger and have more paths or ways for the different Turtles to play differently. But early on, it can feel rather boring as many early levels don't change much with the 4 playthroughs. This is especially the case in the "gimmick/vehicle" levels that ask you to ride a hoverboard or glider or 3D shooting section as these do not change at all depending on the Turtle. You even get all 10 crystals with Leo. I feel it might be better if the game gave you the medal for completing it with all 4 Turtles when you beat it just once. It's sorta similar for the boss fights but at least the bosses are actually kinda fun and not very drawn out.

Then again, there is nothing requiring you play each level 4 times. The bare minimum the game asks you is to just complete the level once with any Turtle to unlock the next level. You can speed through the game once with just Raph if you want.

But yeah, I was pleasantly surprised with this game. And of all of the TMNT games on the GBA, I feel this is the one I'm most likely to ever come back and replay in the future. I enjoyed its design and approach that much. I really do feel this game has potential with a modern reimagining that takes its concepts much further. I'm imagining a TMNT game where how you complete a level and which Turtle you use unlocks a different set of levels. That would be so cool. As it stands, TMNT2 BNGBA is a pretty fun time for the 2 or so hours it lasts. I highly recommend checking this one out.

TMNT (2007)

The last and final TMNT game on the GBA was the one based on the 2007 CGI movie. And I loved that movie as a kid. So much so that I went and sought out whatever merchandise, books and games I could based on it. I remember getting the PS2 game based on the movie, as well as the PSP and DS versions. The PS2 version was this really good alternate take on Prince of Persia (makes sense since it was made by Ubisoft) with great level design and mechanics. I recommend everyone reading this go try it if you can. The DS/PSP version was.......a game. So I was looking forward to see how the GBA would translate it. I was hoping for an extension of TMNT2 BNGBA.

If I had to briefly describe TMNT2007GBA, it feels the closest we've seen so far to a GBA version of the Turtles in Time game. It's a straightforward and streamlined 2.5D brawler. No platforming. No vehicle sections. No exploration or branching paths. No Collectibles etc. You just pick a level, select which Turtles the game dictates you can choose (depending on the story mission) and off you go.

The first thing I want to highlight are the graphics and artstyle. This game looks great. And I don't mean "good for the GBA". I mean, really good. It uses this really nice and detailed artstyle that absolutely pops. It's gorgeous. Like, with some tweaking, it wouldn't look too out of place in a modern retro style game. I might even go so far as to say this is one of the best looking games on the GBA. Everything from the Turtles to the enemies and environments is some great pixel art.

The game also has a hub world. You start in the Turtles' lair where you can walk and talk to Splinter to play levels and look at in-game trophies and achievements. But you can also leave the sewers and walk around a small street in New York. This street has a few pedestrians moving around that completely ignore your Turtle, and some stores you can walk in to purchase items to help you in later levels like health potions, extra lives, extra exp, temporary weapons and even a wall jump move. And on this street, there is a small section where you can practice your moves on a respawning gang member, and a rooftop that leads you to April who can give you a minigame to spend 25 coins to throw barrels at targets. Like, yeah, all this stuff could be in a menu, but it's still really cool. And a bit funny to imagine Ralph angrily walking across the street in clear view of every pedestrian to enter a gym and buy some candy bars and baseball bats lol.

When you are in a level, the controls and gameplay should sound familiar. You move with the D-Pad, jump with A, attack with B. There are some tweaks to the overall combat system. You can now do a sort of Sonic the Hedgehog style homing attack by pressing A twice. There are no more "charged B" attacks. Instead you just have combos and moves that rely on a direction + B. You can pick up certain items dropped by enemies like weapons and throwables by pressing B and then pressing B again to use them. You can also pick up and throw objects like crates and even smaller enemies you knock down.

You also have "Brother Bond Moves". When you start a level and choose your main Turtle, you can also choose to bring along another secondary Turtle as backup. When in combat, you fill up a green meter by doing attacks. When this meter is full, you can press R to summon your secondary Turtle who will take out 1 or multiple enemies, or drop a healing pizza for you. The more you summon a particular secondary Turtle, the more they will level up and the longer they will stick around when you summon them.

This game also encourages you to get a high score. Moreso than the prior GBA Turtle games. How many hits you get in a combo directly correlates with how much money and XP you get. Getting more XP levels up your Turtle and improves their stats. Money can be used to by items and resources in between levels. You also get a score and time rating at the end of every level.

The game also tells the story of the movie through these stills from the movie. Although, it really speedruns the plot of the movie here. A single 6 minute mission feels like it blitzes through like 30-40 minutes of scenes from the movie. I can't be too harsh here. This is the norm for movie licensed GBA games. Those cartridges don't exactly have a lot of room to spare.

So yeah, if you are a huge fan of Turtles in Time, you might enjoy this game. I personally, didn't really enjoy this one.

For one, I really liked how the past 2 Turtles' games (especially TMNT2 BN GBA) really mixed up the experience with cool platforming and exploration gameplay rather than rely on strictly combat. It kept the game feeling fresh. TMNT 2007 GBA is just 100% combat in every level and I feel that gets a bit too repeitive. The game does introduce new enemy factions that do look visually different and have slightly different moves (and special or larger enemies that require you to really fight them differently) but I don't feel it's enough. I found myself getting kinda bored of the game by the 3rd level. The game even has a wall jump move you can buy and it does work in the lair but there's nowhere to use it in the regular levels which are mostly straight lines as you move through them. Sometimes there are some cool hazards like mines or explosive crates or trains but they only help so much. 

Your moves in combat are pretty straightforward and don't feel too different. The different Turtles, despite having different stats, don't play too differently. But you're still encouraged to stick with a specific pair of Turtles because of the XP system as the summon moves are really useful in later levels.

The game's few attempts at mixing up the experience come in the boss fights. And these aren't great. Hush is the first one you fight and feels a bit cheap given his AOE attacks but is otherwise passable. The weird red goblin looking thing from the movie is really confusing at first and his fire attack drains a lot of your health. But then you learn you have to walk into him when he's standing still to dictate where he moves and hit him when he inflates himself for his fire attack where he no longer becomes a challenge but is pretty dull. Karai's boss fight is her doing seemingly undodgeable attacks and then splitting into 3.  2 of which are fake decoys. You have to hit the correct one quickly to damage her or she'll restart her attack cycle. Winters' Boss fight involves him dropping these red laser balls on you that you just have to avoid once and hit them so they fly into Winters who will do a charge attack once that you have dodge and then repeat. The 13th Monster isn't a traditional fight but instead a timed challenge where you avoid falling off the truck and throw fish into his mouth while regular Purple Dragon goons and the monster's breath tries to blow you off. The 4 stone generals repeat the same basic and easy patterns so it becomes less a fight and more a waiting game. I didn't really enjoy any of these while the boss fights in the prior TMNT GBA games were actually kinda fun despite not being very novel. They were good straightforward brawler bosses.

It's a shame because I can see all the things this game does well or novel working in a better game. The artstyle and graphics, scoring system, and hub world are really cool. It's a shame that the gameplay itself kinda gets rather stale too quickly for the game's own good and the game doesn’t really have anything else in its hub world and side content to make up for it. And this game is far shorter than its GBA predecessors. I feel you can beat it in around 1-1.5 hours here. And I didn't feel any rush to replay it once I was done.

Of course, I could be entirely wrong here. It’s entirely possible this game has secret levels or something in its hub world that I entirely missed that are that mix of TMNT2 and TMNT2007 I was craving and I can’t deny that. I didn't find anything like that so I have to conclude for now, it’s not a game I’d recommend. If someone reading this knows if I missed something important, let me know and I’ll reevaluate the game.

In closing, TMNT2BNGBA is something of a hidden gem on the GBA. It’s a bit of an odd game that takes some getting used to, but once you do, it becomes a really fun and engaging 2D Action Stealth Brawler Platformer due to its level design and the different Turtles’ abilities. I highly recommend it.

TMNT1 and TMNT2007 on the other hand, are a bit harder to recommend. TMNT1 fares better due to its more varied mechanics and levels but is rather inconsistent and repetitive. TMNT2007 is drop dead gorgeous to the point of almost feeling more modern than it is but is far more repetitive and flawed.

Thank you for reading. I want to cover more superhero/comic book games on the GBA like the Iron Man and Batman games one day. My next post will probably be on Platinumming Cyberpunk 2077. I hope to see you all then.