Current Events > Bloodborne is great but

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why the fuck I gotta grind for blood vials? Why make them a consumable again like DeS when the Estus Flask system was genius. And since you can hold 20 you can just tank lots of boss fights. The bloodletting mechanic is cool but not if it led to this

And also having to go to the hunter's dream to level up. Wouldn't be such a big deal if loading times weren't god awful. If it is remastered for PS5 the improved loading times will be a god send.

Anyways I love the game but it's like 2 steps forwards and 1 step back from DaS in some ways it really just shouldn't be

It's one of the game's biggest flaws tbh. There's nothing skillful about you having to grind out blood vials. It's just a time sink

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*flame shields activated*

I've played them all this year and I feel Bloodborne is the best one.

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Sounds like youre just getting started. Enemies drop vials and use the rally mechanic (what I think you called bloodletting?) to regain your health. If you want to recover vials, you need to suicide. Obv. Its a dream.

*sigh*

also MAX OUT your vitality first. Dont use your level ups for anything but health. Trust me,

I think primarily the main reason they give you a lot of blood vials, is because some weapons drain hp to do bonus damage or something along those lines... If you run out of bullets you can also replenish them at the expense of losing a bit of hp

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Its definitely one of the games weaker points.

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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

I've played them all this year and I feel Bloodborne is the best one.

I've played them all since the beginning, and I also think that Bloodborne is the best one.

ngl though, there have been times when I would grind for hours so I'd have 600 blood vials (20 on person & the rest in storage) so I wouldn't have to worry about that stuff for the rest of the game.

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The godawful PS4 load times make leveling and blood vial management a lot more cumbersome than it would otherwise be, you're definitely right.

It's probably the easiest FromSoft game. Heavy attacks let you do critical hit followups, you regain health by continuing to hit them, you can parry attacks from a distance, you have 20 heals + quick use items.

Some of their best world design and enemy design though. The story and setting didn't exactly go the direction I wanted it to, but I accept it for what it is.

And pretty much no swamp bullshit like is required in every FromSoft game.

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Yup, absolutely shit mechanic. Estus works so much better.
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Blood vials > Estus as a game mechanic

BTW it's easy to farm souls for blood vials if you go to NightmsreLexture Hall 1st floor. There's enemies that die in one or two hits all clumped together in one room that give decent souls drops to grind. Then use that to buy blood vials in the hunters dream.

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The Blood Vials thing goes away as you get better and better at the game.

There'll come a time where you stop needing so many and then you'll have a healthy stock by the time you get to the bosses.

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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

I've played them all this year and I feel Bloodborne is the best one.

Oh I totally agree, just some minor flaws on an overall fantastic game

Xethuminra posted...

Sounds like youre just getting started. Enemies drop vials and use the rally mechanic (what I think you called bloodletting?) to regain your health. If you want to recover vials, you need to suicide. Obv. Its a dream.

*sigh*

also MAX OUT your vitality first. Dont use your level ups for anything but health. Trust me,

Maybe I used the wrong term, I'm talking about hitting up on the D-pad for convert health into blood vials. i saw someone call it that before but idk the official term.

I like blood rally, but it also suffers from blood vials. Like, why risk dying to regain health when I could just back off and use one of my 20 heals instead? At least during bosses I succumb to that mindset

LeEpicGamer posted...

I like blood rally, but it also suffers from blood vials. Like, why risk dying to regain health when I could just back off and use one of my 20 heals instead? At least during bosses I succumb to that mindset

Bloodborne really rewards (smart) aggression.

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Doe posted...

BTW it's easy to farm souls for blood vials if you go to NightmsreLexture Hall 1st floor. There's enemies that die in one or two hits all clumped together in one room that give decent souls drops to grind. Then use that to buy blood vials in the hunters dream.

Good to know, I usually just loop around central yharnam for enemy drops but buying is probably faster

MutantJohn posted...

The Blood Vials thing goes away as you get better and better at the game.

There'll come a time where you stop needing so many and then you'll have a healthy stock by the time you get to the bosses.

It wasn't a huge issue for me until the DLC, I'll admit Orphan and Laurence took me quite a few attempts and I'd run low

Try gitting gud

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Doe posted...

It's probably the easiest FromSoft game. Heavy attacks let you do critical hit followups, you regain health by continuing to hit them, you can parry attacks from a distance, you have 20 heals + quick use items.

I disagree on this point. I got my ass kicked so hard and so many times on Bloodborne more than any of the other FromSoft Souls games, by a mile. So I think its easily the hardest of them all (I havent played Sekiro though).

But idk that could be just me.

Incredible game though. It would probably be my favorite FromSoft game if if I didnt have such nostalgia and favoritism of Dark Souls 1 (which is probably my favorite game of all time)

LeEpicGamer posted...

Why the fuck I gotta grind for blood vials?

That's the thing, you don't.

i adore bloodborn but it is indeed annoying. every time i do a run one of the first things i do is grind blood vials for like half an hour and get a ton in storage so i wont have to worry about them for most of the game, but its still a weird extra step

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It was a kinda fun game except I couldnt beat bosses solo I had to summon help, I dont remember much about blood vials, its been a couple years since I played

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You don't have to grind out blood vials if you don't get hit

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Blue_Inigo posted...

It's one of the game's biggest flaws tbh. There's nothing skillful about you having to grind out blood vials. It's just a time sink

I think it's a thematic thing. Blood vials respawning wouldn't make lore sense like it does with estus.

It's still a much worse system, but that's what I've heard as a justification.

Thing is, I don't really think bloodvials are that hard to come by without grinding. Their drop rate tanks after yharnam, but I just put it in my brain to dedicate a portion of my blood echoes to purchasing them. And if you must grind, it's not that bad. Only real issue is that lamps don't respawn the map, so you have to kill yourself or use the consumable hunter's mark.

My real gripe with bloodvials is that they're incredibly overpowered. They heal too fast and your max stock is way too high. 20 estus was too much in DS1 and a good thing the sequel did was lower it. I think the max is 12 in 2? In 3 I think it's 15, but you have to make the choice how to divide them between regular and Ashen estus. Having the DS1 amount of heals, but they activate 3 times as fast is just fucking bonkers. Either the amount should have gone down, or using them should give you an animation that limits, or annuls, your movement for a 4x times as long duration. Or honestly, both at the same time.

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DavidZ2844 posted...

I disagree on this point. I got my ass kicked so hard and so many times on Bloodborne more than any of the other FromSoft Souls games, by a mile. So I think its easily the hardest of them all (I havent played Sekiro though).

But idk that could be just me.

Incredible game though. It would probably be my favorite FromSoft game if if I didnt have such nostalgia and favoritism of Dark Souls 1 (which is probably my favorite game of all time)

Imo, Sekiro is definitely their hardest one to date.

But Bloodborne is a close second, imo

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MutantJohn posted...

Imo, Sekiro is definitely their hardest one to date.

But Bloodborne is a close second, imo

i think sekiro is harder by circumstance, not having co-op and forcing a parry approach. i found parrying in sekiro to be a bit easier than DS3, but you just have shields and havels armor and the FUGS that kind've cheeses the system.

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MutantJohn posted...

Imo, Sekiro is definitely their hardest one to date.

But Bloodborne is a close second, imo

is sekiro a fromsoft game? If not it doesnt count

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I like the blood vial system. Granted, I've played through so many times that I'll usually just load up a false depth chalice dungeon to score a few hundred thousand blood echoes and dump them all into blood vials and not feel bad about it lol

My first time through it was kind of shit grinding the beasts on the bridge for vials

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sabrestorm posted...

is sekiro a fromsoft game? If not it doesnt count

It is! Imo, their best game too

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LeEpicGamer posted...

Why the fuck I gotta grind for blood vials? Why make them a consumable again like DeS when the Estus Flask system was genius. And since you can hold 20 you can just tank lots of boss fights. The bloodletting mechanic is cool but not if it led to this

And also having to go to the hunter's dream to level up. Wouldn't be such a big deal if loading times weren't god awful. If it is remastered for PS5 the improved loading times will be a god send.

Anyways I love the game but it's like 2 steps forwards and 1 step back from DaS in some ways it really just shouldn't be

Every game since after DeS has been more like 1 step forward and 1 step back. Make one aspect better, make another aspect worse.

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Whats the criticism? You ran out of Vials? You gotta buy more? Youre out of Echoes? All your Vials are in your storage box? I dont understand. Do you not want resource management to be a factor endgame? Does this not translate to hunting for you?

Sekiro works a LOT differently from Souls too, so I think its a little funny if anyone tries to use it as a supporting argument for Estus always being better than Vials. Vials are actually cool because its more or less the Moon Grass from Demons Souls, but geared more for the mechanics Souls itself & leaning less on the classic Low/High potion formula that just doesnt really translate too well at the end of the day.

Big thought here is about Humanity & Soul Gems, and the levels of bullshit Dark Souls used to make up for all the healing ability they give you. Not to mention fucking Miracles, man. What most people think of as Dark Souls style healing really only happened in 3, where you had to rely almost entirely on Estus to heal. Every other game has a system more like Blood Vials, only throughout the game you collect more Estus charges until your flask is complete and thats pretty much all you need. To a lot of players, the game tossing you 3 free heals and basically saying good luck feels like a slap in the face and BAD game design