Disassemble lost of the loot for materials at the blacksmith, apparently they will come in handy later.

I stay under 30% equip load for fast dodges. Avoiding damage is at a premium because limited heals. Of course when you do get hit it's bad.

Ginchiyo best waifu. I am in a poisonous silver mine.

I went with duel swords and that blade on a chain thing.

I have literally no clue what I'm doing. More or less randomly assigning skills and stats. **** the bat bitch. Haven't gotten her below 75% yet after like 20 attempts.

Same

Game is so tilting lol

Sword and spear for me. Finally beat bat bitch. This is so fun and I'm still so bad. So used to DS that I never do a ki burst.

Bat woman took me like 25 tries prob but I was also taking more risks because the semi-hidden shrine let me just sprint right to her in like 30 seconds.

I think the biggest mistake I make so far is saving my Living Weapon for too long. Also I just mash buttons with Living Weapon and don't fully understand the mechanics of it yet.

Does this game have an element of randomness when it comes to gear? I've only been watching a let's play on youtube so I don't quite understand the game or the difficulty of it. I also don't have a PS4.

Also, what is the penalty for dying? I saw the guy die in the first 20 minutes of the game and he just respawned at the altar thing and went back and refought the same guy.

I know in Demon Souls that you lose all of your souls and have to go back to pick them up, but I didn't see that in this game.

I chose axe and dual swords. Mostly use the axe still, tho I have tried spear and single sword at various times (usually when stuck).

Beat Batlady last night with Axe, was at least 20 tries of not more like 30 but in the end got it with no buffs used and elixirs to spare Tried every weapon on her trying to find something OP, in the end nothing worked and had to master dodging. Dropped my weight load to 29% which I think helped, reckon that allowed me to use high stance axe with a similar dodge speed to medium load low stance.

edit: IFX - yes diablo-ish random loot, and yes when you die you lose your souls (and spirit animal) and need to go collect them. Die again and the souls are gone forever, the spirit animal returns with his super meter empty (he was guarding them). Die when you don't have your spirit animal and any souls you were carrying are instantly lost.

This game

Just left the first region.

Got potential to be the legit best game I've ever played.

Yeah, adding Diablo levels of loot to a DS game is pretty much as good as it gets for me.

Great. Was hoping to skip this or at least wait a while as I have a few games backlogged and am addicted to TLOU Factions multiplayer right now (late to the party, saw a few people mention it was great) - and now posters from the DS threads who's opinions I value are saying this is must buy. Have a feeling I'm about to have a lot less spare time...

3rd Main Mission

I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.I don't want to buy this game.

I'll probably buy this game.

I'm literally at this point right now...with the Switch not out for another 2 and a half weeks and my right thumb going under the knife at that time so I won't be able to play it for a few weeks anyway....possibly looking for a game to fill the void.

I'm delaying buying this game so I can accomplish some things the rest of the month, but I did some reading and apparently magic is extremely important- helps make bosses much easier

Picked it up tonight.

Remind me never to buy a game a week after launch again. Two Gamestops, a WalMart, a Target, and a Fry's later, I found a Best Buy with a copy.

"Why didn't you just buy it digitally?"

I buy my video games in a store, shrink wrapped in a little box, the way God intended dangnabit.

Started this last night. Have no idea what I'm doing with skills and abilities. Pretty sure I'm using only about 20% of my abilities. Spear ftw so far.

There is apparently an item that lets you respec, I'm sure it's limited/expensive, but that should alleviate any fears of building your guy wrong.

Book of Reincarnation lets you respec. First one is 10,000 from the blacksmith, next one is like 50,000 then 100,000.

The Ocean Roars Again is one of my favorite levels in any game. Love the design, love the crazy ass boss, amazing.

Random Tip: your attacks will not run you off the edge like in DS. You can walk off, but attacking glues you to the edge. Extremely important during TORA boss fight. Abuse this mechanic.

I'm in the third region and I still never remember to Ki Pulse. I took half days at work this week to have more time to play.

Pretty much have played non-stop outside of sleep and work.

Just finished the 2nd actual mission (the cave with the bat lady). Absolutely loving the game so far. I can def. see the bat lady being most people's first major roadblock. Only took me 8 or 9 tries, but damn, she kills you so quick if you mess up even a little.

As a huge DS/Bloodborne fanboy I was worried I would feel like I was playing a DS ripoff but they really do a great job of making it its own game with its own feel. It's much more "video gamey" than DS is. The way the loot drops, the mission system, the speed you can run, etc. and that's a great thing IMO. This game has way more of an action/arcade feel to it.

Replayability on this is going to be ridiculous. With all the titles to chase, the Twilight/Way of Strong difficulties, min/maxing all your gear and all the weapons, there are going to be people who put many hundreds of hours into this game.

I hope they add PvP at some point. I got to the bat lady two nights ago but haven't had a chance to play since.

That was my first thought as well, Cotton.

Replayability off the charts.

I also think it's an elite speedrunning game because of the levels setup.

Played my first Twilight Mission last night:

I just made it to the third area. So far I'm loving the combat. It really scratches that Bloodborne with the fast pace and the ability to switch between movesets on the fly. Boss design in main missions has been mostly good, too. I like the setting. Hopefully they can keep coming up with levels that contrast visually with each other.

As for negatives, so far the story isn't doing anything for me. If I'm running around Sengoku era Japan killing mythological creatures, I don't want to play as a gruff Geralt lookalike. As for the apparent villain of the piece,

I have some worries going forward. I feel like the loot system has already gotten old. They recycle basic enemies quite a bit more than From's games. That, and the relative lack of unique movesets might limit replayability.

I suck