Recently, I accomplished something I was skeptical I'd ever be able to do. I reached the final boss of Bloodborne. Of course, I know I'm far from the only person to have achieved this goal, but considering my sordid history with Bloodborne and Souls games in general, it's an accomplishment I'm proud of all the same.
If we want to be technical, I've actually beaten the final boss of Bloodborne, but this is only something I was aware of after doing a little research. The true final boss still eludes me and likely will continue to do so unless I mount a New Game+ run. There are essentially three bosses that can be considered the "final" boss. Once I've vanquished the second of those, I'll feel comfortable calling the game complete.
In the meantime, though, I decided that I wanted more Bloodborne and went ahead and purchased the Old Hunters DLC. Since the bosses included in that content are reportedly much more difficult in a NG+ run, I decided to forego my attempts at the final boss for now and delve into the Hunter's Nightmare.
I'm pretty impressed at just how much content that DLC has. I balked at first at the $20 price tag, but now that I've made my way through it, I'm starting to feel it's warranted. The base game contains a good variety of weapons, but the DLC feature a whole slew of new ones, including some new favorites like the Boom Hammer, a fiery war hammer, the Whirligig Axe, which is essentially a mace attached to a buzzsaw, and the Holy Moonlight Sword, an extremely fun greatsword that can fire off beams of energy with its heavy attacks. Although I'd spent the bulk of the base game alternating between the Hunter's Axe, Ludwig's Holy Blade, and the Logarius Wheel, I've now switched to using the DLC weapons full time just because they're so much fun to use.
I only have a couple of bosses left in Old Hunters, but based on what I've read, the worst is already over. Ludwig himself, the grotesque, mutated amalgam of horse and man, was possibly the hardest boss I've defeated in Bloodborne so far. Still, after many attempts and much familiarization with the Whirligig Axe, I was finally able to take him down with only a few blood vials left to spare.
Although I'm not entirely clear on exactly what the lore of Old Hunters entails, it makes sense that it takes place either in the past or in an alternate dimension of sorts. The initial area of the game is very similar to the streets of Yharnam around the Cathedral Ward, but its warped and twisted in ways that prevent you from accessing areas you might be familiar with. The chamber in which you encounter Vicar Amelia in the main game now contains an enormous corpse of what I assume to be an earlier vicar. The streets of Yharnam in the Hunter's Nightmare contain many aggressive hunters instead of the shambling plagued townspeople you might have encountered instead. These more aggressive enemies lash out at you with deadly whip blades and hammers, much in contrast to the placid attack patterns of the early enemies in the base game.
The first area of the DLC definitely took me some time, with several spots that served as huge stumbling blocks. The first area I really struggled with was the series of caves near the river of blood in which a Blood-Starved Beast lurks, surrounded by gnarled little minions just like the ones in Old Yharnam near the Church of the Good Chalice. He's not treated as a boss this time but if I had to guess, he has just as much health as the boss I fought hours and hours of playtime ago. When I first encountered him, I dropped down on him from above and wasn't prepared for such a tough encounter. The second time I got to him, I had trouble even making it there since I had to weave through at least a dozen annoying, blood-spewing flea demons.
After finally making it through that section, I hit another stumbling block when I came across two giants with Cthulhu-esque face tentacles, one of which carries an enormous blade, and the other a cannon. Individually, they're pretty tough, but together they're almost impossible to take down. After employing a strategy that involved an absurd amount of dodging, I finally made it past them, where I then encountered Ludwig, the toughest boss in the game so far. Of course this happened before I found a checkpoint and then I had to retread my steps once again.
It's been slow going, but I'm impressed at the progress I've made so far, even when I find myself repeating the same content over and over. It only makes it more satisfying when I really learn the steps to taking down these encounters and find a new lantern to make it easier to delve deeper into the Nightmare. I've since completed the following section in the Research Hall, which, although difficult, was significantly easier than the first part.
At this rate, I feel pretty confident that I'm going to be able to complete the game for good. I've defeated some of the most difficult bosses the game has to offer and even if it takes some time, I know I can take down the rest, even if the section I'm in now makes me want to tear my hair out.
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