I feel like From Software was pretty damn mean to make the first enemy you encounter be another hunter, especially since this is the first bit of content a lot of people will be playing after several months of downtime. Fortunately, it has only been a few weeks since I last played, so after a little bit, I got the hang of the controls again and was killing monsters as easily as I was before.

The setting is fantastic. I love exploring the twisted nightmare version of the Cathedral Ward during the day, and I love that there are plenty of short cuts and secret to discover all over the place.

As for difficulty, I'm finding it's actually kind of easy, which surprised me, since the Dark Souls 2 DLC was such a significantly huge difficulty spike relative to the rest of the game. However, I played the shit out of Bloodborne, getting a platinum trophy, and I'm level 204 on NG+, so that may account for why I'm having such an easy time with things. Both of the bosses I fought so far (Ludwig and The Living Failures) took me three tries each. I appreciate the fact that the bosses aren't ALL at the end of the DLC though like it was in Dark Souls 2, and so far have been pretty evenly spread out. The enemies in the meantime so far have been a pretty interesting mix, one in particular I realized was blind after a while, and as long as I walked, they wouldn't notice anything. Made clearing out the areas with them in it significantly easier once I figured it out.

So far I'm really digging it, and I'm really looking forward to playing more of it tomorrow.

I'll be picking this up sometime in the early year, or whenever I'm through with Fallout. I'm at the beginning of NG+ so I guess I'll have to fight my way to DLC-Ville.

My nephews have my PS4, but the Quick Look seemed disturbing and gnarly and tense as hell. Can't wait to play it.

I still think this is one of the best trailers of the year, with absolutely amazing music.

I'm enjoying it, it's more Bloodborne. I really want to play with the new weapons but I'm not sure anything will be able to compete with my beloved axe. I'm only about an hour in and on NG+ but so far the difficulty seems about on par with the rest of the game (though I think I'm a bit over leveled). I'll be playing more tonight for sure.

First boss is crazy over tuned for NG+8 relative to the other bosses, easy enough on early NG+'s though (beat it like 5-6 times for other people and did 70-80% of the damage with Beast Claw). Third boss is the shit and second area is creepy as fuck. Visually gorgeous, as always Bloodborne totally demolishes every other game this year in terms of looks.

I believe I've used 6 or 7 different weapons so far; lot of reasons to vary it up.

I've been using the Boom Hammer here and there with my secondary character and it seems pretty good at wasting weaker enemies. I got through the Forbidden Woods one-shotting those smaller tangles of snakes no problem. However, you kinda want to have the explosive part primed at all times since it has a bit of a wind-up and can't really stunlock foes. Haven't touched the DLC content itself, other than grabbing that weapon and the heavy whip/cleaver thing.

Also, did they remove the bag guys who abduct you if they kill you? That might not be a DLC thing, but I recall there being one outside the grand cathedral and one in the forbidden woods. I would've liked to grab the Tonitrus earlier, since I'm actually using a strength-based character this time.

I'm definitely thinking about getting this, I like Bloodborne a bunch. I've heard the DLC is really hard, but can anyone that's played a bunch of it tell me if a lot of it is with the constantly respawning bell maidens, or the place with poison everywhere. I'm really not into doing anything like that again.

I haven't made it to the first boss yet. I started a new playthrough and went to the area when it unlocked (about level 30) and was promptly ejected back to the main game by the first enemy. I've been periodically checking back throughout the game, and made it to a big shortcut, but it still seemed a bit off even after beating Rom in the main game (I haven't checked back since I just got enough mats to get a +9 weapon, so I feel like I might actually stand a chance now).

I really want that buzzsaw, but I expect it's after the first boss?

@random45 said:

I feel like From Software was pretty damn mean to make the first enemy you encounter be another hunter, especially since this is the first bit of content a lot of people will be playing after several months of downtime.

I dunno, seems like the right way to do it. An enemy that forces you to get your act together and relearn the mechanics if you forgot them. They're all over that area too, so for me they kind of acted as a "hey, you shouldn't really be here yet" warning when I first went there.

@gunstarred: I just finished the DLC. There are no special respawning mechanics, and only a single poison pool that is about twenty square feet in size.

@arbitrarywater: I think you have to defeat the Blood-starved Beast in order for the snatchers to appear.

@teddie: I'm pretty sure you find the saw in the first area, before the first boss.

Haven't reached the DLC yet, just started again on NG+

There are something like 12 weapons in the DLC, I figured having found like 5 or 6 would be most of them but apparently not.

I only had enough time to get past the first enemy. Love the scenery and the lighting! It's bright out!

Ah, that explains it. I wanted to do the thing where you go in Old Yharnam through the back door so I haven't fought the Blood-Starved Beast yet.

Coop4Dayz

I "beat" the DLC on my NG+ game last night after putting in probably 7 - 8 hours, but I still have a boss to beat and some exploring / quest completing to do so I can get all those new weapons. Excited to give some of them a try, I ended up just going through the DLC with just my +10 Hunter's Axe. All in all the DLC is great, and a couple of the bosses I bought were pretty incredible / frustrating.

The DLC has been incredible so far. Miyazaki, and his team have outdone The Tower of Latria IMO. The area after the first boss Ludwig is Phenomenal. The difficulty has been perfect. This DLC has everything the vanilla game should've had. I wasn't very pleased with BB in the first place due to it's lack of weapons, spells, build variety, and poor PVP etc. It sorely needed this content. The DLC has been constantly amazing me, and surprising me. It's amazing the stuff they pull off here. Absolutely brilliant level design, and very clever traps to name a few of the many stand outs. The DLC feels a lot more dynamic too.

Restored faith in Miyazaki. Can't wait to play more of this!

I was ready to give The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth the reward for best dlc of the year, but The Old Hunters has far surpassed my expectations. The new areas, the new weapons, the new bosses, even the the new music tracks, have all been fantastic. When I beat Bloodborne back when it came out I didn't feel much of a reason to play it again, despite enjoying it a fair bit. This dlc has completely rejuvenated my interest in the game. As an aside, I can't express how happy I was to see the last area in the dlc. What a great homage to The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Holy crap that first boss is hard on NG+

Took about 20 tries and co-op with 2 additional hunters to kill the first boss. Finally downed him, lit the lamp, then immediately got killed by the very next enemy.

10/10

It might have partially been because I stayed up all night to play the DLC as soon as it came out, but the first boss gave me quite a lot of trouble. I'm pretty confident I won't have nearly as hard a time on my second go-through though, feel like I have him down pretty nicely now. Loving the design on him as well, especially in that cinematic when he goes into his second phase. The second boss was kind of a let down though, I never really felt like I was in danger and just kind of wanted to get it over with quickly so I could move onto more interesting things. The third boss was really easy, I breezed through with just two deaths, but I still felt like it was a very fun fight with some cool visuals. Currently stuck on the fourth boss, haven't tried him since my launch all-nighter. Interested in seeing how well I fare against him with my batteries properly charged, my performance started getting pretty damn terrible as time went by. Managed to get him into his second phase twice though, so at least that's something. All in all, this has been a really cool DLC so far. Looking forward to running through it on my other characters as well.

@shinboy630 said:

The important part is you beat the boss lit the lamp. Best feeling in the Souls games.

First boss on NG+ with Blade of Mercy was... interesting. None of the bosses in the main game killed me more than twice, so let's just say this guy holds the record. Along with that random hunter walking around with the minigun.

If people are having trouble killing the two giants in the well here's a fun way to go about doing it:

The setup required is quite elaborate, but definitely a lot smoother than actually trying to fight them in those confines.

this DLC is amazing. so far im just after the third boss, and wow, some stuff in here is genuinely surprising. they packed this thing with so much good content that i'm giddy just thinking about returning to it.

Was just messing around with the whirligig saw and discovered holding down L2 while in 2-handed mode. It's pretty great.

I just beat the third boss, I LOVE the Gerhnam and Gascoigne fights, so it was a real treat when she was very similar to them. She was definitely the easiest boss I've fought so far (beat her on my first try), but it's still my favorite boss of the expansion at the moment. I haven't even played with any of the new weapons yet, so I have a lot of experimenting to do in the Chalice dungeons when I clear the DLC. I love the level designs so far, I love the huge amount of short cuts, and god freaking DAMN this is a great expansion. I also really appreciate how getting back to the bosses if you've died (of the three I've fought so far) is very quick and easy, taking at most 30 seconds to run back there after you've respawned.

This DLC is far exceeding my expectations.

I'm playing through the DLC with my NG++ character and I went into the DLC with max vials (600). I'm now down to 4. One of my only complaints with the main game was that it was very easy overall; you had to get deep into the Chalice Dungeons to find any real challenge. I'm happy to report that the DLC is kicking my ass right now. I'm glad that Bloodborne has continued the tradition of the Souls games where the truly challenging stuff for the fans is in the DLC. If you want more Bloodborne you absolutely need to pick this up.

As someone who never really wanted to play a dark souls game and bought bloodborne day one, I can say this has been the best time I've had with it yet. The main game was fantastic and all those chalice dungeons were nice but with the new scenery in the DLC its a breath of fresh air. With the addition of some friendly AI mechanics and paced out hunter type enemies, the quicker "knife-fight" fight style that this game introduced originally is now more predominate, considering that's something I was left with wanting more of by the end of the main game. Overall I'm happy with the amount of game given here and the price tag is also a pretty one. Though the Complete edition for $50 new at retail also seems like a real steal too.

The DLC is Artorias of the Abyss good. I won't know if it surpasses the Dark Souls DLC until I finish it, but man did that first boss kinda blow my mind. It surpasses the Artorias fight with the 2nd phase reveal.

I recorded my victory and I was extremely hyped when I finally won. Volume yelling warning if you watch it.

So I'm about to start a completely new run to play the DLC, should I run through the entire game (without killing Gehrman) or should I jump into the DLC right after killing Amelia ? From what I saw of the QL it seems like I would just get completely shredded if I went for it that early, or was Brad playing on NG+ ?

@ares42:Brad was playing NG+, but you still probably won't be leveled enough right after Amelia on a fresh run. DLC is apparently ~SL65'ish; after Amelia you'll probably be ~30.

Speaks for itself:

I'm not even angry to be honest, I would be if I was solo but eh, makes for a cool video. It's sort of novel being one of the best players in the world at a fight and still somehow not having killed it in my game (killed it for other people of course). Most people just straight up aren't ready for the damage and die immediately so summoning isn't even necessarily beneficial, but it does seem to make the Boss' AI more fun to deal with after the buddies die. The second phantom in my game (love09re) died within the first 15 seconds of the fight the other few times I summoned him; interesting contrast. Again weapon choice and flexibility matters here a lot more than it would in a Souls game. I'm curious how much HP he had in total.

I enjoyed the DLC a lot, it had a lot of content additions and fixed the weapon variety issue that the main game had it also had some fantastic bosses (particularly the first one.) Sadly it was very short, I finished everything except Laurence in about 3hrs 30mins. Normally I'd be fine with this but in my region I had to pay $30 which is simply too much for the content provided as I see it. It has however inspired me to bother to actually go through and finish the chalice dungeon stuff so I can upgrade and try the variety of new weapons.

Very solid DLC in general just too short and costs too much for me specifically.

by the time i was exploring the area after the first boss, i decided that this DLC was really fucking good. there are some really great moments that feel like you haven't seen them before in a souls game

I'm level 85 and not on NG+, will that help a bit with the hunters that this DLC seems full of? Hunters were my biggest issue in Bloodborne.

@honkalot: That's a good level for the DLC. More importantly, though the vast majority of hunters aren't actual hunters, but glorified mobs - they have far less hp, respawn, and can't dodge. They have trick weapons and guns, but that's about it.

@milijango: And most importantly, most of them don't heal. Except that guy with the chaingun.

Okay that's excellent, then I'll probably start going on it this weekend. Thanks!

Turns out Laurence is pretty difficult at max difficulty as well, whoda thunk it. Three cheers for Living Failures.

I've just realized I'm at the final boss and I'm kind of shocked, kept hearing Jason or Brad or someone estimate 8 hours and nah it's maybe half that (depends on your own personal play speed/style of course).

Doesn't use batteries. It's wired into the house's electricity. It will NEVER stop beeping, which is good.

I've been playing for around 8 hours and I've still only killed 1 boss. Low health and NG+ means most things kill me in 2-3 hits. Doesn't help that the past 2 hours or so have been spent trying to kill Laurence with his 1 hit potential. If you run the DLC on the normal game or you have plenty of health you'll probably breeze through most stuff since enemies simply wont have the potential to kill you instantly.

I'll pick this up once I finish Fallout 4. Probably next month. Was going to wait for a price drop, but they gave out that 10% off and I had a $10 credit on my account from a prior promotion. So I bought it. Just waiting to dig into it. Also just realized I am on like NG+7 or 8 like FCD. That should be fun. I haven't played in like 6 months.

My first thought after not having played Bloodborne for months and months... Damn this frame rate is terrible. I didn't get very far. Died on gatling gun hunter. Try to get through it. I got two of the new weapons and they seem cool but it feels pointless to use them unless I can level them up fast.

The final boss is very fun, and it's so thrilling when he goes into his second phase at half health. My heart was beating so quickly when I killed him - very fun fight. I think I died to him six or seven times before I finally managed to get him down.

The optional boss on the other hand... Oh boy... Some of its attacks can almost one hit you if you're hit directly, and for the life of me I can't get the damn timing down. I'm used to bosses attacking much quicker than this, and his attacks are brutal if you get hit. What makes this boss by FAR the worst boss of the whole expansion though, is that if you die, you have to fight through several groups of enemies and wait through two triggered events before you can get to him. It makes it such a freaking slog to get back to him, and then it's heart rending when you die almost immediately upon getting in there. The other bosses had shortcuts that opened up right to them, so I don't know WHY they didn't do the same here. It just makes the fight a thousand times more frustrating than it really needs to be. Still haven't beaten it yet, but I'll get there eventually once I get the stupid timings down.

The expansion so far had been excellent, and then I hit this roadblock, and it's making me start to get very frustrated. I think I've died more to this boss than all the other bosses in the DLC combined.

Ok, done trying to kill him for the night, getting too frustrated. I seriously wish the corpse run wasn't so fucking stupid. I just want to have another crack at the boss, and having to fight a hunter and that giant monster, along with the other half-dozen or so weaker enemies along the way just makes this no fun at all. Yeah, it's optional, but come on...

@random45: I'm not a fan of the optional boss run either, but you shouldn't be fighting anyone on the way there. You should be quickstepping past the hunters (they always start with gunfire), and sprinting past the beasts. You can also lure the giant out of the doorway and he won't be able to catch up.

Side note: has anyone tried the Church Cannon? Is it the same as the regular Cannon but with different stas?

@golguin:I get what you're saying but I don't see self imposed challenges to extend the length as a valid argument. I went in at the recommended level (well 1 above I was lvl 66, 25VGR, 20END, 40 SKL and 15 ARC) and I had a good challenge against Ludwig and Orphan of Kos. Both required a good 3 times each but Living Failures and Maria I beat first try. The standard enemies between the bosses weren't challenging at all and the amount of area that you had to cross between the bosses was quite short.

The most value for me has been the large number of new weapons added which makes replays of the main game far more interesting. It's a shame that they didn't scatter them in the main game because it would've made for exploring the main games world a lot more interesting.

I'm fine with the length of the DLC, just not when its coupled with the extra $10 I have to pay.

I had that exact same reaction to the frame rate. Bloodborne is the only console game I've touched this year so it's rough going back to the sub 30fps. If you keep playing the DLC you get A LOT of new blood stones to upgrade those weapons real quick.

Beat it. An excellent expansion. Fromsoftware yet again shows they are king with SP DLC. Artorias of The Abyss I probably prefer a bit more since I think Artorias fight alone is worth the price of admission. Best fight in a souls game. The DLC also kind of molds perfectly with the vanilla game.

Maria was great though, but man once you get her weapon it's such a let down. It should've had the blood buff like the Chikage, as it's similar to what she does with it. Ludwig is pretty great for that incredible surprise midway. The final boss is superb even though it's design is pretty bare-bones. The last area, and the other two bosses I didn't mention I felt were pretty mediocre especially since one is just a reskin. I felt 20$ is a bit much for this, but I really enjoyed it.