It has come to light that there is a way to dramatically reduce the difficulty of the game. Due some reason or another (people are assuming its a memory leak), keeping the game running for about a dozen hours in a row results in boss AI acting abnormally, reducing their move sets and such. The end result are bosses that would normally have multiple phases and a variety of different attacks constantly spamming the same moves over and over. The shadow trio won't do their snake thing, Vicar Amelia won't heal, etc.

This reddit thread has pretty good video demonstration of this glitch in action against one of the optional later bosses. I guess for anyone having trouble with nigh impossible chalice dungeon bosses, just keep the game running over night?

Isn't this some weird inverse of a PSA?

Ya. The hunter is starting to wake up from the dream, and the nightmares have less of an effect on him. Working as intentional.

Nah, just view it as a glitch warning: if you leave it on too long, a memory leak will cause very abnormal memory behavior.

When I fought the shadows, I definitely do not remember a "snake thing" and when I was down to the last brother he just kept dashing to his left, not even attacking. Sounds like I may have been victim to this glitch. Wanted to share the gameplay footage but once again my ps4 wasn't recording (seems to happen whenever something particularly odd occurs, bummer I couldn't upload it)

Does putting the PS4 in Suspend mode count? If it does, no wonder the fight against Vicar was so easy, beat her on the first try.

According to the reddit thread, suspend mode does indeed count.

No, Shadow of Yarnham are pushovers. There is only one of them that actually attacks you aggressively (the one with the katana), and one that attacks you if you get close to him (with the flamethrower). The last one just keeps dashing away from you whenever you get close (fireball guy) and he'll only do the 'snake thing' if there is some distance between you. So if you kept on him, he wouldn't do it.

Nah that fight is just really easy anyway. Beat it first go twice in a row (summoning).

@bollard: everything is pathetically easy with summoning. I did try suspend once with the game running and I can't really recall if I noticed a huge difference.

Some boss changes are definitely more obvious than others. Doing my own testing, while Cleric Beast seems to no longer do jump attacks at you and Father Gascoigne seems to just do the same one handed axe swing combo every time instead of moving around all that much, neither are as blatant as the differences in the Logarius fight shown off in the reddit thread.

This is disappointing. I thought the, uh, leggy boss (on mobile so I can't get spoiler tags to work) was particularly easy last night. I've been using suspend mode for a while, so that must've been it.

@turambar: Wait, what is logarius suppose to do? I thought it was really weird how Patrick had a lot of trouble with him when for me he did an easy to dodge projectile attack once, a jumping attack in his second phase and a basic 3 hit combo all the time.

Blood Starved Beast was super easy now i know why.

He has multiple projectiles and a melee combo in the beginning. At half hp, he gets additional melee attacks, starts using a flying through the air, and sticks a sword in the ground that summons waves after waves of throwing knives.

Hmm. I know I've had the game running for huge chunks of the day. And now I suspend it at the menu screen at night. Normally I'd think that'd reset it but I heard someone say it still did it when they switched characters?

Anyway, the only boss that was bugged was Shadows when the one guy just kept circle strafing and doing nothing else. Everything else has been as unforgiving as ever.. Just reached (a chalice dungeon boss) Bloodletting Beast last night and here we go again.. another ridiculous fight.

That is really strange to hear.

I've tested this with chalice dungeon bosses, and I see no difference what so ever. They are exactly the same as if I do a fresh boot of the game. So maybe this doesn't apply to chalice dungeons? Or at all. And everyone is just crazy.

I just saw the video and that is for sure not the Logarius I fought. Has all the moves you just mentioned, but the video just has him swinging.

Can this explain how some people are saying they had an extremely easy time with X boss and they just smacked them till they died?

Maybe this is what happened to Amygala or w/e theyre called when it kept jumping away from me with its back turned for the last third of the fight.

That feel when you're still on the Cleric Beast and you bought the game at launch.

Maybe, I wish my Logarius was like the one from the video. I beat him on my second try but he was constantly doing fast combos, jumping up off screen and divebombing me all while we fought in a tornado of knives that intermittently hit me if I wasn't behind cover.

I also didn't have any bullets like an idiot so the fight dragged on for a really long time. Somehow because all the bosses so far were large monsters I completely forgot that you could technically parry a boss.

Now I'm curious if I should just leave Bloodborne on suspend overnight before I face the final boss.

You never shattered the sword that was stuck in the ground? The sword was the source of the blade projectiles.

@golguin: didn't really think to do that, he kept charging me constantly.

Thhaaat explains why my bosses kept getting glitched.

In the early going, I was having a heck of a time with the Blood-Starved Beast. I would get him down to about a third or less of his health before he just steamrolled me. Put the PS4 in suspend mode and came back the next evening and tried it again. The first phase went normally and when the second phase started he seemed even MORE aggressive then usual. I was running away screaming and popping blood vials. Then I got a nice combo hit on him that brought him down to about a 5th of his health when he just kept rearing up on his hind legs and screeching. He just screeched over and over, no attacking or even facing me. Just screeching.

Killed him and moved on. Bastard.

@zevvion: Well the last brother that glitched out was the one with the flaming sword, I took out the fireball guy first as he was causing the most headache.

Watching footage of the Micolash battle, I definitely had the glitch going on there at the very least. In the first phase he did not attack at all and in the second it was all very easy to avoid and parry physical stuff -- none of his AOE magic or tentacle spell. Something might have been going on with Wet Nurse as well, but she seems super slow and predictable in any case so I'm not sure to what degree it was happening there.