Why do I write an article such as this without tangible tips?
Well, while others can tell you a lot of technical stuff like how to get insight or where to grind for blood or what pattern to use against a boss, your real enemy in any game like Bloodborne is yourself. The reason for this is that we have a few attitudes that work against us and that are very apparent in a game like this, so today we will see some of them so you can spot them and make your own adjustments, unless you want to keep dying and dying, ad nauseam without an apparent logical reason. Now without any more introduction let's begin the list.
Expecting a land-slide "photo finish" victory = discouraging death.
I personally had this problem and while it is sometimes kind of obvious, it is quite hard to neutralize. We sometimes just expect to land a lucky combo and just rally to the finish. It is like playing a baseball game, scoring 15 runs early and just continue on cruise control until the end of the game. The truth is that this will almost never happen in Bloodborne (or any souls game), so you have to accept this or else you will get very discouraged each time a boss lands a hit on you basically letting yourself die because you didn't thought that you could fight back and win. Most of the time it takes some Rocky style "go the distance" struggle before you can fell a beast and survive. It will not always be pretty or easy, but it is very satisfying.
Thinking that grinding will make bosses a breeze = deserved death.
This one may be an attitude that newcomers could find themselves with. The grinding and leveling in Bloodborne is faster than any of the other related games, but that doesn't mean that adding up stat points will make it a breeze. The game is mostly based on dodge and attack mechanics, so even if your stats are high, if you are not fast enough when playing a boss you are going to get hit a lot and die regardless of how much you "enhanced" your character. Don't get carried away in a grind fest for too long and focus on your strategy.
Not playing with a healthy dose of confidence = unexpected death.
For both newcomers and those who have a history with the Soul games, it must had been pretty weird to keep taking damage while you were playing as careful as possible. This is because the game is designed in a way that it rewards you for been aggressive, but penalizes you if you are too shy when attacking. For example, I began my game with the Cane weapon. At first I was having problems with normal enemies because the cane has less attack power than the other weapons, but after a while a discovered that the real problem was that I wasn't attacking with authority, instead I was just trying to poke the monster to death (which doesn't work that well with crowds), so now I play Bloodborne just like I would play Castlevania and the change in my survival rate was impressive. Your #1 rule when fighting an enemy in Bloodborne should be that if the creature hesitates then you hack and slash it to oblivion.
Ignoring the potential of items = unnecessary death.
This one goes for those of you out there that are just ignoring the good assortment of items that you have in Bloodborne. Survival isn't always limited to attacking and dodging as sometimes a well placed item can be a lifesaver or just make a fight a lot easier (for example try some simple stuff like throwing an oil pot on a monster and then using a Molotov to set the thing on fire). Later on you will find a lot of good items that will serve you well in your fight against the hellish hordes and some of these items even have a logical connection to the big bad boss itself (like a certain music box).
Seen armor as a simple fashion statement = fabulous death.
Armor sets in Bloodborne are quite cool, but they have stats and some of them go a little further than just a cool looking set. If you simply change sets for their visual appearance then you must surely be a dodging master or at least finish boss fights really fast, because the type of attributes your armor has sometimes play a significant role in whether you live or die and it also applies to some normal enemies in the game. For example that church gear that doesn't look as badass as you would had liked is really good at resisting poison and that my friends is quite useful against some annoying beast that lurks around Old Yharnam.
Wrapping it up:
I know that the things mentioned as tips on this article can look kind of obvious to some of you, but I know that others may be going like "damn it, I do that all the time". The cool thing is that changing those attitudes can really take your skills up a couple notches not only on Bloodborne, but on any game that requires skill and quick thinking.
