Underneath my yellow skin

Bloodborne my first and last official plat

Yesterday, I wrote about Bloodborne and about different aspects of accessibility. Today, I want to write more about Bloodborne, but let’s talk about the plat this time. This is my first actual plat (given that PlayStation is the only platform to give actual plats), but it’s not my first time 100%ing a game. Which in itself is a misnomer because it’s about getting all the achievements, not doing everything in the game.

Side Note: There is a debate in the RKG Discord about calling anything other than the plat on PS a plat. Some people believe it is Not To Be Done, while others don’t think it’s a big deal. I normally call what I’m doing the not-plat, though not for that reason, but I don’t think it’s a big deal either way.

I am two trophies away from the plat (two endings) plus the Bloodborne trophy, which is the trophy for getting all the other trophies. I just did Mergo’s Wet Nurse last night on NG+ by myself with the Tonitrus, Executioner’s Gloves, and the last few swipes with my Hunter Axe. Shoutout to the Hunter Axe, which is a starting weapon, but it’s been my main all along. It’s a basic bitch, yes, but it does WORK. Plus, it’s got reach, which the Tonitrus is sadly lacking.

Side Note to the Side Note: There is a notorious boss in the Chalice Dungeons who is a plat stopper. Amygdala. She is also in the main game, but this is in an arena with limited room in which to run. Oh, and you have half-health is this whole dungeon. The Defiled Pthumeru Dungeon. So she’s not-so-affectionately known as Defiled Amy. I’ve watched people try to kill her and not have any success. She can one-shot you, and it’s such a slog of a fight. Supposedly, she doesn’t have much health, but it can seem like it takes forever.

There is a cheese, though, and I picked it up very quickly as I was just trying to do this as fast as possible. Which, by the way, made me upset when I realized that you don’t have to do all the Chalice Dungeons for the plat.

Anyway. The cheese is that you stand by Amy’s tail in a certain spot and she’ll jump straight up in the air. Your impulse will be to run away, but you need to stand as still as possible. She will land with her head right next to you (but 180 from where you are facing), and you can hit it a few times or with one heavy R2 attack before you’ll want to run back to her tail again.


If  you do this correctly, she  will continue to jump, and you will continue to get your one or two licks into her head. Do this enough, and her head will be able to be visceraled. You’ll have to avoid her purple pools of energy in the second phase of the fight as you run back to her tail, but other than that, if you do it perfectly, this is all you have to do. It’s called cheese, but it’s more like a tactic because it’s not easy. I got killed several times doing this because I messed up once or twice. Plus, if you’re not standing in the exact right spot, she’ll lash out her limbs and insta-kill you.

Honestly, though, doing the tactic really diminished this fight. I was able to do it in about a half-dozen serious attempts. It just takes patience and being able to course-correct if you don’t get the right spot immediately. There was always at least one time per run when Amy would flail, causing me to panic. I just got lucky, honestly, the time I beat her, that she didn’t kill me with the flail.

That was the dungeon you have to do. The final depth of that Chalice Dungeon, the Great Pthumeru Ihyll Chalice Dungeon, kicked my ass over and over again. The first boss, the Phumerian Descendant, was my worst nightmare. Human-sized, fast, and able to stun-lock me. Plus, he had two  scythes or something that he could throw at me that did huge amounts of damage. I watched the cheese videos, but I could not replicate what I saw. By the way, it really helps when the YouTuber puts what they are actually doing in the description. I had to summon a human (random, not an RKG slug) to help me, and he was fantastic. I have no qualms about it because I just wanted to get it done. Yes, this was a unique boss who isn’t in the main game, but to me, he was just an obstacle to my plat.

Then, it was on to the Bloodletting Beast. I had seen Rory of RKG fight him, and he had a not-easy time with him. I wasn’t as wary because I’m better at big beasts than with humanoids. And this was a very big beast. Since I watched Rory fight him, I knew that he was going to go all Sekiro in the second stage, lose his head, and have a centipede guiding him instead. And for whatever reason, that phase was much easier. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t swiping as much with his massive arms, but for whatever reason, I took care of him in fairly short order. Four tries, I think.

Then there was one. Yharnam, Pthumerian Queen. The only one you actually have to do in order to get the trophy. She’s part of the main story and you even get to see her in the actual game. Staring out into the distance with blood smeared down the front of her dress. It’s a disturbing sight, and it’s even more disturbing when you find out that she was being forced to couple with the Great Ones in order to get her pregnant with a Great One. She’s shackled so she can’t escape, and the blood down the front of her dress in the main game implies that she had a child and it was ripped from her uterus. Given that you fight Mergo’s Wet Nurse, well, you can draw your own conclusions.

All of this gives her lots of pathos, but she was so frustrating to fight. I could not get someone from the RKG Discord to help me (no one was available at the time), so I kept summoning the NPC, Queen Killer, who I kept alive with the Choir Bell when I could get it off in time and he didn’t run pell-mell somewhere else. One odd thing about this fight is that he and the clones could get caught on the altar in the middle of the room. That’s how I was able to keep him alive for most of the fight some of the times.

I had to turn up the sound effects and not watch a video as I fought her because the baby crying in the fight is a signal for one of the attacks. Which, honestly, is bullshit. She’s a humanoid who is both fast and has magicks that can attack from afar. I had so much trouble with her, and I was despairing of ever beating her.

The second or third-to-the-last time I fought her, I got her down to a pixel. Then she killed me, and I raged at the top of my lungs. Yes, it was my fault because I got greedy, but there was literally no red in her health bar when I died. I said many bad words and was thisclose to saying fuck it.

But I girded my loins and did it one more time. And I got her. And later last night, I got Mergo’s Wet Nurse. If I can get save-scumming to work, I just have Gehrman for one ending and choosing to let him kill me as the other, and I’m done. Then I can put the game down and never pick it up again. I cannot wait.

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