^ Sums up the sheer enduring brilliance of this game.
Like has been mentioned earlier, everyone has their own individual bosses that they nearly suffer multiple aneurysms trying to get past, while more or less cruising straight through others that stumped many gamers of the same skill level. The choice of weaponry, and how exactly they are then upgraded and utilised in certain conditons, is clearly extremely significant and elaborately calculated into the game design. Lots of times, simply swapping your fave hurting-tool - that you've naturally, obliviously pumped all your blood stones into levelling up - for one that you don't fancy so much but which is more suited to the task at hand, immediately has you making notable progress in a previously-insurmountable battle, and ultimately reaps dividends.
It doesn't scream it out at you, it doesn't hold your hand and tell you directly, it pretty much leaves it to you to decide to stop being so idiotically stubborn and finally try another method. There are likely also very slight, subtle statistical advantages & disadvantages to what type of build you give your character when you first create them, which unconsciously informs the way you play with them as you get used to controlling them and winning/losing specific types of fights - it's not blatantly obvious, but it's just there hiding in the numbers. So playing from scratch after completing it, but this time with a completely different sort of protagonist with a different weapon preference, can be a totally different experience to the first time out. I just love that, and it's great for roleplay purposes too; you can really get absorbed into this world, imagining for your character a fully fleshed-out life within it. The graceful gestures you can use to communicate with other invited/invading players, the consistently immesive way everyone speaks including the text messages left lying around, it's all just so boss.
Not gona lie, I breezed past Cleric Beast on my first try, but Gazza's Dad was a real fucker for me early in the game. Took a good while for me to clock precisely when to wait & bait him and when to go in close and aggressive; he battered me to death sooooo many times in that hairy tantrum mode after I'd done an expert job on him in his man-form. And of course, his poor little daughter's music box came as a nice surprise as a disarming appeal to his last dim flickerings of humanity... that has to be one of the coolest, saddest, most masterfully-integrated gameplay+story elements I've experienced in recent times - in the midst of this mad brutal dust-up, a wordless but telling insight into the loving person this bestial foe used to be, from the sheer pain and torment inflicted by the heart's bittersweet memories. It looks so cool, your dapper Hunter just strolling about partway through this graveyard fight casually cranking this mechanical music box while the beast holds his head in his hand and screams, and then you think about the tragedy of that whole mini-subplot later and feel a bit sad for him. Subtle, powerful storytelling stuff, and having it happen in your particular game experience is all about being in the know.
You're in the know, right?
