Bloodborne is a tough game. It’s even tougher if you try to play it while missing out on a crucial mechanic.

That was the experience I had when I first attempted FromSoftware’s Lovecraftian action RPG back in 2017. Many of the game’s mechanics are easy to miss if you don’t look in the right place. Most are introduced in the Hunter’s Dream, and to get them, you need to interact with individual notes scattered along the cobblestone steps.

The first time I played Bloodborne, I either completely missed or just didn’t internalize the note that said you could press R3 to lock-on to an enemy. As a result, I went through at least 40 hours of the game without it. This isn’t as catastrophic as, say, missing the Z-targeting tutorial in Ocarina of Time, but using lock-on does change gameplay in some important ways. Obviously, it allows you to target an enemy so that the camera always stays on them no matter how much you move around. I was doing that manually, working overtime on the right stick to keep the enemy in my sights. I’m sure there were plenty of times during my first playthrough that I died because I couldn’t keep up with enemies who moved faster than I could move the camera.

The lock-on also changes your movements. Normally, pressing the circle button causes your Hunter to roll; if you hold it, they run. But, with lock-on enabled, that roll becomes a dodge. This is helpful, because it lets you quickly sidestep an enemy while staying focused on their movements. But, there are situations where a normal roll is more useful. If an enemy has a big sweeping attack, you often can’t sidestep it, and need to roll into them to avoid it.

As a noob, I was accidentally playing the way a more experienced Bloodborne player would. In the Souls community, lock-on is seen as a crutch for beginners that can have major drawbacks.

Coming back to Bloodborne, I’m realizing that there were areas where my belief that rolling was my only option helped me. I remember speaking to a friend when I was playing the game the first time who said that he had gotten stuck on Father Gascoigne — an early one-on-one duel against a monstrous Hunter — and hadn’t come back to the game since. Similarly, I’ve seen other players refer to Gascoigne as the game’s first major skill check. That always struck me as strange because I’m not very good at Souls-likes and I beat Gascoigne on the first try.

Returning to the game in 2024, after having played several other games in the genre, I actually had a much more difficult time with the duel. When I locked on, I found that Gascoigne was easily hitting me and pinning me into the corners created by the gravestones that dot the arena. And, when he transformed into his beastly form for the second half of the battle — a form with a longer reach and wider attacks — dodging didn’t do much good. It was only when I channeled my inner Souls novice that I was able to get past the fight. I headed in planning to stay away from the lock-on, and it was on that try that I finally made it through, rolling toward him to avoid his attacks and escaping AOE attacks more quickly because I didn’t need to disable lock-on before I could run.

It’s a case where less knowledge actually helped me. The rolls I thought were my only option in 2017 proved to be the better option in 2024.

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