The Shadows of Yharnam are a strange encounter towards the middle of Bloodborne that caps off the Forbidden Woods with a brutal boss fight that can quickly overwhelm new players. This comes not only from players being outnumbered, but also by the RNG fest that dominates the later phases of the unique Shadows of Yharnam fight.
Developer FromSoftware has had plenty of experience with boss fights that include two or more enemies showing up to turn the tables hard against the player. To that degree, Bloodborne continues that trend with the Shadows of Yharnam by also making the fight harder the more the player manages to whittle down the group.
Three Varied Enemies in Bloodborne's Gank Squad
One aspect that helps the Shadows of Yharnam make their mark among multi-boss encounters is the way that each of the individual variants offer different challenges to the player. This mostly comes down to the ways that the three variants fight, with the sword-wielder coming in to attack from close range, while the other two tend to favor Bloodborne's powerful ranged magic from a distance. It creates a tense arena, where the player has to keep track of what all three enemies are doing at once, even if it appears that the two they aren't currently targeting appear to be out of attack range.
This also opens up for many different strategies, where players can decide which of the three Shadows to take down first, depending on what will be easiest to deal with later on into the fight when they power up in the later phases. For example, taking on the sword-wielder immediately might take the group's melee option out before their attacks start coming more aggressively and with extra damage towards the end. However, this also means that the more evasive enemies remain, forcing players to hammer even harder on Bloodborne's dodge-centric combat in order to chase down these long-range variants.
Of course, much of this strategy often falls apart towards the end of the fight, once only a single Shadow of Yharnam remains. This is because the three phases of the fight ramp up the difficulty, in preparation for when the player finally manages to even the odds by reducing it to a one-on-one encounter like the majority of Bloodborne's boss roster. Most notable is when the final Shadow kicks off the third phase by summoning a series of giant snakes that turn the fight from a tense game of keeping track of multiple targets and sources of damage into an RNG fest that can kill the player because it decided to.
Dealing With an Unfair Final Phase in FromSoftware Games
Among the FromSoftware fandom, the most common defense fans have of the developer's brutal difficulty is how titles like Bloodborne are difficult, but fair. However, while that could be argued for plenty of encounters, that isn't exactly the case for the final phase of the Shadow of Yharnam fight, as the snakes the boss summons attack wildly and can appear from all over the map. This means that it is impossible to actually keep all the points the snakes can attack from in view at once, since they can spawn anywhere in the arena.
That said, there is an easy way to circumvent this phase by keeping a specific Shadow of Yharnam alive and attacking them in a specific way to get them stuck in a loop that keeps them from summoning the snakes. Currently, the best method found by players involves leaving the candlestick Shadow alive until the end, and striking them with a single light attack at a time before letting them dodge away and chasing them down repeatedly. It's a cheap tactic, but sometimes that is the best way to fight against the most frustrating aspects of FromSoftware design, including the rare underwhelming boss phase.
Bloodborne is available now for PS4.
