I've played the game around seven years ago for the first time on my laptop and enjoyed my time a lot. Back when I got my first PS4 around a year later (2017ish), I got the game on there too but ended up not playing the game at all because I couldn't get used to the controller gameplay.
A couple of days ago, I started the game up again for lack of other games to play right now and have, as many probably, started a low-chaos ghost run. For the uninitiated, "ghost" means that you go through the entire game without being detected once. To achieve this, you're either cracked at the game and know what you're doing, or you resort to save scumming, which I also did.
However, I seem to have fucked up in the last mission (saving Emily, getting rid of the two Pendleton twins) and have been detected somewhere without noticing it and loading a previous save. When I ended the mission and was shown the statistics, I contemplated starting the mission over because I didn't ghost through to mission but opted not to.
While I do feel kinda bummed about "messing up" the achievement, I feel like this'll prove to be beneficial for my overall experience with the game since I won't have to keep reloading the same passages for 15 times just to get some arbitrary achievement that doesn't even bear any meaning.
I'll still go for a low-chaos run (not killing anyone), but I won't be bothered to keep reloading saves now: If I'm detected, I run away and hide and take the game on naturally.
How have your experiences with the game been? Which playstyle do you prefer? What games did you ruin for yourself in hindsight because of save scumming?
I really appreciate how FromSoft does achievements--theirs are the only games I ever really go for the 100%, since that usually entails simply playing and mastering all the content that they have prepared. Achievements like "beat the whole game under x arbitrary condition" or "get this super specific scenario to happen" just aren't that interesting to me, but "beat every boss, collect every important item, visit every area" I find very satisfying.
Actually, these "collect x item" or "x amount of y item" do kinda piss me off in FromSoft games. I went for a platinum for both Sekiro and Bloodborne and in Sekiro's case, you had to grind out XP to get all the skill upgrades I think. It took me like 2h of just pure grinding some path when Ashina castle was burning even though I was on NG+2 or something. It was awesome to experience all of the content as in beating all the major bosses, seeing all the endings and stuff but that achievement pissed me off a little.
In Bloodborne, most of the achievements were fine iirc. Getting all of the runes (?) and weapons was a little annoying though since some of these were a little harder to get and require my reading their wiki entries.
I definitely had a spreadsheet for when I 100%'d ds1