Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Dark Souls with Narutofaggotry and bosses meaner than a Souls fan on prom night

[Graffiti canvas]

The combat is definitely a change. Stick with it and it'll come, just like in SoulsBorne. I feel that the difficulty ebbs and flows, with it flowing at the beginning of the game. Probably to discourage those who aren't dedicated.

I'm enjoying the game, definitely not rage quitting over it. I like the style of combining the Souls feel with stealth and maneuverability a lot.

It's like Assasin's Creed and Dark Souls had a love child and gave it up for adoption at birth to a nice old couple from Okinawa who raised it in a Shinto shrine up in the mountains.

 

[UE 558]

 

[BrunoMattei]

I had my own DarkSydePhil moment. I got to the Chained Ogre, and I bet you know where this is going. It took me about an hour or more to beat this fucker. I had two gourds and unlocked the shuriken attack with the arm. The whole grapple mechanic with that boss is a little confusing. Maybe I missed the ability I need to get something out of that? I have no idea. I even had to look up the fight on YT just to reaffirm if I was playing correctly or not. Turns out I was.

And I've played all 3 Souls games. Strength build. No shield. Never really cheesed any of the games aside from using the Dragonslayer Greatax in 3 and I don't know if that counts as "cheesing" or not. And this fucking mini boss kicked my fucking ass.

I did finally beat him but it was anything but fun. It felt like I was missing something or my character was underleveled. I only have 2 Prayer Beads so I still cannot level up my stats.

Edit: I do like this a lot more than Ni-Oh.

 

[MrTroll]

I just beat the Butterfly Lady after several miserable hours of attempts. Don't repeat my mistake and make this your first boss. Apparently there is another, easier boss accessible at the same time that drops an attack upgrade.

 

[Looney Troons]

As someone who does not care for the Soul’s games but has owned and played all of them, I am really enjoying Sekiro. Japanese menus and tutorials aside, Sekiro controls great, the difficulty feels just right, and the combat is hugely satisfying.

The biggest draw to me is that the game doesn’t feel clunky like the typical Soul’s fare.

 

[BrunoMattei]

As someone who does not care for the Soul’s games but has owned and played all of them, I am really enjoying Sekiro. Japanese menus and tutorials aside, Sekiro controls great, the difficulty feels just right, and the combat is hugely satisfying.

The biggest draw to me is that the game doesn’t feel clunky like the typical Soul’s fare.

Weird that you like this over Souls. But to each his own. Souls does have it's own weird quirks like how you jump and there's no climb (except in Demons) and no crouch (not that you ever need it). I do like the combat of Sekiro much more than Ni-Oh. Ni-Oh felt a little over-complicated.

 

[I-chi]

I'm stuck fighting that bow wielding faggot atop the castle. He's really a Father Gascoigne meant to teach you to parry on the fly, match blows and know when to break off. No tricks can really help you there.

I can get his first phase down pat, but Way of Tomoe is fucking me up hard.

So now I've broken off to go explore some of the other zones for minibosses and upgrading.

I wouldn't have this game any other way.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I got Prayer Beads and leveled up my stats. I made crouching more effective for stealth, I don't know if I'll regret that choice or not. I need to grab the upgrade that restores health upon a death blow. I've still yet to fight the guy on a horse.

I found a weird way to cheese the mini boss before you get to Lady Butterfly. I didn't activate the NPC helper, I instead stealthed it and made my way behind them, stealth killed a shield guy, they got aggro'd, I hide until they reset, rinse and repeat and luckily the mini boss had his back to me so that saved a lot of time. After I stealth'd him I then activated the helper.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I've made a little more progress and I'll be perfectly honest: I don't know if I like it or not. The biggest elements that are frustrating to me is the stealth.

A lot of the time, at least in the early game, you can just run by everything. The only time you need to stop and fight is when an enemy is guarding a boss wall. And I don't think I like the way the stealth is handled. A lot of the times you look everywhere, you look for the spot to get behind the guy(s), you proceed very carefully and... Fuck you, there's a guy in a corner you couldn't have seen who sounds the alarm. It just brings to mind: "Okay game, how did you intend for me to handle this situation? Do you stealth through some of it? Or just use stealth on that one enemy? Did you want me to run through it and wait for them to de-aggro? Did you want me to just bullrush and attack everything?" You don't know. And you don't know until you fuck up and try again, and again and again.

Edit: yes, I know you can upgrade your stealth skills but it kind of goes in the opposite direction. You upgrade your crouch so they can't see you as well but some of the time you can be really obviously in their line of sight and they just don't see you at all. Which makes me question why even have stealth at all?

Which brings to mind the second thing that's pissing me off:

Mini-bosses protected by smaller and more disposable enemies. Here's a new mini-boss with a unique pattern: "Cool. I'll try to the learn the pattern and... I get attacked from behind." Souls had situations like that but they happened when you weren't paying attention or you could still kite enemies to you one at a time. Or, the enemies surrounding the big could be killed in one or two hits. Sekiro is like "No, fuck you, you can't kite and you can't use items to kill the big guy. You just have to figure it out."

Another problem I have is purely a personal one but like I said earlier, I played a Strength build in the Souls trilogy. I never parried a single fucking time in all of the games. Not once. I never liked it and I liked how the game left that as an optional thing. The only time you ever have to parry is against Gwyn in Souls 1 BUT you could tank it with Havel's Armor or you use a really good shield. You were not forced to parry. This game say's "Fuck you. You HAVE to parry now." And it's rough for me.

 

[KingofNothing]

I got Prayer Beads and leveled up my stats. I made crouching more effective for stealth, I don't know if I'll regret that choice or not. I need to grab the upgrade that restores health upon a death blow. I've still yet to fight the guy on a horse.

I found a weird way to cheese the mini boss before you get to Lady Butterfly. I didn't activate the NPC helper, I instead stealthed it and made my way behind them, stealth killed a shield guy, they got aggro'd, I hide until they reset, rinse and repeat and luckily the mini boss had his back to me so that saved a lot of time. After I stealth'd him I then activated the helper.

That's exactly what I did. I tried it the straightforward way and the helper basically got mobbed to death because he ain't aggressive enough to deal with that many guys.

 

[MrTroll]

Another problem I have is purely a personal one but like I said earlier, I played a Strength build in the Souls trilogy. I never parried a single fucking time in all of the games. Not once. I never liked it and I liked how the game left that as an optional thing. The only time you ever have to parry is against Gwyn in Souls 1 BUT you could tank it with Havel's Armor or you use a really good shield. You were not forced to parry. This game say's "Fuck you. You HAVE to parry now." And it's rough for me.

I'm a never-parryer in DS too, so I had the same mindset you have, but the timing in Sekiro is much more forgiving. You can pretty much spam the guard button and still deflect a lot of hits (but not all of them, especially if they're coming rapidly), which is something you could never do in DS.

Anyway, I promise you that you will learn to deflect like a pro, or reach a nearly impassable brick wall at the Lady Butterfly boss fight. Unless you find some super-cheap way to cheese her, deflecting properly is totally mandatory for that fight, especially the second part.


For me personally the hardest thing to adapt to so far has been my instinct to evade heavy attacks and watch for openings to launch flurries of cheap hits (I always play dex in DS). The bosses and minibosses have way too much hp for that to work and can't be worn down by attrition. The game is really designed around breaking posture by attacking aggressively and deflecting (which often increases enemy posture bars more than actually attacking does), then following it up with deathblows. Traditional tanking or bob-and-weave tactics just won't work in this game.

 

[Zero0]

I've beaten the game twice now, there are different bosses to fight depending on what ending you go for.

Spoilers I guess, but I won't talk about anything to major

I enjoy the game, even though I still prefer the souls games, especially bloodborne.
I feel like you spend way too much time at the beginning area(You have to go trough it a bunch of times ffs), you do go to other places, but aside from the last area they are all pretty small, although the last area is gorgeous and probably my favorite.
The lack of build variety is also an issue, this game doesn't have the longevity of the other titles, there's not even customization options for how you look (why??), this mean that exploring feels kinda bad since most of the shit I find it's consumables I'll never look at again. The mini bosses almost all give you the same reward, aside from a few, overall the loot is very uninteresting.
Variety is what it lacks, you have one weapon and 10 shinobi tools, some are interesting, but most of the time they don't really serve a purpose (And have limited usage) and hitting people with your stick does the trick, you can't even get the more interesting upgrades until very late into the game and I don't think you can get them all in a single playtrough.
There's also no secrets that compare with the painted world or something, the game really doesn't want you to miss anything, you'll have ncps telling you about shit every minute, half the time they were telling me about shit I had already done, it's way more straightforward.
The combat arts are supposed to give the combat some variety, but again most of them are useless, and having them equipped at all can get you killed, the buttons for it are L1+R1, sometimes you'll want to do a normal attack and end up going on a crazy combo which gets you killed because a bunch of enemies have hyper armor.
I did find the ninjistu skills very useful and very cool, so I was sad that there are almost none.

Also I think the game is significantly easier than the souls games, yeah I took me a bit to get used to the parry timings, but they're pretty generous, besides the last boss, witch can go fuck itself, everything else is kinda meh difficulty wise.
Overall I feel From spent a lot of time developing the new combat system (Which is great despite some flaws) and everything else kinda suffered, there's less enemy variety(Enemies are reused a lot) so you end up aproching almost every enemy in the same way, there's less area variety and well no build variety really.

I hope the dlc can improve things a bit, and I'm glad fromsoftware is trying something new, even if I don't like it as much, there's a solid base here for a much better game imo.

 

[BroccoliBrain]

Played it for a couple of evenings and I’m one of the people who are finding it really hard to adjust. I’m just hardwired to see a HP bar and think ‘bring HP bar down to 0’ when really (with what my little experience tells me), the HP bar is a slower, shittier way to take off a red dot vs correctly concentrating on the Posture bar. I guess it makes sense they have both when I realise the dots are like Wolf’s but having the HP bars there are distracting me. Oh well, I’m salty, but at least I’m not a friend who’s already using cheats.

Went back to DS3 to take a breather and it feels slow as molasses in comparison.

 

[Крыса]

How's the story/lore in this game ? I have to say I'm a big fan of the mystical obscure bullshit of DS/Bloodborne, is Sekiro a lot more down to earth or are there still weird lovecraftian forces that I will know almost nothing about at play ?

 

[Slimy Time]

Played it for a couple of evenings and I’m one of the people who are finding it really hard to adjust. I’m just hardwired to see a HP bar and think ‘bring HP bar down to 0’ when really (with what my little experience tells me), the HP bar is a slower, shittier way to take off a red dot vs correctly concentrating on the Posture bar. I guess it makes sense they have both when I realise the dots are like Wolf’s but having the HP bars there are distracting me. Oh well, I’m salty, but at least I’m not a friend who’s already using cheats.

Went back to DS3 to take a breather and it feels slow as molasses in comparison.

Man, I'll tell you now, when everything starts to click, and you can parry consistently and almost always Mikiri on react, and start getting through minibosses in 3 or 4 tries, holy shit do you feel like a badass. Have spent my weekend playing the heck out of it.
The biggest things I learned that changed the way I played were:

1) The posture meter, in a complete 180 from every other Souls game, actually depletes faster when you are blocking. It's significantly faster so long as you are not being hit. You are far better off going in aggressively, deflecting/blocking attacks, then stepping back just out of range after an enemy combo and holding block. Not only are you protected from any follow up, but you can stay on the offensive when 2 seconds later you have an empty posture bar. This leads to...

2) Be aggressive, even if you are not doing damage. Enemies will block 2 or 3 attacks, then usually have an automatic response attack/combo. Learn that response timing and deflect it, it's much easier when you can get the enemy to give you a combo you already know the timing to. Minibosses will almost always have a perilous attack somewhere in that combo, or if not, will always have one or two combos that will have a perilous. Memorise it, and you will be able to almost always Mikiri, jump kick or dodge. If you are playing this passively, and waiting for them to attack so that you can react like Souls, or attacking aggressively and dodging away without thinking about attack timing like Bloodborne, you will have a miserable time.

3) Make liberal use of the prosthetic weapons. The cost is cheap as hell, and you can buy emblems at any idol for 10 each. Every time you spend money and have a little left over (50-100), go buy some emblems. They are there for a reason, and can interrupt attacks (especially the firecracker), or help you escape an onslaught (mist raven, umbrella, fire cracker). Also stealth enemies when you can (obviously).

Haven't gotten anywhere near to the end, and still face some rage inducing minibosses, but so far have been really enjoying this game. Does a good job of making you feel like a badass through the animations and deathblows/counters, which I never really got in the Souls games.

 

[MrTroll]

How's the story/lore in this game ? I have to say I'm a big fan of the mystical obscure bullshit of DS/Bloodborne, is Sekiro a lot more down to earth or are there still weird lovecraftian forces that I will know almost nothing about at play ?

Well, it's set in feudal Japan, so it doesn't have any overtly Lovecraftian aesthetics. It's not that grounded in realism though, apart from the location and the references to Buddhism. It's still dark fantasy, and still tells much of its story through NPC conversations, item descriptions, and environmental storytelling.

 

[Sissy Galvez]

I loved bloodborne, it’s my favorite souls game by far. How does this game compare in terms of difficulty, learning curve, and parrying difficulty?

I played the Nioh demo and didn’t enjoy it and I don’t really like stealth games. I found it really easy to parry in bloodborne. I wish there was a sequel to that.

 

[INVCTS]

I've made a little more progress and I'll be perfectly honest: I don't know if I like it or not. The biggest elements that are frustrating to me is the stealth.

A lot of the time, at least in the early game, you can just run by everything. The only time you need to stop and fight is when an enemy is guarding a boss wall. And I don't think I like the way the stealth is handled. A lot of the times you look everywhere, you look for the spot to get behind the guy(s), you proceed very carefully and... Fuck you, there's a guy in a corner you couldn't have seen who sounds the alarm. It just brings to mind: "Okay game, how did you intend for me to handle this situation? Do you stealth through some of it? Or just use stealth on that one enemy? Did you want me to run through it and wait for them to de-aggro? Did you want me to just bullrush and attack everything?" You don't know. And you don't know until you fuck up and try again, and again and again.

I've never encountered that myself, to be honest. If you're smart with rooftops, the grapple mechanic, and edge grabbing you can make your way around almost all enemies to get a back attack. Some areas, the riflemen for the general outside the main castle and the ninja on top of it do require you to aggro and runaway if you don't want a direct confrontation with multiple enemies, which I agree is this game's weakspot.

Also, something to note. You definitely want to fight or at least kill most of the enemies in the areas rather than run past them. XP is really important to get to the core skills, and I've seen a lot of streamers gimp themselves by just running past things.

Mini-bosses protected by smaller and more disposable enemies. Here's a new mini-boss with a unique pattern: "Cool. I'll try to the learn the pattern and... I get attacked from behind." Souls had situations like that but they happened when you weren't paying attention or you could still kite enemies to you one at a time. Or, the enemies surrounding the big could be killed in one or two hits. Sekiro is like "No, fuck you, you can't kite and you can't use items to kill the big guy. You just have to figure it out."

I don't like the design here either, but most bosses with multiple enemies are minibosses and generally they allow you to retreat. So while it's time consuming, stealth killing most of the adds and then one on oneing the boss after a stealth kill to put you on an even footing. After a while, the stealth kill even feels a little cheap.

Anyway, I promise you that you will learn to deflect like a pro, or reach a nearly impassable brick wall at the Lady Butterfly boss fight. Unless you find some super-cheap way to cheese her, deflecting properly is totally mandatory for that fight, especially the second part.

Lady Butterfly, depending on when you face her, doesn't fully require the deflection mechanic. If you time shurikans right, when she's backflipping onto a wire, you can knock her down and beat down her healthbar for a bit. After 5 or so instances she stops losing posture during the moments where you have to dodge like crazy. So you could conceivably wear her down with just attacks.

Not that I recommend it, the deflection mechanic definitely sells the aesthetic of the game.

 

[MrTroll]

I've never encountered that myself, to be honest. If you're smart with rooftops, the grapple mechanic, and edge grabbing you can make your way around almost all enemies to get a back attack. Some areas, the riflemen for the general outside the main castle and the ninja on top of it do require you to aggro and runaway if you don't want a direct confrontation with multiple enemies, which I agree is this game's weakspot.

I actually like how it handles crowds so far. The lock-on system is massively improved from DS3, making it much easier to break away and retreat, and since most of the enemies in crowds are weaker, you can quickly wear them down for a deathblow which gives you a second of invulnerability to look around and see who to target next (or find a grapple point). My only complaint is that you can't (or at least I haven't been able to) deflect simultaneous blows from multiple attackers, Arkham-style.

Lady Butterfly, depending on when you face her, doesn't fully require the deflection mechanic. If you time shurikans right, when she's backflipping onto a wire, you can knock her down and beat down her healthbar for a bit. After 5 or so instances she stops losing posture during the moments where you have to dodge like crazy. So you could conceivably wear her down with just attacks.

I guess it depends on how late you fight her (seems like the area she's in is more or less optional), but you'd really need to have a lot of spirit emblems to knock her down enough times to finish her off in both phases. The better use for shurikens is to save them for the second phase when she summons the ghosts and use them to keep her posture bar from replenishing by tossing one every few seconds.

 

[c-no]

Game is interesting but holy fuck will mini-bosses be a complete bitch. Couldn't cheese the 2nd one proper without using the stairs while he was on the high ground. And I'm still wondering if its really a good idea to attack and block while jumping and dodging his shit. Other than that, I may as well re-do the game and its tutorials. It'll be no different than when redoing Dark Souls when I was new to it.

Im downloading it right now to torture myself again and to cry because From Software still dont want to release another Armored Core

Being a mecha fag is suffering

Until Miyazaki makes an Armored Core, we'll be stuck with Not-Souls involving ninjas. I honestly wouldn't mind an Armored Core on PC, especially if they threw in a 9-Ball.