Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki's new game for PS4, XBone, PC

Bushido Blade 2019

Getting into the endgame now. The rhythm of throwing yourself at a boss until you learn all their moves + how to respond to each might not be for everyone, but this is an an excellent game for me.

Kinda wish there were more areas after the point where they can guarantee that you have all the abilities/prosthetics, it makes for more interesting level design possibilities.

This dork beat the game in 27 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3Mt6YRSlHQ

Joke's on him, that's the "bad" ending

This is easier than Souls and Bloodborne, right? Every souls game I've got stuck somewhere after a frenzied two weeks of play at release and then come back to it months later. I've made pretty much constant progress through this and I've never been stuck on a boss for more than an evening, without being able to summon anybody. I mean it gives you a looot of other powerful tools as you progress

It's brilliant anyway, like a more breezily paced, easier on the eye Hollywood souls. The sword fights are really visually entertaining. There's nothing like the mounting despair of thinking you're going to be stuck on a boss for an Ornstein and Smough amount of time, and then the next thing you know the deathblow icon's appeared on screen because you got the rhythm down and obliterated his posture in a scandalously short amount of time. And it's 1am, sure

The one flaw is the lack of replay value, I'm not replaying a game with no character customisation just to get a different inscrutable souls game ending

finding it very difficult to wait for this to come down to a sensible price /skinflint

i am bad at this, and definitely find it harder than bloodborne due to how aggressive the boss AI is - the speed is way higher and i guess i've got old man hands. irritating thing i've been banging my head against Lady Butterfly because now i've finally got her timing down to a no-damage 45 second first phase, i've run out of snap seeds and phase 2 is a bitch without them.

the great thing about this game is you don't get quite as locked out of game exploration as you do in bloodborne/souls - i've been stuck on a combo of being beaten by Lady / Seven Spears for a few days and i've just gone and explored a shit ton of other areas

Feel like a lot of the human-sized enemies require sprinting towards them to close the distance and prevent posture damaging/non-interruptible mid-range attacks. There's a major later game boss where it's surprisingly easy to interrupt most of his close range moves if you hold your nerve and keep attacking until he parries or jumps away

Lady Butterfly is kinda bullshit though. I used up three snap seeds in unrelated areas when I meant to heal cos the default item switch controls are stupid

It just sucks that you can't farm for them like you can most other items - unless i'm just being unlucky/missing something obvious

I didn't use snap seeds tbh, just ran around until she dispels the illusions (or turns them into butterflies that she shoots at you, and you need to keep running or stand behind a pillar).

I really love the moments where you've learned all the boss's moves, but then the key is to relax so you just react and don't anticipate (like dodging too early or jumping when you should be using the mikiri counter). When I finally beat (redacted), I kinda tranced out and felt like I wasn't even paying attention. I think this is the closest I get to meditation?

i definitely start a fight cool and patient, but as soon as i get progress and smell some blood, i turn into sweaty handed hack and slash man - and mistakes start - and its hard to get the heart rate down once that happens.

Oh yeah that is real, "this could be the one!" It's hard but I try not to look at the boss health bar, just keep reacting.

Btw I switched the controls so that up on the d-pad changes prosthetics, and triangle heals (so you can keep moving while healing), that helped a lot.

Oh, One Finger Death Punch 2 is out, forget this

ah shit. got home last night, took down Lady Butterfly in less than a minute, then Ashina Elite Jinsuke and Lone Shadow Swordsman in a row. holy shit.

still, fuck seven spears dude. Genichiro next i guess....

I like to be a completist but don't know if I can bother with the Dark Souls/Bloodborne boss they stuck in at the end here.

Seven Spears took me forever the first time, I think being aggressive helps, but it's another one where they make you read the sweep vs thrust attack (and either double jump on him or mikiri counter).

I literally spent something like 10+ hours spread over a few days taking down lighting boi Genichiro. Dozens and dozens of attempts. I was dumb and stubborn though, there were routes I could’ve taken to beef myself up a bit beforehand, but for whatever reason I was determined to do it as is.

The twitch muscle memory I built up for that dude is something else. After all that pain I want to fight him again. Could probably pull off a no hit take down.

I’ve scoured the lands and mini-bosses since and am pretty well leveled. It’s honestly been pretty painless after that. So far.

Definitely rolling through some areas thinking “oh, I guess I should’ve done this earlier” because they’re weirdly easy.

The sound and animations for deathblows should be noted as being one of the most satisfying things ever in a video game.

SHUUUNG *arterial spray*

Totally.

I spent a beautiful spring day obsessively throwing myself at the demon boss, definitely the hardest thing I've done in this game (and it really is more like a Souls fight).

Just couldn't get through the last phase after learning the first two, I was about to write it off as not worth it when it finally clicked, got him just before I had to leave the house.

Just the last boss now, and I can get back to my non-Sekiro pursuits!

I lost my husband to this game. I understand. Watching it is even fun. Lol

I just did the Demon of Hotrod too. I died a bunch of times on the first two phases then did the third one in one try ¯\(°_o)/¯

It's a shame, what happened to him, but toxic masculinity is what it is I guess

There have been like three times on this game where I've given myself til midnight to beat a boss before going to bed, then got the worst case secenario of doing it at 11:59 and having too much fkn adrenaline to sleep

It's a shame, what happened to him, but toxic masculinity is what it is I guess

lol, exactly right.

The last boss is really fun, only gave him 1/2 an hour so far but it's feeling doable.

Give me a DLC where I kill Genichiro over and over forever

well I sure got my wish

I got last boss down to half health in his last phase, then fucked up a dodge, then got impatient and tired and started dying on the gimme first phase

I'm just sitting down with my coffee to do this. I feel comfortable enough with Genichiro and the first phase that it feels like my fault if I die. Still figuring out phase 2 (and I hope that the lightning will carry phase 3,only made it to that one or twice).

Or maybe I'll just die on phase 1 over and over. One mistake and his posture goes back to zero.

Just gottim. I'm a very ungracious winner in this game, lots of screaming and taunting at fictional Japanese men as they bleed out

The lightning almost doesn't come out as often as you want it to in phase 3, I found it more nerve wracking to run around trying to bait it instead of just keeping up the pressure

Think the key freebies in the spear phase are his jumping stab and also when he does the backwards jump spear swing, he'll usually follow it up with three blockable gunshots and then a mikiri counterable thrust

Didn't use many prosthetics etc, just the occasional mortal draw for quicker damage and the umbrella as an emergency block if I couldn't sprint away from an AoE

I did iiiiit (too).

It took three hours to get to phase 3 today, but luckily I got it in one (thank you based lightning).

Played around in NG+ after giving Kuro his charm back, which makes you take chip damage if you don't block perfectly. It's almost a whole different game, much more exacting (made me realize how much I was spamming block).

Fantastic game, but I think I'm done forever.

Congrats, good going one-shotting the last bit

I'm done too, 63 good hours logged, uninstalled it, may my blade ever be slick with the blood of the despicable failson Ashina Genichiro

shout out to Pot Noble Harunaga, you really pulled it off you crazy bastard

It's sad, he was a fish

Here I am half-hoping they won't do dlc this time

Whenever I see clips of this I keep thinking it's "Ghost of Tsushima," which reminds me to look forward to "Ghost of Tsushima."

holy shit i am slow at this game / i guess am better at not letting it take over my life like Bloodborne did when i was living by myself?

its so weird how I must have done the Genichiro fight maybe 50 or 60 times - the first time it seemed impossible but every single time i could feel a tiny bit of improvement, until the time i killed him i took almost no damage, first and second phases done in about 90 seconds each, then did the lightning reverse 3 times in a row on phase 3. holy shit thats a fun fight.

got the monkeys done last night and excited to see the next areas.

^Sekiro in a nutshell. There were definitely certain bosses in Souls that I never learned 'properly', because you could switch to a different weapon/setup to make things easier, or because they were weak to a certain type of build. Here they made sure that there's no way around learning the whole moveset.

(even certain prosthetics or buffs might make things easier, you're still probably going to get killed if you don't know when to use them)

i think that becomes very clear the first time you get a deathblow without even taking off half a bosses health. 99% of the time its not about cheesing damage.

i've been sort of lowkey sneaking playtime with this game and holy fuck i COMPLETELY missed a whole area because i never went across a bridge at one point.
love you so much from software

this got into my head in a big way. Stuck on Genichiro in lightning mode, all these fucking headless ghosts (they scare me), and the corrupted monk illusion.

took out true corrupted monk last night even without getting the second phase aerial deathblow everyone seems to do - surprised myself but he can go down pretty quick with a lot of deflecting. trying to do all 4 endings in one playthrough - Shura is done, doing the rest now. still loving it.

I got to the final boss two weeks ago, attempted for a few hours, put it down and haven’t picked it back up again. :/

Hopefully get back to it, but won’t have time for at least another week. Will be a little rusty.

trying to do all 4 endings in one playthrough

Oh, I didn't know this was possible. So it doesn't actually, y'know, end after you get an ending?

I did the Isshin one and I never experienced Owl pt. 2.

i am soooooooo bad at this. chances of reaching an ending: 2-3%

i'm stuck at the damn boss right after the ogre (general tenzen), even though i can now reliably start the fight with all of his henchmen eliminated and 1 deathblow down due to stealth.

i think it clicks? at some point the combat clicks? or you just throw it down in rage, misery and frustration and never go back to it idk.

I'm... okay? at this game, I've done p much all there is to do including most of the quest lines, and I can't see myself ever beating that final boss. Has anyone here managed that?

oh and

*SPOILERS*

that big red demon seems like no fun to grind away at, so I've not killed him either

no, i screwed up because i didn’t listen to so and so whispering to someone else which meant although i’d closed off i think two of the remaining paths. never fought the fire demon or the last boss. enjoyed it a lot but i’m not *really* sure why. it lacks the strange and fragmentary mythos and metaphysics of dark souls and bloodborne. and the environments aren’t that potent. but the combat is v pure once you get the hang of it. and the boss fights are *intense*, in the way the combat system forces you to remain persistently engaged and make incredibly quick judgments.

it's definitely more explicit in terms of its storyline. I found it very atmospheric, and I think the environment is as ingenious as that in DS1, possibly more so as it changes over the course of the game as the plot pushes on. I agree about the combat, it's an absolute joy to take out a boss that you had previously thought was invincible, even more so than the Souls games as there's no recourse to outside help and little scope for cheesing.

I did the last boss and the fire demon, both of which were worthwhile and my most memorable parts of the game. That could just be because they were at the end, but it's probably because they took the longest to learn.

(I think I did use the flame umbrella on the demon, which protects you from the move where he jumps into the sky)

Also this series is essential viewing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mmP5jOWemI

scrub dojo - this sounds like my dojo

xxp okay I will go back and give it another go (or 100 goes!), does that vide provide some useful hints?