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

Anyway, I just beat the double apes, which thankfully were not as hard as the single ape. It helped that I learned/realized too late that I can drink from my purple gourd *before* he uses his terror, not as a heal but as inoculation! So as he roars I just swing away. And to that end, I also learned that the headless ape is weak to divine confetti, for whatever reason, so that made it that much easier. The other brown monkey, fwiw, thankfully does not grab, does not fart and does not throw poo, among other downgrades, and it doesn't have too much health, either. So all it took was some firecrackers and quick ass kicking to get it out of the way. One thing that happened that surprised me, though, was that after I killed the headless ape (for, what, the fourth time?) the red deathblow icon flashed *again*, so I instinctively hit R1, just in case I hadn't closed the deal. (Which has happened before, I panic in shock that I've finally "killed" it and actually miss my cue and basically have to hit it again to get the deathblow cue back.) Only this time when I hit R1 I somehow used my mortal blade, which I literally forgot I had (even though it has been on my back for most of the game), killing the ape/centipede/whatever for the fifth or sixth time and getting me another ninja skill! That was pretty cool.

OK, I can tell these last few bits are going to be a pain, but I do appreciate this game's endgame. Ghost enemies have started to appear here and there, I think it's getting darker outside (?) and now I suppose I need to fight my way through the castle again, with new, tougher enemies? I guess I don't mind, it's kind of like having a DLC built in. It's also kind of a relief to realize that skill points are not that important, and certainly not as important as prosthetics can be. It would have been really frustrating to get this game a couple of years ago and dive in blind thinking it was even possible, or at least practical, to get all those skill points and combat arts. I suppose only letting you use one combat art at a time is a hint they're not really necessary, even if the ability to pause for once does let you switch things around on the fly, however awkwardly.

Something else novel (for From) about these games is whereas past games of its ilk encouraged you to separate and fight groups of enemies, or gives you the option to run past them, here there are a few choke points of ninja gank squads that all but indicate you're supposed to outright skip them if you can/want, like the super aggro nu rooftop ninjas or those annoyingly agile little toadstool guys. They're just not worth the effort, really, especially in groups.

It's happened a couple of times now, but I love it when the NPCs fight. And as cheap as it was, needing to fight another ninja mini boss again ... with a second ninja hiding in the corner, was worth it for me to (after dying a bunch to both of them) learn I needed to puppet the second one and let it take out a hunk of health from the main one before I stood a fighting chance.

Oh, so now I have to fight two more bosses, one after the other, to get the first "bad" ending? Or I have choose a different ending and fight different bosses? And then there are two more potential endings? Yeah, I think I may just call it a day on this game. I really couldn't care less about the "plot," as such, and generally I haven't really been enjoying the boss fights that much, which have been almost exclusively aggro sword fights. This game is fine but I just didn't get much out of it. All the upgrading, the prayer beads, the combat arts, the prosthetic, they never really felt like they gave me much more power or advantage, it was all pretty imperceptible, since so much of the game is built around deflecting/parrying/posture. Which, if that's your thing, I can totally see someone really digging this. But from my perspective - and who knows, coming right after RDR2 might have been the problem - this feels both more difficult and more rote than that Soulsborne games, which makes it less ... fun. All work and no play, etc. It had its moments, though, and I'm glad I made it through as much as I did.

Oh shit, it looks like there is a *ton* more!? Yeah, nah. I can't do it, don't want to do it.

well done! I've started playing this through again, it takes a while to get back into the swing of parrying, but when it goes well it is so satisfying, this game has THE best combat

― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S), Thursday, 7 October 2021 08:06 bookmarkflaglink

otm.

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

What a show off. At least, I assume they're showing off. I watched it blindfolded.

This is the only Fromsoft Soulsbornelike game I don't own. I've badly wanted to check it out for a while now as it seems to polarise opinion - a real Marmite game. But it's always very expesnive (£60 full price, £40 in CEX). It's on sale on PSN at the moment for £30 and I am trying not to spend too much more this month. Do I snap it up? Is it worth it?

fwiw i loved it. as mentioned above, my favourite combat in any fromsoft game.

Do it! It's their tightest game, just know that it's less "play however you want" and more about learning the combat systems as they are. And it has a grappling hook.

People have called it a rhythm game, and I guess if you are a person who really doesn't do well with reacting to cues in a reasonable amount of time, then you might not enjoy it.

Okay I've done it. If I can't afford to eat by the end of the month at least I'll have Sekiro

Oh wow this game is sooo good and sooo funny

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

First impressions:

- a beautiful looking game on the whole. Nice to see after the browns and monochromes of the other Soulsborne games (other than Elden Ring of course)
- Love the whole sneaky stealth getting the drop on enemies part of the game. It takes real tact
- love the combat side of it for the most part but not sure about the unblockable moves. I can't seem to anticipate what the enemies are telegraphing in time. Does the Japanese word that flashes up change according to what move they're going to do?
- those giant roosters should not be underestimated. The number of times I've cleared the last soldier out of an area only to have a chicken kill me from behind...
- pretty as it is, I hope the decor switches up a bit as at the moment it's mostly pagodas and snow
- it seems you can skip while parts of this game? You can run past everything. There was a mini boss dressed in white who did a lot of thrust attacks I just couldn't deflect. I got fed up with him and found some other area that took me up to a cave and now I'm in a whole new place with buildings on fire. I can't tell if I've just snuck past the boss or if I've taken an alternate route
- in conclusion: lots of fun, but tough as old boots even for a FromSoft game

the roosters are assholes.

It wouldn't be a From game if you couldn't run past 99% of enemies.

It's been awhile...I remembered that you don't have the Mikiri counter (for countering thrust attacks) at the start of the game, but had forgotten that you have to get it from the skill tree: https://sekiroshadowsdietwice.wiki.fextralife.com/Mikiri+Counter. It's extremely satisfying to pull off, and for some fights you're trying to read low attacks vs thrust attacks vs normal ones.

That mini-boss is probably optional, and I think there are some parts of the game that can be done in a different order?

I seem to have no problem doing things like the mikiri counter on the practice zombie. Bosses feel different

Without question, the "Sekiro" bosses are harder than anything in the other From games. So many of the fights are about timing, with no room for error, and the imposed limitations of the game make it hard to steamroll anything through cheese or OP technique.

It confounds me why sometimes in these games certain parts seem a lot easier than others. I struggled so much on most of the mini bosses but I merked Demon Ogyoubu Oniwa (the guy on the horse) first attempt with hardly any damage

For all its emphasis on deflecting and smart counterattacks, I've found that the best strategy for this game so far is generally to attack as aggressively as possible

Piece of piss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffYBCpY4D3M

In general, this one and Bloodborne are the two From games that reward aggression the most.

Piece of piss

📹

Oh I struggled so much with even some of the minor minibosses. Chained Ogre took ages

Every one of these games have a couple of bosses that are just absolute pushovers. No idea why. If memory serves, just about every other boss in Sekiro is a huge, imposing challenge, with the exception of one novelty boss level.

the pushover is a delight in sekiro. just a lovely gimmick boss level.

I just googled to remind myself, and man, there are some bosses and mini bosses that gave me sooooo much trouble.

It was the Demons Souls bosses that confounded me the most. I think I only had major trouble with about three of them? And half of them went down first time. Some of them barely put up a fight at all, just stood there letting me wail on them

Stuck between a bull and a butterfly. The procession of bosses and mini-bosses is relentless, which is a shame because I definitely like the stealth/explore parts of these games more than trying to work out the best combination of moves will help to cheese which impossible boss. Drunkard Juzuo took at least 20-30 tries.

It is a weird balance, when I think about it, between stealth and totally aggro relentless fights required to advance.

So far I've either aced a boss or struggled loads and had to rely on semi-cheesing (deaggroing them then backstabbing)

Tbh I don't remember maintaining stealth very often in this game.

This is probably the least cheese-able game out of all the From games, in terms of bosses. It's been awhile but they all use the mechanics in a slightly different way, and force you to fight on their terms (some are more about doing vitality damage, others are more about breaking their posture, etc). I guess the 'cheese' comes in using items or ninja skills that they're weak to.

Highly recommend checking out some of these silly but informative videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMFJMCWtY-w

Ok I think I'm going to have to start another playthrough :)

that fuckin bull tho.

Half the reason I want to play this again is that I now know you can parry the bull.

The stealth stuff, iirc, involved hiding in tall grass, leaping from roof to roof, etc, then zipping down for a kill, stuff like that.

I did forget that you can often use stealth to get rid of one of some (but definitely not all) bosses' life bars.

yeah, so this was the only way I could beat Juzuo the Drunk (the sumo guy on Hirata Estate).

There's a way to sneak through the building on the left hand side, sneak up behind one of his aids, backstab, run behind the building again until they de-aggro, and repeat. You can then get a cheeky stealth backstab on the boss before fighting him properly (with the help of that fella standing in the water to distract him).

If you don't kill all his aids first, it's a really tough fight. Even if you do, it's tricky as anything. I was subsisting on left-hand dodge rolls and then hitting him in the back a few times. Bu the rhythm would be interrupted when he would push me into a corner or against a rock.

I don't know whether things like the "sneak/backstab/de-aggro/repeat" method is the "right" way to do it, or indeed if it counts as cheesing, but it's in the game I guess? If this is how hard the early minibosses are, god knows what to expect for the rest of the game.

I'm really bad at knowing which moves are being telegraphed, and more often than not I just can't parry or do the correct type of riposte anywhere close to in time. There have been points where I SWEAR I've hit the correct button and just watch as the enemy picks me up and stomps me to an inch of my health bar.

i think in that sort of fight you’re certainly expected to pick off the minions, before tackling the big boss, though that back route feels a bit cheesy, as you say. mainly because they do not react as their mates fall to the ground around them.

my general approach is “absolutely do not care how i achieve beating this boss, the easier the better”.

Great general approach. Anything else is insanity tbh

I started a new game and it's feeling great so far.

You're totally right about there being no right way to win - items, backstabs, 'cheese', whatever. But later bosses might be harder to beat by slowly chipping down their vitality and running away, because they have huge health pools or are really good at blocking/deflecting your attacks. So you'll probably be forced at some point to win by breaking their posture, which requires you to keep on top of them (basically deflecting their attacks, and attacking when they stop attacking, and dodging/countering their perilous attacks - the ones telegraphed by those Japanese symbols and some sort of movement tell).

There have been points where I SWEAR I've hit the correct button and just watch as the enemy picks me up and stomps me to an inch of my health bar.

Yeah, you'll never be able to parry/counter a grab attack, those are the ones where you need to get a sense of the telegraph move and just jump back/dodge/run out of the way.

Man, early ogre grab attack, giant monkey grab attack ...

Also tbf I don't think you're supposed to constantly deflect/parry huge enemies with huge swords like Juzou, because they're huge and cause a ton of posture build-up.

And also once an enemy's vitality gets low, their posture doesn't recover as fast, so maybe you can use the hit-and-run strategy for most bosses? But it will probably take way longer and be harder for some of them, and also it's fun to stay in their face and swordfight. It's definitely an adjustment from Souls, which drill dodging and spacing into you. One of those Saint Riot videos makes the point that a lot of early game bosses in Sekiro (Juzou, the bull, maybe even Lady Butterfly) do in fact require a lot of dodging and spacing, and maybe it would have been good to include more deflection-based fights in the early game.

Ok I'm deeply back into this game now, just got past Genichiro on the Ashina Castle rooftop (and whatever comes after this is a bit of a haze in my memory until the end game). Such a fantastic fight.

Stealth is a *much* bigger part than I remembered, I had gotten used to fighting multiple enemies in Souls/Elden Ring but you really really don't want to do it here. Also using a lot more items and skills than in my first playthrough, I think.

Well, the big monkey still took hours of attempts this time around. I was pretty happy with this run though, even got some spear ripostes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-E5PUOxlk8

Beating big monkey is what eventually gave my controller drift.

Man, I kinda want to search for old reactions from the first people that faced this boss blind.

I got to Lady Butterfly and got in the mood for revisiting Dark Souls. So now I'm stuck on her, the Bull and Ornstein & Smough all at the same time!

Haha, I think a lot should open up once you get past those walls.

I managed to first-try the ape couple, aka Sekiro's version of O&S. Same strats basically, run away (unlocked, with the camera pointed behind you), and attack the more aggressive one when you can!

Thanks to a guide, I'm actually trying a different ending this time, the Purification one. I thought I had already broken it somehow and was about to kill the giant divine lightning dragon, but it turns out I just needed to eavesdrop on my crew a bunch.

The alternate Hirata Estate is no joke, just got to Owl pt. 2 after beating the ninja who keeps summoning dogs and Juzuo and friends pt. 2.

This game is so damn good, and I know I'm still missing a bunch of things (like once again not bothering with most of the Headless/undead minibosses).

Does anyone listen to the Bonfireside Chat podcast? I think it's excellent for listening to people discuss the lore of these games.

That said, I was surprised just how cold they were on Sekiro, and especially the reasons they give for not really loving it, many of which could easily be ascribed to Dark Souls anyway.

Strangely, they also dislike DS3 while stanning hard for DS2, neither of which I've played through much, but I understand goes against popular consensus