Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (new From Software game)

What's the chance of the game being improved/fixed by updates? I mean, some bosses apparently go too high on the bullshitometer scale to the point of becoming objectively unpleasant?

 

Now, instead of reusing bosses in sequels, they reuse bosses in the same game!

 

Now? I think people are forgetting a lot of stuff about Dark Souls 1 and 2...

 

really have no idea how people are upset about the fight with 2 apes.. the one you should already be familiar with. the brown one that comes in literally takes 3 hits to die, it's stupid.

 

When you kill Hanbei the Undying for good, a centipede crawls out of his neck.
When you kill real Corrupted Monk, a centipede crawls out of her mouth.
When you kill Guardian Ape, a centipede crawls out of its neck.
When you kill Genichiro, Isshin crawls out of his neck.

Isshin is a centipede!
Case closed.

 

Nah it's good now. I'd call 2 bosses in the game bad, 1 that's like the priest swarm from DS3 and another that's a gimmick-y weak point situation, and the problem with them is they're pushovers but framed like they're huge events.

Don't know what all the bloated HP bar stuff is about really, doubt any one boss took more than five minutes on a successful attempt, are people playing extremely passive and not breaking posture? There are a couple of bosses where I get kills from Vitality, and even those don't feel too long. Never needed enough runs at an enemy to get bored, felt like every attempt showed something new and was progress.

can't say for sure, but I did resort to stepping away from that combo and then just stepping in and punishing the moment he finished instead of going for a full deflect string as I did always seem to miss one or two. The arrows did tend to hit a block rather than deflect but their damage was insignificant. I wonder if charmless was ever the planned default mode (at least the "blocks still do partial HP damage" part of it), had some incredible tense fights in this run.

 

Being aggressive, constantly doing posture damage while the boss is at 100% HP, from my experience, it just doesn't work in defeating it. I usually drop their HP to 50%, then work on posture since the damage now actually stacks and doesn't recover it fast enough. The best case scenario, at least for me, is dropping them to 25% and then taking my time working on the posture but at that point I know that any damage I do to their posture remains and it's only a matter of time. Of course there are also bosses that counter this tactic, that have a weapon and just attack you and beg you to be deflected, like Lady Butterfly, Isshin, Genichiro, Headless Ape and others. With those it's easier because you do some posture damage and you also find openings where you can chip away at their HP. If worse comes to worst just spam all the Gouging Top shurikens, the charged one to do like 20-25% HP damage. And use the ceremonial tanto to get more emblems. Hm now that I think about it.......

 

pussy.

 

This is pretty much the gist of it. Owl (Father) at Hirata Estate is pretty much this as it's a slow, long fight where you need to deal damage and at around 50% you'll start to reap the rewards and get enough posture damage, one of the longest fights in the game at least for me but also one of the best.

One thing I would like for a "hard mode" would be one where prosthetics are disabled but boss rewards are better for skill XP, something like that. All bosses are beatable without them and force you to really learn the bosses moves/when to strike and it makes fights like the 2 Apes far more challenging.

 

Well I didn't use prosthetics too much anyway, except for the firecrackers so....yes, you absolutely need to learn the fights, no way around it, prosthetics or no, more than previous Soulsborne games.

 

https://files.catbox.moe/qzspuo.webm

 

Oh there are quite a few rage compilations on YouTube.

 

How restrictive and streamlined is world traverse in the game? Can you use the hook to move around freely anywhere you want or its application is limited only to specific places designed for that (like it clinging only to special points on constructs)? And how is the combat like that of Dark Souls? Are there ways of tackling enemies apart from using close combat weapons exclusively, for example by using special damaging devices, thrown/ranged weapons, various consumables, magic etc?

 

Definitely the latter, but it's really well done, with plenty of options and some clever design trick on how to place them to make things interesting.

Fairly different, but still top quality. You have a series of "prosthetic gadgets" that are designed to exploit the weaknesses of some enemies or bosses, even if the tricky part is often to realize which is the right gadget and when it's the best moment to use it.
Your other main weapon is stealth. Most of the common enemies (and even some minibosses) can be dispatched or made easier rather easily by picking them one by one with stealth kills.

Generally speaking I like Sekiro a LOT. Far more than I expected to. I was rather lukewarm toward it, but in fact it's on its way to become my favorite From Software game of all time. Which is something, given that I loved most of their previous titles too and I started that infamous petition to bring it on PC few years back.

I think Sekiro has the best combat, level design and environmental navigation in their games.
That said, I DO think that it goes a bit too far on the difficulty curve. I always thought that DS reputation of being "super hard" was exceedingly inflated, that with the right understand of the mechanic and a suitable build basically anyone could finish it, no matter how slow in reflexes, if even just powerleveling through it with a Havel and a strong weapon. Or downright trivializing it with magic.

Sekiro on the other hand is very unforgiving on mistakes, demanding on your reflexes and even the battles you already mastered to a decent level leave little to no room for error.
Which is why I could never suggest it in good conscience to some people I know (my brother, for instance). They would simply never adapt to it.

 

Tuco Benedicto Pacifico , I remember reading you a lot of years ago in Neogaf PC threads. One of the few prestigious guys there.

 

The hook only works on specific points but they are thrown almost everywhere so you'll be flying like a monkey for the whole duration of the game. The world gives you a fair amount of ways to tackle areas and you can explore multiple paths from the beginning of the game. It also works on a few specific boss type enemies and can be used when they're in an indecisive, unmoving state, allowing you to close the gap and stunning them slightly for free hits.
Mind you, exploration isn't this game forte, unless you're particularly dumb nothing aside from mini-bosses or bosses will kill you since you can always deaggro in an instant by flying around with the hook. You don't even die from falls into the void if you're at full hp. Tension is non existent in the game outside of boss fights. Idols (bonfire) are dime dozen.

The combat is parry focused but still has a souls like feel to it because of how the input queue works with that engine. They removed stamina management but then it's not like there wasn't a souls that almost removed it (is there anyone who worried about stamina in Dark Souls 3? so much regen, so little cost of dodge rolls) You can do a few action cancel like on your first r1 but overall you can feel the lineage compared to other action games. Your main weapon is just like any souls katana and will feel a bit frustrating at times for how little range it has because enemies move around so much and the thrust doesn't always work great for that (there's also a boss who actually fucking counters that so heavily you can't use it at all).
You can unlock skills for use with your katana, and they feel like Dark Souls 3 weapon arts. They're highly situational and most are a bit useless, they all (well, the ones I tried) have long windups making them a tough sell in chaotic situation like multiple enemies or when you don't know a boss moveset and need to be able to react to attacks. They can be useful against enemies/bosses you already know well but you won't be using that stuff for much of your first experience with the game.

As for tools/ranged weapon etc, they're all classified under "shinobi prosthetic tools" and they're like Bloodborne's magic and guns : they all use the same resource, Spirit Emblems, which act like BB's bullets (there's even an item early game gained from a boss that allows you to trade health for emblems, just like BB's blood bullets). You can flame enemies, use a spinning shield, throw shurikens, have a thrusting or cleaving spear, use an axe, teleport when attacked, turn around enemies, distract them with sound and set them on fire, stun enemies with firecrackers and a few other uses for these, like situational axe for breaking shield.
They're consistently useful throughout the game although their usefulness can be an either overpowered or useless type of situation. Firecrackers can stunlock a few specific enemies continuously, which I believe isn't intended since beasts, which are supposed to be the weakest against those things, won't be stunlocked and have a timer for between uses (need to wait like 15 seconds before you can use for stun again).
You also have skills that extend the ability to use those tools further, like having quick close the gap move slash attack after throwing a shuriken. Personally I found that to be mostly useless because it leaves you open for retaliation on boss fights and often didn't close enough gap to begin with.

It may be a departure from souls games but at the core the lineage really shows, and much of those prosthetics work like some weapons you may have had before. Heck, flaming enemies is like using black flame but now giving a burn effect, and the upgraded version is like a firesurge.

It's very very soulsy but with the spastic meter cranked to 11 and enemy tracking to 12, so now you have to constantly do perfect parries, perfect evasion etc and there's very little room for mistakes.
The camera is also very much souls lineage and is not suited for that type of game. I don't even use lock on much in souls games but here considering how much enemies move around you really need it.. except that it often breaks and stops working. Oh, the boss moved around a tiny micro pillar, you almost broke line of sight now you lose lock on and he's rushing toward you, good luck. And let's not even talk about what happens with the camera in these games when your character is backed to a wall..

 

Lutte, Tuco Benedicto Pacifico thank you both. I am more inclined to try Sekiro. Now, how varied are the enemies in the game? By variety I mean not only physical appearance of the enemies, but also manner they oppose the player, types of attacks, ways of handling/treating them etc (for example, if there are only/mostly enemies that attack at close range, it is not very good). Have you to deal with a lot of plain, regular enemies (both in number and variety) or you mostly fight 'bosses' in Sekiro?

 

Like every other Souls game.

 

In the first half of the game enemies are mostly the same, you have your usual samurai with swords spears and rifles, you have ninjas, and more elite samurais you deal with them by hitting them with your sword and avoid getting hit, You also have monks unarmed and with spears, hit them with the sword. Theres also some dogs and monkeys and, I am sure you guessed it, hit them with your sword.

Its mostly the same, you either deflect or dodge then you hit until they deflect or dodge and they hit. Movements are more or less the same aside from the ninjas on roofs which tend to jump around a lot so the formula is follow them and hit them with your sword. I havent met any normal enemy that needs a more complex description.

 

The problem is that I haven't played any Souls game much. If it's like that the bosses are pretty creative and varied, but the regular enemies are plain and basic, then it'd be rather disappointing. And Lutte mentioned there isn't much in terms of exploration in Sekiro.

 

Normal enemies are more or less just like normal Dark Souls.

Sekiro highlights vs Dark Souls are the bosses, you can't really roll, roll, hit 3 times, roll, roll, run around until enemies AOE attacks are finished, hit 2 times, roll roll until the boss is dead like in in Dark Souls.

 

Regular dogs/wolves/monkeys die in a single hit of a shuriken btw, they're far less of a threat than they used to be in groups in older souls.
The game gets creative with regular enemies at the last area of the game, but that's about it. It's the only area where using stealth is actually not a waste of time (in the early game it's more larp than real use) because of a certain ranged mechanic enemies have.
Otherwise if you're doing stealth on anything except minibosses, you're just larping because you could just run up to them, kill one, jump like a monkey and hit another etc.
Or run far enough and lose aggro, then run back and backstab. Enemies don't notice you fast enough when you run to their back, meaning you don't need to crouch stealth to backstab kill one of them.

I wouldn't say the boss variety is like any souls game either. The content reuse is stronger than other people here are willing to admit, to an extent that's really damning. Area variety suffers the same issue and the storyline makes you retread ashina not once but twice (removes your bonfire idols access and make you get back to them). All souls game had content reuse but the amount in Sekiro is extremely damning. I'm now 33 hours in, completed most content despite myself (skipped all the headless shit and demon of hatred), haven't killed the end boss yet but mastered the first two phases to the point of doing them no-hit no-heal and I felt like there was about only 15 hours of real content, with the rest being padding to dramatically lengthen it.

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And that's exactly what's wrong with the game right there. So much shit is repeated. You die often to a phase of a boss but have to retread the same previously mastered moves ad nauseam. What I found bearable because it was just one spectacle boss in Friede in DS3 is now a standard fare and many enemies will be met multiple times.
It's a bittersweet game because there's a decent amount of positive about the combat. I don't dislike learning the final boss and I didn't dislike many other bosses. But the tedium of phases and length of fights gets to you.

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Owl

second encounter takes like 10 minutes. That sort of thing was already testing my patience really hard in Dark Souls 3's DLC ( Gael and Midir )

If the next From game is anything like this it'll be no-buy for me.

 

I fucking the game for making me fight this worthless sack of shit Genichiro each time before facing Isshin Sword Saint

 

Dude, stop fucking posting and go play the games. Jesus christ.

 

100% this. Make the bosses even harder. Even more frenetic with even more combos to learn. But for fucks sake don't make me nibble them to death.

THE most stupid mistake is to make trash mobs tanky in a Souls game. That's what killed Surge (plus the samey environment). Trash mobs that constantly respawn must be dangerous but at the same time you've to be able to dispatch them quickly. That's Souls 101. The same thing is true about bosses, only turned to 11.