Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (new From Software game)

[Ash]

The thing about DMC/NG's harder difficulties is that once you've unlocked them you have learnt all the games enemies, mechanics and rules pretty well. Most notably boss AI. Dante Must Die is very difficult but by the time you've unlocked that you've beat the game three times at least, had much practice, and know everything like the back of your hand.
Sekiro is simply on another level of difficulty for it's first playthrough, a stupid one. Just a touch too extreme with the bosses, meanwhile many of the mobs are easy. Flawed design.

 

[Ash]

I'd like to know how many times you died to the end boss first playthrough, truthfully.

LOL who's counting that shit? Just jump in the game, get your "cling-clangs" on, get rekt, take a break. Repeat until git gud. Fuck the end boss, the amount of times I died to Lady Butterfly is already too big to count. I just kept taking breaks and returning until I stopped sucking. Yeah I guess that's not everyone's cup of tea, especially if you feel like you should always be progressing and hitting walls frustrates the shit out of you. I just take a break and play/do something else until butthurt dissipates, then I can try again. Is that bad game design? I honestly have no idea, I just know that conquering this game was one of most satisfying gaming experiences I had in years, maybe even moreso than my first run of Dark Souls 1. And now replaying it is a pure joy.

It is my cup o tea. Done it over and over again with all the Jap action classics. Done it with the souls games. Done it with Genchiro and Owl. I would have powered through to the very end but I only found the game to be an 8.5/10 for various reasons described prior (including botched difficulty), just short of true greatness, that I couldn't be bothered anymore once I hit Isshin. If the game was insta classic for me I'd have powered through the last boss, or at least tried more than 6 times like I did with Genchiro/Owl/True Monk and others.

I didn't have much a problem with Lady Butterfly, mainly because I left her alone for a long while and tackled other areas gaining gourd seeds etc. 10 deaths maybe. Most bosses I found to be highly enjoyable, but Isshin seemed like it'd be a true exercise in frustration and I couldn't be bothered with it now that the game was essentially over, had let me down with late game levels like Mibu Village, Ashina castle recycle #3 and Sunken Valley, and didn't have another Buddhist temple level to offer. If every level was at or near that quality we'd have a winner.

It's frustrating how close Sekiro comes to being a instant classic for me. Seriously bummed out by some things. Still GOTY though...cause what else is there that even comes remotely close to insta classic?

 

[Maggot]

Don't you little shits think yourselves superior, nor ignore a clear problem in the game's design, just because you had the patience to die to the end boss over and over again before you finally learnt his patterns and appropriate counters. The difficulty is a touch extreme even for a old school-styled Jap action game, and the game also fails to train you properly for its challenges. I'd like to know how many times you died to the end boss first playthrough, truthfully.

Fine, I'll let you have this one sullynathan. You used to post some nonsense at me ("Ninja Gaiden has no platforming wat da foook?"), but it seems like you've levelled up of late. I dub thee Master Shinobi.

The game gives you 3 lives before having to go back to a checkpoint and even when you fuck up a deflect it still counts as a block so there is no penalty for missing a deflect. The game even tells you when the enemy is doing an unblockable attack with a giant red symbol. Another case of muh "souls games are teh hardest evar" retardation.

 

[Ash]

Cool story bro

As for said "retardation", nowhere did I claim "souls games are teh hardest ever". I've played thousands of games over the years. The actual Dark Souls games difficulty is near perfect to my tastes, actually. As is most Jap action classics. This game just crosses the line at times for a first playthrough, and other times is too easy. To deny this is clear retardation.

 

[Momock]

Ash, it's not that the bosses are too difficult in Sekiro, it's that they heve a "trick" to discover, almost like a boss in a Zelda game where the right item at the right time or spot is the only way to kill the bosses (it's not the only way in Sekiro of course, but the other way is pretty hard). I don't know if I'm a fan of this design. At least it should have been comunicated better that things rolled this way with bosses, maybe?

 

[Black Angel]

Ash, it's not that the bosses are too difficult in Sekiro, it's that they heve a "trick" to discover, almost like a boss in a Zelda game where the right item at the right time or spot is the only way to kill the bosses (it's not the only way in Sekiro of course, but the other way is pretty hard). I don't know if I'm a fan of this design. At least it should have been comunicated better that things rolled this way with bosses, maybe?

With the exception of some bosses like Lady Butterfly 2nd phase where you back her up to a corner and completely lock her into a dance of L1-R1, the game was pretty explicit in explaining to you how to deal with most bosses, especially in NG with all those pop-ups. And in classic Fromsoft fashion, enemy weaknesses was either communicated from NPC dialogues or item's description, like using fire against red-eyes enemies.

Even then, the 'trick' to deal with some of these bosses are actually pretty fucking cool:

 

[Lord Romulus]

Spoiler

 

[toro]

Ash, it's not that the bosses are too difficult in Sekiro, it's that they heve a "trick" to discover, almost like a boss in a Zelda game where the right item at the right time or spot is the only way to kill the bosses (it's not the only way in Sekiro of course, but the other way is pretty hard). I don't know if I'm a fan of this design. At least it should have been comunicated better that things rolled this way with bosses, maybe?

With the exception of some bosses like Lady Butterfly 2nd phase where you back her up to a corner and completely lock her into a dance of L1-R1, the game was pretty explicit in explaining to you how to deal with most bosses, especially in NG with all those pop-ups. And in classic Fromsoft fashion, enemy weaknesses was either communicated from NPC dialogues or item's description, like using fire against red-eyes enemies.

Even then, the 'trick' to deal with some of these bosses are actually pretty fucking cool:

Lame. Nioh's combat is better. /s

 

[Black Angel]

Lame. Nioh's combat is better. /s

Nah, fam. Rolling x amount of times then attack only to repeat rolling x amount of times, or shield-turtling for x amount of seconds then attack and repeat is obviously the best of them all

 

[sullynathan]

I haven't played the game in 22 days because of breath of the wild but I came back to this beast.

I finally beat it and I give FROM two for that ending. It's a proper difficult FROM Software ending boss even with all the bullshit associated with their games. I only beat him by exploiting the rest of my unused items and somehow near perfectly using lightning reversal twice to stun him. I didn't expect to immediately fight him after genichiro.

It also took roughly 26 hours to beat which means it's the shortest of these souls type games alongside demon's souls.

I found the demon of hatred first but by this point i was already pissed off at the game for making me go through ashina as a whole thrice. The boss was ripped straight from dark souls and I removed one health bar before i got tired of dying.

Now, i know I didn't get everything. I've seen videos of people killing the snake but never found him again in the game, I didn't kill the giant fish, i didn't buy the 5000 sen mask and I'm supposedly missing one mini boss because i only have 3 prayer beads. Maybe I'll get these.

 

[Multidirectional]

.
It also took roughly 26 hours to beat which means it's the shortest of these souls type games alongside demon's souls.

It's a pretty short game on repeat runs but I don't mind that at all, I had fun replaying it 5 times.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Beat Demon of Hatred after about two solid hours and listening to podcasts.

Now for Isshin... holy shit, is there a mod to skip the cutscenes in between the phases? What a moronic idea.

Also at this point I think I'd install a mod that auto fills the resurrection pips. It's just such a pain to go back and farm mobs for them.

 

[sullynathan]

This is me beating Isshin first time in a very messy manner.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Wow way to hang in there

 

[sullynathan]

Wow way to hang in there

Yup. I never made it to the last phase before, so I really didn't want to die this time. It isn't a big loss to use consumables that I were laying in my inventory for the whole game and the fact that I'd been fighting the boss for almost an hour meant I was really tired and did poorly even in phase 1 compared to previous tries.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

ehhhhh I hate this game.

I beat Genichoro a bunch of times no problem but now he's like a wall, I'm getting worse, probably time to put the game away again but it bugs me, I want to beat it and delete it and never play it again. I want to hate-fuck this game.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

And after all my complaining he just goes down easy. I think I hurt his self esteem. Thanks sullynathan for reminding me consumable items exist.

 

[Lord Romulus]

Isshin should probably take around 5 minutes to beat if you focus on deflecting. Don't even need anything fancy like combat art, prosthetics, or items except gourds. Here's Isshin with the bell demon and charmless. A bit sloppy in some areas, but you get the idea.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I found his first phase easy enough once I learned the timing of his moves but it's a pain because mistakes are so punishing. Genichiro actually has quite a dynamic moveset and I kept getting impatient with him too. Just annoying. For a fight like this I don't think mid-boss checkpoints would be the end of the world.

Then I watched a speedrun where they just spammed him with hits and he never pulled his spear out (???) and in his third phase somehow did three lightning counters in a row. Talk about RNGesus.

 

[toro]

Isshin should probably take around 5 minutes to beat if you focus on deflecting. Don't even need anything fancy like combat art, prosthetics, or items except gourds. Here's Isshin with the bell demon and charmless. A bit sloppy in some areas, but you get the idea.

let me plug my own shit

 

[sullynathan]

I started a trend

 

[Fishy]

Dropped this not long after launch, having hit a double wall made of Lady Butterfly and the Blazing Bull. Thought the relying on parries was way too heavy and there was no way I'd get through it. Not to mention the complete clusterfuck that is also fighting the typical FromSoft camera.

Having decided to go back to settle some old scores, I started with the angry pensioner. Took me a while, but she finally went down. From there, well, the game just broke wide open. Nothing past her has been that rough. It's funny how quickly some fights suddenly click. Genichiro looked pretty rough and then, all of a sudden he couldn't touch me anymore. Guardian Ape phase 2 was intimidating at first, but by the time I met him again he didn't last 30s (well, before calling in reinforcements). The two Owl fights too felt way too long for me to manage, but suddenly, it just happens. Even Demon of Hatred and Genichiro/SSI haven't been that much of an issue. Good few retries obviously, but both went down tonight. I still need to rely on the umbrella to close the distance back to the DoH though, that's the one bit I haven't figured out on this one, but ah, the prosthetic just fills in for me. Last fight was surprisingly ok too past the initial surprise moves each phase. Geni was more or less a pushover, and SSI 1 quickly became one. Phases 2/3 were a bit long as all I could figure out to damage his posture was deflecting the jump and using the mikiri on his long combo which ends in a thrust sometimes. Didn't fancy trying out the lightning reversal, I didn't trust my timing as it was only the 2nd or 3rd I had him in the last phase.

Enjoyed it a lot in the end, and I accept that my original impression was well off: the game is actually very generous about deflect timing. And it's insanely pretty, both in terms of landscape and in terms of combat animation. From Soft still have a lot of work on camera behaviour though, so many fights in enclosed areas or with pillars that make a mess of everything... The Centipede Giraffe and errr, Lonesword Ninja or something (the one down in the hole) take the cake, but Bull, Lady Butterfly, Genichiro, Owl all had their fair share of issues in their respective arenas.

Anyhow, glad I picked it up again. I'll probably push to NG+ to see the Shura ending and meet those final two bosses.

 

[Black Angel]

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Puts dozens of Isshins in the game
Doesn't use this opportunity to fight them.

 

[Black Angel]

Puts dozens of Isshins in the game
Doesn't use this opportunity to fight them.

Hesitation is defeat, but I think the guy did it right by not hesitating to run