By the way, about prosthetic tools:
My impression so far is that they definitely have an impact on bosses, but I ain't finding it a very elegant implementation of the concept. What I wish prosthetic did was opening up new avenues of engagement that you could focus and develop according to personal style. What it does is making bosses a gimmick guess game, where you have a dozen or more tools and have to guess the right one that devs chose for this one boss (the choice not always apparent).
That's a pretty old school mindset, I give you that, and if that's the intention then kudos for the devs. But I can't stop wondering how the game would have been if say, focusing on spear prosthetic upgrades allowed me to become a lancer shinobi specialist, not so different from a build in DS, and tackle challenges lancer-style ways. More or less like Dishonored let's you focus on certain abilities opening up stylistic avenues of play. But this would probably make the game too easy for From standards.
Prosthetics, and to an extent combat arts and latent skills, does opens up new avenues of approaching and engaging enemies and bosses. While at a glance the skill trees and prosthetic upgrades gave an impression that there's some sort of RPG mechanics in there, ultimately you would want to take most, if not all, of the skills and prosthetic upgrades, for the sake of opening up as much option as possible when trying to approach certain fights.
This guy, for example:
Made me realize that Umbrella deflection can actually be used to deflect attacks which, if deflected normally, would push Sekiro back like Owl's charged slash after a single shuriken or Monk's last spinning slash, without actually being pushed back. You can also see in this video and the others where he deliberately *NOT* using Mikiri Counter against perilous thrusts, to keep the flow of deflection going and build up the posture bar slowly but surely, instead of using Mikiri which would cause bosses to step back and regain their posture.
And then there is an extreme example such as this:
Also, if you experiment a bit, for example the jump after Shadowrush can be followed up with a mid-air prosthetic, such as the Loaded Axe, which would inflict significant posture damage while staggering most targets, allowing you to continue your offensive to either whittle down vitality or posture, and the Loaded Axe actually connect faster from mid-air than while on the ground.
But yeah, the Loaded Spear in particular is very limited in its application. There's only 2 bosses where the spear is actually useful, the Headless Ape (which would count as twice encounters), and Shigekichi (?) the Red Guard boss which is just another variation of Juzou the Drunkard sadly, and even then only until his armor is completely stripped. However, I still think it's fun trying to find which combination of skills, combat arts, and prosthetic tools can yield most fun out of experimentation.
Anyway, while I agree with others that NG+ is just easy mode because you gain access to all skills, combat arts, and prosthetic tools you unlocked in previous run, I think it's still fun seeing how you can change your approach against early game bosses with combat arts and prosthetic tools you gained later, with prosthetic later upgrades. Lady Butterfly, for example, is an early boss whom a lot of times you'll fight with base shuriken, so to me finding out she's completely vulnerable to charged Spring-top(?) Shuriken/Gouging Top when she jumped was very satisfying.
