Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (new From Software game)

[Nathir]

I am getting stronger. I farmed like 10 levels clearing the area before fighting that dude.

I'm pretty sure you're just fucking with me now, but I mean come back when you have more vitality, attack power, and have more skill as a player (ie, not unlocked skills).

I can almost beat him almost every time (getting him as low as 1/8 or 1/10 of his hitpoints) but he beats me every time. I don't really see a point of leaving him alone, it's not like further bosses are going to be much easier. I want at least beat him before I start playing Outward tomorrow.

You can cheese him by using the stairs.

 

[Ivan]

I just wanted to jump in here and say that the Guardian Ape is one of my favorite boss fights ever. I never laughed so hard in a boss fight before, it literally felt like an encounter out of God Hand.


Any clues as to where I can find the non-phantom version of the Corrupted Monk??? I totally feel like I should have encountered him by now.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I am getting stronger. I farmed like 10 levels clearing the area before fighting that dude.

I'm pretty sure you're just fucking with me now, but I mean come back when you have more vitality, attack power, and have more skill as a player (ie, not unlocked skills).

I can almost beat him almost every time (getting him as low as 1/8 or 1/10 of his hitpoints) but he beats me every time. I don't really see a point of leaving him alone, it's not like further bosses are going to be much easier. I want at least beat him before I start playing Outward tomorrow.

You can cheese him by using the stairs.

How so?

 

[Somberlain]

Any clues as to where I can find the non-phantom version of the Corrupted Monk??? I totally feel like I should have encountered him by now.

Just carry on with the main quest. He is mandatory and you can't miss him.

 

[Lord Romulus]

I just wanted to jump in here and say that the Guardian Ape is one of my favorite boss fights ever. I never laughed so hard in a boss fight before, it literally felt like an encounter out of God Hand.


Any clues as to where I can find the non-phantom version of the Corrupted Monk??? I totally feel like I should have encountered him by now.

Keep going, the real monk is a mandatory boss, just keep progressing. Its surprisingly late into it the game despite being the one boss they showed off in demos.

 

[Nathir]

I am getting stronger. I farmed like 10 levels clearing the area before fighting that dude.

I'm pretty sure you're just fucking with me now, but I mean come back when you have more vitality, attack power, and have more skill as a player (ie, not unlocked skills).

I can almost beat him almost every time (getting him as low as 1/8 or 1/10 of his hitpoints) but he beats me every time. I don't really see a point of leaving him alone, it's not like further bosses are going to be much easier. I want at least beat him before I start playing Outward tomorrow.

You can cheese him by using the stairs.

How so?

Lure him on top of the stairs and jump down. He will keep using atttacks that cant hit you and you can jump at him for a few swings while he is recovering from unsafe attacks.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Killed it too, such a nice "fight". Proper way to kill a giant boss.

Do you remember the item you grabbed after you killed it? On the other side of the broken bridge? I missed it, remembered it's there but sadly, you can never backtrack there. Was it something good?

Other then its heart? Eh, I don't remember so it's not good, like most of them loot tbh...

 

[Ent]

What happened to little Robert? Did the monks kill him?

 

[cvv]

Guardian Ape down. First stage beat on second try. Took me two more hours to finish this fight. Probably the longest of all bosses for me.

It is a fantastically designed fight but the HP bloat is real. It's like 50 swings to kill the first monkey and 30 perfect blocks plus 12 Ichimonji strikes to guard break the second. I don't mind difficulty - short, fierce and brutal, why not. But such mind-numbingly long boss fights are retarded.

EDIT: Just watched Lobos. That motherfucker beat the entire fight first try. His reactions and controller button pressing skillz are much superior to mine womp.

 

[Solid Snail]

Completed the game today. I played all Souls, including Demon's which is my favourite and Bloodborne.
I hated Sekiro. It's just too hard and punishing for no real reason, it's like From decided to make the game almost impossible just to not make people complain about how the game was "easier" than Souls. I don't understand what the fuck reviewers played by writing this is easier than Souls titles, because it's not, it's a fucking nightmare and the more you advance the more harder it turns. I don't even know how I managed to complete, considering the final boss was utter bullshit and maybe I just got lucky. I'm ok with making a whole game based on deflect and parry system, actually it's rather easy to deflect attacks because the game is responsive, but than you have a mini-boss surrounded by 10 minions and you need to kill them all stealthly and attempt to kill the boss, just to die and repeat until you'll do it eventually. The final location is a giant piece of shit:

Spoiler

there are enemies sucking energy from you, they can target you from very far away, and even if they are weak as hell there are too many and you need to kill them stealthy because if you try to run, you are fucked. After this there are those samurai jumping, throwing bombs and thunders at you, I managed to skip the majority of them by running. And than you miss a jump falling near a waterfall just to trigger a mini-boss. You move two steps and yeah, another mini-boss. You finally kill the motherfucker mini-boss spamming thunders on the water, you submerge just to find an headless enemy. Inside the water. Plus a giant carp you need to avoid, but thanks God you need to swim for like 20 meters so that was easy. But that area is filled with cheap stuff to make people cry blood out of their eyes. The dragon boss was rather easy, honestly, and than the game forces you back to "reality" just to face a 4 phases boss in which, if you die, you restart from the first phase. I did it eventually by basically burning all the healing items and power-up items I had to make my life easier, but I died a fuckton of time and never, not a single time, I felt smarter by playing this, or skilled, just lucky.

You can face a boss how many times you want, trying to understand their attack patterns, but they simply deal way too much damage so every small error it's hard punished. I also didn't like the decision to have repeated mini-bosses all over the game, it felt like when in Dark Souls 2 you had a dumbed down version of the DS1 Gargoyle fight, just repeated for the whole game.

EDIT: I want to add if you are looking to get the best ending you NEED to actually read a walkthrough because it's fucking convoluted and you won't trigger it by yourself. Even by using a guide I still got stuck on a passage, the best ending before this is much much worse to trigger. I love obscure stuff in videogames, but I still need to have like an hint to figure out the puzzle, here you have no chance to figure out those stuff alone if not by accident, and even so you need to replicate some things two times so yeah, no chance.

Spoiler

To get one of the ending you need to eardrop a conversation between Emma and Ishin, so you are supposed to go back to Ishin after a certein event, be in a specific position to see it's possible to eardrop this conversation. Ok, it can happen you do that casually. But than you need to eardrop a "monologue" from the emperor, that triggers from a very specific point of his chamber too. And than a final eardrop is between the dude upgrading your arsenal and Emma, again to hear this you need to be behind the house. For the final, true ending instead you need to keep asking rice to the Divine child until she gives you a "special" one to give to the emperor, and than you can figure out the rest. But I got stuck because I asked her rice like three times for some quests, but you need to keep asking her until she provides you with the special one, which moves the events. It's very bullshit.

 

[cvv]

For those struggling with Orin - the key for me was the "Flowing Water" Ashina skill. Took it, beat her ass first try. The problem in my previous 20 tries was that her attacks build-up a lot of posture damage for you, even if perfectly parried. With this skill you're actually doing more damage to her. I see it as a possible must for fast, swordy bosses.

Just in case you don't know, holding the Block button depletes your Posture gauge faster. That's how I beat her despite her pressure.

Wait what are you saying? There is no "depletion" of posture, there is build up. And afaik your posture break meter fills up faster if you just hold the block button instead of parrying.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Killed spear like a true shinobi (aka Ichimonji stair abuse) and not some dumbass who would fight an enemy with 50x more hp and 10x more damage than you.
This game sucks.

 

[Lutte]

but than you have a mini-boss surrounded by 10 minions and you need to kill them all stealthly and attempt to kill the boss, just to die and repeat until you'll do it eventually.

I was hoping this wouldn't be a constantly repeated pattern in the game.. are you saying this still happens till the end?

Despite the great amount of checkpoints, this sort of mechanic makes death extremely punishing and considering how easy it is to die in this game.. one point I didn't see raised is how the rising from a single death is utterly useless and just equal to having one more healing potion. Considering how much talk there was about the gimmick before the release of the game. The E3 trailer showed you getting a free buckstabbu on the drunkard :

But unless I missed something, this can't be done on mini-bosses or bosses at all. Only normal enemies didn't notice me rising from death. The thing has no strategic value and the game could exist without it and giving you one or two more potions at the start of the game and there'd be very little difference in practice. For such a core marketed gimmick.. it's kind of a flop.

For the positive so far : the prosthetic tools add a decent variety to the game and they can be very effective if you know when to use them and against whom. The clash of swords is well executed and it feels great to see animations where enemies don't just stand around taking hits like they're suddenly immobile between move rotations, the flow of the game is greatly improved over souls. Same for more basic moves like kicking an enemy's head after jumping over an attack. It's beautiful. The level design is quite nice, although what I've seen so far doesn't really equal Bloodborne's heights.
I'm greatly enjoying the combat system when it's 1 on 1 against the various minibosses and bosses.

But the game is marred with some seriously infuriating things that make it hard to fully appreciate some of the novelties.
And those infuriating things are ADDED to the lot of infuriating things that were already present in souls games.
I only died once against the chained ogre, from the grab attack that threw me into the void. That sort of one hit kill combined with env is just cheap, it has existed since the inception of souls but From really doesn't want to part with that.
Camera still goes really spastic at times depending on the angle of things that are behind you and that caused a few more cheap deaths.
I'm not sure the souls-y commit-to-action system is a good idea in a highly reactive game like this too. Against butterfly, I got hit many times by her sweeping attack despite reacting and trying to jump because I was already doing an action (a sprinting attack) and my character was committed to it. The symbol for her sweep only showed AFTER I had already committed and lost the ability to react to it. That sort of stuff was fine in souls games and their highly predictable enemy movesets and pacing between combos but here I'm not quite enjoying how you're pushed into being purely defensive until very specific key moments.

 

[Jinn]

I hated Sekiro

You completed it, so you're obviously entitled to the opinion you formed about it, but something that always strikes me as strange in these situations....

Game released 3 days ago, played it probably 10 hours a day, then said they hated it. It always just makes me a little confused how someone who hates a game could so obsessively play it. "Hate" being such a strong word as it is.

 

[Blaine]

According to a reviewer whom I trust: "You can't walk ten fucking feet without finding another idol."

It's Dark Souls 3 bonfires everywhere syndrome all over again, not a good sign.

I see a lot of ratings on this post, but no replies. I'm looking for confirmation or refutation here, not an argument.

People who don't understand why ubiquitous fast travel nodes were disastrous for the Souls franchise (or worse, didn't even notice that they'd become ubiquitous post-DS1) can't help me. I'll need answers from people with at least a few neurons to rub together.

I'll check back in a few weeks if no useful feedback appears in the immediate future.

 

[Multidirectional]

Game released 3 days ago, played it probably 10 hours a day, then says they hate it. It always just makes me a little confused how someone who hates a game could so obsessively play it. "Hate" being such a strong word as it is.

The only explanation for these people I can come up with is that video games are literally their life, not a rest from it. They will play them even if they hate them because what else is there?

Anyway, I fucked off the old hag for now and suffered through the crappy snake section. Short as it is I still died few times right at the end of it because I couldn't figure out where to go after poking its eye out. The branch I was supposed to grapple to sent me into abyss first couple times so I ended up running around like a retard looking for other places to go.
Beat the first real boss, finally, the dude with the horse. Only died like 10 times, FUCKING EASY MODE. Got nothing on the old cunt. But maybe she'll be more manageable now with attack upgrade.

 

[Jinn]

People who don't understand why ubiquitous fast travel nodes were disastrous for the Souls franchise (or worse, didn't even notice that they'd become ubiquitous post-DS1) can't help me. I'll need answers from people with at least a few neurons to rub together.

You're not going to be happy with the amount idols in this game, though with this style of play their pacing makes more sense. I wish instead of them all being fast-travel nodes, only a few key ones would be. Either way, if that is going to make or break the game for you, you're not going to like it.

 

[Lutte]

According to a reviewer whom I trust: "You can't walk ten fucking feet without finding another idol."

It's Dark Souls 3 bonfires everywhere syndrome all over again, not a good sign.

I see a lot of ratings on this post, but no replies. I'm looking for confirmation or refutation here, not an argument.

People who don't understand why ubiquitous fast travel nodes were disastrous for the Souls franchise (or worse, didn't even notice that they'd become ubiquitous post-DS1) can't help me. I'll need answers from people with at least a few neurons to rub together.

I'll check back in a few weeks if no useful feedback appears in the immediate future.

I did reply to you though.
The amount of fast travel checkpoints are necessary.
I told you, this game is so much harder, there is no other way. Like I can't even imagine dying as much as I do in Sekiro and having some of Bloodborne's longer walks (like the run to get to Gascoigne or the run to get to shadows of yharnam)
Sekiro is much harder than all the other souls I played. And I played BB through streaming services with the added latency. In BB I've only had two moments where I felt I got somewhat stuck, when I reached Gascoigne (after which most bosses felt really easy), and when I reached Ebrietas (I tried many times.. then abandoned and just killed the end boss when my subscription ran out. Didn't want to pay one more month just for one optional boss).
In Sekiro, it feels like every moment is a new moment to be stuck at and die a lot.
I'm going hollow.

 

[Sentinel]

For those struggling with Orin - the key for me was the "Flowing Water" Ashina skill. Took it, beat her ass first try. The problem in my previous 20 tries was that her attacks build-up a lot of posture damage for you, even if perfectly parried. With this skill you're actually doing more damage to her. I see it as a possible must for fast, swordy bosses.

Just in case you don't know, holding the Block button depletes your Posture gauge faster. That's how I beat her despite her pressure.

Wait what are you saying? There is no "depletion" of posture, there is build up. And afaik your posture break meter fills up faster if you just hold the block button instead of parrying.

If your posture bar is filled up and you want it to go down faster, just hold the block button (while no one is attacking you). It restores your posture at a rate proportional to your current HP.

 

[Sentinel]

Also, Lightning Reversal has got to be the coolest shit ever to pull off.

 

[Solid Snail]

Game released 3 days ago, played it probably 10 hours a day, then says they hate it. It always just makes me a little confused how someone who hates a game could so obsessively play it. "Hate" being such a strong word as it is.

The only explanation for these people I can come up with is that video games are literally their life, not a rest from it. They will play them even if they hate them because what else is there?

Anyway, I fucked off the old hag for now and suffered through the crappy snake section. Short as it is I still died few times right at the end of it because I couldn't figure out where to go after poking its eye out. The branch I was supposed to grapple to sent me into abyss first couple times so I ended up running around like a retard looking for other places to go.
Beat the first real boss, finally, the dude with the horse. Only died like 10 times, FUCKING EASY MODE. Got nothing on the old cunt. But maybe she'll be more manageable now with attack upgrade.

Umh no, videogames are not "my life", but I need to start working again this week so I played as much as I could in order to try and finish the game. Judging people's habit and labeling them as no-lifer based on a post in which they don't praise the so damn praised From Software because of some dumb (in my opinion) decisions is rather stupid. When playing those games sadly I enter a loop in which the more I fail, the more I want to beat that damn section just to prove I can do it.
With "hate" I'm not gonna saying Sekiro is shit, because it's not. I love a lot of things From did here, but I can also recognize some cheap choices they made just to give people their superhard game, because from a gameplay design point some choices have not a real reason to exist, like enforcing a mini-boss fight with 10 minions you can't avoid fighting. Please show me a similar case in the whole Souls history, it doesn't make sense. Usually in the past if you got stuck in a boss you could just breeze throu an area to reach the boss and try again. Here in 90% of cases you can't. Yup, for mini-bosses you usually have the option to skip them entirely, not always, but often, but if you do so you can't upgrade your health, so there's no sense on doing that.

So yeah, when I say I hate Sekiro it means I hate the choices From Software did in order to keep promoting their games with stuff like "prepare to die". It's ok to die in those games, it's part of the game: learn from your mistakes, get better, win and proceed. In Sekiro I didn't find this element, the "you got good, your skill are better now". Because I can try to learn a boss pattern 20 times but in the end when I do it I feel just lucky, probably if I'd tried that fight again the moment after I completed it there would be a good chance I'd fail it again, even because the game has this bad design habit of throwing different kanji for unavoidable moves confusing the player, so if you can't recognize immediately the move the enemy is performing you may end up dodging instead of jumping and you will probably get a fuckton of damage from that. Sekiro has a good core, but sadly the negative points in my opinion surpass the positive ones here.

 

[Jinn]

Judging people's habit and labeling them as no-lifer based on a post in which they don't praise the so damn praised From Software because of some dumb (in my opinion) decisions is rather stupid.

Just to be clear, since I got lumped into this post, I didn't call you a no-lifer. I think you can play a lot of videogames, be passionate about them, and still have a life beyond them. I was just curious what compelled you to play so much while saying you hate the game. Thank you for the explanation! I think you have some good points, but I would say that one thing I disagree with is the comment stating progression with a boss is based on luck. I think Genichiro is the perfect example of this for me, because you actually have to learn the mechanics and his particular moveset intimately to beat that fight. I really don't think luck could get you through it. Maybe there are bosses beyond that where luck factors in, but when I see comments like this, I feel like it's because the player is stubbornly beating their head against what they think they've learned from the game, instead of trying to find if something new needs learning.

Anyway, I'm sorry that you and others didn't get the From game you were looking forward too. That legitimately makes me sad, cause I know how much people were anticipating it. Hope the next one does better for you.

 

[Jasede]

OH MY GOD I had such a good gaming experience just now.
I tried Lady Butterfly 2-3 times, feeling like I got it, but just not getting the last inch of her HP. Frustrated, I tried the Snake and fought Genbu for the first time! I beat him in three tries! That was such an amazing fight.

I really have to stress what a good fight that is. During the battle, cheesy as this sounds, I came to respect him so much. The animations are superb. I wish I could ride like that guy. And he never got tired, just kept on attacking. It was like a DBZ battle, block block, attack attack, grapple jutsu!

So much fun!

 

[Lutte]

OH MY GOD I had such a good gaming experience just now.
I tried Lady Butterfly 2-3 times, feeling like I got it, but just not getting the last inch of her HP. Frustrated, I tried the Snake and fought Genbu for the first time! I beat him in three tries! That was such an amazing fight.

I really have to stress what a good fight that is. During the battle, cheesy as this sounds, I came to respect him so much. The animations are superb. I wish I could ride like that guy. And he never got tired, just kept on attacking. It was like a DBZ battle, block block, attack attack, grapple jutsu!

So much fun!

You'll be less enthused with what comes right after him.

 

[Blaine]

I did reply to you though.
The amount of fast travel checkpoints are necessary.
I told you, this game is so much harder, there is no other way. Like I can't even imagine dying as much as I do in Sekiro and having some of Bloodborne's longer walks (like the run to get to Gascoigne or the run to get to shadows of yharnam)
Sekiro is much harder than all the other souls I played. And I played BB through streaming services with the added latency. In BB I've only had two moments where I felt I got somewhat stuck, when I reached Gascoigne (after which most bosses felt really easy), and when I reached Ebrietas (I tried many times.. then abandoned and just killed the end boss when my subscription ran out. Didn't want to pay one more month just for one optional boss).
In Sekiro, it feels like every moment is a new moment to be stuck at and die a lot.
I'm going hollow.

Ah. I guess it got lost in all the alerts.

The most notable deleterious effect of ubiquitous fast travel nodes tends to be on the game's level design, so hearing that the difficulty justifies the amount of nodes, while informative, doesn't really address the whole picture. In short, DS1's levels (for the first half of the game or so, at least) were designed to be traversed without the use of fast travel, whereas DS3 in particular is designed around its ubiquitous fast travel nodes.