Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (new From Software game)

[Wunderbar]

Finally managed to beat Genichiro. It was a satisfying bullshit.

Funny that you get a bonfire right after the fight, and then another bonfire downstairs, and then another bonfire after shortcut to the

Spoiler

dilapidated temple.

 

[cvv]

True Monk is my favourite boss fight BY FAR. 15 attempts, just the right number. She does have 3 HP blips but the fight doesn't seem that long as with Genichiro, Monkey or Owl. You just have to do certain things right.

Oh and that thing with QTE...are there still people ITT who're not getting the counter mechanics? Against stab press X. Against sweep jump. Against normal strikes press block at the right time. That's a fun QTE system but still QTE. The monk will test your ability to decide in a split second if to jump or X to the limit. I wish I was less clumsy with the controller but I still managed somehow.

True Monk, 10/10, wanna fight again.

 

[polo]

If thats QTE to you then everything is QTE dude. DSone: "If the enemy attacks, you roll, or parry so its QTE".
Nah, cause u have different choices, if the enemy sweeps, you can get far, or just run around, or jump. Jumping is the 'best' option most of the times, but you have other options.

 

[cvv]

If thats QTE to you then everything is QTE dude. DSone: "If the enemy attacks, you roll, or parry so its QTE".

When a big red symbol appears over your head, the game goes BLAAANG and you have to press a certain key in time is not QTE? 'k.

And relax, I'm not shitting on the game, I love it.

 

[polo]

I dont care if you shit on the game, there are actually some things to shit about. But when the symbol appears over your head and the game goes BLAAAANG (?), you DONT have to press a certain key, you have options. So yeah, its not.

 

[Lutte]

AFAIK, traditionally QTE means reacting immediately to a prompt and pushing the button for the prompt successfully completes it. But in Sekiro just because you see a prompt doesn't mean you should immediately press a button. There's such a thing as dodging a thrust too soon.

The red symbol is a warning for a special move but a QTE it isn't.

 

[Child of Malkav]

About the seven spears general, I watched a cheese video in which you stealth attack him once and then you him twice followed by loaded axe. So stealth, hit twice, loaded axe. He will still damage you but won't interrupt your attack because the axe gives you enough hyperarmour. I did that and it worked. Fuck that guy. And the O'Rin fight.

 

[Matador]

I don't agree with the kanji warnings being QTEs. They are signals of an special attack like in other action games like Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden.

Not only you have discern which kind of special attack you face and time the reaction right, in the case of thrusts you can get away running if you are a little far or even parry them with good timing! In the case of sweeps you can also get away and in the case of grabs you can run or jump away.

So you have different options to no get hit, but if you perform the best option (miriki counter to thrusts, double jump to sweeps, side dodge to grabs) you get good damage to the enemy posture, or in the case of grabs you keep close to the enemy open to punish after the long animation. It's a reward for mechanics mastery.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

I had to do like 80+ attack on that spear guy who oneshots me to get his health bar low enough to start parryiing. And the main problem is - with a hard boss like this you don't even have time to learn him properly. You die in an instance if you make one mistake. The time it takes me to get back to him - I forget everything about fighting him.
I'd say thas a bloat! Bull and Ogre are not problem at all.

What spear guy? That general in front of the tower?

Nine Ashine Spears or smh.

That's the one. Yeah, you're clearly doing something wrong, my man.

What am I doing wrong?

probably everything

https://v.redd.it/fz00rbb7oco21/DASH_240

does not look like 80 hits you have to deflect his follow up attack after you do mikiri

Also lol at the people bitching about "incoherent and inconsistent experience". Last time you had your coherent experience you could literally just walk to your right with raised shield and R1 almost all bosses in DS1 or roll through all their attacks with i-frames and fuckton of stamina in DS3.
You get fucking help messages before major fights about new mechanics (dodging against Lady B or grabbing the lighting against Genichiro 2nd phase). You can stubbornly practice your deflecting /parrying skills against every boss or you can utilize all tools and items at your disposal and have fun with combat system.

 

[cvv]

Have I noticed some talk about game journalists getting surprisingly gud ITT?

I am never going to finish Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
An ode to not bothering when things get too tough.

Spoiler

 

[Matador]

 

[Jasede]

I don't think most people bought it on PC.

I did because the port is amazing, 60 fps at max settings at all times, loads quick, smooth and responsive. Very happy.

This is on my laptop.

 

[Silva]

If dodging an unblockable is considered a QTE I guess Dark Souls was modern QTE trash...

But DS also does have it's share of glorified QTE, aka those bosses where you can't circumvent its puzzle (this is specially offending in DS3 I think, like in Dancer, Friede, Gael, etc). And this isn't a bad thing per se, it can be good in the right dose. The problem is having a game solely based on this. Soulsborne had exploration, worldbuilding, builds, etc. to complement that, but having a game based strictly on that is like this gif Ivan posted earlier

And mechanics for mechanics sake, bros, For Honor exists since 2015, and it lets you face human opponents (thus bringing feints, baits and mindgames to the table, which is impossible in single-player) and in a MUCH more robust swordfighting system. All times Lobos faced a boss in that youtube playthrough the inevitable thought was "oh, another For Honor-light duel".

So, I'm not saying Sekiro is shit. Only that it doesn't offer things I find worth paying a full price at the moment (and I'm unemployed, so everything costs a fuckton right now). When it goes on a sale though? Sure, why not.

 

[Strange Fellow]

But DS also does have it's share of glorified QTE, aka those bosses where you can't circumvent its puzzle (this is specially offending in DS3 I think, like in Dancer,

Not sure what you're referring to here. Dancer wasn't a gimmick boss.

 

[Sentinel]

it has 124k all time concurrent peak
dark souls 3 (the most popular one) had 130k. That's pretty incredible for a new IP.

 

[Somberlain]

I'm at the final boss at the moment and oh god, it's exhausting. 4 phase fight where the boss has attacks that deal damage even through deflect and has similar looking but different combos with different timings. Obviously, the boss' vitality pool is massive so breaking the posture by deflecting is basically the only way but also more difficult than any boss before. I haven't even made it to the last phase but the first three at least all have a different moveset which means a billion moves you have to memorize so you can actually deflect them


Obviously I'm gonna destroy this faggit eventually and claim my rightful victory but I might need a long break after that. We'll see

 

[Silva]

But DS also does have it's share of glorified QTE, aka those bosses where you can't circumvent its puzzle (this is specially offending in DS3 I think, like in Dancer,

Not sure what you're referring to here. Dancer wasn't a gimmick boss.

Dancer is among my favorite bosses ever. But if your build doesn't happen to be heavy weapon & armor, you'll have to "dance" to her music, which means a glorified QTE where you must memorize every muscle spasm of her. It's still a great experience as this singular point in the game, but horrible when every boss is like that (coff DS3 coff).

 

[Sentinel]

I just finished the game. TLDR - I think it's the best FromSoft game so far.

+ It has the open ended level design of Dark Souls 1, with you being able to take out bosses in the order you want (I met Corrupted Monk as my 3rd boss for example, after Lady Butterfly and the Horse dude).
+ The combat is amazingly good. It's the first combat system I've seen that manages to pull off fast swordfighting convincingly while not being a clunky mess or guess work. Some moves are incredibly satisfying to pull off, like Lightning Reversal or Mid-air Deathblows, and the sound effects of deflecting just makes it all more satisfying.
+ The story has the most branching of any FromSoft game yet, with some bosses being exclusive to certain choices, and one of them is the first time FromSoft has done something of the sort.
+ Resource scarcity is done very well, making the consumables you pick up through exploration and mini-boss killing extremely valuable.
+ All the encounters are designed to encourage players to use consumables instead of just hoarding them.
+ The big majority of the tools are good or great.
+ There isn't a single area that makes me think "I don't wanna go through this annoying shit again", unlike all the From games since DS1.
+ Final boss forces you to use everything you've learned throughout the game while not feeling unfair.

- Emblem system is annoying. I honestly wish it'd just replenish when you rested/communed at an idol. There are some times where you're banging your head against a boss encounter but you run out of emblems and gold to buy them. This is pretty shit.
- Most of the soundtrack is trash - which doesn't surprise me considering Yuka Kitamura composed most of it. There are a couple songs that I liked and got me in the mood, but I noticed there was a 2nd composer, and I'm willing to bet they had his hand, just like Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3.
- I hated the fucking Ape boss fight. Big creature fights have always been shit in From games, and this was no exception. Divine Dragon later on was fucking awesome though.
- Hitboxes on grabs are (still) totally fucked, now a problem exacerbated by the reduced iframes.

I'm so glad they ditched multiplayer. It allowed so much fun shit with the combat system it actually made Jank Souls unplayable to me.
I hope there's some DLC, and I pray there's no sequel. 'Cause I sense a DS2-tier disaster without Miyazaki.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I had to do like 80+ attack on that spear guy who oneshots me to get his health bar low enough to start parryiing. And the main problem is - with a hard boss like this you don't even have time to learn him properly. You die in an instance if you make one mistake. The time it takes me to get back to him - I forget everything about fighting him.
I'd say thas a bloat! Bull and Ogre are not problem at all.

What spear guy? That general in front of the tower?

Nine Ashine Spears or smh.

That's the one. Yeah, you're clearly doing something wrong, my man.

What am I doing wrong?

probably everything

https://v.redd.it/fz00rbb7oco21/DASH_240

does not look like 80 hits you have to deflect his follow up attack after you do mikiri

/QUOTE]

The guy on the video is probably WAY overleveled for this.
I had level 2 damage and level 2 vitality and wasn't doing the same amount of posture damage to him while taking him to red life as that guy does to him while he is at FULL health. At full health the amount of posture damage I did to him healed in the time between my attacks.

 

[Jasede]

I dunno about sequel but maybe one where you play a samurai or different ninja, but instead of prosthetics you upgrade your weapons: katana, katana+wakizashi, nodachi, naginata...

 

[cvv]

Anyone figured out the quest in the Fountainhead Palace with the lady asking to free her father from "bewitching" carp or some such? I've googled but strangely I can't find anything.

 

[Jinn]

The guy on the video is probably WAY overleveled for this.
I had level 2 damage and level 2 vitality and wasn't doing the same amount of posture damage to him while taking him to red life as that guy does to him while he is at FULL health. At full health the amount of posture damage I did to him healed in the time between my attacks.

As I said, come back later when you're stronger. Much like some of the best designed open-exploration RPGs out there, not everything put in your path (or slightly out of the way of it) is meant to be taken on as soon as you meet it. Sometimes coming back later and seeing how you've grown is more rewarding than repeatedly attempting something that is out of your current power level.

EDIT: Karhu, if you have a question or would like to respond to something I post, then do it. Enough with the buttons.

 

[Durandal]

I am angry. Angry about telegraphing.

The main problem here is that there's no consistency in enemy wind-up animations actually telling you anything about the properties of the incoming attack itself. The animation can say one thing, but from it I cannot reliably gauge the timing required to deflect, the range of the attack, whether the attack inflicts knockback on block, whether the attack tracks you, whether the enemy has poise on this attack, whether the enemy is doing some iaito move where he near-instantly lunges at you outside regular melee range with next to no wind-up, whether the enemy will follow up with a combo, and so on. There's the separate red kanji which signifies perilous attacks, yes, but even then it doesn't tell you what type of perilous attack in particular you are dealing with. The only way is to tell by the enemy animations, of which there are many. While thrust/grab/sweep wind-up animations are similar, the actual stances can be rather ambiguous to tell apart at first glance given how fast the wind-up for attacks can be, ultimately meaning you have to figure out through trial and error what each enemy animation even means. Not to speak of non-human enemies with their own special wonky-ass hitboxes.

For regular enemies it's not too difficult to figure out their attack patterns, but for the huge amount of (mini-)bosses in the game those rules are constantly thrown out of the window, as they pelt you with atypical attack patterns and animations solely designed to throw you off which you simply have to learn by dying. The mini-bosses often feel innately annoying to deal with because you feel less like you're applying and adapting your fundamental skills you have polished throughout the game, but more like you have to throw all that shit out of the window and start over. From what I've read here it's the most fundamentals-focused bosses and the downright gimmicky ones which are everyone's favourite, while those inbetween tend to be assholes because they have another GOTCHA! trick up their sleeve, whereas you know with the downright gimmicky ones that standard rules won't apply at all. Add having to sneak kill all minion adds around a mini-boss each time you die instead of being able to instantly retry that guy on death and you have a recipe for frustration.

I'm not saying it's too hard, it's just that the learning process for dealing with each (mini-)boss is needlessly obtuse by obscuring the properties of incoming attacks. Take a game like Furi. In that game you face a bunch of different bosses, but it's tolerable to learn because you always know in advance what you are dealing with because of the telegraphing. In that game, each enemy melee strike has an universally constant timing required to parry it and an universally constant visual and aural telegraph. You only need to learn one abstract animation timing throughout the game. Because each strike has the exact same parry timing, you know that if you got hit it's because you fucked up the timing, less so because you couldn't tell that the enemy was actually starting an uninterruptible 5-hit combo.

Because there's only one telegraphing effect, parrying a string of attacks comes down to pressing the one parry button at the right times, which might give one the impression it's just a quick string of QTEs and feels lame as a result. Here's an unpleasant thought: it's the exact same for every game where you can i-frame dodge outta the way or parry everything while standing in one place. That includes Bayonetta and most Platinum games, the new Ys games, the Souls games, and god knows what else. If I only have to press one button to dodge/parry and I don't have to worry about positioning or whether I need to dodge left or right, then the defensive play is the same shit (at least against single enemies). Perhaps dodging enemy attacks in those games feels less like a QTE because you aren't told the precise timing of the attack or because there's some fancy animation involved, but the idea behind dodging them is the same: memorize the animation and timing in order to dodge them consistently. Except that shit can vary wildly between enemies and bosses and just involves more memorization. It's almost telling how the only way DaS2 could create additional challenge was to have bosses feint more often in order to trick you into dodging. Which you die to a few times and then have memorized for the rest of the fight.

Keeping this in mind: would you rather have a single constant universal timing for melee attacks, or that there's a godzillion different timings with their own unique attack animations? When you come down to it both will revolve around the same thing, it's just that the former takes less time to learn. If you want to make the former more flexible, just have enemies attack on the count of three, which can be a really fast onetwothree or a drawn out one... two... three..., so that either way you always know when the attack comes. I certainly wouldn't be opposed to be given more information about the strikes I have to deal with. I mean, why can't a kanji of a different color appear for each type of perilous attack? Why not add separate audiovisual telegraph for attacks which inflict huge knockback, add two or multiple sound cues or visual flashes when an enemy is about to launch a combo, add a visual effect on the enemy when he's poised, have a charge aura appear around enemies in an iaito pose, have the part of the ground be highlighted to display the hitbox when a beast is about to do a ground pound. When an enemy does a leaping attack the camera always pans upwards to make the type of attack more obvious so you are more likely to reflexively dodge it or stand still and reflect it; why not apply that same line of thought to the rest of the game?

What is gained from obscuring enemy attack properties other than increasing the time it takes to get to know them? I'm not even complaining about the difficulty execution of the response necessary against enemy attacks. Once I learned the enemy attack patterns, the flow of the boss fights became a lot more enjoyable. Once I did.

 

[Somberlain]

Karhu is Dreed 2.0

 

[panda]

Last game of this type i played was Jedi Outcast.
I knew i was bad, but actually seeing that avg streamer 3-4 times better is so depressing...

Sadly I don't quite have the reflexes I used to have and sometimes Sekiro really does demand you deduce the coming attack in 0.2 seconds and react correctly. My neurons don't fire that fast!

Still having a lot of fun.

Yeah, can't even block half of time, but still can't stop playing