Topic: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

[iPPi]

After finishing up with Jedi: Fallen Order a few weeks ago, I picked up Sekiro and started playing it. Over the last month and a half, I have put in over 75 hours into the game, and am at the end of the third game cycle (NG+2), and have completed all achievements.

This game is seriously awesome - it is incredibly challenging at the start as you try and learn the game mechanics. Enemies have two "bars" - vitality and posture. Vitality is their health, and can be defeated by dealing sufficient damage. Alternatively, you can also defeat enemies by filling their posture bar through proper deflections and counters (hitting the enemy also fills the posture bar). Once an enemy's health is depleted or their posture bar is filled, they become vulnerable to a "deathblow", which allows you to kill the enemy (regular mobs do not need a deathblow to kill, but all minibosses and bosses need one or more deathblows to defeat).

There were certainly a few "walls" (i.e., bosses) that took many, many attempts, and early on I was getting frustrated (Juzou, Lady Butterfly, and Genichiro were the three early bosses that gave me some trouble). However, eventually it 'clicks' and you learn to properly deflect the attacks (the game heavily emphasizes deflecting over dodging) and to defeat the enemies.

The game world is very well designed and thought out. One of the late-game areas is seriously one of the most breathtaking and beautiful areas I have ever seen in a video game. The story and narrative is also quite good - like most FromSoftware games, not all plot points are told to you explicitly and you will have to some exploring and reading to get all of the lore.

One early issue I was having was that I was struggling playing the game with a controller. Having played all of Fallen Order on KB/mouse, I read some comments indicating that people preferred Sekiro on controller, so I opted to start playing it on a controller. I found it difficult to control and react properly, so I switched to KB/mouse, and I found it substantially easier to control and to play. The game works fine on KB/mouse and all keys are fully re-mappable.

Highly, highly recommended.

[Quemaqua]

Not sure why I haven't given more time to this. Now that I'm back home and can play, I started it and gave it a little time, but just not all that much. I think maybe it's something I know is going to ask more of me than I'm in the mood to give right now. But it sure was beautiful, and I should make a point to go back soon.

[iPPi]

It does take time - you cannot play this game like a Dark Souls game. It requires you to approach the game quite differently. In many respects, the game becomes a rhythm game once you learn a particular boss' move set and how to respond to it.

I am now on my fourth playthrough (NG+3), and have activated two in-game events to make the game even more challenging. Specifically, at the start of the game (on a NG+ cycle or a new game after you have finished the game at least once), you have the option to give away a certain charm. I understand that doing this increases the general difficulty of the game and also results in chip damage from blocking attacks, which means that properly deflecting is now even more important. I also activated a "bell" in the game, which increases the difficulty further (I understand activating the bell gives better loot but that is irrelevant in a NG+ cycle).

This particular playthrough is going a lot slower now because I have started playing other games, but the increased difficulty is noticeable.

[Quemaqua]

Interesting. This is on my short list of things to get back to, once I'm done with Control and The Sinking City.

[iPPi]

Version 1.05 was just released.

The update adds "remnants", which is similar to the messages that you can leave in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. But instead of message you can record your movements up to a certain amount of time and players can see it. As someone who is on NG+4, I don't think this adds anything to the game, but the game is now "online".

A few different outfits for your character are now also available.

The more substantial and significant update are the Gauntlets, which are boss rush modes. I'm going to be trying these in the near future -- I am just waiting for the 3440x1440 ultrawide fix from the community since the game does not support ultrawide natively, and the latest update broke the previous 3440x1440 resolution.

[Quemaqua]

Wow, that's cool. And NG+4, that's something. I don't think I've ever gone that far in any of the modern From games.

[nickclone]

I used to think that I hated "souls like" games, it seems like I just didn't like Dark Souls. Only played the first one, hated it! Not sure about the sequels, the first game and the community around the series really turned me off to the whole genre.

Until I played The Surge, loved it and beat it. Not I'm playing the sequel and I'm always on the lookout for "souls like" games that might interest me. I've been looking into this one, but I'm waiting for a price drop.