f13.net

Here's the long awaited trailer and reveal. Let me be the first to say MEH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGPknmiLxGo

Is that basically a Samurai themed Dark Souls? Looks good to me.

definitely want this one.

This looks fucking great, says the guy who never cared about dark souls because it wasn't demons souls.

That looks cool, but the fact that it's a Souls game has me hesitating. I'm getting more of an Onimusha vibe than anything else from that trailer; if it isn't dickpunchingly hard I might pick it up.

oh right, e3. lol.

I'll get it but I don't like it. Too sunny. I am serious.

So, a Nioh clone :why_so_serious:

Doesn't seem quite like a Souls game. A little faster paced, especially with that jumping and grappling and not really much indication yet of gear customization.

Rumors (many of which have already been validated) indicate that co-op is heavily limited and only in certain areas and PvP is "possess a monster" kind of stuff, similarly limited. If so, then this is one of those "one playthrough and I'm done" games.

(https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/alwaysunny-nightman.gif)

Ghost of tsuhima shown and nioh 2 revealed to give us a full samurai fighting experience.

Not a SoulsBorne game:

https://www.polygon.com/e3/2018/6/13/17458474/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-hands-on-e3-2018

Lost all interest.

That sounds fantastic. Souls meets Tenchu.

After five games I think it might actually be a good thing that its not a soulsborne game.

Sekiro gameplay

Edit by Trippy: major boss/encounter spoilers in this video watch at your own spoilage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTRuIDPtfm8

this is the most demon's souls looking title from them since demon's souls

day one

Huh? Also jesus spoilers.

Woah, what? Stealthy Japanase ninja souls game, and it is coming out in two weeks?  FUCK YEAH.

Right? I linked it here, but I did NOT watch it. Heh.

That came out the blue.  Love the souls and loved the Nioh, so this looks like a rather spiffy funtime.

I had to stop watching it after 3 or 4 minutes, because it was too good to be ruined by spoilers.  Minor one here:
But no shit, talk about out of the blue.  For me anyway.  DO WANT.  The great thing here is that I don't have to wait hardly at all. 

On further investigation, it seems to lack a fair few things though ;  no multiplayer, upgrading or stats ?

The combat better feel shit hot.

Doh, really?  I can live without the multiplayer, but...what am I going to do with all the souls of the dead I've collected?  They gotta have some analog.  Must investigate.

You get XP and currency killing things. XP is used to unlock stuff in skill trees and the currency is used to buy items and consumables. There are no stats, leveling and no armor or additional primary weapons (you only have your katana in your right hand). There are multiple attachments including weapons and a shield you can switch between for your prosthetic left arm.

I was really worried about the dumbing down in Bloodborne and for good reasons. Fortunately the whole game was so good that I quickly forgot about it. I can only hope something similar will happen here, where the dumbing down has been multiplied tenfold, although unlike Bloodborne's the setting is really not one of my favourites. If the game is fun I'll play it, but I am ready for a new Souls game and I am not sure this is it.

Is stealth a thing in it? Or is it strictly dodge/roll/block Souls combat?

How was Bloodborne dumbed down? And no this is not the next Soulsborne game you were looking for.

Stealth is a big part of the game, as well as vertical traversal.

Less stats. Also the dumbening was in the ability to perform one last dodge even when you didn't have enough endurance for it, but what I was referring to was the huge cuts to stats and itemization.

Ah, there are skill trees ?  That conflicts with my understanding, so that's good.

I'd read about the arm stuff, but it seemed light.

EDIT :  Watched more video.  The Snake.  Nope.  Nope right the fuck out.

This comes out tomorrow for regular humans, but a lot of folks got it one day ahead and plenty of reviews are already out with very high scores. So far, and interestingly enough, the lowest scores come from IGN Japan which only gives it an 8 out of 10 where everyone else is giving it 9 or above. Biggest Japanese criticisms are about a lack of variety in enemies and maps.

I'd probably pick this up if the Grim Dawn expansion weren't coming out in a week. Also I actually feel a bit burned out on Souls games.

I can't figure out if I am going to jump on this now or not.  Would like more info, particularly about how Soulsy it is or isn't (or maybe about how much of a Technu successor it might be) and also hearing some grumblings about controller compatability that might need sorting. 

Making the ps4 controller work on Steam took me 5 minutes and a Google search, but it jow works flawlessly. Most of the grumbling is from idiots who gave up after 5 seconds.

The game teaches you how to stealth within the first 60 seconds, so it is safe to say that it doesn't feel that much "soulsy" to me so far. Which is something that was clarified here a while ago.

Not being Soulsy might be fine, I guess what I am really wondering is how far it goes into general Hack&Slash territory.  I dislike (or get bored of) most H&S, but the Technu comparisons give me hope.  I only ever had...I think it was the first PS2 version of Technu, and I fucking loved that game.

Combat is fine, bosses are fine. Everything is good and Souls-like. The fucking stealth part though is super annoying *TO ME*. I really can't find the fun in stealth games. I also don't like the hook too much as by the time you shoot a few that unpleasant Spider-Man feeling begins to creep in.

Now, let's talk about that Chained Ogre grab, without the fire shortcut.

the only games i liked stealth in was splinter cell chaos theory and metal gear solid 4

if this game is stealth-centric, I'm waiting for it to be $9 or grabbing it off a pirate ship

So much blood... And way too much of it is my own.

Stealth so far is sort of optional but encouraged because alerted enemies start calling for help and if you don't thin their numbers before going into battle you may end up overwhelmed by numbers. Or maybe that's just because I'm not that good at the combat system yet.

I am only 5 hours in so it's hard to say how stealth-based it really is. You cannot run into an area without scouting (stralthily) a bit, that's certain death. But once you have figured out where the enemies are you can certainly kill them all. I would say, based on what I have played so fat that the stealth mechanics are not mandatory as a way to avoid enemies that would otherwise kill you, it is more like a mandatory way to slow the pace down and force you to assess the situation and devise an attack plan before you dive in.

After a few sneaky practice runs it's cool to basically hit "execute" and see how well and hkw efficiently you can kill everything by spending the least healing resouces in the process.

So, after killing 4 mini-bosses through dozens of retries each you finally get the chance to turn your hard work into your very first stat increase. So here I am, thinking that this will at last make other enemies easier, and then I watch my vitality stat increase all the way from its starting value of 10... to 11.  :uhrr:

I guess that was the healthy effect of jogging over from the spawn point to the bosses so many times.

Haven’t had the chance to play this myself yet. I do see quite a few complaints though by people about glitches, „warping“ bosses that ignore your dodges and parries and camera issues.

So basically Fromsoft being Fromsoft or worse?

I haven't found any meaningful glitch but I also have not finished the game yet. I can tell you that a few of the things that felt wrong and maybe buggy for me ended up being part of the process of getting familiar with a game that has some subtle differences from the usual Soulsbornes, especially when it comes to dodges and iFrames.

Bugs or not, being From Software the best software house of the last ten years, we can only hope they'll keep being themselves for another ten years.

Well, their technical side has always been little wonky. There's a reason why DSFix came to be.

I made a mistake in reading reviews in the frist place though. The way people describe this game makes it sound as if you'd need the reflexes of a teenager to play it and I have started to question if I'd still be able to play it at my age of 42. Well time to try, I guess.

The "get gud" and "you have been 2 frames early" crowd is out in full force already though. It's interesting to see what kind of effect this has. They are accidentally discouraging people from buying the game by hyping up the difficulty level and due to their constant chest beating.

I watched a streamer yesterday for a few minutes. He hit a boss and started kiting it around. He mentioned how it took multiple tries and 5 hours to defeat some other boss (I think the main one, he was playing NG+).

It looked like the worst of mmo fights, kiting a giant damage sponge around.

You can have the coolest mechanics in the world, but when it's wrapped in such bad fight mechanics, meh.

My biggest technical problem is that horrible, terrible camera. The point of a third person camera is to keep yourself and your surroundings in view. There have been moments in boss fights where I could see neither and had to guess whether my inability to move was because of blocking geometry (change movement direction or jump, depending on the height of the thing) or because I have been knocked prone (need to hit the dodge button). That confusion can allow a boss to get two good hits in on your defenseless body.

And then there is the lock-on system randomly disengaging whenever the enemy jumps past you too fast. Which many of the enemies do on a regular basis. In that case you have to notice the problem, swivel the camera around to find the bastard and then lock back on. Which again is enough time to take a pointless hit.

Everything apart from the terrible UI works great for me though. But that's on PS4. From what I hear, the PC version has more issues.

That's just people who try to either cheese or win with the tactics they WANT to win with. I often made that choice myself and took 4+ hours and a hundred tries to beat a boss, but I knew very well that it was my choice to do it with THAT weapon, or at THAT early level or by NOT using the widely known better approach, and so on. The beauty of these games is that you can really fight and win in many, many different ways.
Fight mechanics are pretty great as in all the other From games.

From what I've watched on streams it seems more the former than latter.

My main concern is it sounds like you can't "cheese" the game by over-leveling on easy content like you can in the other Soulsborne games to compensate for aging reflexes. E.g. in Bloodborne right now I'm about 40 levels higher than the normal/recommended level for the boss I'm on right now (Ebrietas, level 109* vs 60 - 70 typical) and I've still died to it three times now (though my last attempt was pretty close).

Yes those super long fights are because that's the only way that person knows how to beat the boss without failing right now. But in time people will get better and the fights will get a lot shorter. It's like in Bloodborne where it'll take me, say, 20 minutes to beat a certain boss while a speedrunner can do it in 2 minutes or less.


* In my defense I'm not totally lacking in playing ability as I'm good enough to mostly solo some of the NG+ early game bosses like BSB in co-op mode even with only a +6 weapon. I.e. I've joined other people's games who are clearly worse than me and I've had to carry them through some of their early-game NG+ bosses.

Sekiro doesn't seem to have a riposte mechanic, right?

So why exactly should I parry? Parry is very high risk. Miss the input and you could die. BB and DS at least gave you riposte with significantly higher damage even if you didn't have the opportunity to backstab. This made parrying a tradeoff between risk/reward because each successful parry helped you.

What I've seen so far is a lot of whittling health bars down microscopically while trying to survive until the enemy/boss has lost enough health so that his posture bar is no longer recovering instantly and then the fight simply ends once you get that parry in.

Deflecting does extra posture damage.

Does it matter? Honest question

I've seen how quickly enemies can regenerate posture when they are at 100% health. From my perspective it seems like it's much more difficult to beat certain enemies by breaking posture with parry/deflect because they regenerate posture so quickly. What I usually see is people whittling down health bars to a point where posture regenerates slower and then they switch to parry/deflect.

That first part doesn't seem to be fun though.

It does matter to the point that it's the whole game. Riposte has always been the "hardest" part of the Souls games, only good players could perform it consistently. And now it's THE only way to play. As far as I can tell so far, blocking and dodging or even jumping are not gonna get you far. Let alone spamming attacks. And there aren't -at least in the beginning- many crutches like magic or real long range attacks. Even sneaking can let you clear an area no problem but won't do anything for you against bosses. Either you learn how to deflect, or you can sell/uninstall the game unfortunately. I must say, before release everything pointed in the other direction with the Activision deal, but this is the hardest From Software game... maybe ever? Unless you have a particular innate affinity with the timing of riposte and lightning reflexes, I don't think you are gonna beat this game. Hell, I am talking about myself: I hate to admit this but after a few more days of trying there's a chance this game is beyond my capabilities at this point.

Wow.

Sounds like it's a good thing I didn't pick this up then. One of the things I loved about the Souls games was how different builds lent themselves to different playstyles. This all sounds pretty disappointing so far.

That's getting to my point though. This game is designed around deflect/parry. Posture regenerates if the enemy does not get hit. So far so good.

My issue is in how fast posture seems to regenerate when the enemy is at good health.

Deflect is a reaction as is parry, so you can only deflect/parry if the enemy attacks you. What I've seen so far of the game: Boss is at full health -> boss attacks -> player deflects -> posture bar regenerates because the enemy is not attacking or it's an "undeflectable" attack. So people do this song and dance where they parry/deflect to not die and counterattack to reduce the health bar of the enemy (and health goes down slow as fuck). At some point the enemy has lost enough health that posture regen is slower than posture damage via deflect and then the enemy dies once posture is broken.

Fights take ages because its death by a thousand cuts and if you fuck up once you're insta-murdered. Also you can't cheese it.

Maybe the talent trees give you enough abilities that break down posture more quickly?

Take the tutorial boss for example. In DS you could murder the asylum demon at level 1 with the base weapon, in BB you can murder the giant wolf bare handed. You can in fact beat most of the games at level 1 without any upgrades. I can't see how you could possibly beat the tutorial boss in Sekiru though using the intended mechanics because you'll never be able to inflict more posture damage than he regenerates. I suppose that you could beat him in the old fashioned way by parry/dodge and hitting him a bunch but that would probably take ages.

Granted I've only played the first areas of the game and a few streams.

Yeah, but in DS and BB a riposte does significantly more damage and can stagger enemies/break stance. It's always valuable even if you can't do a backstab or visceral attack after. What I've seen so far of Sekiro gives me the impression that deflect is not very useful in the early parts of a fight because it only does posture damage which the enemy regenerates faster than you can apply it and there seems to be no stagger mechanic that lets you follow through with a counter after a successful parry.

I wouldn't be surprised if it opened up to more options later on, and even in the beginning there are many ways to tackle (or not tackle) trivial enemies. But the tough ones are so hard to figure out and learn that it's like everyone is quite lost, and the fact that death penalty is maybe harsher than ever doesn't lend itself to a smooth trial-and-error process. You don't have that typical "Fuck it, I am gonna throw myself at this mini-boss 100 times until I learn it" here, and they are surrounded by other mobs so everything takes much much longer to learn.

But yes, deflecting and countering is the core mechanic here and it is slammed on your face from the very beginning.

And no in my experience they cannot regenerate it as quickly as you say (unless you are talking about bosses), you gotta keep pushing it and when their posture is broken they are dead. It is clearly not the same as the Souls, as you say, but it serves the function of opening them up for a clean blows and eventually a finisher.

Yes, bosses. Should have made it more obvious.

Ah, OK. With bosses it seems to be a bit less about deflections, although for example the Shinobi Hunter forces you to pick up the Mikiri counter which works pretty much like the deflection except on a different button. No idea how it is with other bosses, but to me the Mikiri thing expresses exactly their intention of creating a game all about timing your counter(s). So, I don't know, maybe that's where they want for players to try different things and so deflecting is not the only viable option anymore.

To me the biggest annoyance are the trash mobs surrounding the mini bosses. Even the damn Wrestling Ogre forces you to deal with a stupid extra lancer from time to time. It all detracts from focusing on the enemy and learning what they do in a way that doesn't really add much to me. Same with the Shinobi Hunter, surrounded by useless crap that you have to get rid of over and over again before you try the boss again.

I have to ask, when you mention the tutorial boss, which one are you talking about? ostly to try and remember how I beat it, and also because this time I have been having a hard time figuring out myself which one is the tutorial one, which one is the optional one, as they all seem skippable up to a point.

Forgot his name, the boss who
Allegedly he's beatable in the tutorial  like all of the previous tutorial bosses (Asylum Demon in DS 1 for example) were.

Right now I can't see how though, he recovers posture incrediby quickly

Hah. Because of the impact on the story, I assumed that one wasn't beatable. Silly me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz1-H4gmPC0

From the video it looks like it takes about 1/3 damage to his health before the delay before his posture meter starts to drain is long enough that you can keep it from emptying as long as you keep the pressure on rather than running away to the other side of the arena any time a Perilous Attack symbol appears like most streamers are doing right now. I.e. git gud.

It's just a flesh wound...if you do manage to beat him.

I've been watching Fighting Cowboy play this and even just looking at the fight above that Trippy linked :

This game looks boring as fuck.   Help me out here.  Is it one of those things that's just better to play than watch ?

Anecdotally, but my 14 year-old bought it and says it is the best thing ever, and more fun than the Souls games.  I think he is very near the end, or so he says.

It should be said that - as much as I dislike saying so out loud - his video game reflexes are better than mine ever were.  I know I like the idea of this game, time will tell if I like the actual game.  I will try it shortly after he's done with it, I expect.

Mathematically, that 14 year old was 4 when Demon's Souls came out.

I suppose so. Sekiro combat is very mechanical and timing based. From the outside this may look like two guys that just hit katanas at each other. From what I've seen so far there haven't been any flashy visual fights similar to those in BB or DS. So less "Dancer of the Boreal Valley, Father Gascoine or Artorias of the Abyss. Maybe it gets more flashy later in the game.

From the reactions I gathered so far they must be very satisfying to beat though. I can't speak from experience though, I haven't made it to the first boss yet. Still trying to find my footing in that game.

I purposely did not mention, as to not draw your ire, that he never tried Demon's Souls.  He refuses to go that far back in time.  But he generally like the others, including BB, though I don't think he finished any of them.  Neither have I!

-_-

I don't know what to tell you.  I am onboard.  Demon's Souls is the only one of the bunch I completed, never came close with the others.  I like them just fine, but not enough to see them through.

I really like the visual style and art direction. I like that the game looks and feels like a Japanese martial arts movie including the ridiculously gory kills and resulting fountains of blood. I really, really like their choice to make Japanese audio and english subtitles the default. It add so much to the atmosphere of the game. The UI is improved, the technical aspects of the game have been improved as well. The level design so far is absolutely great.

Game is hard as fuck though. You seriously need to keep up on visual and audio clues to get your timing right.

Also dodge is your enemy. The only recommendation that nearly every good player gives is that you should always deflect if possible and sidestep/jump over attacks that you can't and that dodge is a fools errant most of the time.

It is so fucking hard.

For some reason the game is a lot of fun. As usual (isn't that true for every game though?), not for everyone. This is so hard and counter intuitive that I have experienced levels of frustration that I have never felt in the *Souls and Bloodborne, but at the same time very rewarding when you finally clear a section or kill a specific enemy, and generally speaking when the combat starts to slowly flow out of your fingers. It took me more than 15 hours to begin to feel that I have a bit more control over it, and I have honestly thought about giving up because fuck it who has that amount of time? But it is certainly fun when you get the hang of it. It is as someone else said a "rhythm game" at times, requiring perfect timing and precision, and also a bit of a puzzle game, whereas you have to figure out the battlefield and choose how to attack in a way not so different from XCom, but it is rewarding and especially when you get good better with the sword slaying enemies even only to grind money is satisfying and addictive.

Okay, so the guy I was watching has now done a 'proper' walkthrough where it's pretty quickly demonstrated that gearing and levelling correctly for the bosses turns it into a rather more interesting affair.  It's looks boring as fuck watching someone chib a horse for 50 minutes but slightly more interesting when the use firecrackers and set it on fire in 2 minutes.

Still considering purchase.

I am not even gonna mention what piece of shit website published this article, which I won't even link, but here's the title: "Sekiro: Shadows Dies Twice' Needs To Respect Its Players And Add An Easy Mode".

My eyes are rolling so fast I can hear them breaking.

I don't know what's more tired. People demanding that FromSoftware adds a difficulty setting to their games or people who treat this suggestion as if it was some form of blasphemy.

There is a reasonably argument to make why even a game like Sekiro should have difficulty settings and it's also reasonable for FromSoftware to not add them

The use of the word "respect" in that article pisses me off.

We don’t need to argue about that bullshit Forbes article. That article is bullshit.

It's arrogant and entitled.

It's pretty wild that Forbes has become the new nadir in games journalism.

And yeah, as someone who doesn't dig the 'l2p' stuff (purely from a time angle, I like it a lot in theory if I had more hours in the day): I just avoid the games because I understand they're Not For Me. Entitled cunts.

The best argument for adaptive difficulty or difficulty levels I've seen so far came from a developer.

They argued that what you want is that all of your players have the same experience playing but that not everyone has the same capabilities or skill and not everyone has the potential to get to a level of capabilities or skill required for a game with fixed difficulty.
What is easy for the "get gud" crowd might be hard for other people and what is hard for the "get gud" crowd might be impossible. They might be too inexperienced, they might have disabilities, they might be too old etc. You could reasonably make a consistent argument why even games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne or Sekiro should have adaptive difficulty because that would give everyone the same experience even if they are of different skill levels or capabilities and could potentially broaden the appeal (and number of sales) and let more people experience your game.

I'd be extremely happy because I'm no longer 12 or a professional Twitch streamer and speedrunner and I'm slowly ageing out of twitch games. There will be a point that is not too ar off where I'll no longer be able to finish games like Sekiro even if I wanted to. Heck, Tetris 99 showed me that I'm too old even for Tetris.

It's the prerogative and artistic choice of the developer though. It's perfectly fine for a developer to decide against that feature because of the artistic vision they have for the game or even for profane reasons like the additional effort different difficulty settings would require in development and testing. I may not like it but that is my own problem. Not everything has to be for me and demanding otherwise would be arrogant and entitled.

I'm not publishing a fucking ridiculous article on Forbes.com though. Whoever decided that games need difficulty settings as a sign of "respect" for a certain type of entitled asshole needs to be slapped.

Agreed. I'd like them if they had easier difficulties (or if I hit the lottery), but I'm not going to be an asshole about it.

The problem with this argument as it applies to the Soulsborne series is that the difficulty *is* the game. It's not like, say, The Last of Us, where a lot of people played on the easiest difficulty cause they just wanted to experience the story and had issues dealing with the clunky combat and unforgiving stealth mechanics. Without the difficult bosses in the Soulsborne games there's no other major aspect of the game to enjoy as the story and characters in the games are almost non-existent*. It would be like taking the classic Resident Evil games and putting in a mode with unlimited ammo and items, unlimited saves anywhere, and non-shitty controls. A game with all that stuff is no longer a (classic) Resident Evil game.

* Yes I know there's a crap-ton of lore in these games but you have to be a diehard to read through all the text and shit and try to piece things together yourself

A little bit on topic, and a little bit on the game in general. I am on the record (my posts from a few days ago) saying that even though I am From Software biggest fan and I have finished each and every single Soulsborne so far and thought that every single one of them deserved Game of the Year, I was afraid that Sekiro was indeed too hard for my reflexes and eye-hand coordination in 2019, at 45 years of age.
Well, 20 hours of /played later the game combat system finally clicked with me and I have... gitten gud (?).

What I am trying to say here is that while it is undeniable that this game is hard because it is, and also because it doesn't lend itself to a lot of the cheese strategies that could be used in the previous games to activate various kinds of "easy mode", if you don't give up things will start to come together and before you know you are better and everything feels easier. This could seem obvious but it wasn't for me a few days ago as I really started to feel defeated. After hitting a wall for 15 hours straight (for real) though, I somehow got over it and all of a sudden everything made so much more sense. All fights are easier, all mechanics are less obscure than they were, death isn't as scary as the Dragonrot warnings make you think, and overall the game is a lot more fun. I have not finished it and I am still being slapped left and right, but I am not lost anymore.

Up to a couple days ago I couldn't help but think that they fucked up and raised the bar too much for my age and genetics, but now I know that no they didn't, they once again crafted an insanely good game (Of The Year) that does not demand to be played, but while traversing a beautiful, desperate, gloomy world, once again offers everybody a chance to train and become better at video games.

I’m not at that point, hopefully it is yet and not ever

I definitely felt that "oh fuck I'm finally too old and this is too frustrating" and gave up playing just 2 hours in, but came back recently and something clicked like it did for Falconeer.

My mind was cemented in Soulsyness combat since it feels similar (which it really isn't fundamentally). There's the combat dummy dude at the beginning who I skipped because I'm not some kinda fuckin' noob listen here but

he teaches you through practical zombie murder the entire combat system, which is pretty fun in the way For Honor is a slightly more accessible fighting game kinda sorta-ish

Even the ping-ping-ping-ping-PING multiple sword blocks which sound and feel frenetic are actually fairly evenly paced in execution. The timing windows seem a lot more forgiving than Souls games so again those assumptions fucked me up--same with being scared I was going to be poise broken or some shit while deflecting, which isn't the same as blocking and aaaaRTFM

After eating humble pie and doing all the available training scenarios I beat the shit out of 4-5 mini bosses (still with a fair amount of death) and progressed way faster than if I'd just kept bashing my head against things. Those took way less time than 100 Lady Butterfly attempts.

The whole point of these games is the Nintento Hard challenge making the exploration worth it and setting up an emotional impact beyond a power fantasy gimme, so fuck that freelancer's opinion.

Nobody's forced to buy these games and the skill requirement isn't some sky-high bullshit like he seems to think it is. It's like the core fucking feature of the entire lineup. If he wants to pay money for a totally frustration-free experience he can hoover up a pile of drugs and masturbate on his no-barrier-to-entry ultrasuede sofa.

This is actually fun as fuck.

Who knew.

hook shotting around the place while murdering dudes is fun, yes.

Well, yes, but I meant the combat, which looked boring when viewing.  Entirely different animal playing.  Fun.

The game seriously has its hooks in me.

I’ve not gotten very far yet but since I’ve realized that Sekiro let’s you cancel out of attack animations to deflect I’ve been much more successful.

You can be really aggressive because you can always block or deflect and you can actually GTFO if things get too heated.

Mikiri Counter is absolutely essential. Made the Shinobi hunter much easier.

Also fuck the Ogres.

I'm up to the Flaming Ram.  Fuck that guy.

The flaming bull? That so far has been the easiest for me to kill. Hardest definitely the drunken mini-boss but I suppose that's mostly a combination of me still being a noob and all the surrounding mobs somewhat behaving unexpectedly.

Got him. Also, that mini-boss just past him.  I'm getting some lessons from Fighting Cowboy (my go-to for Souls games) and I'm finding the tips invaluable.


The bull really needed me running around while at the same time keeping the damage on and bear in mind I'm old.  The past 24 hours has really hurt my hands.  More so than my constant masturbation habit.   :why_so_serious:

So my son finished up on Friday, and now I am giving it a go.  At first, I was like "this is some really cool ninja stuff, but it is too sloppy and hard and I would probably rather be playing a Souls game".

But after giving it a fair shake and getting my head around the controls, I have to say this is pretty fucking awesome.  It really is Technu Souls, or something like that.  Best of two worlds.

But!  It is really fucking hard.  I have only managed around 4 mini bosses, and already starting to worry if I have the chops for this.  I have decided to devote some time grinding skill points and just getting better at combat.  My fingers are all stiff as I type this out, jesus christ.

I’d recommend to everyone to not watch boss fight videos or streams.

It’s the best way to discourage yourself. Some fights look absolutely impossible to me

The strategic decisions of my enemies are highly questionable.

I'm going to go ahead and disagree here.  The Blue Chap at the top of the castle in the Dojo was pushing my shit in regularly.  After watching how FC took him down (and he did it in literally 20 seconds) I took the advice and tried it.  It was a glorious 60 seconds of pure ownage.

Sometimes, if you've been bashing your fucking head off a fight for ages, it's useful to hear that there's either another method or, even better, that you're just NOT READY and shouldn't be there.  In the fight above, the poison dagger you get for your Prosthetic made it trivial.

To me it's a tough balancing act between "I am not gonna cheat and look how others cheese beat it, I can figure it out myself...", and "Oh for fuck's sake how the hell is this even possible?! Let me look if others have even beaten this yet". I don't peek until I am desperate and in danger of damaging furniture.

Watching others for me sometimes turns into „how the fuck would I ever be able to do that“ which is more discouraging than interesting

Finally, finally beat that butterfly BITCH.

What a fight.

I adored that dance.

Life is short, and I want to finish this.  I'm using a trainer and I have no guilt about it.  I like the setting, I like ninjas, and I like arterial spray.  I DON'T like getting my dick stomped on like some masochist.

Fuck grab attacks that insta kill you when you mistime the dodge because the combat system trains you to deflect/block and you forget that button even exists.

Seven Spears has a cheese strat that made him literally trivial.  The scorpion chap also has one.  I got up another level of beads by cheesing bosses and I don't feel bad about it all because some of them you just can't and it's work and, goddamn it, beating them EARNS me some cheese.

Up to Genchiro.  We'll see how that goes.

Genichiro is peak anime

I swear this game is the most trolling From Software ever did.

I agree.  Can't stop playing it though.

And you were right about Genichero.  Not only that, he just butchered me without thought.  I couldn't even get one of his lives down, never mind stage two.

Brutal.

I find the game very hard to read most of the time. Additionally the game doesn't lend itself very well to practice because it only gives me limited feedback.

Practice for me means that I can practice just that one thing that I'm bad at over and over again and that I'm getting feedback what exactly I did wrong. Fights are OK but not that useful if you're trying to practice a certain move and the undying tutorial NPC is simply too easy and also doesn't give you feedback should you screw up. I have absolutely no issue beating the NPC, yet still regularly get my ass handed to me by harder regular enemies.

From Software's usual approach to tutorialisation doesn't work for me here because I actually don't know what I did wrong most of the time just that something went wrong. It was easier in DS and even BB because mechanically parry wasn't all that important and if you got hit you usually either dodged too late or in the wrong direction. Windup animations were much longer too so the windows for dodge were more generous as well. Sekiro doesn't give me enough feedback though or if it does then I don't understand it.

I still regularly mistime deflects and I still have a hard time deciding when to deflect, when to block, when to counter and when to dodge. Take the mikiri counter for example. It's a very important move against thrust attacks and if you mistime it you're most likely dead because perilous attacks usually do a lot of damage. Same for the double jump over slash attacks. (headstomp)

It's hard to practice (tutorial NPC is too easy, regular enemy is not predictable and you can't really iterate quickly), it's costly when you fuck it up and the game isn't really telling me what exactly I did wrong or I simply can't read the feedback properly. (too late? too early? should I have dodged into the enemy with direction and circle or not?)

It at least seems like I'm getting better because I still progress but I couldn't tell you why and most of the time I couldn't tell you why a certain move worked or not which means I'm not really learning.

You can practice doing the same section over and over. It's what I did and helped me lot. I did some parts of the estate a million times (raking up money and skill points too in the process) until I could dominate the swarm of enemies and in case I died I just ressurrected and ran back to the bonfire to prevent dragonrot spread. The dragonrot spread is my only complaint. You can go around it most of the times but in boss fights, where you cannot escape, it really makes you feel like being given a long term punishment for trying to learn.

Outsidr of boss fights, I feel there are infinite occasions to train.

I feel I could play the estates section for the rest of my life and never really master it. Good place for grinding up the skills, though.

This is going to sound stupid, seeing as I have played enough that I should know better, but.....Dragonrot?  I get it as a methaporical story concept, but what does it do in the actual game?  When I ressurrect, I usually just keep plugging away at it until I die good and proper.  It sounds to me now that I am making some horrible, irreversible mistake.  Because I die A WHOLE FUCKING LOT.  Come to think of it, I don't know what half the mechanics mean in this game, nor the onscreen indicators  :grin:

For reference, my progress amounts to only having just passed the first Chained Ogre, and in the estates area I have made it to the actual burning estate itself.  Starting over wouldn't be the worst disaster ever...thought about doing it anyway, because I am playing directly on my son's account (instead of sharing via Steam) which is kinda annoying me anyway.

Outside of Boss Fights Doesn't Matter. 

I get what's being said.  I would kill for the ability to practice a boss, particularly those that are a long way from the spawn points.  I was fucking up on Spear Chaps because I am …. inconsistent with Makiri, despite having it fully upgraded.  Instead, I ended up just using an unconventional strat to win.  I could have just practiced and practiced, but I knew that A - I wasn't that good and B - Fuck that trash run.  Fuck it.

However, the actual 'Boss Bosses' are not skippable, entirely required and give you very little feedback to go on.  I literally couldn't tell you right now HOW Genichiro won - as Neo would say, 'He's too fast' - but I know he handed me my ass.  I have butterfly 'deflect, deflect, wait one beat, then deflect kick' ingrained in my head a the moment and it DOESN'T HELP ME FUCK ALL WITH HIM.  So I know I'm just going to have to learn HIS shit and get it done, but by fuck practicing would be nice.

Honestly, all the trash in the world doesn't matter a fuck and practicing on them just doesn't help at all. None of them will suddenly summon fucking ghosts and lightning bolts and muppets to attack you.  That shit just needs learned.

Almost fuck all.  Stops the NPC's quests progressing and reduces the chance that you'll save your shit on death.  It's a totally forgettable mechanic that you have a million chances to reverse.

I wouldn't worry about it at all, unless it matters much much later ?

The feedback loop of the game is another complaint I have because it punishes players that are in the process of getting better and makes the game even harder for them. I'm at so much dragon rot at the moment that unseen aid never triggers and I can't reset it because I have no item. I'm actually wondering if NPCs could die from too much dragon rot.

Doing sections over and over is not really what I need though. I need to practice moves not enemies and I need feedback what I did wrong and ideally I need to do it in areas where I can iterate quickly. I'll give you an example what I mean.

I'm currently practicing mikiri counter vs the spear monks that live near the cemetery area on Hirata estate because they are the only enemies that consistently do a slash attack and where I can fight single enemies without the need to clear out an area first.

The loop still takes too long because I have to start from the spirit idol at the thicket, kill the enemies that are near the bridge and tower (where the Shinobi hunter was) hook shot to the cemetery, kill another enemy and then head left and down. Then I face one of the monks, fuck it up, die, resurrect, fuck it up, die again. Respawn at the spirit idol and repeat. If you'd ask me what I've learned so far doing that over and over again the only thing I could tell you is that I must be doing something wrong because I die. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, the fuck do I know why though.

Redoing sections doesn't help me all that much because in order to practice a certain move I need enemies that consistently do a certain move and the mix of different enemies in a certain area only means that I'm taking even longer to get better since most enemies don't do the thing I need to practice or don't do it consistently enough.

I can do the estate up to where the drunken boy was in my sleep yet I still die almost instantly vs.  because it takes so long to get back to where I was after death and practice runs usually don't last that long

When I get stuck I go do other stuff, like on Genichiro I beat my head against it for a while and then pushed on to Mibu Village (what) before realizing I should probably kill the first actual boss-boss.

Died again horribly but realized he's weak to a single hit towards his side just after an attack, or if you can step-dodge to the side whenever and plink him undefended. Chip him down to 1/2 and then every time he shoots arrows or swings a sword his posture stays up. Just keep deflecting at that point and you'll get a counter kill. I suck at Mikiri so I just dodged/deflected the entire fight and managed to get past phase 1 (2 health orbs) with no more gourds, but one-shotted phase 2 thanks to those lightning tutorials. Feels good.

Usually when you need to learn something that requires a certain amount of physical skill you opt for tight loops and lots of repetitions. That's why games like Super Meatboy or I wanna be that guy are structured the way they are. Short levels, tight loops, instant restart. The biggest mistake people make when they learn a physical skill is that they restart from the beginning when they screw up instead of at the part where they made the mistake. This will most often lead you to actually reinforce the mistake instead of "unlearning" it.

Learning the piano means that I'll practice a certain set of bars or chords I have trouble with over and over again until it works. I can use a metronome to check if I'm on rhythm, I can slow things down or speed them up, I can arbitrarily extend the number of bars I play or reduce them and when I have a certain part down I expand until I'm able to play the whole song or repeat that process on another part I have trouble with. Each step has clear feedback. Do I hit all of the notes? Do I hit the correct notes? Do I use the correct fingers? Do I hit the correct tempo? and so on.

It's the same with almost all physical skills. When you have trouble hitting nails you practice hitting nails. You don't restart from the point in time where you bought the timber at home depot each time you don't hit a nail. If you screw up a three pointer you keep practicing your throws, you don't restart at the locker room and put on your basketball shoes again.

Right now the game isn't giving me enough to practice what I need to learn in a structured manner and with enough feedback and it makes it quite a bit harder.

Here's the thing about him though ;  He's a cunt.  He's a total cunt.

And he dies like a bitch to Mid-Air Deathblow.  Which you don't have and won't get for fucking ever.

So there's that. 

If I was you, I'd be more questioning why in the name of fuck he's even there because he's clearly entirely out of place, level wise.

Why is Schild not playing this?
Schild, don't be wrong. Play this.

Something something it is not Demon Souls would be my guess as to why he is not playing it.

And really, it is not Demon Souls.  Liking one will not necessarily mean liking the other

Hey to me Demon's Souls is probably the best game ever made, but it's not like we sold our PCs or Playstations after it.

i'm not playing it just because i'm not playing it

i will play it, it's on the list

I was just talking out my ass anyway.  This game is hard not to like on several levels, even if there are complaints that can be leveled at it.

I can't do "hard" games anymore. Most difficult thing I've beaten in the last decade has been Dead Cells. That's not even attempting really to go beyond the first whole clear. 

Demon's Souls was novel and the atmosphere was like nothing I'd played, but never got close to beating it. Bashing my head against a wall just isn't my thing anymore. I'd rather hit buttons and watch shit explode or cruise through a RPG on default difficulty. Yah, I'm lame.

Just do what I do and run a trainer.  The fights are still plenty fun and the game is enjoyable with unlimited health.  I don't need the experience of chucking my controller and swearing to enjoy.

The problem I have with games like this (and Jeff touched on it upthread) is not that I can't possibly learn the boss patterns; it's that after a death, I don't want to work my way back to the boss over and over only to die again in 15 seconds.

For fairness, this time they put a bonfire just outside the main bosses rooms. Not so much for mini-bosses though which are very hard anyway.

They also added the training person.

This is getting ridiculous. After Forbes, now Kotaku.

"An Easy Mode Has Never Ruined A Game". (https://kotaku.com/an-easy-mode-has-never-ruined-a-game-1833757865)

I don't get it. Why don't they just download Big Gulp's infinite HP trainer? Also, I am not sure I understand these articles' intentions. Based on their argument, which is removing entry barriers, shouldn't every single video game come equipped with an optional "God mode"? Coherently, that's what they should advocate for globally not just about From's games.

GiantBomb had a decent take on this issue in the bombcast. However, I don't think any measured response on this issue would cause you to think semi-critically about the benefits of this.

I don't run trainers. If I need to run a program to beat your game outside of fixing a fatal bug, I'm not going to buy your game. If a game/series of games/genre is just too hard, I don't buy it or I buy it really cheap.

Too much shit to play anyhow. I'm not about to write a think piece or petition From to change their games. They're not for me. I don't buy them. Is this a potential lost sale based on something as simple as putting in an easier mode? Hard to tell, there's no current game in recent memory that I played on a difficulty lower than normal.

Also, there's a difference between easier and 'God Mode'. Don't be obtuse. It's a tricky issue. What even is "easy mode" for a Soulsbourne?

For the past Soulsbourne games (i.e. not including Sekiro, which has different mechanics) that would mean mobs don't hit as hard, basically. I.e. it would be the opposite of how NG+(+etc) works in those games.

Edit: and possibly have fewer HP (forgot NG+ mobs also have more HP)

Probably also respawning at the fog shit. Or was that just in Demon's Souls? Oddly enough I still have my copy of Dark Souls, but I don't think I ever played much of it.

Heh, my Demon's Souls import still retains some actual value. Neat.

i should really sell my deluxe edition, J Edition, and Pre-Release Press Beta

So, I spent two hours fighting Genichiro last night.  Two Fucking Hours.  There were about 3 times I sailed to lightning stage and thought myself pretty smug.  But 3 times is not enough time to learn the different moves there, so right back to fuckdom I go.

There's no mechanism in this game to make up for your own poor performance.  I can't really go anywhere to grind out more power that will help.  It's all about my 'getting gud' and I'm clearly not that Gud.  You run out of wee spirit things quite quick and there's no point getting more until you're confident they'll help.  Ditto skills.  Also, I made the mistake of using a fair bit of sugar to practice and now I'm out of it, which is an interesting thing.

It's annoying because I feel that I'm Almost There.  I know when the flurry is coming and how to parry all of it. I know when he jumps to get behind him and I know when he thrusts right after that jump, it's Makiro time. I can even pull what I wrote off a couple of times, but not often because my mind is quicker than my hands.

But Goddamn.  Do I really want to read a writeup about an easy mode ?  I don't think so because I might just end up agreeing.  I mean, it would be really, really, really good if, like the other souls games, I could summon a bro.  Even just getting murdered together would make me feel better.

Took me 4 hours and 40 minutes to beat Genichiro. 4 hours and 40 fucking minutes. When he died I screamed like I won the Champions League.

An interesting follow-up question to that might be:  Do you feel like the payoff was worth the investment?

I haven't read any of the Easy Mode articles, nor have a made it nearly as far as the rest of you (haven't touched it since Sunday), but in general, I would be supportive of a slightly easier mode.  Not full on EASY MODE like we know it from RPGs and others where it takes all the challenge out so you can enjoy the story, because these From Software games are ultimately all about the challenge in the first place.  But I am worried about my ability to even get halfway through this game based on what I am hearing from you guys, and that is a concern.

From Software is free to do whatever they want, and they don't have to cave to the pressure....but at some point, making these games too hard will turn people off from them, and thus they will be shooting themselves in the foot.  And it would be a shame if a large portion of the population is being cut off from the best games made by, IMO, the best developer of games, simply because they are too brutally difficult.  That is something I think is a valid complaint and a debate worth having.

It was absolutely worth my investment, and the level of challenge (and the quality of the gameplay) is exactly why I could not put it down even after 4 hours and 40 minutes. I would have left ANY other game after 1 hours of failed tries. I 100% understand what Miyazaki says when he mentions the satisfaction of overcoming difficulties and so on. This clearly does not trigger in everybody but for those who does there aren't many other games like this.

I also understand that it is not ideal having to download an external program to progress in a game, but suck it up. Big Gulp is here to represent all of those who want to see the game to its conclusion and still enjoy slaying everything without having to die. Trainers and God Modes, internal or external, are a valid point and I always assumed that people who can't be bothered with the way a game is can always rely on them. Treat them like a mod, no one is against Skyrim or Minecraft mods is it? One of my best friends is obsessed with finishing all the games quickly and frustration-free and he does NOT play any game that he can't get cheat codes for. He finishes about twenty games a month and he's happy like that. More power to him.
So I understand why some people don't want to mess with the actual challenge, but there are plenty of solutions out there. I always wanted to see the end of Ikaruga*, and the way to do it is by downloading a trainer or infinite continues not by asking them to make it easier.

I'll tell you something more. This is the hardest From Software game ever, and so far it looks like it's the most popular. There's a lot that can be said about lost sales due to the difficulty, but I am inclined to think that for one reason or the other they would lose way more sales if they changed their formula.

EDIT:
* which, to my point, has an easy mode and it's still widely considered too hard

Good points.  It actually is an interesting conversation.  And I would agree that, at least so far, this is clearly harder than the other FS games.  The first General I had to fight (who I guess is the first boss if I remember)...I was pretty good at getting close to killing him, but I will admit it took me a couple hours.  I would do okay, and then just one fuckup would end it for me.  No big deal, because the respawn was right outside his area.  I was trying a mix of tactics, dodging and sidestepping more than what I understand is recommended.  In the end, something just clicked where I engaged him in a flurry of attacks and perfect parries, and I just FUCKED HIM UP.  I screamed like a dying cow when I finally got him down.  Massively rewarding.  Chained Ogre was the same way, although with him it was more a case of understanding the correct tactics and having access to the items and skills needed.

That there is now another fucking General immediately after the Ogre, this one surrounded by goons and henchman......yeah.  I had to put the controller down and walk away for a while.

And now, for the embarrasing part of my post.....wtf is a Trainer?  I thought at first you were all just talking about watching YouTube walkthroughs, but it sounds like an actual program?

Yeah "trainers" is how they were called in the 80s and 90s if my memory serves me right. It's either a cheat code or an external program that cheats. God mode, infinite ammo, infinite money, stuff like that. No idea what Big Gulp is using, whether is just a code, cheat engine, or what else. Basically, "trainer" = "cheats".

EDIT: Here's an example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmSzkpCr7YE

It is the most talked about. If it's the most popular is something only time can tell. What I can tell you is that the debate is shifting. That's because a lot of "git gud" veterans have now reached their personal skill ceiling and are a little pissed off about that.

Mostly because everyone tends to forget how they actually played the previous games over all of the "difficulty über alles" circlejerk.

It's easy to get on the "From games need to be difficult" train if you're one of the people who have the ability to finish them. It's also easy because no one can check how you finished them. You can cheese Dark Souls, you can cheese Bloodborne. Nobody notices if you beat the game on a Level 1 no armor char or if you grinded your way to level 200 and pyromancied your way to victory. No one will know if you beat every boss by yourself or if you summoned. No one will know if you just murdered a boss through the fog doors with a bow by abusing a glitch or if you made him fall through the earth and hit a kill trigger. No one will know that you rolled a strength 50 char and just used Havel's ring and armor the whole game, never dodge rolling once. No one will know if you simply status effected a boss to death with poison. Speed runners of Bloodborne regularly abuse boss AI or the game mechanics to trivialize fights. No one will know if you spent 2 hours to shoot the dragon to death with bow and arrow from a safe distance. No one will know how you abused world tendency on your PS3 to make Demon's Souls easier or that you farmed hundreds of health items in DS 2.

I could literally go on for hours given how many options you have to cheese and glitch your way through all of the games including Orphan of Kos.

A lot of people killed Ornstein and Smough. Only a few people beat them without summoning, even fewer people beat Smough first to get the ring. (the harder fight). I did but I can't ever prove that I did it "the right way" so who gives a fuck.

There have been lots of ways in previous games to make it easier, to trivialize fights, to cheese or outright cheat. Youtube and the web is full with tutorials and strategy guides that tell you how to most effectively abuse boss AI, make the most broken build possible or glitch the games to make it easier. Watch how fans actually play those games and you'll see that a lot of time and effort gets spent to absolutely not fight bosses the intended (and harder) way. The whole difficulty argument is self aggrandizing bullshit because everyone who beat those games can later claim to have beat it pure and that it was hard while no one can check if they actually beat the games "the way the designer intended it" or if they bullshitted their way to victory.

This gets me back to the reception of Sekiro. FromSoft removed most of the cheese from that game. There's no summons, there's no grinding, you need to beat (mini)bosses to upgrade your char, there's no armor or weapons and no item upgrade system and they built the game around a mechanic that was optional in previous games and which is difficult to execute perfectly.

So suddenly a lot of the "git gud" people are singing a different tune because now they are themselves in a situation where they can't beat the game and where cheesing is not an option and where they no longer can get up on the high horse and proselytize about how FromSoft games need to be difficult and how everyone who doesn't know how to play is a filthy casual.

It's actually very fun to watch.

Game is out less than two weeks and there already exists a full set of cheats and tables for cheat engine and an ungodly amount of time is being spent on finding cheese strats for bosses. . People on the official Sekiro subreddit openly talk about cheat engine and they are not getting banned or even sneered at.

But, you know, auteur game and game designers intent and so on...

The general reaction to Sekiro is very positive but there's also a growing sentiment by a lot of people - even by those who beat the game - that it's actually too hard and that beating it stopped being a fun challenge and turned into a lot of stress and work. There's also a lot of people who either quit for good, ask for cheese strats and there's a growing number of "I just tried boss X for six hours straight, fuck it I'm installing cheat engine" posts.

So I'm actually curious to see how the game get's talked about a year from now when the hype has died down and not everyone is reflexively trying to defend the game design choices.

So much in that post I love mate that I wish I had time to reply to.  The standout is what you said about Smough ; 

1 - Who would do that fight without help ??  It's much more FUN with help !
2 - You can get a ring ?  Oh Fuck.

as off topic as my previous post but more constructive.

The designer of Celeste actually suggested a few "assist mode" tweaks to Sekiro which would make the game easier for people without removing the challenge. Like for example unlimited resurrects, a game speed setting and more.

It's actually very ineresting to hear them talk about the game design philosphy for Celeste because if you play the game how the designers intended it it can be very hard and the "B sides" of the levels offer an even higher challenge. They also added a lot of tweakables to the game that they call "assist mode" and where you can modify game mechanics to reduce the challenge level of the game, like for example adding an additional jump, increasing the stamina etc. They have talked at length about their reasons for adding assists, how this had to approach it, why they think it is not only necessary but actually a very positive thing. They aso talked about how they needed to change their philosophy because their intent was to make a hard game and so they had to overcome their own preconceptions at some point (he called it "letting go")

It's an interesting read

There's two ways you can do that fight

Kill Ornstein first then Smough (who turns into Super Smough) and you'll get Smough's armor set from a vendor if you beat the fight
Kill Smough first and then Ornstein (who turns into Super Ornstein) then you'll get Ornstein's armor set and also the leo ring.

The ring is the additional reward for choosing the more difficult fight because Super Smough is still a slow and lumbering oaf while Super Ornstein retains the reach and quickness he has in phase 1 but additionally gets the AOE of Smough and hits twice as hard.

The ring is not even good because it only boosts thrust damage and therefore only works on thrusting weapons (like spears) or weapons that have a thrust attack. That#s why most people don't even bother except for the bragging rights.

I did it.  I finally got the motherfucker.

gg

Congratulations,
edited for spoiler

Spoiler, WTF?

I didn't realize Celeste had those features but I'm still never ever going to play that game even though I kind of want to follow the story cause I hate platformers, am horrible at them, and Celeste has one of the most frustrating level designs I've ever watched people play. So yeah, maybe he should take his own advice and make his game even easier to play.

i absolutely *hate* the levels in Celeste

I agree, it's about as spoiley as someone backing up towards the edge of the camera in a horror movie ;  you know what's coming.

However, to expand on my post a little bit :  Beat the asshole and to be brutally honest, I'm not entirely sure why, except that I really DID learn his moves.  I also hit him with not one, not two, but THREE of his lightning strikes, so that was fun.  Lightning reversal is great.

However, what's more interesting about it is how the boss fights affected my head ;  much much more than Lady Butterfly, I found it took me a good 20 minutes or so to reacclimatize myself to actually playing the 'real' game after I'd beaten him.  I'd forgotten the 'normal' controls, how to sneak and rope and fight and all that shit.  It was very weird.  The boss fights program your reactions to such a strong degree, it's only later that you realise the fights are, in fact, an entirely different game, which may be why it's bothering people so much.  Also, a harder game though I suspect that goes without saying.

I also want to say that for the most part you'll watch videos or get help that seems to make sense, but just doesn't work for you ;  my advice on those would be to stop trying ;  I've found a lot of the chaps have interesting strats, most of which work, but when they don't it's usually down to your own playstyle being unable to cope with it and it just ends up even more frustrating.

Anyway, now chibbing folks with guns, so a normal Kilmarnock Friday night.

Can someone tell me if you're technically able to deflect all enemy attacks that are not perilous attacks (so all attacks without the symbol)? Game doesn't tell me and it seems to me like there are normal attacks that you can't deflect. Maybe I'm simply terrible at it and have never hit the correct window even after a few dozen tries or I shouldn't try to deflect because it is simply not possible.

As far as I can tell from my own play and watching all the nutters, you can pretty much deflect absolutely everything.

I just watched the world record guy who did the game in 33 mins.  He only 'cheated' once and his quicksilver like speed on the bosses made me feel truly stupid.

 has this overhead attack/slash that I was never able to deflect once. It's not a perilous attack (no symbol) and if it hits it takes off most of your health or fills up your posture bar if you block. I've tried it a lot but no matter how often I tried he always hit me. At some point I stopped bothering and dodged it.

I couldn't really tell you if I'm just really bad at timing the deflect or if it is simply not possible to deflect the attack. Only thing I know is that I never managed to do it even once and simply dodging away seemed like the safer option.

The Fextralife video I just watched seems to suggest that's deflectable.  Though it must be hard, a fair few times, as you say, his posture goes RIGHT up.

It's pretty moot tho, since you should sneak his first orb and then your mate in blue should be the chibber for most of the fight.

I don't have the patience for it.

It would have meant to pull the trash one by one and also away from the NPC (he triggers if an enemy or the boss gets to close to him) then wait until the boss loses aggro, then sneaking up behind him and then triggering the NPC.

It's quicker than a single death and won't result in one.

I didn't sneak on him as I didn't think I could. I skipped the first mobs, ran to his area, backstabbed one of the shielders, chaos ensues, I ran towards the blue guy who draws attention. While he is being maimed, I proceed to kill EVERY mob as fast as I can (my personal hint: thrust leads to insta deathblow on almost everyone in that area). When everyone is dead so is the blue guy and me and the mini-boss are ready to duel undisturbed. This whole setup takes about 45 seconds to clear the arena, not bad.

Also, not sure if I tried to deflect that but I agree that everything in the game seems deflectable except for the red-marked actions.

You can actually deflect that attack. Saw a video. I’m just that bad. Did it the way Ironwood suggested and it was indeed incredibly easy. Blue dude even survived.

Gyoubu (horse dude) was incredibly easy with firecrackers and the grappling hook attack, took me two tries. Lady Butterfly seems doable, I’ve managed to get to Hase two a few times now. I ran out of snap seeds though. I also have no idea how to deal with the glowing things in phase two yet.

Boar was also not that tough.

Maybe I’m getting the hang of things after all.

I just wish crouch wasn’t on L3, the way I play when I’m stressed means I will always unintentionally click in the stick and crouch which fucks up the whole fight

Even though I’m obviously still rather bad at the game I can’t put it down. I’ve played nothing else all week and I’m obsessed enough with it that I read up on and watch a lot of stuff on the game as well.

It’s a pretty great game

Forget about snap seeds, you'll only get frustrated if you run out of them before killing her. Alsom they seem totally unnecessary. When she summons the ghosts, just run like a mad man in wide circles and do nothing else, they will go away after about 30 seconds not without transforming in heat seeking projectiles, which you are still going to avoid just by keeping the running up. After that, back to bashing the old lady.

There are pillars in that room for a reason.


Edit : Corrupted Monk down.  There are consumables that make it so much easier, but what I hate is that it doesn't tell you that and, when you practice, you can run out.  Fortunately, they are farmable....

Sugars don’t really last very long don’t they?

No.  Which is why they give you a skill later to extend them.

Who is corrupted monk? Senpou temple from the Castle Reservoir? I am not there yet, but that's exciting cause I believe we might have taken two different paths. I mean,


That took me a while, a long long while.

Yes, I've killed him and his second fight with his mate.  The second one was miles easier.

The Monk is in Mibu Village.  He's a total wankstain.  You can also fight him again later....

So I actually started over.  May have mentioned it earlier, but I was on my son's steam account, which was getting annoying.  So now I am doing the family share thing, which is 2% less annoying.

Anyway, restarting confirmed I was actually getting better.  Trash mobs barely pose a threat but are still fun to murder.  First boss went down after two attempts instead of after two and a half hours.  Made it nearly back to where I left off, having only died once instead of goddamn uncountable times.  First spear guy will probably give me some trouble, I imagine.

I will probably never get as far or as good as the rest of you bastards, but there is no doubt that this game is fucking amazing.

Oh I suck so bad. I keep going because I am very stubborn and because I adore From's games even when I am supposed to hate them (wrong setting, no shields, no weapon and armour variety), and I absolutely want to see what comes next, next area, next boss. There are no other game worlds that suck me in like what these people have been doing since 2009. But I am 45 hours in and I doubt I am even halfway, so there's that.

I'm getting good. 

However, I'm almost at the end and, frankly, the game is showing it's ass.  There's just not enough of it there.  The latter half just turns into frustrating boss fight after boss fight and it re-uses almost all the areas for little good reason.

It looks like a game that was rushed, rather than the Souls progression.  Don't get me wrong, still loving the fuck out of it, but when you're basically tooling around the same very small area all the time getting sodomised, there's eventually a limit.

Interestingly, that's where the lowest score on Metacritic is coming from. In a sea of 90% scores, the lowest score (an 80%) was from a Japanese magazine that quoted exactly your reasons. To me, it's fantastic and I am in awe at the world once again. The abandoned dungeon and the depths, while not new, were breathtaking.

From Soft always saved money on cutscenes (their lack of endings is legendary) but I never ever felt like anything they did was rushed so this would be a first, especially considering you would imagine them having a proven formula to craft these games after ten years. It would be great to have some development insight.

Beat Lady Butterfly and I’m now at Genichiro (that’s Japanese for fucking fucker, right?) or alternatively Seven Spears. Been away from the game for the weekend and nailed two bosses in the first half hour of my play session.

You can’t walk ten yards without bumping into a miniboss though and it already annoys me. You can’t really explore anywhere.

On the other hand, the boss fight with the second bull Sukurus is just fucking hilarious.

Suffice to say, there's a funny ezmode to him.

Speedrun of this Game is already sub 50 minutes :ye_gods:

FIFY

Yeah, that was the one I was talking about a page back.  Under 34 mins (I think it was 33.27 or some shit) and he only used ONE glitch.

There's also the stream I was watching last night, the guy who got up to (and past) Genichiro without taking a hit.

Not.  One.  Hit.

It was fucking STUPID to watch.  I surely wish I was even remotely able to play.

The route I watched was

Chained Ogre, Gyoubu, skipping Flaming Bull, Genichiro, Corrupted Monk, Guardian Ape, , ,
in 42 minutes.

Also shoutout to the biggest enemy in the game: the camera.

Souls camera was never that great and Sekiro's is better but fighting in enclosed spaces still sucks and you still get unlocked quite often.

No one cares but let me state it for the record anyway: I hate speed runs. Never watched one, never will.

For me it's more professional interest. From my perspective as a programmer it's interesting to see how those games work and how people break them.

I don't like speed runs that use glitches. There are "glitchless" versions but they aren't as common. For the Soulsborne games I prefer watching the "no hit" runs rather than the speed runs for learning about the boss battles though there is a lot of overlap in the strategy between the two. I.e. killing a boss very very quickly is often the best way not to get hit as well.

Indeed.  There's a lot of crossover between the speed run of Sekiro and the no-hit ones.

Watching them both take down horse boss was a masterclass in how to do it. 

That's one thing that kinda bugs me a wee bit about the boss fights ;  I've spent ages learning them and getting good and I know I'm better, but I can't re-fight them.  You'd think with a Fight Memory in your inventory, it would find someone for you to refight for a bit of fun.  Instead, new playthrough seems to be required.

You can do it by fiddling with save game files.

All prayer beads nabbed and only 3 bosses to go.

And I can't be bothered.

Goddamn.

Has the cadence of mini boss following mini boss following boss worn you down?

Honestly, this game is a lot about dueling your enemy. Normal mobs are utter trash in this compared to all the other From games due to the many ways you can cheese them or avoid them. Personally, mini-boss after mini-boss has not worn me down in fact I cherish those fights.

This is, in fact, the case ;  After a while, it's all about the minboss because the stealth is easy as fuck and the 'normal' enemies are about as challenging as pissing in the shower.

However, I'm looking at  so what you gonna do ?

It's a good and fun game with the most interesting sword combat I've ever played, but I've kinda burned myself out.

I seem to get better at the game.

Collected 7 prayer beads, went all the way through gun fort (that was honestly very fun) and murdered a giraffe that doesn’t really look like a giraffe, let an armored knight fall to his death while traversing Senpou temple to the great hall. Discovered a demon bell, got lots of Shinobi prosthetic attachments and a few skill upgrades.

The things you can achieve when you procrastinate on the Genichiro fight.

The centipede giraffe made the combat really fun and also made it click. I was only partying and jumping and it took about a minute to go through two deathblows.

The Centipede Giraffe (literally) hammered something home that I've seen some people mentioning. Sekiro is basically a rhythm game and you have to approach it as such.

The enemies don't have a set of individual attacks that get randomly/procedurally selected. They have attack/movement sets that they execute in the same way in which a musician would play a number of bars of a song. Your reaction is basically pressing buttons to the "rhythm" of their attack sequences.

Why is this distinction being made? Because you don't have to "sight read" the enemy and react to individual attacks (which would make this an extreme twitch game like a 2D/3D fighter) instead you can react to attack patterns/attack sequences making the reaction both easier and more predictable. You can also count them out in rhythm like you'd do when playing cords. Patterns only get interrupted when you break posture or counter. For example, the centipede giraffe follows the same patterns: e.g. 1,2,3,4,5 + 1,2,3,4,5 and parriable two arm slash, 1,2,3,4,5 + 1,2,3,4,5 and perilous slash/grab that you can headstomp or 3 attack combos.

Realizing this made the fight easier because it meant that I wouldn't need to react to each individual attack and instead could follow the attack pattern in rhythm. This meant that I beat the GIraffe on my third try in a fight that lasted probably less than a minute.

The negative effect of this is that you're more likely to miss the complete attack sequence when you mistime the start because your whole rhythm will be off, both because you reacted too late and because getting hit interrupts your sequence.

Combat grows on me but the ability to approach this like a rhythm game is something that the musician/vocalist in me likes as it is a more "natural" approach to me.
Setting is great and I especially like the combo english sub/japanese VO.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne have been much more fun as far as exploration goes. Sekiro is both smaller and more linear (less branching in a level) especially when you compare it to Bloodborne.
I like the approach of bigger areas and fewer bosses more than the few bosses/lots of mini bosses approach of Sekiro but I'm a sucker for big tentpole bossfights.

The stealth system is ridiculous but that's exactly why I like it. If it were more like a real stealth game (like a Metal Gear or Splinter Cell) I'd probably hate it. I can feel like a powerful silent assassin without the need to study enemy movement patterns for an hour and save/reloading a level when I eventually screw it up. Why are enemies so bad at noticing Sekiro. Well he's obviously a supernatural undying being so probably Japanese magic.

The combat system is definitely something that should be in more games.

Ahahahah, just saw an even faster speedrecord ; there's kind of an odd AI choice on the horse boss where he follows you off the cliff.  You can rope up.  The horse....cannot.

lol.

34 minutes? I am 62 hours in and I don't think I am really close to the end.

My boss times so far:

Mikiri counter is really finicky on my PS4 pro.

If I don’t take my hands off the sticks when i do it half of the time I dodge sideways even though I press forward. Even if I take me hands off the sticks it sometimes doesn’t work. I’m sure my timing is right though.

It’s really fun to press the counter only to see your toon dodge sideways right into the slash instead of forwards. Double jump is much more consistent.

Yesterday, I pressed the jump button a couple of times and it Mikiri'd.  No fucking idea why it did that.

On a related note, you might find it funny that I danced with the Owl once again for two hours learning him.  Finally got into a good rhythm and took him into the second stage.  So there he was, quarter health, almost fully posture depleted and suddenly I stopped moving.  He leapt on the opportunity and spent a whole minute cutting my head off.

My controller ran out of battery.

You can't imagine the howling.

No it's not funny, it should be but it ain't. As someone who got killed not once, not twice but three times in phase 3 of the Genichiro fight right before the death blow I feel for you.
First time mikiri counter didn't work, second time I got electrocuted, third time he pinned me into a corner and the 3rd person camera killed me.

PS 4 and XBox 1 compliance testing requires that the game pauses immediately after a controller disconnects e.g. due to low battery. I don't know how the PC version handles it. I'd expect the game to switch to the pause menu though.

Hrmf, I actually thought Mikiri ONLY required hitting the button.  I don't have enough time in game to tell you it works all the time, but I certainly beat the first spear dude that way.

My blood pressure went up in sympathy at reading your account above.  Shiiiiiiit.

Don't worry, I charged up, went back and fucked him up.  2 left.  ISS and DOH.

I may just skip DoH.

HAHAHA I read that -if you really really want- you can eavesdrop on the child and Emma at some point and undertake a HARDER story path with more bosses and more headaches for a different ending. I really love this stuff, but no not for me. At least not yet.

Well, it's a bit weird. The in game tool tip mentions that you should "dodge into" enemies and the controls that are displayed are left analog stick + circle/left analog stick + B respectively.
Only pressing the button works as well because dodge without a direction (press only circle/B) defaults to step forward. Up + button also works.
There are two issues with the way the counter works. Firstly you are normally using the left analog stick to move and if you're not letting go of the stick or the direction is not directly "up" when you press the button you'll sidestep instead of mikiri countering a thrust. Secondly if you're too close to an enemy the step forward will turn into a sidewards movement if you use lock on. You'll bounce off the enemy due to collision and the game translates this into a sideways move.

This is usually what fucks up my counter on the Genichiro fight. I'm right up in his face and when he does a perilous thrust attack my character moves forward and then sideways as he collides with the enemy model. In other games this probably wouldn't be an issue but in Sekiro enemy attacks track movement because the game expects you to block/deflect/counter and the enemy tracking you will make this easier. This means that a thrust will still hit you even if you've moved to the side but you're no longer using a mikiri counter.

I'm usually circling around enemies by locking on and then moving left/right because that reduces the risk of getting yourself pinned into a corner or a wall and this makes the counter harder as well.

It would have probably been a better idea to not map it to dodge/sidestep but they already run out of buttons so I have no clue what button they'd be able to use instead

That's the one I'm doing.  I wish I hadn't.   :why_so_serious:

To Elaborate :  There are 4 endings.  There's an easy sucky one and then there's 3 others that have the same kinda path and you choose at the end.  You get more choices the more FUCKING SUFFERING you put yourself through.

I'm at Max suffering now.

Just like Real Life.

Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-04-11-sekiro-shadows-die-twice-has-already-sold-more-than-two-million-copies

Put Bloodborne on the PC, you assholes, and you can have my money.

Yell at Sony!

I specifically edited it so it didn't look like I was shouting at you.   :why_so_serious:

(But, yes, I'd kill for Bloodborne PC.)

Haha I didn't think you were yelling at me.

Anyway, just killed DoH after 5 brutal hours. I am kind of drunk (meaning not that I had any alcohol, but that I tilted after the first two hours so I am not sure how he even died). I can't stop playing but this game is turning me into a cave man.

Well I just beat Genichiro and did the Folding Screen Monkeys. *its something*

Grats on beating Genichiro. For me that felt like graduating from "I am fumbling around" to "OK who wants their ass kicked?"

2 hours in, no luck with the final boss so far. Can't even bring it to its last stage.

Which one, Sword Saint ?

I got him down to 2 left.  Beat the first stage, then stabbed him once in the second.

After that, he goes full on spear rampage nuts and shoved it so far up my ass the point held my hat.

Same, I am stuck at the spear craze. I heard there's more lightning goodness after that.

Yeah, but lightning makes it easier, I find.  It's fairly easy to reverse.

A lot can be said and has been said about the difficulty of this game. Personally, as I said before, I feel that it's not as hard as everyone (including me) feels in the first 10 hours of gameplay. Meaning, it kicks your ass so much at first, but then you get the hang of it and it becomes as hard as any other From Soft game. So overall, I'd say the whole conversation about the game being too hard has been blown out of proportion. With that said, I am pretty sure the final boss is the hardest of any From games so far. He's a real gatekeeper. "You wanna finish the game? Ok, here's me. Earn that final cutscene." In their previous games the final bosses were adequately hard, but it wasn't rare to find them relatively easier than some other previous encounter. Here, the Final Boss is a true Final Boss and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people ended up saying fuck it and leave it at that.

Me? 5 hours in. Not even close to beat it.

The one thing that becomes clear the more speedruns and no-hits runs you see is that this game wasn't close to finished in many respects including the AI ;  most of these bosses have cheese strats that are just fucking STUPID.

The latest I saw was the Genichiro fight beaing beatable if you face the wall away from him and just swing.  He has no clue how to deal with that and keeps closing in to get you, but gets caught in the backswing.  Again.  And Again.  And Again.

There's the horse-suicide.  The Monk-Ash Manuever.  The Owl-Father-Swing.   Basically any 'proper' boss fight has some little trick that just trivialises them.

I'm fairly sure we'll see one for the final fight soon enough.  Maybe then I'll be able to do it.  lol.

The monk strat is stupid. She basically stands there until she gets an in air deathblow

I understand the technical criticism, but does it really matter? I mean, could you find those strategies yourself or did you see them in some youtube video? Personally, I did not watch anything and I couldn't find any cheesy strat for any boss. *Had to* to them the hard long way and the final one is the only one that could finally make me looo for some help.

My point is that easy strats for bosses always existed in the other From games too and maybe they weren't so much a matter of bad programming like in this case, but I tend to think that without resorting to some internet scavenging those technical shortcomings are irrelevant and hard to find.

You can't have it both ways though ;  you can't have this 'uber hard' game and then have that difficulty trivialised. 

The game basically IS the difficult and engaging combat.  And now you can see that it's smoke and mirrors.  At least two of these strats are not hard to find for anyone and one of the others I found myself to my amusement.

Got the corrupted monk

Still stuck at the final boss Ironwood? What's your attack power? Mine is 15 and I am tempted to grind that up some more cause I feel so terribly weak.

12, I think ?  If you're talking about grinding skill points for 4 for 1 then I can honestly say ;  fuck that.   :why_so_serious:

That's how I reached 15 from 12. I decided at some point that I did not care for new skills anymore and put those points into attack. It's 5 for 1 as far as I know. It's not really helping me so far (although I feel I am close, brought the big boss to its final stage and half HP there).

What about Vitality? I have 18 and I won't' be seeking those last two points until (if ever) I'm done with the final boss.

I have the full 20.  It's about technique more than anything else and I'm old.  I'll get to it.

Given that you beat most of the bosses both of you should be much higher than 12 or 14. each memory gives you 1 ap and I’m already at 14 even though I’ve yet to beat the ape

Nope, just checked :  20 Vit and 12 AP.

I think you're either getting confused, or actually, I don't know what the fuck.  I've beat all the bosses save the last two.

Please let me know what I've missed.

You should get 1 vitality for every prayer bead necklace (every 4 prayer beads) so you’ll end up with 20 vitality because there are 40 beads total to get. (Option: enhance physical attributes on the sculptor’s idol menu). That’s 200% vitality. You only get them once, they don’t reappear on subsequent NG+ playthroughs.

You should get 1 attack power for every memory you get from a boss. There are 14 memories you can obtain from bosses not all of them in the same run. (Option: enhance attack power). The cap for AP is 99. https://sekiroshadowsdietwice.wiki.fextralife.com/Memory

I beat Lady Butterfly, Gyoubu,  Genichiro, Folding Screen Monkeys and Corrupted Monk that’s why I have 15 AP

You both should have more because you beat more bosses than me.

You have to “trade them in” at the sculptor’s idol though

You can see your current stats on the bottom of the inventory screen

I know all that.  I've done all that. 

However, is your math off or some shit ?

I have beat 11 bosses.  I have 12 AP.

If you've beat 5 bosses, you should have 6.  What the fuck ?

I thought you started at 10 for both stats. You only start at 10 vitality though. So ignore my previous comments  :oops:

AP soft caps at around 14

I was going to say that. Attack Power starts at 1, unlike Vitality. No way in hell you can have 15 AP halfway through the game. More like 5. I have 15 cause I ground 3 extra AP through an item you only get right before the end.

Anyway, I am timing myself with a stopwatch. I am 8 hours into the Final Boss attempts. Still no luck. I would be happy if I could kill it within ten hours of trying, but I am not sure. I have reached the final stage about ten times now (out of hundreds of attempts), and one time I was close to end it but failed. As Ironwood said it's all technique, precision in execution, timing, etc. That's why it's taking me so long, it takes me longer than the average person to learn the pattern, have my brain react flawlessly to the visual cue, and even more time to communicate the data to my fingers, which don't always perform as sharply as they should. I won't be surprised when I'll hear my friends say "Oh yes it took me a long time! Like 1 hour". Ugh.

Going by achievement completion percentages you’ll be well above average if you beat that fight.

About that ape  :headscratch: :argh:
I mean how? He’s running around like he’s on speed and is hammering me into the ground with his huge arms, when he’s not literally shitting on me.

Never get a hit in even I use fire

Edit: problem is that deflecting/blocking will knock me away so I’m always too far away to attack.

The Ape took me four hours I believe. As usual, until your brain starts to recognize the patterns at a glance you won't beat it. To me the key is a skill called Ichimonji. I knew which attacks to avoid (almost all) and which ones I could afford to deflect to put a hit or two in before running away again. The attacks that leave the ape a bit open are the ones where it rolls on the ground left and right. When you see that one, you go in, deflect both the ridiculous motions and then slam the ape with ichimonji wich almost completely reset your posture and damage the enemy's a lot. Another attack that is easy to exploit is the fart one. When it turns around and before the ape farts you can put a hit or two in. Another good chance is when the ape does that 40 yards jump. Use sprint and get behind. I know this stuff seems obvious but that's how I did it. What was seriouslly tough was phase two. Which... I can't even remember how I did it. I think you want to try and stay behind the ape as much as you can, and use its weakest attacks to punish it. When it lunges forward falling flat on the ground for example, great chance. In phase two it's also immune to firecrackers, so forget about it. Honestly, it's once again all about realizing what's going to happen and react to it in a split second. Almost every attack has a safe spot, a single tile on the floor where you are safe. I know you know it, but that's how the Guardian Ape works. In phase two it's harder to read what the ape is doing, so I am gonna tell you: when it goes berserk slamming things in all directions, it's "kind of" safe to circle it by going left, not right. A lot of time you are safer between its legs.

Anyway, some things you can deflect, some things you should just try to dodge and time the minuscule number of i frames of your dodge. But when your posture is in the danger zone, that's where Ichimonji saved the day for me (with that boss, and all the other ones too). It's my personal cheese.

Sorry, I know this is probably not helpful. I am sure there are better guides everywhere and youtube videos that make it look trivial. This was my take on it, I realized (after 80 tries?) which attacks had a tiny safe window and where, and which ones did not and I just had to run. Sure this game is about precision, reaction and all that, but there' definitely a phase which I would call "intel gathering" where execution doesn't matter cause you simply cannot win against bosses until you learn the weak spot of every single one of their attacks.

EDIT: English.

The problem with guides is that they don’t help when you don’t have a good grip on the fight. Because while they explain what you should do they can’t help you actually do it.

I’ve watched a few and they always make the fight look easy. Hard part is doing it myself

The best guides show you the moves that you're already kind of familiar with after getting the fuck kicked out of you.  It's about learning the rhythm and it helps when the guide says block, block, dodge, punish and you can try and internalise it before the fight.  The guides I watched on the Monkey fights really, really helped me out since I KNEW what was kicking fuck out of me, but not quite HOW.

I did it.

11 hours and 46 minutes.

I am exhausted. I am probably never gonna play this game again in my life. But it was awesome.

Congratulations mate!

For people who like me struggle with accidentally pressing the stick in difficult fights, you can unbind crouch without the need to assign it to a different button. I basically unbind crouch from L3 if I do a boss or miniboss now if it's not needed (for a stealth deathblow for example)

I simply can't hold the controller so that I don't accidentally press L3 (I've tried a lot) and this tweak means I never accidentally crouch and fuck up my movement/attack while trying to stay alive.

Smart thinking.  Not sure if I have that problem in this game, but I think there is another game where it gives me fits.  Breath of the Wild, I think.

Binding of Isaac added a "reset run" option to the console versions in the latest patch (it's the "r" key on PC). You have to press both L3 and R3 and you can't rebind the command or deactivate it. I've probably reset a few dozen runs by accident that way. One time literally 10 seconds before I would have completed one of the hardest achievements in the game. You could say I was not amused.

So apparently the platinum trophy/achievement requires at least one if not two NG+(+) playthroughs. You can cheese it a little because you can get 3/4 endings by copying save files but you need all boss kills on the same save file for the platinum and that's not possible in a single playthrough.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHA

More seriously, why? Or also: not happening. As soon as I was done with my playthrough I went to watch all the other three endings on Youtube and I was very happy like that. Do people care about achievements that much?

Games that offer NG+ apparently need a justification for why you should play NG+. I can't think of a better reason, actually.

Getting all achivements would be hard on a single NG anyway because you'll need to get all skills and all prosthetic upgrades which will turn into an absolute grindfest given the XP progression. The all gourd and all prayer beads achivement additionally locks you into a specific ending because you need the
In Bloodborne it was the chalice dungeon achivement which required additional NG+ attempts because not all items necessary to create all chalice dungeons could drop on a single playthrough.

I'm now 50 hours in, I've revisited most of the areas to pick up items and explore the waterways with my new skill I picked up after the corrupted monk. I killed a few mini bosses, failed hard at one or two headless (instant kill due to terror is absolute bullshit, the fight is hard enough already) and I'm still stuck at the Guardian Ape.

The game is a lot of fun when they design the fights so that they fit the Sekiro combat system. Genichiro Ashina is probably the best all around fight in the game so far, The Centipede Mini Bosses test your deflect timing, Seven Spears needs counters. Corrupted Monk rewards execution or cleverness (prosthetics use vs. blocking, deflecting). Lady Butterfly is loads of fun, Gyoubu's charge attacks let you experiment with loads of different tactics. The game is decidedly less fun when they screw with you by taking away some of your tools/moves or if they put a Dark Souls/Bloodborne style boss in where you're more dodging and chipping away at their health bar. Chained Ogre with his dodge heavy wrestling moves, Flaming Bull,  (which is basically a Bloodborne Boss who doesn't fit the Sekiro combat style at all) or the headless with the slowing mist, teleport and terror attacks. The first half was much more interesting than the second half but that is an issue all From Software games share. There's also entirely too much reuse of (mini-)bosses and regular enemies. I don't really need to fight the drunkard three times or the same headless multiple times.

Guardian Ape is annoying as fuck and absolutely no fun to fight. The best strategy seems to be to dodge everything and get a few hits in when he does one of the attacks where he needs to recover. My best attempt was when I treated it like a dark souls boss basically dodging everything, running in hitting him once or twice and then running away. Which means that the fight takes ages. Also dodging is not effective because all enemy attacks track you. This makes a lot of sense because you don't need to worry about positioning for your deflects and parries and it makes the combat smoother, as long as it is centered on sword combat. It's bad though when you need to dodge because enemies make ridiculous mid attack corrections to track you. Ape's flying overhead grab for example. It's fun to evade it only to see him change direction 90 degrees while in the air and still hit you, then insta-kill you.

Then there's the weird difficulty spikes. There are regular enemies that are decidedly more difficult than most mini bosses or bosses. The two grey double sword wielding monkeys in the poisonous swamp prior to the Ape fight, the purple interior ministry ninjas, the knife wielding Mibu village grandmas who take out a whole healthbar if you miss one dodge, those fucking black dudes with Ichimonij. The pacing constantly switches between "a little bit too easy" and "repeatedly hitting a brick wall for five hours"

Right now I'm not sure I'll ever finish the game, not because I think I couldn't but because it stopped being fun a few hours ago. I've basically done everything I could at this stage in the game and have run out of options except banging my head against the Ape until I kill it. The fight is not nearly fun enough to spend hours on completing it though.

For me hard games like the ones From Soft makes need to pose interesting and fun challenges. No one except the most masochistic gamer will fight a single boss for hours if the challenge isn't interesting or fun. Bloodborne can be excruciatingly hard at times but most of the bosses and areas are a lot of fun, even after you have repeated them dozens of times. I didn't mind retrying Genichiro for a few hours, I didn't mind retrying Lady Butterfly, I probably spent a whole day on Queelag in Dark Souls and probably two on Artorias the Abysswalker.

There were already too many bosses in Sekiro though where my reaction was "this is not fun but I'll probably have to do this for the next few hours anyway"

Fucker is down. Took me five hours. Now my hands hurt

I know the feeling. And especially Guardian Ape took me about that much.

They seriously make you

It's easier.  Tons easier.

Yes, I was terrified too Jeff but it took me 4 hours for the first fight, and ONE try for the second.

That's cause it's easier.

Easier. hmmm....

Probably in an arena twice the size.

Smaller arena, two enemies that never get farther than two feet apart from each other and that bum rush me into the wall until I’m dead.
Lock on is practically useless.

So far they never separated from each other and they usually pin me into a corner so that the camera gets all fucked up and I die because none of my moves work. Focus on one, get totally smashed by the other.

Won’t take me as long as the previous fight probably. It’s about as much fun though.

Headless Ape moveset is exactly the same, so you know what shit he's up to and capable of.  You know also how to defeat his various flavours of bullshit.  So.  You can smack him up and pull out the beastie with the spear, or....

You can smack his bitch up.  Who's easier to kite when he's doing his headless scream and her posture doesn't go down hardly at all.  So you smack her the fuck up while he's prancing about like a dick and you finish him spearwise and parrying.

Once you do it, you'll wonder why you even cared, it's such a breeze.

Though maybe having to go through almost a DAY of that monkeys literal Bullshit just prepared me for it.

That’s not it. Right now I can’t kite them. They both rush me. First phase is easy. Second phase I don’t get an opening. Because they are always close enough to each other so that the other can hit me while I try to kite and dodge one of them.

By the time I’ve separated them enough to get a hit in their postures have almost recovered. Worse when one hits me I get knocked down and then both just smack me into next Tuesday.

In the videos they’re always farther apart and take longer to get around. In me previous attempt they are literally right next to each other, always.

Just run around until the big monkey does the scream. When it screams THEN they have to be separated cause the big one is not moving and the small one is chasing you away from the scream. Strategy is to beat up the small one first, which is very easy, and then focus on the big one.

Ok, he was easier.
Edit: thank got for I frames. Deathblowed the one while the other did his scream

I have to say I’m with Ironwood. Last three Bosses and I don’t know if I can be bothered. Game stopped being fun and feels like a chore now.

Sorry for using this thread mainly to vent now

I have officially given up.  I have no interest in beating sword saint and he's turned me off the rest of the game.

You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference.

On the one hand I appreciate the memes and just how thoroughly that guy has been dunked on since writing this tweet, on the other I wish people wouldn't give stupid takes by morons so much free exposure.

Also Owl is a cheating bastard

I found second owl easier too.  But that's probably because by that point you knew his moveset off the top of your head.

I’m rapidly approaching the limits of my ability and patience with this game.

OK so late game Ashina Castle is basically “what if we recycled a lot of the mini bosses but put them in small enclosed spaces so that they are an absolute pain in the ass to fight”

Owl is dead. Killed him after I had already spent all of my gourd, all of my pellets and two resurrections.
That had to add poison even after all the other shit he can do. Off to fountainhead.

Criticism is fair but the reality is that this game is great and like all the other Froms is very addicting and keeps calling you back no matter the frustration until you down that boss. And downing a boss brings a form of bliss very few other games (any?) could ever ever deliver.

Well, I’m sorry that I’m not as positive about the game as you but Im not feeling the bliss right now. I’m mostly pissed off and I’m playing this more out of spite than anything else. My main reaction after the last few bosses hasn’t been a feeling of achievement or the rush you feel after overcoming a tough challenge but mostly a mixture of pissed off anger and „well I’m glad I won’t have to do that ever again“.

Maybe it’s still a testament to From Software that I haven’t quit yet and that I’m stubbornly pushing on regardless. The amount of time I still spend on Sekiro content - either playing the game or watching/reading things about it - seems to indicate that I like something about the game or I’m already deep in Stockholm Syndrome territory.

Owl phase two for example is not harder than phase one, he still has essentially the same moveset. Augmented with a lot more bullshit like covering the whole floor with poison you can’t cure because there’s no window where he lets off attacking you, or smoke bombs that remove lock on or insta gib firecrackers or posture recovery.

That’s challenge but the kind of challenge that just pissed me off royally because it’s cheap. Which is fitting for a Shinobi Boss in a twisted way but doesn’t make the fight any more fun. You only have few windows to heal in fights anyway because bosses are just relentlessly attacking and an area of effect poison ability in an enclosed space is just mean spirited, as is an ability that removes lock on, stuns and fucks with your camera. In a game where the windows to react are tight and you are always only one or two hits away from death. It’s fun when the camera resets you now have your back turned to the boss and then get almost instant killed.

That’s not tough, that’s not difficult, that’s just bullshit.

Firecrackers into posture break and knockdown and stun into jump with coup de grace stab into the chest in an arena that by this time in the fight is mostly covered in poison. That is one attack you didn’t evade in a ten minute fight and you’re dead. From a full health bar.

I wasn’t feeling any bliss after that fight in truth I was mostly hurling expletives at my TV and From Software in general.

Then the very next area you go to starts off with the next 3 phase boss that is also just a recycled boss from earlier in the game. No down time, no time to recharge or cool off or to get you in a different mindset. just bam, bam, bam, boss after boss after boss.

On which platform are you guys playing this btw?

Had the chance to play this on PC and it is much easier to deflect attacks and in general react than it is on my PS4 pro.

PC fpr me. In my experience, From Software games are better on PC -since Dark Souls 2- if nothing else for the shorter loading time. That helps in a game where I died and went back to the loading screen about 2189842 times.

According to Digital Foundry and the ResetEra OT for Sekiro the console versions have additional input lag over the PC version.

The XBox One X version is allegedly the worst (figures, the XBox has worse input lag in general) and the PC has the best with the PS 4 in between.

This confirms one of my long held suspicions in that I always need to parry “earlier” than I would intuitively parry as if I have to “lead” the parry a little. If I parry when I think I should I always get hit on the PS 4 version, which means that I have to memorize the attack patterns completely because react parry never works.

I tried it on the PC version today and if I parry when I think I should I don’t get hit and “sight reading” enemies sort of works better than on my console.

Also if I’m not imagining things the patch has actually made things worse. I’ve missed so many inputs today and generally had a pretty bad time with the two Owl memory mini bosses and the trek through Hirata Estate. I even had a few hiccups and hangs.

Quote from the thread

“The problem is not that parries are super generous, its that there's a sizable input lag between hitting L1 and your character actually blocking, at least on console. You can easily test this by rapidly tapping L1 or binding it to turbo function on modded controller. Sekiro will do about 4.3 blocks per second no matter how fast you tap it. That's about 230 ms or 12-13 frames of latency, which is massive for a game that's built around parrying. Now they must have done it to discourage people from parry-dancing, but it still punishes people who have the reflexes to pull off reactive parries. Instead you have to sorta 'lead' the block by few frames to do parries. If you wait until the sword is 4 feet from your face before hitting block like the game tells you to, you are going to get smacked in the face.

I dunno how much of a problem it is on PC, but in the DF PC video, the first thing he says is how easy it is to parry compared to console where he had to anticipate and lead his blocks.”

Not sure if it would make a difference for me. I don't do the parry based on my eyes, I do the parry based on when the game taught me to do the parry. If you know what I mean.
Since we are talking about frames, which are seriously hard to perceive for all humans let alone a 45 yo one, I don't exactly do things based on what I see when I see it, I doubt my reflexes and my eye.hand coordination would be able to keep up. I am under the impression that my fingers react exactly to the patterns I have learnt by playing and by dying over and over. Since I am on PC I react at a specific point during an enemy attack. If I were on PS4 I would react a slightly different time, whatever it is that my muscles have recorded as "safe" as opposed to "hurt".

The bottom line is that I am sure it matters for people with incredible reflexes, but overall I am tempted to state that the majority of players don't exactly learn the timing of games (when it comes to incredible small amounts of timing aka frames) based on what they really see and can do in a single frame, but instead through pattern recognition. In a sense I felt that the game trained my fingers before it trained my eyes, and with a different frame lag I would have simply learnt slightly different reaction patterns from the get go.

Restarted my playthrough on PC. Yes, I know I’m mad.

The PC version is leaps and bounds better than the console version, it feels better, it looks better (obviously), it controls much better. I can now actually reliably deflect and Mikiri counter. Seven spears was almost a joke, I murdered every mini boss between the dilapidated temple and Genichiro, Gyoubu first try, Bull wasn’t a problem because I can now actually parry him.

Only ogre was still a bitch.

I’m now at Lady Butterfly and Genichiro, have 10 prayer beads already and it took me less than five hours.

60 FPS and the lower input latency make so much of a difference.

The world finally opened up a bit but it still feels linear and way too much about defeating bosses than exploring a world. I don't get the sort of satisfaction I used to get because the moment you kill one the next one is five minutes away and have to learn that dudes move set. In some way its the feeling of another dude in armor that dark souls 2 gave me. Don't get me wrong, its a well designed game with solid fighting mechanics but I miss the old fun I used to have with these titles.

Huh, interesting.  You are playing with a controller on the PC I assume, right?

I use an XBox One Elite controller in conjunction with the wireless dongle from Microsoft. Works fine. Haven’t used a PS 4 controller yet.

I haven’t had time to play any further because I’m down sick and Picross is better suited for my enfeebled mind right now.

I might suffer from confirmation bias so take everything I say with a grain of salt but on the PS 4 Pro I had to memorize most of the attack patterns to reliably deflect them, on the PC I can react to some of them and still hit the input window that’s probably why Mikiri Counter now works.

You definitely can do more inputs/s though than on console so being aggressive pays off more.

I still play the  game on my 4K Sony TV@1080p (HDR makes a lot of difference) and probably due to the higher graphical fidelity and twice the FPS (locked 60 FPS on PC vs unlocked 30 on Pro) I now notice the cues much better (the flashing of the enemy blades when they do a perilous attack and the sparks for deflects)

I didn't know it was 30 fps on Playstation. Fuck that. I mean, 30 fps are totally fine to play games, but not when you can have 60. We all know that they truly feel different.

Playing on ps4 since I haven't upgraded my gpu.....no wonder it feels like some stuff ends up more difficult than it should

Base XBox One: locked 30@900p
Base PS 4: locked 30@1080p
XBox One X uncapped@1800p (3200x1800)
PS 4 Pro game uncapped@1800p (3200x1800)
PC: locked 60@1080p up to locked 60@4K with mods.

Both uncapped console versions are “very inconsistent” according to Digital Foundry and average frame rates are in the “high thirties to low forties with frequent judder.
Both capped console versions frequently dip below 30 FPS and feature stutter and judder. The DF video compares it performance wise to Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 which have been bad as well.

PC has completely stable 60 FPS even on low end cards like GTX1060 or RTX560

In addition PC version also has the lowest input lag compared to PS4 and XBox