Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - From Software

[Trippy]

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

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Trippy]

You can do it by fiddling with save game files.

[Ironwood]

All prayer beads nabbed and only 3 bosses to go.

And I can't be bothered.

Goddamn.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

[Falconeer]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Falconeer]

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

My boss times so far:

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Cyrrex]

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.

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.

[Ironwood]

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

I may just skip DoH.

[Falconeer]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

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

[Ironwood]

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.

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

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.

[Yegolev]

You get more choices the more FUCKING SUFFERING you put yourself through.

Just like Real Life.

[Ironwood]

I'm at Max suffering now.

Just like Real Life.

[Falconeer]

Sekiro sold over two million copies worldwide in its first ten days of sale on PC

To put that figure into perspective, it took From Software's Bloodborne around six months to pass the two million sales threshold (although that was confined to a single platform), and Dark Souls 3, a series already well-established by that point, hit the three million sales mark around two months after launch.

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

[Ironwood]

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

[Falconeer]

Yell at Sony!

[Ironwood]

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

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

[Falconeer]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

[Falconeer]

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

[Falconeer]

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

[Ironwood]

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.

[Falconeer]

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

[Ironwood]

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

[Falconeer]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.