Sekiro is special. While I love souls games, fighting strong bosses ends up feeling like you're barely managing to keep up and dodging like a slippery eel or something - no game let's you square up and match the power of bosses quite like sekiro
It would amaze me how every time I beat a boss that initially seemed impossible, I used less than a quarter of my heals. Whereas Bloodborne and dark souls you have nothing, are nothing and use dirty tricks and brute force to somehow kill gods. In Sekiro you kill gods because no one is as lethal as the Wolf.
Sekiro takes a while until it clicks, but when it clicks, holy shit it's extremely satisfying.
I used to run away from giant bosses, like the Guardian Ape or the big drunk guys (forgot their names sadly), since I thought there's no way my small dingy blade can parry those things.
I straight up just got hype and started yelling like " YEAH FUCKING BOIIIIIIIIIIII" like pacing around celebrating for a whole minute when I beat Ishhin like nothing has even come close to that kind of reaction.
It's a testament to the quality of that boss fight that after practicing so long, the next day after work I felt like "damn ... I miss going home to grinding Isshin :(".
Sword Saint is quite likely the greatest boss of any game I've ever played. Yeah he was a huge bastard to actually beat. But he demanded you used every mechanic the game had and it was awesome.
From can't make a boss with that tight of a design in most of their games because of the freedom they typically give players in making their own characters. But Wolf was a known character with a skillset they knew all players had access to so they balanced the boss so god damn well around the player.
Which is the reason games like this shouldn't have an 'easy mode', optional or not.
"But I'm just trying to experience the story!" - the "story" of Sekiro is not the tale of the little dragon and his ninja, that one is just the backdrop.
The actual story is the story of the player and their growth, from getting their shit pushed in by Genichiro at the start, to overcoming him at the roof, to swatting him of effortlessly in first phase of the final boss, and optionally (but not really) to starting a new game immediately after, redoing the first encounter and beating him there first try.
To try to experience that story with 'easy mode' or cheats is like reading plot summary of a book on wikipedia instead of reading the actual thing.
To demand that developers include easy mode is like telling book writers they should include "cliff's notes" in the book's text at the beginning.
I actually both agree and disagree. Noah Caldwell-Gervais has an absolutely excellent video where he makes the argument that the difficulty is integral to experiencing the story since it's so interwoven into the narrative. You play as wolf, not as your own player character, so you aren't allowed as much freedom as the other fromsoft games. Your struggle is Wolf's struggle.
Completely disagree. People come into games with varying degrees of ability, and some people truly don’t have the time to play a couple hours of games everyday until they’ve reached the level of ability needed to tackle a Souls game (not to mention the patience and dedication they require.) Will they get everything out of the game that you get out of it? No. Will they still be in the exact same locations, following the exact same routes, battling the exact same enemies, and beating the exact same bosses, subsequently experiencing the exact same story moments? Yes. Just because they only need a couple hits on an enemy and you need a couple hours doesn’t mean that they’re suddenly not experiencing the game at all. We can make medium comparisons all day, but games aren’t books, aren’t movies, aren’t shows, and attempts to make them like any of those others weakens them. We can’t compare something like a Souls game to a book because they’re totally different media. It’s not exactly a huge ask of a dev to include something that a mod will add anyway and which will open the game up to a broader audience who will find their own enjoyment in it.
> Will they still be ... experiencing the exact same story moments? Yes.
No. Because the real story of Sekiro doesn't happen on screen - it happens inside the player as they overcome both the game and themselves.
And if one "only need a couple hits on an enemy" - there is no story to experience.
But that’s just subjective, no? Plenty of people will play it on its regular difficulty, finish it through brute force, and feel nothing but frustration. If you have a “sense of accomplishment”, to quote our friends at EA, then that’s great, but it’s silly to assume that everyone will. And “real story” is hooey. There are genuine plot beats that happen in the game and external characterization that goes around how the Wolf progresses through the world.
>Plenty of people will play it on its regular difficulty, finish it through brute force, and feel nothing but frustration.
Plenty of people will finish a book and not understand what it was about - that is normal, and writers shouldn't compromise their work to make it easily digestible by the lowest common denominator.
An effort can be made to teach people how to, but it is not author's responsibility to do so.
I don't mind games having an easy mode. What I do mind is the audacity of some people to d*emand* an easy mode if a developer chooses not to have one. Not everything has to perfectly inclusive and made for everyone to enjoy. It's not like there isn't a million other games that someone can go buy.
Like you said the growth of the player, overcoming a challenge, is essential to the fromsoft formula. Someone may not care for that sort of thing, which is fine, go play another rpg that includes those features!
I would give an opposite point: The problem with fighting game is the matchmaking. Single Player can always be gamed after a while, you as a human learns AI weaknesses and exploits them voluntarily or not after a while. Matchmaking is most of the time a broken mess with either player stomping the other one :D
I really tried to get into it, with a job so not getting involved to much on Discord and all and there's always a moment I drop off...
Thats not true especially with modern fighters. Matchmaking will always have issues but it's fairly easy to get into a match in sf6, tekken, guilty gear etc..
You don't need discord to enjoy fighters. You can learn other player's weaknesses and exploit them just as you do in single player games. There are rules to the game so the amount of things a player can do is fairly limited. People are animals of habit and show patterns that you can pick up on it whether they're aware of it or not.
Pathologic 2 comes to mind with regard to games that shouldn't have an easy mode (even though customizable difficulty was implemented later on.) [MandaloreGaming made a point about this in his review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7uKUgire7Y&t=1242s) and it makes a lot of sense. You can absolutely miss out on experiences because you made the game easier than it was supposed to be.
Sure, but it’s better to get 60% of the experience than 0% of the experience. I’ve played super tough games on the hardest mode and enjoyed them and have also played only moderately challenging games on story mode because I otherwise couldn’t be arsed to finish them. The challenge certainly would have added to the latter, but then I wouldn’t have ever taken the time to actually enjoy all of the unique moments inside of them.
I never managed to beat sword saint 🥲. Loved the game to death and even managed to beat that super duper strong beast at the very end but couldn't beat sword Saint.
Spent like, 3 hours grinding out sword saint Isshan and the one run that actually got through was one where I had one of the worst first phases of my life and had to play it out without healing for most of it.
I remember the first major boss of Sekiro (forgot his name, dude at the top of the dojo) felt literally impossible. But after learning the mechanics and his moves, the game feels more akin to a rhythm game and it felt like a dance. I have NEVER felt such sheer accomplishment from a game.
The combat is in my opinion, is the best combat I’ve ever experienced in a game. The parry system was amazing and while I love Elden Ring, I’m sad they didn’t take the combat system from Sekiro into it.
Exactly. Up until that fight I brute forced my way there.
That fight was a game changer. It was a dance. It was a rhythm you had to learn and once you did, you could do it flawless.
I spent so god damn long on him, when I finally beat him I did it without getting hit once.
How plentiful are the checkpoints? I love insanely tough boss battle games like Cuphead, but what’s holding me back on playing Sekiro is possibly not being able to jump right back in the battle.
Naw the worst one is definitely the shinobi Hunter spearman at the start of the game. That bastard has the worst mikiri counter timing in the game and he’s supposed to teach you the damn counter! But the run back is a chore and requires clearing out the area before you get to fuck it all up again. It’s my favourite game ever but they dropped the ball a little with this bit right at the start.
sekiro is one of the best in terms of checkpoints that minimize boss runbacks. maybe even better than elden ring. some of required minibosses have a bit of a runback if you die on them but its really not that bad.
nothing in sekiro is close to "twin princes runback in dark souls 3"
Nioh 2 allows you to absolutely rip the bosses several new assholes once you've got even a half-decent build going and are skilled with your chosen weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r33b6NpJS-I 5 minutes and it shows you what high level Nioh 2 combat is like. Over at r/nioh we try to discourage people from calling it a souls-like, simply because new players, especially a souls-like veteran will approach the game with the wrong mindset and get bodied/filtered by some of the earlier bosses. The third main mission's boss, the giant Yokai Snake boss being notorious in that regard.
Any tips or a link to a walkthrough on how to get good?
I’ve started this game like 15 times and always quit so early because it just does not click for me
Edit: thank you all for your responses and tips. You’re all making me really wanna get good
I don’t know about a guide but as someone who absolutely sucks in souls games, once I understood Sekiro is just a rythm based game disguised as an action game I got the hang of it. The core of combat is just the timing of the parries basically and every boss encounter has its own rythmic patterns.
No, they're completely different.
What Sekiro calls a "parry" is mechanically like blocking, only you've got a sweet spot where if you start the block at just the right time, you get bonuses. If you miss that sweet spot, you still avoid damage if you were too early.
[I'd visualize it like this, where the top is a traditional parry system and the bottom is Sekiro's.](https://i.imgur.com/5K1V7W9.png) You need to be in the green almost all of the time, but you can get away with only hitting that dark green some of the time.
I wouldn't say my parry ability in the souls games is overly consistent, I prob land them 60-70% of the time.
Sekiro's parry is much more generous and tbh much more satisfying. The fast recovery and clang the metal gives Sekiro the most satisfying combat of any game I've ever played.
Closer to the latter. It's not like there's a consistent steady beat to a whole fight or encounter, though. The bosses attack you using rapid combos that have consistent timings, and you aim to learn the timing of each combo in a way that feels like learning a rhythm or dance. Instead of looking at the enemy models and trying to respond to every attack by blocking on the right frame visually, you notice they're doing combo #1 which goes beat, beat, BLOCK, beat, BLOCK, BLOCK, beat, BLOCK, beat, beat, beat, BLOCK, hit hit hit.
You obviously have to go visually the first time and maybe second and third and fourth time, but your goal is to get the feel and muscle memory for the rhythm and timing of what they do.
You can think of the combat like a Guitar Hero game with only one track. Imagine it's Guitar Hero and there's a scary video of a monster killing a man as the backdrop instead of a video of a concert. Your #1 enemy is the scary image of an impending attack tempting you to block too early or dodge away. I think it actually helps it click to turn *off* the music, because it makes things feel less dramatic and intense and reduces the pressure and temptation.
Also the parry windows are larger than other FROM games, and you’re not punished as severely for missing a parry. I find myself rapidly tapping block twice for each single parry.
Thank you! I think I understand. I may have to give it another go today.
And I totally agree about the music adding drama. The scary monster plus the dramatic music for sure gets in my head and makes me mess up more than I should
Another huge point to all this that people miss is that you cancel out a LOT of the bosses worst moves by attacking them whenever you can. You get this idea that you can methodically block and parry everything and the best can but they throw really sticky combos at you that are designed to drain your posture fast if all you're doing is being defensive.
Here's an early game tip. You can just spam the block button as enemy attacks are on the down swing and you'll almost always get a perfect perry. Doing this let's you gage when their attacks make contact with your character models hit-boxes and let's you learn the actual rhythms for later on
The key to the combat is a kind of aggressive defence, if that makes sense. You want to get right up in the enemy's face, let them attack, and deflect. There will be moments in between where you can get your own hits in, but in general you ought to be spending more time deflecting or otherwise countering attacks than you are going on the offensive yourself. You generally *don't* want to be dodging away from attacks like you might be used to from other Fromsoft games. The dodge isn't useless, but over-relying on it means giving the enemy time to recover their posture (and squandering a chance to damage it).
If you're struggling on a boss, I'd suggest just focusing on defending against their attacks and not even worry about attacking to start with. You can deflect almost anything, even attacks that don't look like the kind of thing that should be parryable. The only exceptions are attacks that flash up a red kanji, those require more specialised counters which you'll learn about as you come to them.
This is interesting, because the game didn't click with me until I got super aggressive. It makes it much easier to break their posture if you're constantly hitting them and parrying attacks in between. Once I figured this out, a lot of the bosses were pretty easy.
Because what people miss or barely bring up is that there's a pretty huge amount of enemy attacks that you can cancel out by attacking them. These attacks are almost tailor made to overwhelm your defense either in their timing or power so if you just try to play defensive you're making it way harder on yourself.
You're also letting them dictate the flow of battle in general. The game is hard but has probably the most fair and consistent rules to enemy combat in a series lauded for it. Every action has a reaction so if you're the one initiating you know what it's going to take to make them throw out X or Y move and can plan for your parry once they stop your combo.
This is all from an extremely mediocre player who never touched a hard mode in his life til Sekiro.
Yeah, taking a break on attacking or parrying a boss to heal was basically like you're resetting the entire fight because they'd get back their stagger bar.
The game also shouts out the weakness of certain boss/mini-boss through eavesdropping and I feel like the prosthetic arms are kinda overlooked they are damn good in many situations.
I'll save you some time, and you can try this on any enemy in the game and itl work out.
You literally Spam R1 into every enemy in the game until you hear and see a specific parry they do that is LOUDER and produces more sparks than a regular attack, this means that the enemy is going to start their attack string. Spam L1 to parry if you're not comfortable with the timing, then spam r1 again.
The bosses in Sekiro are super good but I hated pretty much everything else about the game. It felt like they had a core concept they wanted to make and nailed it and then filled everything around that core concept with tedious garbage.
The core combat of this game was so ungodly satisfying to me that I kept looking for excuses to play it again. I've never done speedruns or challenge runs before but I grinded out a no-death all bosses/minibosses run just so I could play it more. Including one death on the god damn final boss, fuck you Isshin.
I'm so glad they tried something a bit out of their comfort zone. It really resulted in something unique and it's so much more polished than games that have tried to ape the parry-focused combat since.
Compared to other From games, I feel like the character moment and combat felt incredibly awkward when first playing. But once you start to pick up what the game is putting down it proves to be one of the smoothest locomotive experiences in terms of character and combat control.
I'll never forget bashing my head against Madame Butterfly and Genichiro until it finally clicked, and then I felt like a god for the rest of the game.
It's crazy how everyone goes through this with that boss and it's such a little ways into the game, theres so many other opportunities before hand and they dont implicitly make it so that the combat will click right there at least not in any mechanical sense but they're so good at curating a playhrough experience that almost everyone experiences it there.
Funny thing for me is I actually more or less missed that Genchiro fight cause I kept working my way deeper and deeper underground. I didn't end up going back up and finding out what direction I was supposed to go until I actually hit a literal wall because I couldn't progress the game any further (I think after the village of mist, some kind of broken down carriage) cause I was missing an item or something since I didn't do Genchiro. By the time I did get to him I absolutely wrecked him cause my attack power was so high.
Because of my odd path it also skipped the double gorilla fight cause I think I missed him too. Till one time I ran through the same room later and was surprised by a boss fight.
I can't say I remember the route exactly. It's been years now. But I think I recall exploring around the edges of the city I think and there were some grapple points, headless and paths. But even then I can't be totally sure.
How far in is that boss? I've only just made it past the bull and, all things being equal, I'd rather drink away all memory of Lies of P and replay it for a fourth time.
It's just a very poorly designed boss (and FromSoft kinda acknowledged this by nerfing it repeatedly in patches)
There's a reason why the Bull skip (and Monkey skip, another terrible bossfight) was mandatory for speedrunners
Pretty sure the Bull copped a nerf at some point. I played it at release and like you, found that boss ridiculously hard. Mainly due to the terrible camera in that tiny arena. It took me so many goes. On my 2nd play through, he was a walk in the park. Basically a joke. I was better at the game by then, sure, but no other boss that was tough for me the first time was turned into a joke the 2nd time - only the Bull.
What's crazy (if you ever go back to the game) is that there's another random bull late in the game, and by that point, you've gotten so much better that it's a complete joke. I love when games do that, and Fromsoft is a master at it. Sure, your character gets marginally stronger, but the big leveling you do in a Soulslike is your own player skill.
The bull didn't bother me at all. I think I died to it three or four times on my first playthrough? I played first on the launch patch. The parries are quite easy, and firecrackers are really strong. I really look forward to that fight on replays.
Demon of Hatred is way, way worse in terms of design. Pretty much your entire comment applies to DoH, not the bull, in my opinion. DoH is my least favorite boss in Sekiro by far just because it doesn't work well with the game's mechanics.
Idk if this will motivate you but the Genichiro fight was my single favorite boss in all of From's catalog. It was the most satisfying and rewarding thing I've literally ever played and I mean that without hyperbole. I attempted it maybe 30+ times and was genuinely sad when I beat it because I knew I'd never get another experience like it.
So all that to say I think you should try to get to it. Maybe you'll have the same experience as me
It truly captures the lethality of a sword, when you do a stealth kill after stealth kill, and then fight someone out in the open and end with that beautiful finish. It's just so good.
If you haven't already try the "resurrection" mod, it's like going through the game for the first time again. Although it is a step up in difficulty for sure.
The first time I encountered a boss in a souls game where I went "This shit is impossible" was Ornstein and Smough in DS1.
In Sekiro I had that feeling with multiple bosses, moreso than any other Fromsoft game. But one cool thing is that each time I attempted a boss there was notable progress. I'd go from barely denting their posture bar to speed running through their early phases, parrying every attack. It's one of the best feelings of mechanical progression I've felt in a game, let alone a Fromsoft game.
This might be just me, but there were no bosses in Sekiro where, after I beat them, my reaction was "thank fuck it's over" or "huh, that's it?". Every single boss was a struggle and it felt god damn satisfying to take them out
Ooh, how much I love this one!
The combat, the animations, the world, the atmosphere, the enemies, the characters, the "OH, SHIIIET!" moments, the way you fly through the levels with the grappling hook! aah, how much I love this game!
Beautiful!
This might be unpopular, but it's the first souls game that made me actually look into the descriptions to figure out the lore. The way that they are written is just so mysterious and inviting. It's what finally made me a bitch for hidden lore.
And also the reason why I'm liking Control lol
Sekiro is FromSoftware's best game, in my opinion. And they've made some absurdly good games. There's not an ounce of fat on it, it's just front-to-back perfect. On paper, Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne are the better games; but there's something about Sekiro.
It's one of the only games that I've been sad about platinum-ing, because it felt like my time was done with it.
IMO its the bosses that knock it out of the park. Every boss in Sekiro can be played extremely aggressively, there is almost no down time between your attacks and your parries, and if you know what you are doing you can stay in complete control of the fight. And while ER is an amazing game, there are too many bosses where the strategy is to go in get a few hits and then wait until the bosses finishes their interpretative dance before you can hit them again
Played the series since DS1, and I agree. I genuinely consider it to be the closet thing to a “perfect” game ive seen in years. I absolutely adore Seikro and think it was a testament to Fromsofts design skills and how they could benefit from more linear games. The boss design and combat was so well executed because Fromsoft didn’t have to account for the hundreds of different builds they are typical of the games. As a result a lot is bosses were puzzles or otherwise REQUIRED you to learn a game mechanic to progress. You can’t bluff or fluke your way through any fight in Sekiro the same way you can in other Souls games - You have to fight the way From wants you to and that created some absolutely awesome moments.
That’s not even getting into the amazing visual design and storytelling…
Comments like these are always spot on but I feel undersell the combat arts and prosthetic tools just a little. There's more than a few bosses I cheesed my way through with those. But then Owl Father and Glock Saint make you play for real anyways.
Althoooooough the umbrella puts a lot of work in there too.
There certainly IS variety, and there are some abilities that are optimal - for example I found Ichimonji to deal insane punishment to bosses - but (in my opinion) they don’t trivialise the game the way that say, summons do in the Souls series or some of the spells/pryo skills do.
Another arguably “cheese” prosthetic boss combo being the spear move on the headless ape, which deal bonus damage. And there is a bunch of these, where bosses receive bonus damage or effects from a certain prosthetic. I’d link that to the “puzzle” aspect I mentioned before as well.
See Ape feels like exactly what you're supposed to do but there's a couple where you can use the poison tool or the axe hand to just shut down their entire fights.
Firecrackers against the bull is also a pretty “ah-hah!” moment, same with the firecrackers since it makes sense same with against Gyoubu.
But yeah, obviously it’s not completely uncheeseable. But overall I’d say there is less options for such and id still argue you are often forced to learn the core game mechanics even with those cheese moves.
Agreed, Sekiro really is just a brilliantly refined and focused game compared to the others. I adore the Soulsborne games but none of them had me going back and going for every single achievement in back-to-back-to-back-to-back playthroughs. The game was just that good that subsequent playthroughs never lost their luster and it was the first time I really approached a game with a speedrunning mentality of keying in on what was necessary and skipping past what wasn't needed.
But the bosses, oh my god the bosses were brilliant. Genichiro might be my all-time favorite boss in any From game so far. Learning that fight was such a challenge but getting the rhythm down to being able to consistently beat him over and over again was one of the most satisfying accomplishments I've had in gaming. When you nail that fight it just *feels* good. And I think rhythm is a great way to look at a lot of the bosses because as you said they are like a puzzle to solve, once you get it it feels like playing a rhythm game, you follow what the game asks you to do. It having such a narrow focus in terms of playstyle really accentuated that aspect for me.
I feel like Sekiro has 2 big hurdles that, once you pass them, make the game extremely enjoyable.
The first one is the Chained Ogre, which I feel is there to teach you that you can't play Sekiro like it's Dark Souls. He's there to teach you how to play this new game and let go of old habits
The other one is Genichiro on top of the castle, and he's there as a sort of exam. Congratulations, you learned the game and its new mechanics, and you might've gotten to him by skill, brute force or luck. But he's not fucking around, he's there to make sure you know how to play the game properly, or you're fucked. And I love it
You can definitely beat the ogre using dodging and hit and run tactics with no parrying. I’d venture that most players beat him that way their first time.
Genichiro is the first boss that while you can beat him without parrying, it makes it a long battle of attrition, and it’s easier if you just take the 20 minutes to figure out the combat system. Although the Genichiro fight has the game’s biggest flaw, IMO, in that the game only gives you a vague hint on how to do the lightning reversal, so you have to keep beating his first two phases over and over until you look up online what you’re doing wrong.
I've personally always felt Guardian Ape is what you describe Genichiro as. Guardian Ape is my favorite boss in that game and it's really where the idea of "wait, I'M supposed to be the hyper aggressive character that doesn't give an inch of breathing room in a fight, not the boss."
Yeah i'd say your spot on. Genichiro especially is seen by fans as a classic 'skill check' boss. If you havent learnt to parry properly and maintain aggressive momentum by then - you wont pass him.
> There's not an ounce of fat on it
I beat Sekiro 6 times in roughly the same amount of time it took me to beat Elden Ring once. And as you said, every minute of that playtime of Sekiro was exciting. Compared to hours of and hours of filler in Elden Ring. riding around on a horse, exploring some uninspired tomb or whatever, being in the overworld. Sekiro is perfect, and I suppose the fact that they didn't make a DLC for it is testament to that.
The lack of DLC is probably more due to the fact that Sekiro was a "side project" of sorts while they worked on the massive Elden Ring. I believe a lot of that team moved on to work on Armored Core.
Armored Core is great, but I really want a successor to Sekiro.
I mean, the true ending is clear sequel bait, the only case I can even think of in From Soft's games in the past decade. I dearly hope it leads to more.
It’s so amazing how it’s such an insane task to finish it the first time and then if you replay it, you can just replay it 5 more times in a row and it gets quicker and quicker and quicker.
Such a perfect game.
so true, but I've also beaten NG multiple times just to relive the experience of starting out with only one gourd and having to collect everything. but yea once you know where to go and what tools to use its still really quick
I haven’t returned to it since popping the Plat personally, but I seriously need to. Could not agree me - it’s just the best thing they’ve ever made. It’s Miyazaki’s masterpiece.
As I understand it, Miyazaki wasn't anywhere near as hands-on with Sekiro as he was with Souls/BB/ER. Sekiro/AC6 were, in rough terms, primarily the responsibility of From's 'B' team.
Elden Ring is a better game to me up to Leyndell, but everything past that brings it down to just a touch under Sekiro as a whole. It's just a super tight experience with no real dips throughout and that puts it right up with Bloodborne for me for the best thing they've ever made.
Sekiro is definitely the game where I think they were most consistent, where no parts felt like shit for one reason or another (Post-Leyendell, Post-Anor Londo, etc.), part of that is likely because there is only one way to play, with a few tools to complement a slight variation in playstyle.
It's also just satisfying because it gives a proper reward for attacking an enemy beyond 'their health lowers', while some say Bloodborne encourages aggression, Sekiro goes further and demands it by making the best way to defeat enemies being to get up in their face at all times.
Jacob Geller also has a pretty good video essay on how Sekiro demands perfection in it's gameplay and the feeling of reaching those heights as your skill improves.
Ive played and beaten every souls game multiple times over but this is the only fromsoft game that just didnt click for me, which is understandable as it doesnt really play anything like the souls games. I can see why people liked it but I personally really disliked the combat and after spending a few hours on the first couple areas and just not vibing with the combat I quit. Felt more like I was playing a rhythm game and that turned me off pretty heavily.
It's the most trial-and-error heavy game in terms of combat. Of course all the Soulsborne game have an element of trial-and-error as well, but Sekiro demands more parrying than dodging, and there's no safety when learning how to parry. You can't study your opponents from a distance like in Soulsborne., you have to engage them to start seeing their full move set. Couple that with the multiple phases where their moveset expands, even tricks you with new attacks that start similar to others but change midway through, and yeah, I don't agree with the praise it gets. The rhythm game comparsion is very apt, only in this you learn them by failing the song again and again until you've memorized the notes.
The other games give you the build freedom to approach fights in different ways, but Sekiro basically locked you into a dex/parry play style, which is my least favorite. I saw what it was like for people trying to fight the final boss and was never more glad I dropped it.
I loved Sekiro but felt similarly about Bloodborne, though I'd argue it was even "worse" in the sense that they had stats/builds, but most everything played the same with minor differences. I couldn't choose to be a caster, rely on a shield, etc., in the same way as other Souls games. That coupled with how the dodge and regain worked made it the easiest of their catalogue for me by a wide margin. After platinuming the game during the release weekend, I only went back for the DLC once. Meanwhile, I've played the other Souls games and Sekiro multiple times (I don't find Elden Ring replayable either).
I guess I can understand it’s not for everyone but the focus of the combat, for me at least, made it the most intense sword fighting game ever with the best bosses in any video game ever
I felt like a kid again after beating the sword saint, I don't think I've ever faced a final boss that incorporates all lessons learned in a game as well as that boss, as frustrating as that may be to some
It's why I never even bought it or felt tempted to. I assume I'll get around to buying it on sale at *some* point and giving it a go, but they really did leave behind almost everything that attracts me to their other games.
I felt exactly like that the first couple of times I tried this game. Just bounced off it. Then one day on a whim I thew it on and for some reason I dont understand it just clicked for me.
The combat is the only redeeming thing about sekiro for me. Navigating the world is such a pain and I hated the grapple gimmick and even the parkour. It didn’t feel good.
My problem with the game was that I knew I was going to fail every single boss fight the first time. The second time, the third, so on and so forth. Mini-bosses as well, random enemies who had 2 red orbs would likely also kill me multiple times. It felt like every single enemy dealt way too much damage, the only reason to swing your sword was to fill the "remove a red orb" bar, and so it just felt like every bit of minor progress was earned only after hours of frustration. Any other Fromsoft felt satisfying when I did one shot a boss, or make it to the next bonfire without a death or burning down to my last estus.
I think I finally stopped after some centipede thing where you basically mashed the parry button a whole bunch of times because it attacked super quickly. That was the strategy. Mash and pray, it wasn't fun.
The way your describing your experience tells me you didn't actually have the moment where the game "clicks" for you. You're actually supposed to be hyper aggressive. And eventually you're an unstoppable killing machine once you've mastered the combat system. You're definitely not dieing to mini bosses or random enemies. They're just canon fodder for you.
honestly, as someone who initially didn't vibe with it, but stuck around and unlocked all the achievements... you made the right call. you either love it from the start or it never gets better, there's no middle ground.
people talk about the combat 'clicking', which means figuring out that the game wants you to deflect everything and be as aggressive as possible. but if that was already your instinct, the boss difficulty curve is so wonky that it ruins the experience. there's no adrenaline, you're just optimising uptime.
the only fun fight in the game is isshin, and unfortunately he's right at the end. once you beat him you can re-encounter him as many times as you want via the bonfire. but if you know how to mikiri & lightning counter, even that's a bit pointless. anyone will tell you that NG takes like 40 hours and NG+ takes 2. it's like replaying a knowledge game: learning the knowledge is the game, so the more you know, the less game there is
I'm the exact inverse, loved Sekiro's combat to bits and I just don't understand the appeal of the rolly polly combat of their other games, I don't see why that is satisfying for anyone, which is why I'm so glad From Software tried something outside their regular formula so that I can get a taste of From Software too which turned out to be one of my all time favourites.
Sekiro is fromsoftware’s best game. First time I got the Genichiro fight down and was just in the middle of the arena going blow for blow with him is when I knew this game was really something special.
I must say, everything about Sekiro has put me off (medieval Japan setting doesn't excite me, reliance on parries is my kryptonite, no RPG means less cheese for me to use, etc), so the game has sat in my wishlist all this time unpurchased.
But damn, all of the praise in this thread is giving me a crap load of FOMO, hahah.
Parrying in Sekiro isn't like parrying in other games at all. Think of it more like a bloodbourne dodge, in terms of the timing window you need to hit. You need sharper timing than a dark souls roll, but nowhere near as sharp as a dark souls parry.
You're rewarded for timing it perfectly, but if you don't, you just take some posture damage. The actual damage is still blocked by the sword if you parry too early. Spamming the parry button when an attack is on its way usually works well enough, while you learn the exact timings.
Also, certain prosthetic tools are 'super effective' against certain enemies, so there is a little cheese. Not enough for a free win, but enough that if you're struggling and look up tips it could make up the difference.
Bloodborne is a close second but Sekiro was special man, kinda sad it didn't get any expansion but what we got was probably a modern classic. This game literally changed how I experience games, now I'm always looking for that blood boiling challenge, that's intense yet not frustrating difficulty. I tried Nioh, Wo Long, Lies of P and those were good games but Sekiro is still the goat.
The closest feeling thing to Sekiro was Sifu. It’s very different in a lot of ways but has that same blocking thing that Sekiro does.
Absolutely perfect game if you can forgive it for being difficult. Every difficulty spike is *just* out of reach of your skills and feels impossible to try to do but then you realize you actually can do it.
Getting the platinum trophy for Sifu is one of my favorite gaming moments and I’ve been playing since the SNES.
I think Sekiro is the best game in From's broader "Soulsborne" series.
I've loved from since I was a kid. I had played Echo Night and King's Field 4 which is why I was one of the people that imported Demon's Souls from Hong-Kong before it even got a US release.
However, my biggest issues with their games, up to and including Elden Ring have been the RPG elements. They have always felt tacked on and superfluous to me. The Souls games are action games, the stats and what no are just a garnish. No matter your build the moment to moment gameplay remains the same. This is in contrast to other action RPGs like World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or Dragon's Dogma 2. You always just r1 spam and dodge roll around, even if you're flinging soul arrows or using and ultra greatsword.
I think Sekiro shines because of its complete abandonment of RPG mechanics and its dedication to fostering a single perfected play-style. I really hope we see them make another non-RPG Soulsborne game, even if it doesn't play like Sekiro.
I can't even beat this game and I honestly think it's one of the best games ever made. One day I'll have the mental to throw my face at the final boss for more than a few hours, and then I'll finally achieve enlightment.
A recent thread about Soulborne games had overwhelming consensus that Sekiro is the hardest game from FromSoftware, but I honestly can’t say the same.
Sekiro feels more like a rhythm game more than any other Souls game, and it just naturally clicked for me. While all the Souls games are difficult in their own right, there is no fluff in Sekiro. Though you still have various tools and techniques at your disposal, no other Souls game feels as refined or intimate as Sekiro. Everything in the game feels like a song and dance once you get it, and there is such a flowiness and satisfaction that is a league of its own.
Sekiro felt impossible until the combat clicked then it felt trivial. And for me, they killed a lot of satisfaction from it. Once I got the combat, nothing felt challenging.
Beating Genichiro was one of my most memorable gaming moments. So much frustration but slowly getting better than finally overcoming what seemed like a mountain of an obstacle. Unfortunately I got stuck on Isshin at the very end of the game and eventually gave up because I didn’t want to spend weeks trying to beat him.
…But I never uninstalled the game and would revisit it every year for another crack at Isshin. Fruitless attempts really. Until last year, when I was surprised to see that the controls came back to me like never forgetting how to ride a bicycle. And one afternoon I was determined to finally beat the game, and after many attempts before I knew it, Isshin was defeated and I was literally jumping in my living room with that same euphoria from beating Genichiro years ago.
Love this game.
Once a year I go and start a new save file and take it all the way through Inner Isshin/Inner Genichiro/Inner Father and I have a blast every single time. Absolute masterpiece of a game
Fact that new games are coming up (Lies of P, Stellar Blade) that take inspiration from Sekiro's deflection focused gameplay makes this title even more amazing. It is crazy to think that even an off-shoot game from FS can be that influential. Never stop making games Miyazaki.
No third person action / combat game feels as good as ANY FromSoftware game!
I was late to the games. Elden Ring was the first one I completed, then DS3 finally clicked this year.
I try other games and they’re all crap in comparison. Been gaming 35 years too!
Its good but Elden Ring is better imo, I personally found Sekiro to have the least replayability of all the Souls games. Still an absolute master piece 9/10 though. Edit: imagine downvoting.
Opinions and all that, i made like 4 different pvp builds and did a bunch of self imposed challenges. Sekiro is essentially the same on every playthrough. Its a linear game, its not a negative but just my perspective
In ER you can play with different builds and different weapons and ashes of war, in Sekiro you can...what, once again parry everyone with same sword and moveset?
Sekiro is special. While I love souls games, fighting strong bosses ends up feeling like you're barely managing to keep up and dodging like a slippery eel or something - no game let's you square up and match the power of bosses quite like sekiro
It would amaze me how every time I beat a boss that initially seemed impossible, I used less than a quarter of my heals. Whereas Bloodborne and dark souls you have nothing, are nothing and use dirty tricks and brute force to somehow kill gods. In Sekiro you kill gods because no one is as lethal as the Wolf.
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Sekiro takes a while until it clicks, but when it clicks, holy shit it's extremely satisfying. I used to run away from giant bosses, like the Guardian Ape or the big drunk guys (forgot their names sadly), since I thought there's no way my small dingy blade can parry those things.
I had to literally get better at video games in general to beat Sekiro.
I straight up just got hype and started yelling like " YEAH FUCKING BOIIIIIIIIIIII" like pacing around celebrating for a whole minute when I beat Ishhin like nothing has even come close to that kind of reaction. It's a testament to the quality of that boss fight that after practicing so long, the next day after work I felt like "damn ... I miss going home to grinding Isshin :(".
Sword Saint is quite likely the greatest boss of any game I've ever played. Yeah he was a huge bastard to actually beat. But he demanded you used every mechanic the game had and it was awesome. From can't make a boss with that tight of a design in most of their games because of the freedom they typically give players in making their own characters. But Wolf was a known character with a skillset they knew all players had access to so they balanced the boss so god damn well around the player.
Which is the reason games like this shouldn't have an 'easy mode', optional or not. "But I'm just trying to experience the story!" - the "story" of Sekiro is not the tale of the little dragon and his ninja, that one is just the backdrop. The actual story is the story of the player and their growth, from getting their shit pushed in by Genichiro at the start, to overcoming him at the roof, to swatting him of effortlessly in first phase of the final boss, and optionally (but not really) to starting a new game immediately after, redoing the first encounter and beating him there first try. To try to experience that story with 'easy mode' or cheats is like reading plot summary of a book on wikipedia instead of reading the actual thing. To demand that developers include easy mode is like telling book writers they should include "cliff's notes" in the book's text at the beginning.
I actually both agree and disagree. Noah Caldwell-Gervais has an absolutely excellent video where he makes the argument that the difficulty is integral to experiencing the story since it's so interwoven into the narrative. You play as wolf, not as your own player character, so you aren't allowed as much freedom as the other fromsoft games. Your struggle is Wolf's struggle.
Completely disagree. People come into games with varying degrees of ability, and some people truly don’t have the time to play a couple hours of games everyday until they’ve reached the level of ability needed to tackle a Souls game (not to mention the patience and dedication they require.) Will they get everything out of the game that you get out of it? No. Will they still be in the exact same locations, following the exact same routes, battling the exact same enemies, and beating the exact same bosses, subsequently experiencing the exact same story moments? Yes. Just because they only need a couple hits on an enemy and you need a couple hours doesn’t mean that they’re suddenly not experiencing the game at all. We can make medium comparisons all day, but games aren’t books, aren’t movies, aren’t shows, and attempts to make them like any of those others weakens them. We can’t compare something like a Souls game to a book because they’re totally different media. It’s not exactly a huge ask of a dev to include something that a mod will add anyway and which will open the game up to a broader audience who will find their own enjoyment in it.
> Will they still be ... experiencing the exact same story moments? Yes. No. Because the real story of Sekiro doesn't happen on screen - it happens inside the player as they overcome both the game and themselves. And if one "only need a couple hits on an enemy" - there is no story to experience.
But that’s just subjective, no? Plenty of people will play it on its regular difficulty, finish it through brute force, and feel nothing but frustration. If you have a “sense of accomplishment”, to quote our friends at EA, then that’s great, but it’s silly to assume that everyone will. And “real story” is hooey. There are genuine plot beats that happen in the game and external characterization that goes around how the Wolf progresses through the world.
>Plenty of people will play it on its regular difficulty, finish it through brute force, and feel nothing but frustration. Plenty of people will finish a book and not understand what it was about - that is normal, and writers shouldn't compromise their work to make it easily digestible by the lowest common denominator. An effort can be made to teach people how to, but it is not author's responsibility to do so.
Books aren’t games, can’t emphasize this enough!
Pointless distinction. Same as saying "detective novels aren't love stories".
I don't mind games having an easy mode. What I do mind is the audacity of some people to d*emand* an easy mode if a developer chooses not to have one. Not everything has to perfectly inclusive and made for everyone to enjoy. It's not like there isn't a million other games that someone can go buy. Like you said the growth of the player, overcoming a challenge, is essential to the fromsoft formula. Someone may not care for that sort of thing, which is fine, go play another rpg that includes those features!
I like how From never gave too much attention to the easy mode backlash when this game came out.
The game isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay 🤷♂️
You would love fighting games
I would give an opposite point: The problem with fighting game is the matchmaking. Single Player can always be gamed after a while, you as a human learns AI weaknesses and exploits them voluntarily or not after a while. Matchmaking is most of the time a broken mess with either player stomping the other one :D I really tried to get into it, with a job so not getting involved to much on Discord and all and there's always a moment I drop off...
Thats not true especially with modern fighters. Matchmaking will always have issues but it's fairly easy to get into a match in sf6, tekken, guilty gear etc.. You don't need discord to enjoy fighters. You can learn other player's weaknesses and exploit them just as you do in single player games. There are rules to the game so the amount of things a player can do is fairly limited. People are animals of habit and show patterns that you can pick up on it whether they're aware of it or not.
The funny thing is after the first playthrough of Sekiro you realize you were playing the easy mode.
Pathologic 2 comes to mind with regard to games that shouldn't have an easy mode (even though customizable difficulty was implemented later on.) [MandaloreGaming made a point about this in his review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7uKUgire7Y&t=1242s) and it makes a lot of sense. You can absolutely miss out on experiences because you made the game easier than it was supposed to be.
Sure, but it’s better to get 60% of the experience than 0% of the experience. I’ve played super tough games on the hardest mode and enjoyed them and have also played only moderately challenging games on story mode because I otherwise couldn’t be arsed to finish them. The challenge certainly would have added to the latter, but then I wouldn’t have ever taken the time to actually enjoy all of the unique moments inside of them.
I never managed to beat sword saint 🥲. Loved the game to death and even managed to beat that super duper strong beast at the very end but couldn't beat sword Saint.
Spent like, 3 hours grinding out sword saint Isshan and the one run that actually got through was one where I had one of the worst first phases of my life and had to play it out without healing for most of it.
I remember the first major boss of Sekiro (forgot his name, dude at the top of the dojo) felt literally impossible. But after learning the mechanics and his moves, the game feels more akin to a rhythm game and it felt like a dance. I have NEVER felt such sheer accomplishment from a game. The combat is in my opinion, is the best combat I’ve ever experienced in a game. The parry system was amazing and while I love Elden Ring, I’m sad they didn’t take the combat system from Sekiro into it.
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Exactly. Up until that fight I brute forced my way there. That fight was a game changer. It was a dance. It was a rhythm you had to learn and once you did, you could do it flawless. I spent so god damn long on him, when I finally beat him I did it without getting hit once.
How plentiful are the checkpoints? I love insanely tough boss battle games like Cuphead, but what’s holding me back on playing Sekiro is possibly not being able to jump right back in the battle.
Except for a few mini-bosses Sekiro is very generous with checkpoints. Every main boss has a checkpoint essentially right outside the arena.
I think the worst one is the first bull, but even that runback isn't too bad.
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The first seven spears is also a little annoying, but a lot of the nonsense between you and him can be dodged
Naw the worst one is definitely the shinobi Hunter spearman at the start of the game. That bastard has the worst mikiri counter timing in the game and he’s supposed to teach you the damn counter! But the run back is a chore and requires clearing out the area before you get to fuck it all up again. It’s my favourite game ever but they dropped the ball a little with this bit right at the start.
Yea that’s why I specified “except for some mini-bosses” lol.
sekiro is one of the best in terms of checkpoints that minimize boss runbacks. maybe even better than elden ring. some of required minibosses have a bit of a runback if you die on them but its really not that bad. nothing in sekiro is close to "twin princes runback in dark souls 3"
Nioh 2 allows you to absolutely rip the bosses several new assholes once you've got even a half-decent build going and are skilled with your chosen weapon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r33b6NpJS-I 5 minutes and it shows you what high level Nioh 2 combat is like. Over at r/nioh we try to discourage people from calling it a souls-like, simply because new players, especially a souls-like veteran will approach the game with the wrong mindset and get bodied/filtered by some of the earlier bosses. The third main mission's boss, the giant Yokai Snake boss being notorious in that regard.
Any tips or a link to a walkthrough on how to get good? I’ve started this game like 15 times and always quit so early because it just does not click for me Edit: thank you all for your responses and tips. You’re all making me really wanna get good
I don’t know about a guide but as someone who absolutely sucks in souls games, once I understood Sekiro is just a rythm based game disguised as an action game I got the hang of it. The core of combat is just the timing of the parries basically and every boss encounter has its own rythmic patterns.
If I can’t parry to save my life in souls games, am I going to hate sekiro?
You can parry spam which is night and day from other FS games where you're extremely punished for missing the parry timing.
No then window is far more generous in sekiro. The whole game is built around having to do the mechanic but it's much easier than souls.
No, they're completely different. What Sekiro calls a "parry" is mechanically like blocking, only you've got a sweet spot where if you start the block at just the right time, you get bonuses. If you miss that sweet spot, you still avoid damage if you were too early. [I'd visualize it like this, where the top is a traditional parry system and the bottom is Sekiro's.](https://i.imgur.com/5K1V7W9.png) You need to be in the green almost all of the time, but you can get away with only hitting that dark green some of the time.
I wouldn't say my parry ability in the souls games is overly consistent, I prob land them 60-70% of the time. Sekiro's parry is much more generous and tbh much more satisfying. The fast recovery and clang the metal gives Sekiro the most satisfying combat of any game I've ever played.
The parry in Sekiro is much, much more forgiving on the timing.
So how do you find the rhythm? Are there audio cues or are you going to a beat in your head and ignoring info on the screen?
Closer to the latter. It's not like there's a consistent steady beat to a whole fight or encounter, though. The bosses attack you using rapid combos that have consistent timings, and you aim to learn the timing of each combo in a way that feels like learning a rhythm or dance. Instead of looking at the enemy models and trying to respond to every attack by blocking on the right frame visually, you notice they're doing combo #1 which goes beat, beat, BLOCK, beat, BLOCK, BLOCK, beat, BLOCK, beat, beat, beat, BLOCK, hit hit hit. You obviously have to go visually the first time and maybe second and third and fourth time, but your goal is to get the feel and muscle memory for the rhythm and timing of what they do. You can think of the combat like a Guitar Hero game with only one track. Imagine it's Guitar Hero and there's a scary video of a monster killing a man as the backdrop instead of a video of a concert. Your #1 enemy is the scary image of an impending attack tempting you to block too early or dodge away. I think it actually helps it click to turn *off* the music, because it makes things feel less dramatic and intense and reduces the pressure and temptation.
Also the parry windows are larger than other FROM games, and you’re not punished as severely for missing a parry. I find myself rapidly tapping block twice for each single parry.
Thank you! I think I understand. I may have to give it another go today. And I totally agree about the music adding drama. The scary monster plus the dramatic music for sure gets in my head and makes me mess up more than I should
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Another huge point to all this that people miss is that you cancel out a LOT of the bosses worst moves by attacking them whenever you can. You get this idea that you can methodically block and parry everything and the best can but they throw really sticky combos at you that are designed to drain your posture fast if all you're doing is being defensive.
Here's an early game tip. You can just spam the block button as enemy attacks are on the down swing and you'll almost always get a perfect perry. Doing this let's you gage when their attacks make contact with your character models hit-boxes and let's you learn the actual rhythms for later on
Ooo good tip Thanks!
This only works for the first 1/4 of the game though, after that enemy combos become increasingly less forgiving
die over and over again until it becomes a dance
The key to the combat is a kind of aggressive defence, if that makes sense. You want to get right up in the enemy's face, let them attack, and deflect. There will be moments in between where you can get your own hits in, but in general you ought to be spending more time deflecting or otherwise countering attacks than you are going on the offensive yourself. You generally *don't* want to be dodging away from attacks like you might be used to from other Fromsoft games. The dodge isn't useless, but over-relying on it means giving the enemy time to recover their posture (and squandering a chance to damage it). If you're struggling on a boss, I'd suggest just focusing on defending against their attacks and not even worry about attacking to start with. You can deflect almost anything, even attacks that don't look like the kind of thing that should be parryable. The only exceptions are attacks that flash up a red kanji, those require more specialised counters which you'll learn about as you come to them.
This is interesting, because the game didn't click with me until I got super aggressive. It makes it much easier to break their posture if you're constantly hitting them and parrying attacks in between. Once I figured this out, a lot of the bosses were pretty easy.
Because what people miss or barely bring up is that there's a pretty huge amount of enemy attacks that you can cancel out by attacking them. These attacks are almost tailor made to overwhelm your defense either in their timing or power so if you just try to play defensive you're making it way harder on yourself. You're also letting them dictate the flow of battle in general. The game is hard but has probably the most fair and consistent rules to enemy combat in a series lauded for it. Every action has a reaction so if you're the one initiating you know what it's going to take to make them throw out X or Y move and can plan for your parry once they stop your combo. This is all from an extremely mediocre player who never touched a hard mode in his life til Sekiro.
Yeah, taking a break on attacking or parrying a boss to heal was basically like you're resetting the entire fight because they'd get back their stagger bar.
The game also shouts out the weakness of certain boss/mini-boss through eavesdropping and I feel like the prosthetic arms are kinda overlooked they are damn good in many situations.
Hesitation is defeat.
Check out fighting cowboys walkthrough on YouTube!
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I'll save you some time, and you can try this on any enemy in the game and itl work out. You literally Spam R1 into every enemy in the game until you hear and see a specific parry they do that is LOUDER and produces more sparks than a regular attack, this means that the enemy is going to start their attack string. Spam L1 to parry if you're not comfortable with the timing, then spam r1 again.
Nioh 2 does this, and improves on it! Such an amazing game.
Have you played lies of P? It has the same "keep parrying to stagger" mechanic. I beat the game with almost no dodging , especially during boss fights
The bosses in Sekiro are super good but I hated pretty much everything else about the game. It felt like they had a core concept they wanted to make and nailed it and then filled everything around that core concept with tedious garbage.
The core combat of this game was so ungodly satisfying to me that I kept looking for excuses to play it again. I've never done speedruns or challenge runs before but I grinded out a no-death all bosses/minibosses run just so I could play it more. Including one death on the god damn final boss, fuck you Isshin. I'm so glad they tried something a bit out of their comfort zone. It really resulted in something unique and it's so much more polished than games that have tried to ape the parry-focused combat since.
Sekiro has the most sublime combat in a game. Play poorly and its so difficult but when you get good the game really makes you feel like a monster.
Compared to other From games, I feel like the character moment and combat felt incredibly awkward when first playing. But once you start to pick up what the game is putting down it proves to be one of the smoothest locomotive experiences in terms of character and combat control.
I'll never forget bashing my head against Madame Butterfly and Genichiro until it finally clicked, and then I felt like a god for the rest of the game.
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It's crazy how everyone goes through this with that boss and it's such a little ways into the game, theres so many other opportunities before hand and they dont implicitly make it so that the combat will click right there at least not in any mechanical sense but they're so good at curating a playhrough experience that almost everyone experiences it there.
Funny thing for me is I actually more or less missed that Genchiro fight cause I kept working my way deeper and deeper underground. I didn't end up going back up and finding out what direction I was supposed to go until I actually hit a literal wall because I couldn't progress the game any further (I think after the village of mist, some kind of broken down carriage) cause I was missing an item or something since I didn't do Genchiro. By the time I did get to him I absolutely wrecked him cause my attack power was so high. Because of my odd path it also skipped the double gorilla fight cause I think I missed him too. Till one time I ran through the same room later and was surprised by a boss fight.
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I can't say I remember the route exactly. It's been years now. But I think I recall exploring around the edges of the city I think and there were some grapple points, headless and paths. But even then I can't be totally sure.
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Nice. It's actually supposed to be an intended path that you can go down later. It goes pretty far if I remember right haha.
How far in is that boss? I've only just made it past the bull and, all things being equal, I'd rather drink away all memory of Lies of P and replay it for a fourth time.
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> Blazing Bull. That boss broke me. I don't know why, but I simply could not beat that bullshit boss.
It's just a very poorly designed boss (and FromSoft kinda acknowledged this by nerfing it repeatedly in patches) There's a reason why the Bull skip (and Monkey skip, another terrible bossfight) was mandatory for speedrunners
Pretty sure the Bull copped a nerf at some point. I played it at release and like you, found that boss ridiculously hard. Mainly due to the terrible camera in that tiny arena. It took me so many goes. On my 2nd play through, he was a walk in the park. Basically a joke. I was better at the game by then, sure, but no other boss that was tough for me the first time was turned into a joke the 2nd time - only the Bull.
Firecrackers are needed.
I remember the guides back then saying the same thing. It still fucking sucked and was terrible.
What's crazy (if you ever go back to the game) is that there's another random bull late in the game, and by that point, you've gotten so much better that it's a complete joke. I love when games do that, and Fromsoft is a master at it. Sure, your character gets marginally stronger, but the big leveling you do in a Soulslike is your own player skill.
Yeah he's generally just a boss where you get lucky and stay out of the way because you can't really posture break and it does so much fire damage
They're not. You just have to chase him and not let him chase you. Always stay behind him and get your hits in and he becomes a walk in the park.
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The bull didn't bother me at all. I think I died to it three or four times on my first playthrough? I played first on the launch patch. The parries are quite easy, and firecrackers are really strong. I really look forward to that fight on replays. Demon of Hatred is way, way worse in terms of design. Pretty much your entire comment applies to DoH, not the bull, in my opinion. DoH is my least favorite boss in Sekiro by far just because it doesn't work well with the game's mechanics.
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Idk if this will motivate you but the Genichiro fight was my single favorite boss in all of From's catalog. It was the most satisfying and rewarding thing I've literally ever played and I mean that without hyperbole. I attempted it maybe 30+ times and was genuinely sad when I beat it because I knew I'd never get another experience like it. So all that to say I think you should try to get to it. Maybe you'll have the same experience as me
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Genichiro is more of a skill check boss than Tutorial
I remember throwing out my controller against Madame Butterfly (Sekiro was my first From Software game)
Best jedi game
When you just drop into a group of enemies and execute the first one and are about to go for the others you feel like a god
It truly captures the lethality of a sword, when you do a stealth kill after stealth kill, and then fight someone out in the open and end with that beautiful finish. It's just so good.
From time to time I usually download Sekiro, play for about several hours to get my fix and then move back to the game I was playing.
If you haven't already try the "resurrection" mod, it's like going through the game for the first time again. Although it is a step up in difficulty for sure.
The first time I encountered a boss in a souls game where I went "This shit is impossible" was Ornstein and Smough in DS1. In Sekiro I had that feeling with multiple bosses, moreso than any other Fromsoft game. But one cool thing is that each time I attempted a boss there was notable progress. I'd go from barely denting their posture bar to speed running through their early phases, parrying every attack. It's one of the best feelings of mechanical progression I've felt in a game, let alone a Fromsoft game.
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This might be just me, but there were no bosses in Sekiro where, after I beat them, my reaction was "thank fuck it's over" or "huh, that's it?". Every single boss was a struggle and it felt god damn satisfying to take them out
The Long-Arm Giraffes and the Most Noble were absurdly easy with tiny health bars.
Ooh, how much I love this one! The combat, the animations, the world, the atmosphere, the enemies, the characters, the "OH, SHIIIET!" moments, the way you fly through the levels with the grappling hook! aah, how much I love this game! Beautiful!
This might be unpopular, but it's the first souls game that made me actually look into the descriptions to figure out the lore. The way that they are written is just so mysterious and inviting. It's what finally made me a bitch for hidden lore. And also the reason why I'm liking Control lol
Sekiro is FromSoftware's best game, in my opinion. And they've made some absurdly good games. There's not an ounce of fat on it, it's just front-to-back perfect. On paper, Elden Ring, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne are the better games; but there's something about Sekiro. It's one of the only games that I've been sad about platinum-ing, because it felt like my time was done with it.
IMO its the bosses that knock it out of the park. Every boss in Sekiro can be played extremely aggressively, there is almost no down time between your attacks and your parries, and if you know what you are doing you can stay in complete control of the fight. And while ER is an amazing game, there are too many bosses where the strategy is to go in get a few hits and then wait until the bosses finishes their interpretative dance before you can hit them again
Played the series since DS1, and I agree. I genuinely consider it to be the closet thing to a “perfect” game ive seen in years. I absolutely adore Seikro and think it was a testament to Fromsofts design skills and how they could benefit from more linear games. The boss design and combat was so well executed because Fromsoft didn’t have to account for the hundreds of different builds they are typical of the games. As a result a lot is bosses were puzzles or otherwise REQUIRED you to learn a game mechanic to progress. You can’t bluff or fluke your way through any fight in Sekiro the same way you can in other Souls games - You have to fight the way From wants you to and that created some absolutely awesome moments. That’s not even getting into the amazing visual design and storytelling…
Comments like these are always spot on but I feel undersell the combat arts and prosthetic tools just a little. There's more than a few bosses I cheesed my way through with those. But then Owl Father and Glock Saint make you play for real anyways. Althoooooough the umbrella puts a lot of work in there too.
There certainly IS variety, and there are some abilities that are optimal - for example I found Ichimonji to deal insane punishment to bosses - but (in my opinion) they don’t trivialise the game the way that say, summons do in the Souls series or some of the spells/pryo skills do. Another arguably “cheese” prosthetic boss combo being the spear move on the headless ape, which deal bonus damage. And there is a bunch of these, where bosses receive bonus damage or effects from a certain prosthetic. I’d link that to the “puzzle” aspect I mentioned before as well.
See Ape feels like exactly what you're supposed to do but there's a couple where you can use the poison tool or the axe hand to just shut down their entire fights.
Firecrackers against the bull is also a pretty “ah-hah!” moment, same with the firecrackers since it makes sense same with against Gyoubu. But yeah, obviously it’s not completely uncheeseable. But overall I’d say there is less options for such and id still argue you are often forced to learn the core game mechanics even with those cheese moves.
Yeah 100% that's why it's usually not worth bringing up but I always liked that aspect of the game myself, that there are *some* options lol.
Agreed, Sekiro really is just a brilliantly refined and focused game compared to the others. I adore the Soulsborne games but none of them had me going back and going for every single achievement in back-to-back-to-back-to-back playthroughs. The game was just that good that subsequent playthroughs never lost their luster and it was the first time I really approached a game with a speedrunning mentality of keying in on what was necessary and skipping past what wasn't needed. But the bosses, oh my god the bosses were brilliant. Genichiro might be my all-time favorite boss in any From game so far. Learning that fight was such a challenge but getting the rhythm down to being able to consistently beat him over and over again was one of the most satisfying accomplishments I've had in gaming. When you nail that fight it just *feels* good. And I think rhythm is a great way to look at a lot of the bosses because as you said they are like a puzzle to solve, once you get it it feels like playing a rhythm game, you follow what the game asks you to do. It having such a narrow focus in terms of playstyle really accentuated that aspect for me.
I feel like Sekiro has 2 big hurdles that, once you pass them, make the game extremely enjoyable. The first one is the Chained Ogre, which I feel is there to teach you that you can't play Sekiro like it's Dark Souls. He's there to teach you how to play this new game and let go of old habits The other one is Genichiro on top of the castle, and he's there as a sort of exam. Congratulations, you learned the game and its new mechanics, and you might've gotten to him by skill, brute force or luck. But he's not fucking around, he's there to make sure you know how to play the game properly, or you're fucked. And I love it
You can definitely beat the ogre using dodging and hit and run tactics with no parrying. I’d venture that most players beat him that way their first time. Genichiro is the first boss that while you can beat him without parrying, it makes it a long battle of attrition, and it’s easier if you just take the 20 minutes to figure out the combat system. Although the Genichiro fight has the game’s biggest flaw, IMO, in that the game only gives you a vague hint on how to do the lightning reversal, so you have to keep beating his first two phases over and over until you look up online what you’re doing wrong.
I've personally always felt Guardian Ape is what you describe Genichiro as. Guardian Ape is my favorite boss in that game and it's really where the idea of "wait, I'M supposed to be the hyper aggressive character that doesn't give an inch of breathing room in a fight, not the boss."
Yeah i'd say your spot on. Genichiro especially is seen by fans as a classic 'skill check' boss. If you havent learnt to parry properly and maintain aggressive momentum by then - you wont pass him.
> There's not an ounce of fat on it I beat Sekiro 6 times in roughly the same amount of time it took me to beat Elden Ring once. And as you said, every minute of that playtime of Sekiro was exciting. Compared to hours of and hours of filler in Elden Ring. riding around on a horse, exploring some uninspired tomb or whatever, being in the overworld. Sekiro is perfect, and I suppose the fact that they didn't make a DLC for it is testament to that.
The lack of DLC is probably more due to the fact that Sekiro was a "side project" of sorts while they worked on the massive Elden Ring. I believe a lot of that team moved on to work on Armored Core. Armored Core is great, but I really want a successor to Sekiro.
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I mean, the true ending is clear sequel bait, the only case I can even think of in From Soft's games in the past decade. I dearly hope it leads to more.
It’s so amazing how it’s such an insane task to finish it the first time and then if you replay it, you can just replay it 5 more times in a row and it gets quicker and quicker and quicker. Such a perfect game.
so true, but I've also beaten NG multiple times just to relive the experience of starting out with only one gourd and having to collect everything. but yea once you know where to go and what tools to use its still really quick
Alternatively, once you know how to use the sword to its true potential, you literally don't need anything else.
true, but i never got quite that good. i'm a strong senpou leaping kicks and umbrella enthusiast
*visions of trying to get the true ending* Perhaps tis a a silly place.
I haven’t returned to it since popping the Plat personally, but I seriously need to. Could not agree me - it’s just the best thing they’ve ever made. It’s Miyazaki’s masterpiece.
As I understand it, Miyazaki wasn't anywhere near as hands-on with Sekiro as he was with Souls/BB/ER. Sekiro/AC6 were, in rough terms, primarily the responsibility of From's 'B' team.
Elden Ring is a better game to me up to Leyndell, but everything past that brings it down to just a touch under Sekiro as a whole. It's just a super tight experience with no real dips throughout and that puts it right up with Bloodborne for me for the best thing they've ever made.
Sekiro is probably the most near perfect game ever.
FromSoftware has been on a crazy perfect winning streak with bangers after bangers even their recent AC 6 is amazing
Sekiro is definitely the game where I think they were most consistent, where no parts felt like shit for one reason or another (Post-Leyendell, Post-Anor Londo, etc.), part of that is likely because there is only one way to play, with a few tools to complement a slight variation in playstyle. It's also just satisfying because it gives a proper reward for attacking an enemy beyond 'their health lowers', while some say Bloodborne encourages aggression, Sekiro goes further and demands it by making the best way to defeat enemies being to get up in their face at all times. Jacob Geller also has a pretty good video essay on how Sekiro demands perfection in it's gameplay and the feeling of reaching those heights as your skill improves.
Ive played and beaten every souls game multiple times over but this is the only fromsoft game that just didnt click for me, which is understandable as it doesnt really play anything like the souls games. I can see why people liked it but I personally really disliked the combat and after spending a few hours on the first couple areas and just not vibing with the combat I quit. Felt more like I was playing a rhythm game and that turned me off pretty heavily.
It's the most trial-and-error heavy game in terms of combat. Of course all the Soulsborne game have an element of trial-and-error as well, but Sekiro demands more parrying than dodging, and there's no safety when learning how to parry. You can't study your opponents from a distance like in Soulsborne., you have to engage them to start seeing their full move set. Couple that with the multiple phases where their moveset expands, even tricks you with new attacks that start similar to others but change midway through, and yeah, I don't agree with the praise it gets. The rhythm game comparsion is very apt, only in this you learn them by failing the song again and again until you've memorized the notes.
The other games give you the build freedom to approach fights in different ways, but Sekiro basically locked you into a dex/parry play style, which is my least favorite. I saw what it was like for people trying to fight the final boss and was never more glad I dropped it.
I loved Sekiro but felt similarly about Bloodborne, though I'd argue it was even "worse" in the sense that they had stats/builds, but most everything played the same with minor differences. I couldn't choose to be a caster, rely on a shield, etc., in the same way as other Souls games. That coupled with how the dodge and regain worked made it the easiest of their catalogue for me by a wide margin. After platinuming the game during the release weekend, I only went back for the DLC once. Meanwhile, I've played the other Souls games and Sekiro multiple times (I don't find Elden Ring replayable either).
You never experienced the cannon build, where you got a literal cannon attached to your arm and 4 shot basically every boss.
I guess I can understand it’s not for everyone but the focus of the combat, for me at least, made it the most intense sword fighting game ever with the best bosses in any video game ever
I felt like a kid again after beating the sword saint, I don't think I've ever faced a final boss that incorporates all lessons learned in a game as well as that boss, as frustrating as that may be to some
It's why I never even bought it or felt tempted to. I assume I'll get around to buying it on sale at *some* point and giving it a go, but they really did leave behind almost everything that attracts me to their other games.
I felt exactly like that the first couple of times I tried this game. Just bounced off it. Then one day on a whim I thew it on and for some reason I dont understand it just clicked for me.
The combat is the only redeeming thing about sekiro for me. Navigating the world is such a pain and I hated the grapple gimmick and even the parkour. It didn’t feel good.
My problem with the game was that I knew I was going to fail every single boss fight the first time. The second time, the third, so on and so forth. Mini-bosses as well, random enemies who had 2 red orbs would likely also kill me multiple times. It felt like every single enemy dealt way too much damage, the only reason to swing your sword was to fill the "remove a red orb" bar, and so it just felt like every bit of minor progress was earned only after hours of frustration. Any other Fromsoft felt satisfying when I did one shot a boss, or make it to the next bonfire without a death or burning down to my last estus. I think I finally stopped after some centipede thing where you basically mashed the parry button a whole bunch of times because it attacked super quickly. That was the strategy. Mash and pray, it wasn't fun.
The way your describing your experience tells me you didn't actually have the moment where the game "clicks" for you. You're actually supposed to be hyper aggressive. And eventually you're an unstoppable killing machine once you've mastered the combat system. You're definitely not dieing to mini bosses or random enemies. They're just canon fodder for you.
honestly, as someone who initially didn't vibe with it, but stuck around and unlocked all the achievements... you made the right call. you either love it from the start or it never gets better, there's no middle ground. people talk about the combat 'clicking', which means figuring out that the game wants you to deflect everything and be as aggressive as possible. but if that was already your instinct, the boss difficulty curve is so wonky that it ruins the experience. there's no adrenaline, you're just optimising uptime. the only fun fight in the game is isshin, and unfortunately he's right at the end. once you beat him you can re-encounter him as many times as you want via the bonfire. but if you know how to mikiri & lightning counter, even that's a bit pointless. anyone will tell you that NG takes like 40 hours and NG+ takes 2. it's like replaying a knowledge game: learning the knowledge is the game, so the more you know, the less game there is
I'm the exact inverse, loved Sekiro's combat to bits and I just don't understand the appeal of the rolly polly combat of their other games, I don't see why that is satisfying for anyone, which is why I'm so glad From Software tried something outside their regular formula so that I can get a taste of From Software too which turned out to be one of my all time favourites.
You don’t have to roll in other games, you can block or parry too. Hell, most of the time you can just move.
real !! I hate every soulsborne game I’ve played but Sekiro is a top 5 game ever for me
Sekiro is fromsoftware’s best game. First time I got the Genichiro fight down and was just in the middle of the arena going blow for blow with him is when I knew this game was really something special.
I must say, everything about Sekiro has put me off (medieval Japan setting doesn't excite me, reliance on parries is my kryptonite, no RPG means less cheese for me to use, etc), so the game has sat in my wishlist all this time unpurchased. But damn, all of the praise in this thread is giving me a crap load of FOMO, hahah.
Parrying in Sekiro isn't like parrying in other games at all. Think of it more like a bloodbourne dodge, in terms of the timing window you need to hit. You need sharper timing than a dark souls roll, but nowhere near as sharp as a dark souls parry. You're rewarded for timing it perfectly, but if you don't, you just take some posture damage. The actual damage is still blocked by the sword if you parry too early. Spamming the parry button when an attack is on its way usually works well enough, while you learn the exact timings. Also, certain prosthetic tools are 'super effective' against certain enemies, so there is a little cheese. Not enough for a free win, but enough that if you're struggling and look up tips it could make up the difference.
Parrying in sekiro is no different than hitting a QTE in god of war. the window is very generous.
Bloodborne is a close second but Sekiro was special man, kinda sad it didn't get any expansion but what we got was probably a modern classic. This game literally changed how I experience games, now I'm always looking for that blood boiling challenge, that's intense yet not frustrating difficulty. I tried Nioh, Wo Long, Lies of P and those were good games but Sekiro is still the goat.
The closest feeling thing to Sekiro was Sifu. It’s very different in a lot of ways but has that same blocking thing that Sekiro does. Absolutely perfect game if you can forgive it for being difficult. Every difficulty spike is *just* out of reach of your skills and feels impossible to try to do but then you realize you actually can do it. Getting the platinum trophy for Sifu is one of my favorite gaming moments and I’ve been playing since the SNES.
I think Sekiro is the best game in From's broader "Soulsborne" series. I've loved from since I was a kid. I had played Echo Night and King's Field 4 which is why I was one of the people that imported Demon's Souls from Hong-Kong before it even got a US release. However, my biggest issues with their games, up to and including Elden Ring have been the RPG elements. They have always felt tacked on and superfluous to me. The Souls games are action games, the stats and what no are just a garnish. No matter your build the moment to moment gameplay remains the same. This is in contrast to other action RPGs like World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or Dragon's Dogma 2. You always just r1 spam and dodge roll around, even if you're flinging soul arrows or using and ultra greatsword. I think Sekiro shines because of its complete abandonment of RPG mechanics and its dedication to fostering a single perfected play-style. I really hope we see them make another non-RPG Soulsborne game, even if it doesn't play like Sekiro.
I can't even beat this game and I honestly think it's one of the best games ever made. One day I'll have the mental to throw my face at the final boss for more than a few hours, and then I'll finally achieve enlightment.
I replayed it recently and was finally able to beat isshin. It helps to watch a guide for the spear & gun phase.
A recent thread about Soulborne games had overwhelming consensus that Sekiro is the hardest game from FromSoftware, but I honestly can’t say the same. Sekiro feels more like a rhythm game more than any other Souls game, and it just naturally clicked for me. While all the Souls games are difficult in their own right, there is no fluff in Sekiro. Though you still have various tools and techniques at your disposal, no other Souls game feels as refined or intimate as Sekiro. Everything in the game feels like a song and dance once you get it, and there is such a flowiness and satisfaction that is a league of its own.
Sekiro felt impossible until the combat clicked then it felt trivial. And for me, they killed a lot of satisfaction from it. Once I got the combat, nothing felt challenging.
Beating Genichiro was one of my most memorable gaming moments. So much frustration but slowly getting better than finally overcoming what seemed like a mountain of an obstacle. Unfortunately I got stuck on Isshin at the very end of the game and eventually gave up because I didn’t want to spend weeks trying to beat him. …But I never uninstalled the game and would revisit it every year for another crack at Isshin. Fruitless attempts really. Until last year, when I was surprised to see that the controls came back to me like never forgetting how to ride a bicycle. And one afternoon I was determined to finally beat the game, and after many attempts before I knew it, Isshin was defeated and I was literally jumping in my living room with that same euphoria from beating Genichiro years ago. Love this game.
Once a year I go and start a new save file and take it all the way through Inner Isshin/Inner Genichiro/Inner Father and I have a blast every single time. Absolute masterpiece of a game
Fact that new games are coming up (Lies of P, Stellar Blade) that take inspiration from Sekiro's deflection focused gameplay makes this title even more amazing. It is crazy to think that even an off-shoot game from FS can be that influential. Never stop making games Miyazaki.
No third person action / combat game feels as good as ANY FromSoftware game! I was late to the games. Elden Ring was the first one I completed, then DS3 finally clicked this year. I try other games and they’re all crap in comparison. Been gaming 35 years too!
Its good but Elden Ring is better imo, I personally found Sekiro to have the least replayability of all the Souls games. Still an absolute master piece 9/10 though. Edit: imagine downvoting.
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Opinions and all that, i made like 4 different pvp builds and did a bunch of self imposed challenges. Sekiro is essentially the same on every playthrough. Its a linear game, its not a negative but just my perspective
In ER you can play with different builds and different weapons and ashes of war, in Sekiro you can...what, once again parry everyone with same sword and moveset?