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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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    Spent some more time and I'm much more in the flow of things now; while I don't want to curse myself, I definitely feel like this section of the game is far more forgiving than the start.

    Have some relatively minor complaints around things like the music, and the re-use of generals, but I'm also still very much into the combat and the move away from stressing over the finer points of build types and stat distribution.

    Should have quite a lot of time to throw at this over the long weekend, which I'm looking forward to.

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      I'm not quite sure what to make of this, although admittedly I'm not very far in at all

      (I just beat the Blazing Bull).

      Generals and Bosses seem to switch from being too darn hard to being ludicrously easy when you get the 'trick' or when you get an AI fluke in your favour. As an example of the former, I beat

      the Butterly Grandma by keeping her on the ground through chancing on the right combat art, which I spammed without a break through both her phases. Once or twice she managed to get up in the air but a quick shuriken brought her down again and then my spamming re-commenced.

      As an example of an AI fluke, I was trying to aggro and pick-off the guards around

      Juzhou the Drunkard but somehow ended up aggroing him alone while the rest of the crew stayed stock still, so I ran to the pond, got the NPC involved, and we battered him at the water's edge while his entire guard looked on doing nothing.

      Neither of these felt like a satisfying victory.

      Not much keen on the resurrect mechanic. It seems much too fussy when combined with the way you may or may not lose some of your coins and XP depending on your divine blessing ratio which depends on whether/how many people are cursed through the very act/frequency of your resurrections. For a game that is meant to do away with the RPG fussiness of the previous games, this feels like a fudge. I preferred the simpler Souls/Borne system where you get one chance to reclaim the lot.

      Stealth is rather clunky, I find. He's one loud ninja! Aerial traversal looks and feels great even though it is limited to a few signposted grapple routes. When the route isn't available, though, but you still clearly need or want to get up on top of a building, you have to jump and grab in rather a clumsy fashion.

      Other have commented on the music. I feel it's disappointing too. It seems mostly to serve as an indicator of enemy awareness states, moving through registers as they go from unaware to yellow to red, and doesn't do much else. Nor does it come alive much in boss battles, unlike the Souls/Borne games.

      I'm a total nerd for this period of Japanese history and architecture and folklore and the Onimusha games are among my favourites, so I love the setting and art design here. I think it's the best looking game From have made, from the detailed character models to the environment, so I hope I can get over my slightly ambivalent relationship with the game to see more of it. Otherwise I'll be pinning my hopes for some feudal Japanese tourism on the Ghost of Tsushima, I think, if it's not sacrilegious to say such a thing.
      Last edited by Golgo; 23-04-2019, 18:55.

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        The main appeal for me, having completed a few NG/NG+ runs, are the boss fights. I think they are utterly sublime. I don't play many fighting games, but I've never played a game with such intricate and satisfyingly designed boss fights. I love fighting them so much that I made different save states for each of the bosses, so I can fight them whenever I want. I wish From had included an option to fight any of the bosses in any of the arenas. Would have made a great game-completion unlockable. Excluding 1-on-1 fighters, do other games exist with combat as satisfying as Sekiro? I'd love to know, if such a thing exists.

        Comment


          Originally posted by bcass View Post
          The main appeal for me, having completed a few NG/NG+ runs, are the boss fights. I think they are utterly sublime. I don't play many fighting games, but I've never played a game with such intricate and satisfyingly designed boss fights. I love fighting them so much that I made different save states for each of the bosses, so I can fight them whenever I want. I wish From had included an option to fight any of the bosses in any of the arenas. Would have made a great game-completion unlockable. Excluding 1-on-1 fighters, do other games exist with combat as satisfying as Sekiro? I'd love to know, if such a thing exists.
          Tried God Hand on ps2? Utterly bonkers game where you can spank cowboys into space but such great fighting mechanics.

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            Yeah, I've heard of it. One of those games I've been meaning to play for years now.

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              Shinobi Time.

              Feels like I made some decent progress for a first session yesterday but to echo one comment from the thread, the game really wants you to use specific items for specific situations.

              When fighting the Chained Ogre I accidentally realised you can

              take off a whole bar of health if you let him reset and then sneak up on him. I suspect this will work for other mini bosses as well, at least I hope so

              because after I trundled off

              down memory lane to get the flame arm

              it became much easier to overcome him.

              I think I might be headed off in the wrong direction now though, having knocked out 3 mini bosses I could do with nailing a fourth but I seem to have found an impasse that no one else has struggled with...


              Giant white snake, needs a set path through, all going fine, stab him in the eye, run away but I can never make the final grapple to what I assume is the last bit of the encounter. He writhes around and smashes me to death. I'm sure I am doing something wrong but I don't want to die too much because of the Dragon Rot...



              So I might need to do some backtrack EXP grinding to see what else I can uncover.

              I reckon I can finish off the first

              memory area now I have the proper counter skill

              but then there are a lot of places that feel daunting that I don't really want to go to yet.

              Use bravery. Die frequently. Improve oneself.

              I think overall it has started reasonably fairly, it is difficult but not insurmountable. So far...

              Comment


                Re: chained ogre tactic: that is definitely a viable strat for a lot of mid bosses and some full bosses.

                You should be able to make the last grapple you mention at this point. Don't worry too much about dragon rot.

                It doesn't have that much effect and you can reverse it's effects with a purchasable item. You will need to reverse it to get through certain points of certain NPC quests because when they're afflicted with it they won't give you the dialogue you need to progress.



                I've got to the end of the game going down the 'best' ending path and am on the last boss. I don't know if I'm going to complete it. I'm not pissed off or frustrated with it but the last boss is hard and looooong. I'm not the best player of Sekiro but I know I can do this with enough time. It's just that I've seen the rest of the game, defeated almost every challenge and I'm just not sure I care about spending 6 hours getting this boss down. I can see how he works, what his attacks are and so on but I don't have the compulsion to get it did.

                Absolutely loved the game and had a wonderful time with it.

                Comment


                  The Sword Saint can be cheesed with Ichimonji Double.
                  Kept you waiting, huh?

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                    I've had a fair bit of free time to sit on the sofa and play games this past week, which has lead to me just getting the platinum in this.

                    Fair amount of thoughts on it overall, but I'll also be walking away for a bit to ponder on it some more. There's a lot in there that I really love, but there's also some elements that I'm less keen on. In short, I think this team working on a solely single-player game is a great thing, and has allowed them to craft some really great boss fights that do a much better job of teaching mechanics to you and dragging you up to their level then they've ever managed in any of their other games. At the same time though, I found a lot of the jank (shoddy hit detection, questionable inputs etc) way more frustrating than before, and the re-use of mini-bosses a little disappointing.

                    It's certainly a very pretty game, but it also shares so much essence with the Souls games that it's kinda hard to truly separate them, which is a shame. On this note I agree with folks here saying that the music isn't one of its stronger suits; it's serviceable enough in the background but when actively listening to it, I don't find it anywhere near as distinctive as I'd have expected (or wanted) it to be.

                    Natural caveat to this is that with the pedigree of the developer, I'm holding this to a way higher standard than I would 90% of other games. It's still going to be one of the best things I play this year, it's just I think I have a much clearer view on how I'd have wanted this to be better than I do with a lot of other games that came before it.

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                      Busy with life stuff but had some small progress now and have beaten my first proper boss after a bit of skill building.

                      It’s hard to see how anyone could progress in this game without some Hirata Estate grinding, I’ve got the proper passive skills in place now to actually let me experiment without excessive punishment, at least, I can both run away and recover health properly.

                      Really has got its teeth into me though. I like it.

                      Comment


                        Originally posted by J0e Musashi View Post
                        The Sword Saint can be cheesed with Ichimonji Double.
                        i thought they patched that out on 1.3

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                          So after some tactical upgrading and item use I managed to beat Lady Butterfly after a handful of attempts. She felt relatively easy to learn which I think helped a lot.

                          Had a poke around

                          Ashina Castle

                          but didn't taking on so many

                          owl people

                          at once and had to stop for sleep...

                          Very much looking forward to continuing on powering up Wolf, what a great game this is

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Lebowski View Post
                            i thought they patched that out on 1.3
                            They might have done. I haven't played it for a few weeks. I need to go back to it at some stage.
                            Kept you waiting, huh?

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by ItsThere View Post
                              So after some tactical upgrading and item use I managed to beat Lady Butterfly after a handful of attempts. She felt relatively easy to learn which I think helped a lot.

                              Had a poke around

                              Ashina Castle

                              but didn't taking on so many

                              owl people

                              at once and had to stop for sleep...

                              Very much looking forward to continuing on powering up Wolf, what a great game this is
                              Sounds like you're about as far as I am, I'm just at the shrine just before lady butterfly. Also at the big open field with the general on the horse, which keeps killing me. Making progress bit by bit but its slow work. I got the strategy guide on Friday so using that to help me!

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by doodledude View Post
                                Sounds like you're about as far as I am, I'm just at the shrine just before lady butterfly. Also at the big open field with the general on the horse, which keeps killing me. Making progress bit by bit but its slow work. I got the strategy guide on Friday so using that to help me!
                                Are you using the

                                firecracker arm

                                for the horse dude? Makes it manageable and like everyone has been saying, there is only really one strategy that works for any encounter!

                                Try and kill him before facing Lady B though, she is the tougher of the two I think.

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