Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki's new game for PS4, XBone, PC

Another early game qualm I have with this game: On one hand, "Sekiro" actively encourages stealth play with grappling points, tall grass, resetting enemies, stealth deathblows, eavesdropping, etc. On the other hand, mastering the parry mechanism is really the only way to progress, and the only way to master the parry is to fight enemies, not to avoid them or sneak up on them. Sure, the game gives you the zombie sparring partner for practice, but I find him pretty tedious. The flipside is that actual enemies, while much more challenging and productive, are also, you know, very potentially lethal, so while you might get better dying to them over and over again to get better at parrying, there is the downside of dragonrot, losing money, reloading, starting an area all over again, and so on, which is also kinda tedious. It forces a frustrating trade off: speed vs. skill. The easier way is also often the faster way, so you're rewarded in expediency but punished for skipping much needed parry practice. The hard way helps you hone your skills, but it's also sometimes a little boring to fight the same scrubs over and over again when you know there may be an easier alternative.

Compare that to Dark Souls, where the parry, while unnecessary, makes things much easier, a reward for learning to fight better, though even in the faster DS3 and Bloodborne the parry is just one of many options. Here the parry more or less is *necessary,* which makes even the basic enemies tougher, but that also risks turning "Sekiro" into (as others have pointed out) something of a rhythm game. Which Dark Souls et al. sometimes had going on as well, but it was never *key* to the combat to totally memorize slash-slash-parry-slash-parry-parry. Those aforementioned "so many different ways to do it (magic, ranged, poise, shields, dodge, summon friends, etc)" makes things a bit easier, sure, but they also make things a bit more varied and interesting.

you got me playing again

Right now I'm dealing with the Armored Knight, who might be the biggest troll of any of these games so far. Not long after eavesdropping and getting the information that there is a super soldier somewhere whose armor can't be pierced, not long after getting a weapon whose description specifically says something like "will strip the armor from enemies whose armor otherwise can't be pierced, making them vulnerable," they give you a mini-boss that is literally invulnerable, that can't be injured, whose armor can't be pierced or stripped, even with the weapon designed to do that, where beating down its poise is the only way to get a deathblow ... and then the deathblow doesn't even kill it! You have to time the deathblow near a ledge, in essence putting in a bunch of work just to get a built-in cheese. I guess that's pretty funny.

Meanwhile, I think I just messed up a quest, too (somehow). There is a bug crying guy that wants a pinwheel. I offered him the red and white pinwheel, having read that it upgrades a merchant. He said, essentially, thanks but no thanks, what about the white pinwheel? So I give that to him (rather than send him to the dungeon, which seems cruel), and it seems to have progressed his white pinwheel quest. Does that mean I can no longer upgrade a merchant? What did I do wrong? Right now he's asking me to magic him away somewhere, which obviously I can't do. Guess I need to do so more googling.

Hmm, maybe the NPC has dragonrot, which dragonrot-blocked me? Fuck dragonrot.

The Armored Knight is hilarious, definitely an in-joke about a Dark Souls character wandering into the wrong game. But yeah the clue about the loaded spear is just weird, it doesn't even feel like a From troll to deliberately mislead like that, it just seems like a mistake?

I think you're on the right track with the crying NPC, I think he shows up later and you need to use a prosthetic to send him on his way (which I'm sure I wouldn't have known without looking it up).

I think it turns out that I gave him the red and white pinwheel and then, on prompting, the white one, before I went back to that vendor NPC, so I'm out of luck as far as upgrading the vendor goes, afaict. The vendor keeps asking me to send him a big guy, and the big guy keeps asking me to spirit him away, but there is no longer a way to send the big guy to the vendor.

I killed the giant centipede giraffe (wtf?) after a few tries. It felt kind of like a troll, too. It's so fast that there really is no deflection, per se, just spamming the deflect button, which inevitably wears down its poise and lets you kill it in, like 20 seconds.

Least favorite OP common enemies so far might be those little, well, trolls, with the armored hats, that either throw knives at you or poison you, and also evade a lot of your mostly fruitless attacks, often including the ax, which is their mortal foe but which forces you to burn through spirit emblems. That's another contradiction in this game I don't appreciate. The only way to build up stats is to kill enemies for gold and XP, but some of these enemies are such a pain in the ass that you're better off avoiding them entirely, since there is a good chance they'll kill you (these mushroom guys, a couple of those roof ninjas or other spazzing spinning blade enemies), halving whatever gains you hoped to achieve. Literally one step forward, two steps back.

Can't you still use the Divine Abduction prosthetic on him to send him away

Also I remember the main use of the spear being the centipede inside of the giant ape boss, which I never would have figured out on my own

I just took out a couple of other mini bosses, some ninja in a pit and the guy with a spear (who was a huge PIA). I believe next up I have a proper big boss to face, which makes me nervous. I've now upgraded my power with four prayer necklaces, but I have no real clear idea what that means, and while I've been accumulating skills, they're getting so expensive the only way I can imagine going much further is by not dying, and ... yeah, I'm going to keep dying, over and over again. Reminded today of how much more fun Bloodborne was, as this one feels so much more tedious and one-note. Be aggressive! Keep slashing! Fingers crossed you deflect accurately, because it's the only way to beat them! Etc.

Wow at Genichiro. This mid-game boss is pretty much as hard as any end game boss in the other From games, imo. If he was half as fast I'd probably have just as many problems. That said, I've managed to make it through his first red dot and almost the second red dot, so I guess that's some progress. I suppose it really is just a matter of identifying and timing the counters just right, almost to a mathematical degree, which ... well, let's just say math is hard and can be a drag. But again: progress. Gotta love how From offered a few helpful quality of life changes in this game (endless stamina, no weapon degrading, blocking) and then threw in a few things just to fuck with you (like the whole idea of the enemy posture bar, which regenerates, as if to mock you, and making perfect parries the *default* mode of play).

I spent... so many hours on that Genichiro fight. Like more than any boss in any game ever. I will say by the time I beat him, I had the fight down like clockwork and felt pretty badass. But yeah, it was a humbling journey getting there.

I think I've been using Mikiri wrong. I thought I just had to press O but you have to dash toward him at the same time. I hope that helps me!

Oh really? I don't remember that at all, I thought it was just pressing O when you're in range. I wonder if I was pressing forward instinctively the whole time. Seems like it works either way?

I thought it was pressing O, but I've also seen push (dash) forward L while pressing O (that's what the pop up instructions I've seen a hundred times while I'm waiting for him to reload have said), and I also saw someone say you have to first deflect (not block) his attack after he jumps to earn the mikiri, but I have no idea. I've tried a few different strategies so far. One is to get in his face and just attack away, blocking as able/needed, but inevitably he'll do an unblockable grab and more or less kill me, or at least undo any momentum. The other is the death from a thousand cuts strategy, waiting him out and whittling away at his health to make his posture regain slower, but so far I haven't been patient enough. At least it finally occurred to me that you can block pretty much everything he does save for the (er) unblockable attacks, but that rewards patience, too, since eventually you have to let down your guard and get a few hits in.

This was one of my favorite fights, and I remember it being a matter of needing a certain response to every one of his attacks. And there are enough different attacks that it had a sense of depth, and transcended the parry/counter rhythm game.

At least this dumbass is right next to an idol. I need to rest my fingers for a while, but in the meantime, having watched a few guides, I always find it odd that when I fight these assholes their moves are soooo much more seemingly unpredictable than for the dudes who can take them out without breaking a sweat. Granted, they've probably played the games a hundred hours more than I have, but at the same time, I can't even mikiri this boss and they make it look so easy, and, in this specific instance, where they say "first phase is almost always a stab," I get a mix of grabs, stabs and sweeps that make it hard to get to phase two without almost all my estus.

I think some of his moves have to do with how close you are, so maybe staying in his face vs keeping your distance dictates how it plays out to some extent. But obviously there's some rng too.

I just made it to the third round for the first time. What kind of stupid system makes you kill an enemy twice and then ... makes you kill it *again*, a third time? Like, why give him two life bars if he essentially has three? Annoying. Anyway, not going to beat this guy if I can't figure out why my mikiri is not countering, but he's so fast and so lethal it doesn't give me more than a couple of times to even practice before he takes me out.

That being said, I have gotten him to his third phase a few times now, so I know it's doable. Now it's just a matter of the same aforementioned BS, figuring out how to properly (in this case) time the lightning deflection in the few seconds I have, before he kills me and send me back to the start again. Which, yeah, that's pretty tedious.

OK, this third round seems a little more forgiving, but will still take some time. I really don't get how ... I dunno, how *off* this otherwise well-tuned game is? Like, you fight the world's toughest dude, then he ... for no reason takes off his armor? And *then* he introduces lightning attacks? Why does he take off his gear? Why doesn't he just start with lightning? Not complaining, because it should make things easier. Just sayin'.

I killed him. The fucker. Having honed my skills enough to take him out in his first form both times several times (before quickly panic-dying to his next phase) I got really impatient and sloppy being made to fight him again and again, but then more or less fortunately stumbled onto a way to speed up the fight. The first few times I fought him I had the ichimonji combat art armed, yet given how much I was spamming block/deflect I kept accidentally ichimonjing him, which made me vulnerable to getting killed. Instead I switched to the spinning attack for most of my fights, which was less punishing to me when I accidentally used it, since I usually at least got a few hits in on him in the process. After still dying a bunch, albeit with more regular wins over at least his first round and a good number of wins over his second round, I figured I should change my fight style up a little, since it wasn't working consistently. Instead, I re-armed ichimonji (double ichimonji, as a matter of fact) and found that while it doesn't quite stunlock him you can still get several overhead hits in a row before he regroups and gathers strength again and you have to defend a bit. Yet all along those overhead hits (and other strikes you get in) have been lowering his vitality, which keeps his posture meter high, so I was able to get a rhythm down and get past both parts of that fight with most of my estus left over for his next phase. And as I noted, the next phase this toughest of tough bosses basically turns into a big pussy. "Beware my wrath! I will now ... strip off my armor, making me easier to stagger, and throw in an AOE lightning attack that not only is pretty easy to reverse, but it turns out that I, Genichiro, can be stunned by my own lightning!" And the rest is pretty fast and simple, thank goodness.

If there is one silver lining it's that dying to him a million times only got me one unit of Dragonrot, like the game was taking pity on me. Though the dickhead of course comes back to life *again* at the end, so fuck you, From. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. But sometimes three times. And sometimes not at all.

Now I'm going to rest my cramped trigger fingers.

Nice! Yeah 'phase 3' in this game is usually just trying to psyche you out with a new flashy attack, but should be shorter & easier iirc. Unlike Friede in DS3, where phase 3 was by far the most dangerous.

Watching this, it's definitely not how I remember fighting him, but sure makes it look easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg73iVitFM0

(also the next bit mentions that the spear clue references "ill-fitting armor", which ok, sure, wouldn't apply to the big dumb Dark Souls knight, his armor fit very nicely)

lol, so the giant babies with diapers are the ones with "ill-fitting armor?" Whatever, From. I assume like this guy did that that's just one of a few translation errors in this game. The first time I was fighting that guy with the bell, btw, I killed his dogs and ran to hide, and as I waited for him to chill he went over and got sad about the dogs. And then later there's another guy like him who is sad about his dead monkey. What's up with that, From? Making me feel bad about these ruthless, relentless monsters.

Anyway, I don't trust shit like that video. Is he in NG+? What are the icons under his vitality? How is using something like mist raven not a cheese, but any other advantage apparently is a cheese?

Regardless, sure, if you can always do perfect deflections then you'll wear down any enemies to nothing. But perfect deflections all the time are like perfect parries all the time are like those people that beat Dark Souls with no armor and a broken sword at skill level one with bongos. Sure, you did it, guys, good for you, but some of us can't dedicate our lives to gitting so gud we've got every last second of the game timed out. We do the best we can with what we've got.

I found that deflections weren't that bad because the game is quite forgiving about letting you re-guard and try again soon after you attempt a parry too early, I spent a lot of time holding, releasing and reholding the button

I wondered if PC 60fps was somehow making the game mechanically way easier than console tho, as I am not amazing at these games and found Sekiro to be some distance easier than every other From game

You might be onto something. I generally follow the fighting cowboy walkthroughs, and he stated at the start of this one that he's playing on a PC. Maybe that explains why some of these folks have no problem mikiri countering certain enemies that seem impossible to time on my PlayStation. Genericho, for example, I was never able to consistently get the counter in on his armored form. I would go back to the tutoring dummy and try again and again on him, with no problems. But the boss himself, rarely. And yet in his final form, no problem getting to counter.

Yeah it's NG+, which gives you an option to get take damage whenever you don't do a perfectly timed deflection. Makes the game way harder obv, but also teaches you proper parry timing I guess.

I think the Mist Raven thing is because people considered it a useless skill when the game came out, and he was trying to find applications for it.

Of course, the big downside of having beat a mid-game boss that felt almost like a late-game boss is that I have no desire right now to move forward, and I suspect once I do it will be with some some serious trepidation of what's to come.

Holy shit at the rooftop monkeys in kimonos! I love not only that this "fight" exists, but that it exists as a *boss fight.* So silly. I wish From did more stuff like this, just to lighten the mood a little.

Yeah there are some more varied, gimmicky fights and set pieces coming up I think, nothing as exacting as Genichiro for awhile.

I hate the XP system in this game. In order to advance your skill trees you need XP, but every time you die (for good) you lose half your XP. And of course the amount of XP needed keeps getting bigger and bigger, too. So any time I find myself with even half my XP meter filled I feel compelled to go waste some time farming, because dying (even accidentally) to a tough enemy will undo all that work I did to even fill the meter half way. And of course just about any time you go up against more than a couple of enemies, at least at this point in the game, you run the risk of dying, so any farming you do has to be more of the easing pickings type, which is ... slow work. Why they decided to go this route is beyond me. It's a game designed to kill you a lot that also punishes you for dying.

thing is, XP are secondary to Prayer Beads, you don't really need many of the skills unlocked by gaining XP to get far in the game, whereas Prayer Beads are pretty essential

Well, you really never *need* anything, as a hundred youtubers have demonstrated with these games. Prayer Beads you do need to get stronger, gourds you need to get more estus, but XP you definitely need for skills to make things a little easier in some circumstances. Case in point: were it not for ichimonji I would have gotten even more bored fighting Genericho over and over again and possibly set the game aside a while. Though, fair enough, I can see not needing to go past a certain point in skills.

Regarding prayer beads, weird, then, that for being essential the prayer beads are generally gleaned by fighting often *optional* mini-bosses. Just another aspect of From perversity. (One of my favorite From FU moves is making you face singular tough enemies early game, then throwing in situations with several of them later. I'm at the gun fort part now.)

Pretty standard in these games to be rewarded for exploration/playing more of the game, but hardcore speedrunners (or just people who have played the game before) don't necessarily need the extra stats/gear

For sure. Though it's tricky with these games, because you don't *need* to do anything ... if you don't ever die. But if you do die, a lot, then you need to level up if you want to have a fighting chance. In the case of this game specifically, the fastest way to level up, or at least gain some advantage, is not to die, because dying halves your XP and money. But of course if you're not dying all the time then you don't really need the advantages. On the other hand, the more you play the better you get, dying or not, which in turn once again negates the need for stat advantages, because you have gotten gud. It's kind of a vicious cycle of contradictions, with the emphasis on vicious.

I do appreciate how this is in essence a Souls game, but one that changes things up in subtle and not so subtle ways, with new mechanics, old tricks, new tricks, old mechanics, and so on. There's a lot more platforming, there's more (overt) strategy, there seems to be even more risk/reward management. Tons of idols, tons of reasons to have more idols. It kind of makes me even more curious about Elden Ring, since on one hand it seems like a return to a fantasy world, but on the other it comes after this and Bloodborne. And, of course, because it's Miyazaki, who clearly has his go-tos. "In a dark world blighted with decay and cloaked in mystery, an undying hero must battle his way through legions of enemies whose diseased blood has infected the realm and sent its residents into a cursed frenzy." Etc.

Poking right along here. I'm in the spooky PIA Village straddling two bosses, Orin of the Will O'Wisps (or whatever) and ... Corrupted Monk? Still discovering all sorts of kind of random choices made by the designers, akin to the prosthetic that pierces armor but not the armor you think it's introduced to pierce. For example, the first snake eyes can be poisoned with the sabimaru, but the second snake eyes didn't seem as (or at all?) affected. And yet, the second one was the first boss I've managed to actually cheese (thank goodness) in this game, since it turns out she *is* susceptible to poison ... when she's standing in a big pool of it, like a moron. Then there's the mist monster boss in the house that you need to kill to get rid of the fog, which has two red dots but is a cakewalk, but corrupted monk has just one red dot and is a huge pain. And some other bosses so far have two red dots but come back for a third round, anyway. I know the enigmatic mythology is a big part of the appeal of Souls games, but at a certain point these games are just fucking with you.

Like, did Miyazaki sit down one day and say, you know, I'm actually going to make poison build up slower and less lethal than players are used to. But terror! That shit is going to build up fast and kill you almost instantly, like curse did. It's shit like that that doesn't make me feel bad for trying to find alternative routes and fighting methods. I'm happy to try and cheese an enemy when the "right" way is to slash them once, run away, wait, run in, slash twice, run away, etc., for a few concentration-filled minutes, all while avoiding various unblockable attacks, their ability to turn ethereal, needing to use up limited resources like divine confetti or snap seeds, and so on. Even the cheesing, sometimes I wonder if *that* is supposed to be the right way.

OK, well timed case in point. I first stumbled on Orin of the Water completely by accident. I had made it through the particularly manic Mibu Village to another idol, rested up, and figured, well, I have a couple of minutes, let's see what's around the corner. Oh, it's the NPC I didn't send to be experimented on! (Miyazaki has a thing for tricking players into sending NPCs to their doom.) He still hears the music, only this time, so do I. I go a little further and see what appears to be a lady playing music, with an interaction button by her. It looks like an arena space, but she seems chill, so I interact. And she freaks the fuck out and attacks me! I panic and race around, then realize I can get back to the idol, which means she's an optional double red dot enemy boss. I look her up, learn her name, and learn she's one of the harder optional bosses, at least at this stage of the game (and aside from the headless enemies). I really want another prayer bead, though, so I keep googling for strategies and ... yeah, she seems tough.

However! Some folks note a few potential cheese strategies, so planning for the worst, I looked into them. One involved sneaking in a backstab after sort of prematurely getting her to aggro, for 50% off her health. Another involved getting her stuck behind some rocks en route back to the idol, another involved luring her across the bridge coming up and fighting her over there. Now, I knew about the bridge, because once I learned she was optional I zipped past her, fought some other enemies and explored a bit more, but also learned there is *another* boss, this one not-optional, coming right up, and figured I might as well give her a shot before dying to the next dude a lot. I had fifteen minutes this morning so figured I would at least see if any of those tricks worked. I sneak up behind her to try the 50% off trick, and no dice. She's onto me, and I run back to the idol. Googling, I learned this cheese was apparently patched. Next I run past her across the bridge, turn around, and see her slowly making her way to me. I figure why not, keep luring her across the bridge (which takes no time, thanks to her teleporting attack)... and more or less kick her butt, a total cheese. I guess the AI doesn't quite know what to do in the tighter confines across the bridge?

Actually, it took me three times to kill her, because the first time I accidentally aggroed another nearby enemy I forgot to dispatch, and the second time I think she fell into the water (?) and vanished, to respawn again after I rested. But the third time the bait-and-kill strategy worked like a charm. Now, why would From fix the first cheese (taking off a dot of her health) but *not* this one? Why would they keep her AI designed to slowly follow me well outside of the arena to a place where I have the advantage? And then there's the matter of the sabibaru. I saw somewhere that while she was hard to damage she could be worn down a little by an initial sabibaru attack, so I tried that. And it *worked*. The poison took off some of her health, but more importantly the sabibaru took out *a lot* of her poise, which similarly means that From designed it to do that, too, just like letting her wander across the bridge. These were no oversights, they must have been left in as sort of back-door strategies for those having trouble.

Which I assume I will have with Corrupted Monk, which seems like another war of attrition type fight. Stab, run away, wait, repeat. They give you a divine confetti right before the fight so I assume I'm supposed to use that, but I'm wary, since they don't really show up that often in the game so far, and I have a hunch it will take me more attempts than I have divine confetti.

O'Rin was fun, I don't remember her being too hard to fight straight up.

I don't think I did all the Headless fights though. Or maybe I did later, using the prosthetic that protects against terror. Seems like a pretty classic From thing, optional bosses that are accessible early on to strike fear into your heart, but you're not really supposed to tackle them until late game.

I knew better than to skip the giant monkey for now, even though I know it's possible.

Hmm, I guess Corrupted Monk wasn't quite as bad as I expected. Don't get me wrong, everyone had dragonrot now, again, but still, for a big spooky ghost samurai it's relatively slow and easy to parry/avoid. Plus, while I tried a few times with snap seeds, which are effective, those things are so hard to come by I decided on a different approach and followed a suggestion to throw ash at it, and that worked like a charm to disrupt its attacks.

Tried the ape once or twice, looks like another one that reward patience. And keeping your distance.

Famous last words and all that, but I think this might be my favorite fight so far. A grotesque monster monkey that farts and flings its poop? More of that. I managed to beat its first phase, and got about halfway through the second, even crazier phase. Shouldn't be too bad, though, because at least it's kind of fun and definitely ott in the best way.

Wait until you meet his monkey life partner

Holy shit, I used up all my spirit emblems!

Ha, I just noticed you can buy them at the idols. Funny one, From. I assume I'm 2/3rds or so through this game and I stand by my assessment that it my least favorite of the Froms I've played so far. Just so much bullshit for the sake of bullshit. In Dark Souls you can reclaim your souls after dying. In Bloodborne you can seek out the blue eyed baddie to retrieve all (some?) of your souls. But in this annoying game losing half your souls *and* money when you die just makes busy work, which is super annoying, since the game is essentially designed to *be* busywork already. That is, trial and error is once again the name of the game. Which combat art? Which items? Which prosthetic? But then dying over and over while you trial and error just sets your upgrade progress back further and further, more or less forcing you to farm, not for any real advantage, but just to at least get back to where you *were*, which is stupid. The only way around that is to not die, but not only does it take all that trial and error to learn how to not die, dying is the *whole point* of these games.

I feel like this game really overdoes the grabbing bosses trick, too, though I concede it's funny to watch the giant monkey throw me across the arena.

You know what? I take it back, fuck this giant monkey. I do OK with the first phase, but the second phase, especially the all but insta-kill terror attack, is just tedious bullshit. I read something about using the spear to pull out the centipede (?) in the second phase, but in the opportunities I've had to use it it hasn't retracted shit from the monkey (which is ironic, given this particular fight). And of course you only have a couple of shots to use it, anyway, because you run out of spirit emblems you can use. Anyway, I can totally see the monkey as a wall I don't feel like making it past. I've liked the From games so far, but maybe it's because I just played the gentle by comparison Red Dead 2 or maybe it's just the stress of it, but I'm finding this kind of boring.

Noooo, the monkey's not that bad. You just need to be super cautious about that scream. I remember mostly attacking him when he does that body dive that puts him past you. You can parry the sword too iirc.

We'll see. I can make it past the first stage pretty easily (Night Jar seems to help a lot), using maybe just one or two gourds if I'm being sloppy. But the second phase my impatience is an even bigger obstacle. I've already spent several tedious minutes running around the arena, dodging poop and whittling away at the monkey. Now I have to do it again? Only this time I can't stun it or get in as many hits? And even if I could the terror attack more or less limits you to one or two hits before you have to take cover? That's even more tedious. I've blocked or parried many of the attacks, but I'm not sure to what end.

It's such a weird boss to throw at you. After the game has trained you to be aggressive and get in their face, bam, here's comes a hyper aggressive enemy that you're meant to stay away from and get shots when you can.