Alright, so by this point we've all heard me jerk off the Souls franchise raw. I'm an unabashed fan of the series. But it wasn't until well into I realized some of the other games From Software produced. Mainly while shooting a let's play, I realized that these are also the makers of Tenchu, a game series I never personally played.
But when I saw the trailers and gameplay for this one during E3 last year, Tenchu's heavy hand could sure be felt in the gameplay. But it also definietly feels like the Souls series that I love could be felt here too. But everything moved so fast, there was stealth. This was going to be a whole different beast than I was ready for. But it didn't stop me. I speak of course, of.....
SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE(PS4)
In a fictionalized 16th century Sengoku period in Japan, a battle between the Ashina Empire was in the midst of the bloody coup for control. During the aftermath of a devastating conflict, an old shinobi by the name of Owl comes across a ragged looking orphan. The child shows no fear, grabbing the blade of Owl's sword, goading his death. Owl however sees a fire in this youth, adopts him, trains him as a shinobi and names him Wolf.
Two decades pass and Wolf becomes a shinobi, and personal servant to a young noble boy called Kuro. The Ashina clan is falling, and current leader of the Ashina army seeks to create an immortal army using Kuro's power. Wolf attempts to help Kuro escape, but he is cut down by Genichrio Ashina and loses his arm. Kuro is captured again.
But due to Kuro's power, the "Dragon's Heritage", Wolf survives the wounds and has been found and treated a former shinobi and sculptor. The sculptor replaces Wolf's wounded arm with a shinobi prosthetic, which allows him to use various ninja tools right from his arm. New abilities in tow, Wolf heads back to Ashina castle to save Kuro.
Those of you who are familiar with the "Souls" will note a pretty distinct difference right off the bat that Wolf is an actual character. He's not a customizable ninja, he has a designed face and voice. He actually interacts with other NPCs and actually has a definable backstory. And while at the onset the overarching goal is unclear, he does have character motivation. This is more than any Dark Souls or Bloodborne character has ever had.
And while at its surface it looks like this is going to be a harder version of a Tenchu game, make no mistake about it, this is a Souls game through and through. The combat will feel familiar, the map exploration is vast, experience can be lost at death. But there are a lot of new elements that drastically change the experience as well, so like always there is going to be an adjustment period where you have to unlearn what you know from previous Souls titles.
So let's get right into the meat and potatoes: The combat. The first thing you'll need to brace for is that like the nimble shinobi, this game moves at a breakneck pace. Faster even than how Bloodborne moved, which is impressive because that game was not slow. Much like you will remember the game uses the right shoulder buttons for you primary sword attacks and your Prosthetic. Your left trigger, which once was used for shield and parrying is now used from your grappling hook which allows you to fly around the map as well as be used in certain combat situations.
But it's not just a matter of fast combat either. Sekiro expects you to approach things more skillfully as well. Enemies are incredibly focused and sharp, so if you just try to hack and slash through the game you are going to lose your other arm. The big crux of the combat this time is 90% of the battle hinges on the Posture system. Essentially you and your target have a glowing bar that increases as you deal/take damage, block blows, and most importantly, deflect enemy attacks. Your posture recharges more quickly dependent on health, so sometimes it's wise to back up and hold your guard before you dive in for another round.
If you or your target have your posture maxed out, you are left vulnerable for a kill shot. If an enemy takes one of this it completely kills them outright regardless of their remaining health or in your case and wipe out a large amount of yours. While dealing damage is one way to do it, the main way to really send off an enemies posture is to time your blocks just before impact to deflect their blow and knock off a large amount of their posture. If they have lower health, it will take longer or make them unable to regain their posture.
So yeah, if that sounds like the parrying system from Dark Souls? That's because that's exactly what it fucking is, and man do I hate the parry system. I have never been good at timing the parry properly so I knew I was in for a rough ride. And boy was I, but I'll get into that later.
What the Sekiro does not explain well enough though, and this is a massive oversight from where I stand, is that even if you don't time your parry's correctly, you are still able to block blows with relative success. You don't get the larger posture benefits from it as well as taking a big posture hit yourself and it's possible to lose health from that as well, but it's certainly better than just eating a number of slashes and wiping a fight almost immediately.
In addition to the main combat, enemies have some special telegraphed attacks that can't be blocked or parried by normal means. For example, some enemies use a sweeping slash that can't be blocked at all, but this can be jumped over (holy shit the game as a jump button!) and an aerial stomp that counters it. Some enemies have a grab move that must be dodged to avoid damage. Some enemies have a thrust move that a special counter is required to fight against. These moves are signified by a tone and flashing Japanese character, but good luck making out which one it's supposed to be telling you in the heat of the moment. It's usually much better to get a feel for their motion or pay attention the enemy. A spear user's wind up will probably indicate if a thrust or sweep is coming, and big guys grab. Not rocket science.
Or, you can say to hell with combat and try to go about stealth kills. With thew new faster movement and significant upward mobility thanks the jump and grappling claw, there is a lot of opportunity to sneak and fly around your environment and trying to land a number of unnoticed kills. In some areas, this is going to be mandatory because of the nature of the parry based combat, it is highly discouraged to try to fight multiple enemies at once. You will want to pick off as many baddies as you can to progress with all your health in tact. Even better, some bosses and minibosses are also susceptible to stealth kills which knocks off a full bar of their health which can make some fights significantly easier.
There are some changes to the death mechanics and penalties. First and probably most importantly goes along with the game's NáméSáké: Shadows Die Twice. Thanks to Kuro's Dragon's heritage. when you are first slain, you are able to basically lay prone for a few moments for enemies to leave your body, and resurrect yourself with some minimal health. Usually this allows you land at least one more stealth kill before enemies are alerted again or allows you to bail out and get some distance. As you gain kills you will restore your ability to revive again and with some items you might be able to give yourself more than one revival.
But should you die again, there all penalties. First, in true souls fashion you take an experience hit. Leveling up in this game is used specifically for unlocking new abilities and techniques, and so long as you "bank" a full XP bar you won't lose it upon death. But if you die twice before you tick over to a fresh bar, half of that experience is lost. There are also shops along your game where you can you buy various tools and items. These just money, and like XP if you die you are losing half of that too.
With the experience loss being mitigated some and only losing money which is not a critical element for progression, you might be fooled into thinking that dying is not as impactful as it is in previous From Software games. You would be wrong. If you get killed too many times, the NPCs of the surrounding area get affected by an illness called the Dragon's Rot. This basically causes them to start hacking blood and dying. I am not sure if this is something that can permanently kill some NPCs, but it absolutely can halt the ability to do side quest progressions. It can be cured and thankfully I never seemed to die enough where I couldn't cure it again. I managed to finish the game with cure to spare.
The other big chance to combat is instead of learning spells or having differing weapon types to use, you have a set of skill trees you can put your experience towards new abilities and items. So while you only ever get the one sword to use throughout the game, you have a different special techniqes you can equip to change the play style a bit. Sadly you can only ever equip one at a time but if one doesn't work it's nice to know you can change it to approach fights differently.
After that it's pretty Soulsy through and through. You a single recovery item that gets more uses as you play and be refilled at checkpoints. You have totems acting as bonfires for checkpoints and recovery. You get a series of different tools for the shinobi prosthetic that have limited disposable uses, essentially becoming your spells in the game, and so on. Like I said above: while it might initially feel like a Tenchu game, it's really a Souls game.
This game has an exceptional soundtrack. It is properly scored to a somber samurai film affair: quiet and harrowing when exploring area's, but increasing in tempo and tension when getting into battle and boss scenarios. I am a sucker for traditional Japanese instruments though so I might have a somewhat biased opinion, but damn does it set for a exciting one on one duel.
From Software looks like they payed a bit more attention to detail on the character models on this one. I'll be the first to admit that most of the characters from their other games have very poorly designed faces, mainly because most of they are meant to be covered in armor 90% of the time. But now we have cutscenes and conversations with an actual character, so it's nice to see that make things a bit more visually appealing for it.
There is no online mechanic this time around, which is both a blessing and curse for me. On the downside I am no long able to engage in jolly cooperation, which means any boss that I have to fight through in this game I have to fight through on my own skill and my own skill alone. But on the plus and more importantly, I don't have any random Darkmoon or Belfry assholes dropping into my game as I am frantically searching for a checkpoint with no health left desperate to not lose my progress and experience.
As per usual, the game features a NG+ with harder and more damaging enemies, but because the crux of the combat requires deflecting damage instead of tanking it, they feel a lot less intimidating. Especially if you start up right after you finish the game because you will be in the zone and prepared for it. There are also I believe 4 different endings to the game so there is a bit of replay value to the game as well.
Once I got into a groove, there was not much I didn't like about the game, but what I didn't was almost a deal breaker for me. Every game these companies put out always have a barrier to entry where you need to relearn the mechanics of the new game. But holy shit Sekiro could afford to dial it back a little bit to hook you. This game is bloodthirsty from the word go. Like I said above the deflect mechanic could have been better explained to let me know that blocking was still a viable thing to do to get the gist of the combat.
This lead to me coming up to the first actual mini-boss after the tutorial level and I basically slammed to a halt like running face first into a brick wall. One, I didn't have the timing down on my parries, so I would give up on them which would cause me to take big chunks of damage. Two, it said I'd need to lower his health lower his posture more but everything I attacked with would get blocked. So I played too defensively because I was afraid to parry and block, and couldn't seem to score any damage. Three, it doesn't let you know that running and counter-striking is viable to at least whittle their posture down.
What ended up happening is I would be successful in stealthing to where I could take out one of his life bars, but then I would be totally stuck because I had no clue how I could approach the battle. You can't just Dark Souls walk behind them and slash them down. And had I known blocking was viable, I would have learned that the deflect is pretty generous actually. The game says not to mash it, but if you do you still get a pretty wide window to block so while I might not have perfectly time deflects I would at least not be getting cut to ribbons in every exchange.
And I would argue that a LOT of these minibosses are actually harder than some of the actual bosses. There was one particular shard of glass in my urethra on a snowy cliff that I could not get the attack rhythm down and his attacks could yank me back in for big damage. It wasn't until I started running around the battlefield goading him to attack so I could score a few quick counterattacks before the lighbulb started to go on and I could chip his health down to where I could get braver to push his posture. It wasn't long after that I realized how generous the block actually is that everything clicked that allowed me to really start to go toe to toe with some bosses and actually feel bad ass doing it.
But all of this means NOTHING compared to some of the camera fuckery that this game stick you with, and this was easily my most massive complaint at the start of the game that nagged me all the way to the end. Combat in this game is FAST, so similarly the camera also needs to move fast to try to keep up. So the last thing I need is to get stuck on an invisible rock against a wall and have the camera zoom so far up my fucking ass that I can't see my character or what is directly on either side of me. Manually having to spin the camera in these scenarios force me to give up precious milliseconds I don't fuck'n have when I have 3 loincloth wearing drunkards bearing down on me.
As mentioned above, you only get the one weapon aside of your sub prosthetic. And while the techniques do provide a little change to the playability, you can only use one at a time and that really limits the customization. Dark Souls, Nioh, even Bloodborne had a small offering of weapons that changed the core combat enough to make it feel different. There are plenty of ninja weapons that could have been used here so it is a little disappointing that they limited down to one weapon. It fits from a story perspective but for a gameplay mechanic it's a bummer.
I won't lie, after the first few hours I was pretty much ready to throw this game in the trash. A challenge is one thing and I'm certainly not of the mindset that a game has to have an easy mode. But if you are going to make your game this difficult, the challenge should be in things I have rules for. Not for camera bullshit that is incidental. This could have been fixed if some smaller environment pieces could be glided around instead of locking as a barrier.
But ultimately, everything did eventually click and I fell right back into that Soulsian groove that always feels so good. Fighting the final boss of the game took me 8 hours to do. There was swearing, there was screaming, there was resigned resignation, but when I had that golden run where I just put the boots to him and got that final credits sequence? No better feeling. It's why I still keep coming back to these games no matter how much they punish me. The payoff always feels like payoff.
Look, I will be the first to tell you that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is not a game for everybody. Hell it's entirely possible that Sekiro might not even be for people who are fans of the other games from this company. This is easily one of their most difficult and most punishing games to date. But now that I've gotten over the humps that made me hate it, there was a lot to love in this game. I've had to put it down for a minute, but I already feel the urge to go back to it. A game of the year contender in my book, but I wouldn't blame you for skipping this one if you get frustrated by hard games.
That four monkey chasing boss can fuck right the hell off.
But due to Kuro's power, the "Dragon's Heritage", Wolf survives the wounds and has been found and treated a former shinobi and sculptor. The sculptor replaces Wolf's wounded arm with a shinobi prosthetic, which allows him to use various ninja tools right from his arm. New abilities in tow, Wolf heads back to Ashina castle to save Kuro.
Those of you who are familiar with the "Souls" will note a pretty distinct difference right off the bat that Wolf is an actual character. He's not a customizable ninja, he has a designed face and voice. He actually interacts with other NPCs and actually has a definable backstory. And while at the onset the overarching goal is unclear, he does have character motivation. This is more than any Dark Souls or Bloodborne character has ever had.
And while at its surface it looks like this is going to be a harder version of a Tenchu game, make no mistake about it, this is a Souls game through and through. The combat will feel familiar, the map exploration is vast, experience can be lost at death. But there are a lot of new elements that drastically change the experience as well, so like always there is going to be an adjustment period where you have to unlearn what you know from previous Souls titles.
So let's get right into the meat and potatoes: The combat. The first thing you'll need to brace for is that like the nimble shinobi, this game moves at a breakneck pace. Faster even than how Bloodborne moved, which is impressive because that game was not slow. Much like you will remember the game uses the right shoulder buttons for you primary sword attacks and your Prosthetic. Your left trigger, which once was used for shield and parrying is now used from your grappling hook which allows you to fly around the map as well as be used in certain combat situations.
In these situations, getting the drop is ideal.
But it's not just a matter of fast combat either. Sekiro expects you to approach things more skillfully as well. Enemies are incredibly focused and sharp, so if you just try to hack and slash through the game you are going to lose your other arm. The big crux of the combat this time is 90% of the battle hinges on the Posture system. Essentially you and your target have a glowing bar that increases as you deal/take damage, block blows, and most importantly, deflect enemy attacks. Your posture recharges more quickly dependent on health, so sometimes it's wise to back up and hold your guard before you dive in for another round.
If you or your target have your posture maxed out, you are left vulnerable for a kill shot. If an enemy takes one of this it completely kills them outright regardless of their remaining health or in your case and wipe out a large amount of yours. While dealing damage is one way to do it, the main way to really send off an enemies posture is to time your blocks just before impact to deflect their blow and knock off a large amount of their posture. If they have lower health, it will take longer or make them unable to regain their posture.
So yeah, if that sounds like the parrying system from Dark Souls? That's because that's exactly what it fucking is, and man do I hate the parry system. I have never been good at timing the parry properly so I knew I was in for a rough ride. And boy was I, but I'll get into that later.
If you time your deflections right, enemies can be dropped quickly.
What the Sekiro does not explain well enough though, and this is a massive oversight from where I stand, is that even if you don't time your parry's correctly, you are still able to block blows with relative success. You don't get the larger posture benefits from it as well as taking a big posture hit yourself and it's possible to lose health from that as well, but it's certainly better than just eating a number of slashes and wiping a fight almost immediately.
In addition to the main combat, enemies have some special telegraphed attacks that can't be blocked or parried by normal means. For example, some enemies use a sweeping slash that can't be blocked at all, but this can be jumped over (holy shit the game as a jump button!) and an aerial stomp that counters it. Some enemies have a grab move that must be dodged to avoid damage. Some enemies have a thrust move that a special counter is required to fight against. These moves are signified by a tone and flashing Japanese character, but good luck making out which one it's supposed to be telling you in the heat of the moment. It's usually much better to get a feel for their motion or pay attention the enemy. A spear user's wind up will probably indicate if a thrust or sweep is coming, and big guys grab. Not rocket science.
Sometimes even when you make the right move, it's the wrong move.
Or, you can say to hell with combat and try to go about stealth kills. With thew new faster movement and significant upward mobility thanks the jump and grappling claw, there is a lot of opportunity to sneak and fly around your environment and trying to land a number of unnoticed kills. In some areas, this is going to be mandatory because of the nature of the parry based combat, it is highly discouraged to try to fight multiple enemies at once. You will want to pick off as many baddies as you can to progress with all your health in tact. Even better, some bosses and minibosses are also susceptible to stealth kills which knocks off a full bar of their health which can make some fights significantly easier.
There are some changes to the death mechanics and penalties. First and probably most importantly goes along with the game's NáméSáké: Shadows Die Twice. Thanks to Kuro's Dragon's heritage. when you are first slain, you are able to basically lay prone for a few moments for enemies to leave your body, and resurrect yourself with some minimal health. Usually this allows you land at least one more stealth kill before enemies are alerted again or allows you to bail out and get some distance. As you gain kills you will restore your ability to revive again and with some items you might be able to give yourself more than one revival.
But should you die again, there all penalties. First, in true souls fashion you take an experience hit. Leveling up in this game is used specifically for unlocking new abilities and techniques, and so long as you "bank" a full XP bar you won't lose it upon death. But if you die twice before you tick over to a fresh bar, half of that experience is lost. There are also shops along your game where you can you buy various tools and items. These just money, and like XP if you die you are losing half of that too.
Landing that stealth kill is so important because it literally cuts a minibosses' health in half.
With the experience loss being mitigated some and only losing money which is not a critical element for progression, you might be fooled into thinking that dying is not as impactful as it is in previous From Software games. You would be wrong. If you get killed too many times, the NPCs of the surrounding area get affected by an illness called the Dragon's Rot. This basically causes them to start hacking blood and dying. I am not sure if this is something that can permanently kill some NPCs, but it absolutely can halt the ability to do side quest progressions. It can be cured and thankfully I never seemed to die enough where I couldn't cure it again. I managed to finish the game with cure to spare.
The other big chance to combat is instead of learning spells or having differing weapon types to use, you have a set of skill trees you can put your experience towards new abilities and items. So while you only ever get the one sword to use throughout the game, you have a different special techniqes you can equip to change the play style a bit. Sadly you can only ever equip one at a time but if one doesn't work it's nice to know you can change it to approach fights differently.
After that it's pretty Soulsy through and through. You a single recovery item that gets more uses as you play and be refilled at checkpoints. You have totems acting as bonfires for checkpoints and recovery. You get a series of different tools for the shinobi prosthetic that have limited disposable uses, essentially becoming your spells in the game, and so on. Like I said above: while it might initially feel like a Tenchu game, it's really a Souls game.
Surprisingly, Sekiro didn't go the Nioh route as there are surprisingly few monsters in the game.
Perhaps to disconnect with the Souls series, but I would have liked more fantasy creatures to fight.
Perhaps to disconnect with the Souls series, but I would have liked more fantasy creatures to fight.
This game has an exceptional soundtrack. It is properly scored to a somber samurai film affair: quiet and harrowing when exploring area's, but increasing in tempo and tension when getting into battle and boss scenarios. I am a sucker for traditional Japanese instruments though so I might have a somewhat biased opinion, but damn does it set for a exciting one on one duel.
From Software looks like they payed a bit more attention to detail on the character models on this one. I'll be the first to admit that most of the characters from their other games have very poorly designed faces, mainly because most of they are meant to be covered in armor 90% of the time. But now we have cutscenes and conversations with an actual character, so it's nice to see that make things a bit more visually appealing for it.
There is no online mechanic this time around, which is both a blessing and curse for me. On the downside I am no long able to engage in jolly cooperation, which means any boss that I have to fight through in this game I have to fight through on my own skill and my own skill alone. But on the plus and more importantly, I don't have any random Darkmoon or Belfry assholes dropping into my game as I am frantically searching for a checkpoint with no health left desperate to not lose my progress and experience.
I struggled more with this fucking prick more than any actual boss in the game.
As per usual, the game features a NG+ with harder and more damaging enemies, but because the crux of the combat requires deflecting damage instead of tanking it, they feel a lot less intimidating. Especially if you start up right after you finish the game because you will be in the zone and prepared for it. There are also I believe 4 different endings to the game so there is a bit of replay value to the game as well.
Once I got into a groove, there was not much I didn't like about the game, but what I didn't was almost a deal breaker for me. Every game these companies put out always have a barrier to entry where you need to relearn the mechanics of the new game. But holy shit Sekiro could afford to dial it back a little bit to hook you. This game is bloodthirsty from the word go. Like I said above the deflect mechanic could have been better explained to let me know that blocking was still a viable thing to do to get the gist of the combat.
This lead to me coming up to the first actual mini-boss after the tutorial level and I basically slammed to a halt like running face first into a brick wall. One, I didn't have the timing down on my parries, so I would give up on them which would cause me to take big chunks of damage. Two, it said I'd need to lower his health lower his posture more but everything I attacked with would get blocked. So I played too defensively because I was afraid to parry and block, and couldn't seem to score any damage. Three, it doesn't let you know that running and counter-striking is viable to at least whittle their posture down.
Long Boy Snek dun fack around.
What ended up happening is I would be successful in stealthing to where I could take out one of his life bars, but then I would be totally stuck because I had no clue how I could approach the battle. You can't just Dark Souls walk behind them and slash them down. And had I known blocking was viable, I would have learned that the deflect is pretty generous actually. The game says not to mash it, but if you do you still get a pretty wide window to block so while I might not have perfectly time deflects I would at least not be getting cut to ribbons in every exchange.
And I would argue that a LOT of these minibosses are actually harder than some of the actual bosses. There was one particular shard of glass in my urethra on a snowy cliff that I could not get the attack rhythm down and his attacks could yank me back in for big damage. It wasn't until I started running around the battlefield goading him to attack so I could score a few quick counterattacks before the lighbulb started to go on and I could chip his health down to where I could get braver to push his posture. It wasn't long after that I realized how generous the block actually is that everything clicked that allowed me to really start to go toe to toe with some bosses and actually feel bad ass doing it.
But all of this means NOTHING compared to some of the camera fuckery that this game stick you with, and this was easily my most massive complaint at the start of the game that nagged me all the way to the end. Combat in this game is FAST, so similarly the camera also needs to move fast to try to keep up. So the last thing I need is to get stuck on an invisible rock against a wall and have the camera zoom so far up my fucking ass that I can't see my character or what is directly on either side of me. Manually having to spin the camera in these scenarios force me to give up precious milliseconds I don't fuck'n have when I have 3 loincloth wearing drunkards bearing down on me.
While not the cause of death in this clip, this is a great example of how much the camera can fuck your vision mid fight.
As mentioned above, you only get the one weapon aside of your sub prosthetic. And while the techniques do provide a little change to the playability, you can only use one at a time and that really limits the customization. Dark Souls, Nioh, even Bloodborne had a small offering of weapons that changed the core combat enough to make it feel different. There are plenty of ninja weapons that could have been used here so it is a little disappointing that they limited down to one weapon. It fits from a story perspective but for a gameplay mechanic it's a bummer.
I won't lie, after the first few hours I was pretty much ready to throw this game in the trash. A challenge is one thing and I'm certainly not of the mindset that a game has to have an easy mode. But if you are going to make your game this difficult, the challenge should be in things I have rules for. Not for camera bullshit that is incidental. This could have been fixed if some smaller environment pieces could be glided around instead of locking as a barrier.
But ultimately, everything did eventually click and I fell right back into that Soulsian groove that always feels so good. Fighting the final boss of the game took me 8 hours to do. There was swearing, there was screaming, there was resigned resignation, but when I had that golden run where I just put the boots to him and got that final credits sequence? No better feeling. It's why I still keep coming back to these games no matter how much they punish me. The payoff always feels like payoff.
Once you are in the zone, crossing swords with the baddest of the bad is always tense and exciting.
That four monkey chasing boss can fuck right the hell off.
