SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE šŸ’€

yeah that is fair! Iā€™ve just been in plenty of situations where I think Iā€™m being prompted for advice and itā€™s the last thing a person wants to hear so Iā€™m pretty careful with the position of ā€œlisten, Iā€™m not asking you for the thing you think Iā€™m asking you forā€

games are also a funny medium in that the concept of ā€œa difficult gameā€ as in a challenging one isnā€™t necessarily 1:1 with ā€œa difficult workā€ as in something which is not easy to appreciate, and I think this is both. ā€œthe game is badā€ is not a statement I would make given how much people are enjoying it, but I do think that people who find themselves really appreciating a difficult work are more inclined to go to bat for something that others decide is unrewarding

It makes me sad that this is the inevitable fate of all fromsoft threads

I mean, the threadā€™s still going, itā€™s not like the discussion has failed

Iā€™ve gotta say something I really appreciated in my most recent session is discovering there was an entirely other area Iā€™d overlooked (the monastery, or at least Iā€™m assuming itā€™s gonna be one since I havenā€™t explored it yet), plus secret rooms I didnā€™t even know about, so it was really nice to discover those super hard bosses Iā€™d been facing might just be me not exploring my options (same for the boss that became easier once I remembered that advice about shurikens and airborne enemies).

On the minus side itā€™s the third game in recent times, after Hollow Knight and Celeste, where itā€™s occasionally been physically painful for me to play it. I guess Iā€™m getting old. That got better once I reminded myself to not clutch the controller so hard during duels, though.

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Selectbutton: Threads Die Twice :skull:

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Reflecting submerged in deep feelings, Ninjaman ponders each and everyoneā€™s thoughts here.

More screenshots, the spoilerish behind a cut

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the game is good, is my official take now.

the monastery area is probably my favorite so far. itā€™s exactly what i want the game to be, and even the Armored Warrior fight ended up being fun after the first initial frustrating failures.

i hope i donā€™t hit a brick wall with a boss again, but it feels like maybe iā€™m getting the hang of things now.

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I just beat Genichiro Ashina finally. This fight more than any other made clear to me how creative youā€™re allowed to be with this gameā€™s combat system. I had been fighting him and doing decently well using a totally ridiculous looking strategy: I was constantly running in circles around him, dodging out of attacks and punishing him in tiny windows of vulnerability, chipping his health down slowly until I could get the visceral attack on him. Occasionally I was throwing down fireworks too, to get an extra free hit in.

This was working but it took forever, and when I got to his final form it was no longer as viable of a strategy. So I watched a youtube video of the fight and the person was doing something completely different! Instead of running, dodging, and slowly whittling him down, this person was running right up into his face, hitting him to initiate counterattacks, and then parrying those counterattacks as often as possible. In this way, they barely hit his health but knocked his posture down quite rapidly, getting that visceral hit like 5 times faster than I had been.

So I decided to try and replicate this playstyle, and what do you know, it worked! My other style was totally viable, but playing this way (probably closer to how the developers intended) was much quicker and more consistent.

You gotta love that the game allows this kind of variability. I feel like the combat manages to be more creative than Souls games, even after eliminating builds and constraining your armor and weapon choices. Itā€™s pretty impressive design!

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This is exactly what I love about the game! You nailed it! These are the best boss fights From has ever done because, for the first time, it feels like I can invent my own strategies to play. Compare the Genichiro fight to Gascoigne and its night and day how much more rewarding it is to take on Genichiro

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Yes, and not only that, when I switched fighting styles, I didnā€™t have to respecc, or go upgrade a different weapon type, or anything like that. I just played differently. If this were a Souls game, Iā€™d have had to spend hours completely redoing my build in order to shake things up this much.

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This is objectively wrong and Iā€™ve already covered it upthread, but to reiterate, you take MORE posture damage than just blocking if you mash L1. You CAN mash L1 because you can get a feel for the timing that way, and any accidental deflects you get can increase the posture damage on your opponent

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Anyway, I fought and beat the secret optional end-game boss and it took meā€¦ 4 tries? to beat it. It sucked, because I had to play it like I was playing a bloodborne boss fight, but it wasnā€™t too tortuous. It takes way too long, and its entirely based on stabbing the boss in his big chungus (which hilariously shakes with every hit) but nonetheless.

So I started new game plus! It took me 1.5 hours to get back to Ashina Castle this time around, even though now the game mechanics were tweaked to be less forgiving! 0 deaths on any minibosses or bosses so far.

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Again, mashingā€™s a reliable strategy that will allow you to beat every boss. Iā€™d recommend it for a first playthrough or at the very least a first attempt. Many experienced players and speedrunners are still doing it, so regardless of what happens, itā€™s more effective to mash than not. Itā€™s a better fallback strategy than trying to get the timings if youā€™re not 100% confident, because losing health costs a lot more than losing posture (also, the difference between mashing and not mashing is marginal in terms of damage to posture - whereas damage to your health is much more likely if you arenā€™t mashing).

Right, all Iā€™m saying is it is not a 100% no-drawbacks strategy.

It becomes more of a drawback in new game plus where even regular deflects give you posture damage, so mashed deflects are a great way to completely fuck up your posture.

I didnā€™t learn how to kick in dark souls until new game plus, which meant that I fought those really basic shield enemies by just circle strafing them until i was behind them.

Whatā€™s wrong with a fromsoft game having a combat system with secret techniques to be found only through experimentation?

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This is true, and Iā€™ll retract my earlier statement about there being no drawbacks to it. I simply wasnā€™t aware of them because they didnā€™t seem like there were until I started paying a lot more attention to how the posture gauge was filling. I didnā€™t really focus on the gauge when I was focusing so much effort on getting all the timings down. I simply didnā€™t have time to focus on it and I couldnā€™t take eyes off the fight to watch it until I introduced mashing into my play.

I think itā€™s another failing of the design that thereā€™s not a better visual cue thatā€™s indicated where your character is so you can see it on them rather than having to look up, but a lot of the UI elements in this game are honestly really awkward regardless so itā€™s not too surprising.

Again, just stating this as someone whoā€™s never been able to get timings down and has to rely on this strategy to a greater degree than most, I suspect.

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Anyway, I went into this game actively pretending that I had never played a souls game before, assuming that no souls mechanics would show up. This game clicked almost immediately for me, because I spent zero time trying to reframe the tutorial messages into a mentality of ā€˜this is like dark souls but with this thing changed.ā€™

I went through hanbeiā€™s tutorials to make sure I understood how the combat worked and I literally thought the main complaint about this game would be that it was too easy for a fromsoft game. Itā€™s seriously the easiest time Iā€™ve ever had playing through one of their games! Iā€™m the person who overused co-op to get through every Souls game and I was able to finish this faster than most, by myself. So, indeed, while this wasnā€™t without challenges, it was never something that totally overwhelmed me.

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I certainly think there are a lot of people who have had quite a lot more trouble with it than you. What the reason is for that Iā€™m unsure (the reasons seem pretty varied), but thereā€™s stuff all over the place about how difficult it is, so I think you getting it down might just be that it clicks with you. And Iā€™ve heard that, ā€œit just clicksā€ from a fair amount of players as well, and they seem to go through it fairly quickly and have very few problems. But I think more players than not find this game far tougher than previous From games.

Iā€™m finding it easier than Dark Souls in the same way itā€™s easier to eat a live porcupine than it is to eat a brick. At least one of them seems possible

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I just spent 4 hours on L.B., who fell to the swiftness of my sword as so many have fallen before

The upgraded shuriken + follow up slash (whatever itā€™s called) owns hard, you cover so much distance. I didnā€™t figure that out until the end and I think that technique was what put me over the top.