I mean, your original complaint was that they shouldâve done a better tutorial than what you get by going through the world and they did, they implemented a super complete one. I donât think itâs unfair to call that out.
But whatâs more, when you unlock skills like Mikiri Counter thereâs a popup that tells you that Tutorial Guy has a new tutorial relevant to your new skill. And if you do his basic tutorials, which are already pretty useful, youâre gonna know he has more anyway, so this is gonna go in circles.
As for having no idea heâs near the temple, the sculptor tells you heâs there and you should visit him the first time you wake up. Iâm not sure what more they could have done outside of making him mandatory and that seems like a bad choice. We may be at odds here though. I like that the tutorial is completely optional and diegetic, but thatâs also evidently what makes it missable.
Iâm not sure Iâm in the fromSoft defense force cause I wasnât that much into them gameplay-wise before Bloodborne but Iâm definitely in the âthe gameâs been telling you all thisâ defense force.
âthe gameâs been telling you thisâ is a lot different than âthe game is effectively doing the teaching it wants to doâ
I donât subscribe to âthe user is always rightâ design when it comes to games but tutorializing is the area most closely aligned with The Design of Everyday Things-land
Finally did in Gen after I became good enough to deal with the first phase with narry a scratch. Then I just kind of stumbled into the Screen Monkey bit and cleared it very quickly, probably dumb luck
I still think that if bosses didnât dish out high damage attacks so quickly, maybe more people would be playing around with deflect early on? Some of the early bosses and their attacks are scary as hell, and with the risk of death and possibly repeating a stealth part (and losing money, skill points, Unseen Aid, and spreading sickness, the importance of which arenât yet clear but feel bad), Iâm not surprised if a lot of players try to run, block, poke, and turtle around.
I thought it was clear from the beginning that deflect was a big thing in this game, and I barely looked at any previews. It felt like almost every early text box and loading screen said something about deflect. By the third or fourth enemy in the outskirts I had discovered that mashing parry seemed like a good way to get a deflect in.
But yet, I slipped right into Souls-style circling during the ogre which rewards it, and it just seemed too scary to stand there and deflect some of the early bosses. Iâd try mashing parry and an unblockable would suddenly pop out and I was deer in the headlights dead.
I find it more of a psychological hurdle than a tutorial problem.
I was answering to the âoffers no affordance that he has more to teachâ bit, specifically. Iâm just saying that the game does factually tell you he has more to offer. Iâm not sure where youâre pulling that feeling that I want you to apologize from, but that was never my intent.
Other than that, I expanded on that subject because I find the idea of in-game tutorials fascinating (my fave one is The Witness, which teaches you all mechanics without a word, but can also afford to deliberately instill false assumptions in the first couple minutes, that youâll take hours to unlearn, to hide some of its secrets), and for this kind of combat system weâre in a super tricky spot.
DS mainly taught you situational awareness through its opening situations but this kind of twitch combat stuff seems a lot harder to teach without explicit guidance. For all that Father Gascoigne was supposed to be a parry gatekeeper he never managed to teach me and I finished Bloodborne with the most terrible grasp on that particular mechanic. I feel that undying samuraiâs doing a much better job of it. But at the same time after going through some super terrible mandatory Kingdom Hearts tutorials last month I definitely appreciate that I can skip him and only come back when I need to brush up on some mechanic, even though his tutorials are super good.
I am still struggling to understand how âmash L1 without penalty to try to get a deflect inâ is good design relative to their earlier stuff
I think part of the reason so much is being made of how the game has to teach you the way it wants to be played is because what itâs asking for seems⌠bad, and people are understandably confused at this
itâs not the case to say the game doesnât punish you for mashing L1, in my experience. the window between âpressing L1â and âdeflect actionâ is not particularly forgiving. so many times I have been holding to guard (my general default stance), then let go to deflect last second and been caught because the timing just doesnât work that way. if the enemiesâ attack pattern is fast paced enough that pressing L1 repeatedly works to get a deflect in, I donât call that âmashingâ, I just call it keeping up with the blizzard of attacks.
like every other person on the internet seems to have walked into this expecting it to be the new Souls game despite the developer explicitly saying âthis is not a Souls gameâ and ended up gnashing their teeth about it because they tried to play it like a Souls game and it wasnât fun. That plus the inflated expectation of difficulty thatâs been in the marketing since fucking Prepare To Die seems to be leading people to assume that if youâre dying over and over, thatâs just how the games supposed to go because this is omg the hardest game theyâve made yet! and therefore continue to have no fun beating their heads against the same bosses over and over.
if responding to stuff like âyou just have to parry and deflect over and over!â with âyou donât though, there are other things you can tryâ or âthis game doesnât teach itself wellâ with âsure it does, hereâs how:â or âthe death mechanic is too harsh wtfâ with âdonât sweat it, just go with itâ makes me into some kind of frothing dipshit fanboi From defender then what the fuck ever, sorry i tried to help you enjoy the videogame
Iâm definitely not seeing how this game doesnât teach itself better than Dark Souls, considering I never learned how to Parry from inside Dark Souls. compared to those games, Sekiro is as chatty as freakin Twilight Princess
well I think the tension there is that thereâs a difference between âI want advice for doing better at thisâ and âI think itâs asking too much while turning me off at the same time and Iâm not exactly inspired to carry on so Iâd like to critique it a bitâ
not all negativity immediately merits an actionable solution, sometimes you just want to talk about whatâs wrong
ironically âthe from software ninja gameâ is one of the aspects of my life in which I am most able to recognize the upsetting parts of solutionism
the advice doubles as counterpoint to the critiques though⌠like if you are playing the game in a way that leads you to conclude the game is bad, and other folks who think it is good did not have your issues, it is more than fair to say âmaybe youâre thinking about it the wrong way, how about consider this other approach that the game definitely allows for and encouragesâ
Like weâre having a back-and-forth on the internet, all deflecting and parrying each otherâs posts, in the name of good sportsmanship
yeah that is fair! Iâve just been in plenty of situations where I think Iâm being prompted for advice and itâs the last thing a person wants to hear so Iâm pretty careful with the position of âlisten, Iâm not asking you for the thing you think Iâm asking you forâ
games are also a funny medium in that the concept of âa difficult gameâ as in a challenging one isnât necessarily 1:1 with âa difficult workâ as in something which is not easy to appreciate, and I think this is both. âthe game is badâ 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
Iâve gotta say something I really appreciated in my most recent session is discovering there was an entirely other area Iâd overlooked (the monastery, or at least Iâm assuming itâs gonna be one since I havenât explored it yet), plus secret rooms I didnât even know about, so it was really nice to discover those super hard bosses Iâd 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 itâs the third game in recent times, after Hollow Knight and Celeste, where itâs occasionally been physically painful for me to play it. I guess Iâm getting old. That got better once I reminded myself to not clutch the controller so hard during duels, though.
