yeah, I agree itās not just about them being difficult, and that journalists feel compelled to frontload their commentary that way is usually not very interesting. these have, however, always acknowledged their perceived masochism thematically, and sekiro does approach that differently from the others. Iām not making the case that itās necessarily unearned, but I have been a little surprised by the unanimity of the critical response given how many aspects seem like an acquired taste. itās fascinating that challenge like this is now taken to be a universal good in relatively mainstream discourse (and the language thatās framed in), considering how much that is or isnāt unique to From or directly predicated on the earlier releases.
I mean, games being hard was also seen as a universal good in the 80s. There was a weird decade or so where it was seen as a universal bad. And now we evaluate games based on what theyāre individually going for.
My main gripe with the difficulty discourse is that itās not just reductionist but by this point, almost a form of bad faith. It seems to be ignoring the game right in front of you and assessing it by these marketing terms and now these snippets of translated Miyazaki interviews instead ā even after playing it!
We all have seen that while they are by no means trivial to complete, these games are designed not to go too far on the difficulty, scale it up on a curve, provide many solutions to challenge, all the usual sound design practices that every game does. And even Mario 3D world has some levels that will require a lot of tries in the postgame. What qualifies as uniquely masochistic here, precisely? Itās all a big pretense that we ritualistically go through in the discourse and sometimes also acts as a story we tell ourselves when weāre having trouble with a boss, like damn, this is brutal, Iām getting the real Souls experience. But you were getting the real Souls experience in the parts you had less trouble with, too. And during the tough boss, whatās keeping you going is youāre also enjoying many other things about it, even if the only word youāve verbalized about it is ābrutalā
Man, I love hearing that thereās a Genichiro tutorial rematch. It really does seem to be a Demonās spiritual successor in some respects.
the prospect of getting the dark souls to sekiroās demonās makes me quiver
Another thought on that: mega-game praise unanimity doesnāt mean anything. The true consensus will emerge over a longer period as people get in better touch with, especially, what taste the game left in their mouth.
I think youāre onto something ā personally, this week I āhavenāt had timeā to get back to the game, and part of why is that the game feels like a lot, and Iām feeling more trepidation about getting back into that uncanny experience than any excitement about fighting things or exploring. And I think itās notable that you expressed negativity on release day before anyone else had time to do a take ā anyone else sharing your reaction later mightāve seen the dominant discourse, and consciously or not aligned with it by couching in more neutral terms (after all, itās possible to describe the very same experience with critical/neutral/admiring words)
the replies here make my brain itch so itās another day on twitter
Finally after a few days of trying, I managed to beat Genichiro, and of course he gets up again and gets lightning powers and kills me instantly. At first I was screaming bullshit at the screen, but by this point I had sort of gotten āin the zoneā for this fight so it was only a matter of a few more attempts before he was down for good
Iāve seen some comments about this on the net, and the thought popped into my head as well, so to discuss it here, the combat in this game is like a rhythm game. This is the game that made parrying fun for me by making parrying ultimately pretty forgiving and more about pattern recognition than about developing flawless reflexes.
So many of the harder fights became this wonderful dance of attack, deflect, attack, mikiri counter, attack, jump, jump kick, etc etc, because I had learned their patterns, I learned how to interrupt those patterns and nullify them. If I mistimed something, the punishment was posture damage, which was about the same if I panicked and just spammed block.
What I once thought of as the hardest enemies in the game, like the shinobi, became a real joy to fight because their animations are so well telegraphed and executed. This is a game where you want to stay close to the opponents when its just a one on one fight. Staying close means opportunity. Youāre safer there than anywhere else in an arena. Thatās why the small combat spaces didnāt frustrate me.
The Ashina Elite whose only tell was a glint of light as they drew their sword, had a quick and simple tempo, whether you preferred to dodge or deflect. Long Armed Centipede Giraffe had a complex rhythm of 4 beats, a pause, 5 beats, a pause, 1 beat. They were easy to deflect even in panic but recognizing and responding to the pattern was valuable in itself. It allowed you to anticipate their actions. If you knew what was coming, you couldnāt be caught off guard.
The combat is so obsessed with rhythms that sound matters as much as visuals. I wish I could turn off the red danger symbol and could just increase the volume of the warning sound that went with it. blocks, perfect deflects, hits, and perilous attacks all have different sounds associated with them, and to play well is to listen to those audio cues and respond to them automatically. When you begin playing the game, you wonāt have internalized any enemyās behavior. You need to practice and learn how to dance around every enemy.
Fight choreography is closely linked to dance in cinema. King Huās famous innovations in wuxia filmography came from borrowing the balletic movements of Beijing Opera and translating them to diegetic scenes of violence. Sekiro is a dance where the diegetic music of battle provides the tempo and the steps.
Yeah Iād rather this than any number of DMCs
Do you believe that the enemy attack selection is predictable enough that youāre not reacting? I have not gotten that sense and the sped-up game still renders this substantially more difficult.
Or are you referring to the limited attacks theyāll use when pressed, when they play block->block->parry and you know the next hit is only one of two attacks? Iāve been able to exploit that against simple enemies like the Ashina Elite, who were trivialized once I spent five minutes studying them, but bosses still have enough tricks and they pull out their reaction attack quickly enough that Iām utterly incapable of using that technique against them.
By speeding up the game, they move much closer to something like Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry. But there are still a few fragments of the old heavy-commitment game, which moved at a slow enough pace that I could get a few cycles of reaction and planning in and was more accessible to me. For instance, the evade->attack is very long, something like a second and a half, with over half a second of vulnerable prep before the swing. As the game carries over the āattacks are uncancelableā rule, a handful of slow moves like this become sand traps for input. So I find myself consistently unable to react to sweep attacks or thrusts because, while I would have had enough time to jump after the evade, I initiated an evade attack and am stuck in its very long vulnerable animation. On the other hand, if I try to read the attack and not perform a defensive maneuver as a guess, the attack comes through about 300ms before I can react.
Hey itās me I made a very poor financial decision and have pointedly not read this thread leading up to this very poor financial decision and I love the combat in this game! It clicks for me so much better/faster than any souls ever did! The way it nails the rhythm of chanbara swordplay is amazing!
OK bye!
Yeah Iām gonna get this someday. Not today, but someday, and Iāll probably have a great time.
Youāve described exactly what got me addicted to what I long called deep (now often heard as character) action games. I usually fall back to DMC1 giving focus on inputs resembling a fighter, quick movement/evade available in a 3D space to deal with more capable opponents than usual hack and slash, and Iām in the camp of always describing it: learning each gameās dance. Along with Ninja Gaiden, even the simpler QTE-ful God of War, Godhand is its own extreme, etc. etc.
We know these things (and the wild personalities that often accompany them) is something Platinumās had in spades, but other teams have gotten to building their own battle ballets and I love it.
Sekiro turned out a lot like I was thinking honestly
My hopeās for a place between Soulsborne and Ninja Gaiden, which is clearly in sight but really means I want enemies to be constantly threatening and capable - yeah, fewer stats (or none it seems) and less items for players to lean on, exploit.
At the heart of battle with another action reference: bring something like DMC/Bayo-lite inputs to the front as requirement, only more under the hoodā¦not about show or points. Just to survive. I donāt think itāll be that technical or demanding but hopefully maintains a slope of involvement to build skill, not so much hack and slash.
Pretty sure weāll get the closest thing to controlling Jubei vs the Eight Devils of Kimon.
ā¦the impression it is indeed about reducing numbers and systems to concentrate more on spatial awareness, tools, possible overhead strategies. And a lot more sprawling vertical movement so even though quick action/reactionās required, you arenāt nearly as confined to melee evasion or running like mad.
^ And thatās how the undercurrent of āstand and fight, block/deflectā became core.
bamboo breathing in a bloody river
Not exactly but close enough.
Turns out there was one more zone Iād missed! However now all my potential exploration seems to be hindered by bosses. Also realized Iād missed a shop and shinobi tool near the old grave. I really like that one!
Just fought Sword Saint Isshin for my second playthrough and beat him on my first try. This is the weirdest feeling.
I feel that, barring the final boss, enemies and bosses typically have a single long attack combo, and only one or two followups. Its hard to read, at the beginning, the difference between a thrust and a sweep, but what made so many boss fights easier for me was internalizing when they would use a perilous attack, and what kind they use. For instance, genichiro (before any deathblows) always follows a jump in attack with a thrust and often starts a sweep by sprinting at you for a second or two. so I know exactly how to react several seconds before I have to.
The dodge-counter is one of the slowest attacks but the window to execute it is forgiving, too. It feels like you have a second after the step dodge to start the counter attack. Knowing this, it becomes a tool you use when you know it is 100% safe and not one to use before they have executed their attack.
Normal attacks can actually be block cancelled, but only at startup and only if you havenāt already buffered a followup attack. By the end of the game, I only pressed attack in time with the animation so that I knew I could cancel if I misread the enemy animation.
You should try a difficult fight where you donāt jump or step dodge except to counter a perilous attack, but just focus on blocking, deflecting and deflect countering.
just finished this. got secret ending, which didnāt seem as convoluted as they usually do. though i guess thereās another one too maybe?
i am pretty sure i was missing a gourd seed and three prayer beads, and i also donāt know where the last headless is. stuff to do next time maybe
for all the talk about how this is different from the soulses this also definitely is Souls 6. just packed with gorgeous level design. i guess it doesnāt quite have the tonal gravitas of bloodborne but it also imo pretty much makes up for that with the combat. i know there are some pretty critical takes on that above and i plan on considering them but secretly i already think that theyāre all wrong and that the combat is just hilariously crunchy and wonderful. i love all the bosses, even the couple that i think are gonna be thought of as the bad ones when the game has aged a bit. i wish there was a hollow knight hall of bosses, i would fight some of them again right now
i love that they still did a few puzzle bosses and that theyāre all really nice!
the economy is a little bit of a rough spot, and i do think even just maybe putting a full stack of prayer beads with vendors at very high prices would have alleviated it a bit. i also always think they should maybe rethink the consumable buff item situation in these games, but they keep doing what theyāre doing so they must like it. the tool upgrade stuff is a little fuzzy too, though maybe i just didnāt spend enough time with them
my one real disappointment is that thereās no ash lake/archdragon peak/cainhurst-tier huge secret area-- thereās one key item that mentions a third sword opening a gate to the underworld and i was real fuckin hype about that but it didnāt materialize. looking forward to the underworld expansion i guess!
a longer post is warranted for sure but i just worked through the last boss start to finish in one two hour session and iām all jacked up, need to go take a walk or something
game rules for sure
Iām tempted to start my first NG+ and amp the extra difficulty by giving back Kuroās Charm.
Been cleaning out post game and working for skill/tool upgrades until it gets too grindy.
Yeah baby
I didnāt give back kuroās charm because I felt that getting chip damage from blocking and deflecting would make the combat too soulsborne like (reliant on jumping and dodging).
IMO, just ring the bell demon asap for extra difficulty.
you can reach the bell demon early from a tunnel in the first headless cave
Yeah it might make things too annoying, especially since like you described complicates more evasion on top of trying to involve deflects and blocks where necessary, but Iām probably going to experiment with it. Along with usual ng+ increase and Demon Bellās buffet.