this game makes me think about dark souls 2 a lot.
I still have a lot of probs with DaS II but like what you see in it, so YES I would love a weirder step further from this.
I quit playing sekiro because Iām rewatching twin peaks and donāt want to infect that with any videogame frustration feelings, but in the meantime Iāve been recalling the words of the old masters to prepare for my return
Am at the very threshold of the final fight now, and canāt actually be arsed to polish it off
I hope this doesnāt get a sequel, but Iād enjoy further experiments with combat and scenario 'pon the Souls platform I think. They made the ultimate ninja game here and it suited the house atmospherics just fine
i bet itās bloodborne 2 a year from now and then sekiro 2 two years after that
From rode the mech wave all the way and made 15 Armored Core games out of it, they gotta get paid too man
a few elements are giving me flashbacks. the return of lifegems + flask shards, running while locked on, cumulative death penalty, much more group enemy arrangements, platforming, memory time travel, green poison ā¦ overall wider spaces and a slightly ruddy unpolished vibe
also no corpse ragdolls :c
Really? I do have corpse ragdolls.
Yeah my actors rush back to the stage and try to remember where they fell dead, sometimes from a great height.
i love that in DS2 they essentially pinned the ragdolls to the floor and it occasionally led to weirdness like corpses doing a little spasm dance or weapons bouncing across the floor like rubber balls
Here I just want to ask, what do you think Activisionās input on this really was like? I remember a couple sentences about them being just generally good insight and support on how to meet certain ideals but thatās what Iād like to see dug into
I think the Hanbei the Undying was pretty much made at the behest of Activision.
from what Iāve read, it seems like Activision was eager to make the game easier to learn, though that seems to have been a mixed success based on this thread.
First thing I did on winning the red sword was kill the guy, I am kind
same actually!
expanding on this a bit:
demons souls is difficult & inscrutable but all its gameplay verbs (dodge, attack, parry, item, spell) are immediately understandable, and itās usually pretty clear which one is the right call. youāre only really challenged on your understanding of them (after potentially hours of exploration and learning those verbs) when you finally reach a boss. also, multiple bosses encourage learning new ways to apply those verbs on the fly: the adjudicatorās weak points, the phalanx teaching you the importance of elemental weaknesses, the old heroās blindness, etc.
a given level in sekiro has 4+ mini bosses that ask you āblock, parry, dodge, mikiri counter, jump, attack, or arm toolā multiple times a minute. itās a much larger set of decisions, so if youāre improvising against an unfamiliar boss youāre a lot less likely to guess right. it demands immediate competency just to progress. so far iāve yet to run into a boss thatās asked me to do anything other than near-perfectly execute those actions, as the amount of damage you take only leaves you one or two chances to fuck up & survive.
for someone who likes the souls games because of their atmosphere and idiosyncratic design choices more than because i want to Git Gud, itās taken a lot for me to get used to, and iām still not sure if i want to press on. i seem to run into a cool set piece (big snake) often enough that i donāt get sick of constantly getting my ass kicked for hours on end, but iām really concerned that its endless boss rush is only going to ramp up the further i get in.
so the shorter version: people who are complaining about the difficulty have a valid perspective & arenāt just Scrubs thatāll get better if you lecture them
ps:
i played the import version of demon souls with a half comprehensible translation & have played thru demonās, dark 1-3, and bloodborne multiple times. i finished all of the main chalice dungeons & beat ol queen yharnam. iām not bad at these games, so donāt bother replying with any of that nonsense
I hear that itās a valid perspective, but Iām afraid mine is ultimately oppositional: this was not made to appeal to the same sensibilities youāre looking for; as Souls which were comparatively more mile wide, few inches deep. As 3d action-rpgs. Itās not as interesting or engaging as an immersive experience, the setting and storytelling bridge somewhere more conventional.
Under the very nicely crafted, attractive Sengoku hood, it is a dextrous, muscle-memory Action Game. With liiiite rpg elements. It plays to strengths some have, some donāt/are willing to develop, and some that either way donāt care as much about pursuing.
I would (and have already) described Sekiro in exactly these terms. All the verbs of Sekiro were immediately understandable and the game was mostly in figuring out how to use them in new ways. At no point did I need near perfect execution. This isnāt bloodborne where a single mistake means I got one-shot killed because I made the build mistake of not putting all my points in vitality.
Lady Butterfly is even my go to example of how I discovered new uses for some of the verbs because I wasnāt great at deflecting at the time.
Hereās the problem, I think: Sekiro isnāt those games. Its not a Soulsborne. It shouldnāt be played like a soulsborne and all the habits you picked up from soulsborne games areā¦ not useful for this game.
Playing Sekiro like its a game of spacing and stamina management and waiting for the one opportunity to strike is exactly the wrong way to play it. The game goes out of its way to tell you this both textually and mechanically.
i mean they slide off cliffs and stuff but i donāt seem able to kick them around.
i had one Shulva guyās mace wedge itself in the floor on a slight angle and keep spinning indefinitely. occasionally it looked like it was wobbling, then at some points it would start ramping up speed dramatically. kept me transfixed for like 30min