But a huge part of the mood in Sekiro is having intimidating adversaries that will kill you, and kill you, and kill you, and kill you, and kill you, and to experience all the ways you can die. Thatâs essential to the theme, the narrative, and the game. You have to respect these creatures and their capabilities in order to defeat them.
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Yeah quite, and From have been flying the flag for non-histrionic but still fairly lavish action games for a while where you can dig into the lore as much or as little as desired without being railroaded or shrieked at
Thereâs definitely an audience who cares for that experience, is generally underserved by most titles in the same bracket, and they are being newly pushed away here. Itâs a problem
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wait wait, see thatâs the thing! this game appeals extremely to me. i want to experience whatâs in it. i spent a week on the orphan of kos fight because i wanted to see what was beyond.
this game though? it immediately presses me to the wall just as hard as that fight did. iâve practiced with hanbei a ton, experimented with button configurations, done several practice runs, but iâm still being destroyed by the same two early enemies! itâs incredibly discouraging.
i want to engage with this thing! i like this game! but because of my anxiety, processing problems (my brain has some wierd issues), or whatever else, i canât overcome the most basic of obstacles. then, the internet is like, âwell itâs not for you.â fuck that! i think all the shit in this game is extremely cool! i want to see more of it! and i physically canât do it. not for lack of trying though. iâve tried my ass off and still canât meet the demands.
anyway iâm back to playing god of war, which i put down a while ago. it has several difficulty settings. one is called, âgive me a balanced experienceâ. it feels right for where my skills are at the moment. i might increase the difficulty later, since iâm getting some cool abilities! imagine such a world.
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difficulty is relative. iâve played games on âeasyâ that were probably as challenging to me as hard would be to you.
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This may or may not help you but I think a good thing to do when confronted with a hard fight is to actually not try hard, not worry about dying, and to just watch the enemy closely and figure out your most reliable response to each move, one at a time. Itâs all practice. The beauty of Sekiroâs combat system is that it allows you to make a lot of compromises in how you evade; you can take fights at your own pace and distance. On some fights you can stand directly in front of them and just parry most of their attacks; on others you might want to run away until you see a windup that you know can be punished (leaping overhead attacks in particular). It sounds like it would help you most to relax, which I figure might happen eventually if you⌠keep trying, and keep doing different things just to see how the boss reacts, what it allows and what it doesnât allow. You gotta enjoy the boss fight for its own sake, and not as something keeping you from the rest of the game (unless itâs an actually shit boss fight, which imo thereâs only one in the game and itâs that poison pit).
I understand and respect that, but I think most other people treat easy modes in a reductive way and miss out on a lot, and itâs not necessarily their fault due to the inescapably problematic messaging of having multiple difficulty modes.
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thatâs what people said about smt nocturne but I think I still âgot itâ fine from cheating through the game with a high level party. and if not, Iâm old and depressed with a demolished hippocampus, Iâm not going to be experiencing anything in some magic ideal state, Iâll take what I can and cheat to win if I have to.
besides I think the âdie a million times haha so funâ thing about souls games is a Myth invented by Gamers to spread fake news.
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Well things move fast and can kill you in two quick hits in a lot of cases, so yeah it is pretty punishing. People who have been playing videogames for two decades or more are finding it difficult, some way too difficult. I donât think you can just brush that away. This isnât exactly Wii Bowling
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I know Iâm not responding to your whole argument but Iâm not in the right head space to engage it currently. No hard feelings I hope
Wish I could figure out how to record Sekiro through OBS without a weird unique stutter, no matter what graphics and capture settings I use.
Most of my ng+ led me to think I could possibly develop a beginner type speedrunning see whatâs being done out there, how easily I could implement with my own approach, practice on the couple bosses I tend to fumble at. It didnât come easily (just tons of genre exp) but this is a type of game I might perform at the raw potential level of doing so.
Soon as I first accessed Hirata Estate Revisited w/Shadow Masanaga the Spear-Bearer though âŚyeah, got repeatedly stomped a while. For me that guy is probably the hardest mini-boss, smaller type in the whole game. And he gets a cool but very annoying nin-dog whistle! Nastiest of all the ninja variants, I worked in some cheese this time cuz fuck you! Some finely animated sweep and air attacking, very technical if not overly so. I already did the encounter behind Ashina Castle head-on without manipulating how he starts walking back to his âzoneâ. Took long enough.
I definitely donât think the game should have an âeasy modeâ and I think all of the discussion Iâve seen to that effect is cheapening; even most of the mechanical compromises that seemingly already exist to make the game easier feel worse in my book.
whether itâs a problem or not that there seem to be a decent chunk of people, myself included who find this a lot less accommodating or engaging than prior souls titles really really shouldnât be reduced to an âeasy modeâ
well also, letâs say âeasy modeâ is a name for what ideally is a set of additional accessibility accommodations that allow less-skilled players to engage with the game content, but still experience similar feelings of accomplishment at overcoming its obstacles. a good easy mode imo doesnât remove challenge, just gives you some extra training wheels to deal with it.
itâs ideally non any easier for the person playing it. itâs just giving them a challenge appropriate to their skills.
i wrote a much longer post but i donât know if yâall really wanna keep talking about this, iâm also typing on mobile which is not great for long posts so
Rye probably the major difference I can speak of personally is liking more art/entertainment to have a single concentrated experience, with enough nuance and craftwork that people can keep finding new ways to comb through or enjoy it.
The closer certain titles are to âgamesâ in the traditional, it makes greater sense to have differing levels of difficulty and complexity. However in the other direction, we know certain games might compare to dense literature or a difficult sport, maybe a patience demanding or abstract film, and so on. Iâd like to help anyone looking for the value in them, and vice versa toward the things Iâm at odds with - but I also donât expect everything needs to be accommodating to everyone. There are hard drinks on the shelf, and smoother.
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why has no one asked for this hypothetical easy mode in dark souls remastered? bloodborne? i mean i could have, given how much i banged my head against those particular walls in mad frustration. but i didnât.
who are the real âgatekeepersâ here now?
Because itâs entirely possible to grind past the point where youâre gonna die in two hits in those titles? Because the windows of opportunity in combat are looser?
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I mean, lots of people have asked for them in the other soulsborne games. Part of the reason why the hardcore fans are so dismissive of those demands for Sekiro is that they at least superficially resemble the conversations that have popped up around the five previous releases.
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there should be enough evidence that a plurality of people found those much more accommodating than this for reasons that have been discussed to death at this point?
the answer to your question should be really self evident from the expectations that have been established. it doesnât mean youâre wrong! it means youâre in a minority. From made a game for a minority of what was already thought to be a minority and people are struggling with that.
I still think there are design decisions here that could be better even so & which wouldâve kept me going in spite of the differences & which are worth discussing but none of them are âmake it easierâ
One of the biggest qualities these gamesâve had is their inflexibility up front, looseness behind the veil.
They focused on Sekiro being that literal Hard through and through, isnât it okay for that to exist and not bend for everyone?
Sure I have some partial overlap with the intentional or not gatekeepers, the chest beating badge seekers
Thing is, any cave for Easy moding these doesnât hurt me or my value, Iâd feel pretty wack if that was the case. But you would hurt the piece before the product.
oh so i can mindlessly grind levels to make the challenge not a challenge. great. how is this better than mindfully grinding fights to learn the combat mechanics and enemy patterns?
i think this has already come up elsewhere but i feel like i want to point out in this thread that it is kind of irritating to conflate accessibility issues with âskill level.â making games playable to people with disabilities is not about making them âeasier.â
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