This makes me think the videogame world doesnât really need its Citizen Kane, but it sure could use a few impenetrable James Joyce (or Greg Egan!) novels
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until then weâve always got Oikospiel
I was able to run this as the sun rose over the SB Cabin lake,
and it was correct
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Also I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 2 and 3. Games which gives zero fucks that a player with my platformer skills cannot even make it past the first area, and almost nobody can win them
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This is a world I barely knew about, but these isolated founderâs effects are generally healthy
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Wow Iâd almost completely forgotten God of War had a stun meter. Soon as I tried going mostly hud-less I loved it and never went back. Admittedly this kind of thing works against my understanding of designed guidance and toolset for most players, but in specific action/adventure experiences that are completely operable without em itâs a blast to lose those trappings.
Itâs not something Iâve thought on very deeply so far but as for games with visible meters beyond health, for some reason I kept going to MGS2 and onward, how blunt melee attacks and tranq shots give the option for non-lethal kills to bosses. Then 3 incorporates hunger and a mild sense of diet, poisons.
Kind of a leap to imagine a new type of Poise/Posture working in tandem with HP/Vit, in another game that doesnât stay focused on the sole primary weapon block deflect setup here. But in a more open world action-rpg setup, things like rest, eating habits, and as always clothing/armor; rough ideas for how you could keep them crunched to the side (offscreen) as bearings on a sliding scale for both pos/vit.
I believe that for those who have made the jump to fully understanding the systems in Sekiro, the combat feels more rewarding and expansive and creative than anything else. I can totally understand how it stifles people who are used to certain kinds of creativity from Fromsoftâs previous output but by the end of 4 playthroughs, I didnât find myself missing any of it. A few people have made comparisons to punch out (Both in a positive and a negative sense) and my main disagreement is that punch out is way too narrow a framework. I still think of Sekiro as a rhythm game, but a rhythm game where you set the tempo rather than your opponent.
Its a game that I want to keep replaying because I find something new in the mechanics every time (I have pretty much exhausted the content of the game), something that changes how I looked at something I pretty much ignored.
Sekiro is unwilling to forgive you if you donât play by its rules, but it is extremely generous and freeing once you understand the axioms of play.
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I was thinking how a further evolution of Sekiro could be to hide the vit meter entirely (and allow it to become a complex background number like poise was for the souls games) and the only UX feedback could be the changing background of the posture meter itself and animation changes
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Sekiro with wrestling game HP bars, most inscrutable of game stats
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Yeah honestly if they had made another Soulsborne mechanic game with even harder bosses itâs possible I wouldâve called it a day on From games and not played it. I think I reached that point with the second DkS3 DLC, it threw some more giant beasts and humanoids that I needed to dodge/block and punish until their vitality is down to zero and I simply didnât attempt the first boss, I turned off the game with no regrets. Thatâs also why I was generally lacking in froth for Sekiro before it came out â I almost felt resigned to playing it at first.
Traditional boss design is 100% played out for me and Iâm actually astonished that Sekiro reinvented boss battles enough for me to spend 10 hours practicing the final boss, enjoying the experience the whole time.
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Iâd say itâs one of their finest hours. Ha, well removed from the hours and hours many will suffer through it for an incredible moment of achievement. So finest moments and final bosses indeed. Isshin fought you it seems largely just to honor his grandonâs wish, and his attitude the whole time is incredibly respectful, overpowering as it is. He kneels immediately to provide the fitting deathblow and I have a hard time not just standing there taking it all in âHesitation is defeatâ
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Oh man youâre so right about the Hesitation is Defeat line, I didnât realize until just now that moment is what he was setting up for the whole time. The Isshin arc is so full of masterful foreshadowing, itâs a plotting tour de force
And the whole theme of true names and the respect and dignity that comes with having one, versus the hollowness of merely being a âWolfâ or a âSon of Owlâ.
Isshin can see into peopleâs hearts, suss out their true names, identify the seeds of Shura, and generally seems to have a deep empathy for all those he murders. This paradoxical empathy must be a requirement to be a great warrior, and itâs why Owl is ultimately a failure â his surface-level glib manipulativeness and tricks only involves a facsimile of empathy
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Astromechâs post is gone and I was going to quote one part that encapsulated how only his mentions of Shadow of Mordor here, over time, got me to finally pick it up!
Honestly I was somewhat fatigued by the idea of a AAA machine, churning grit through an expanded Middle Earth when it came out. Then heard about excellent underlying systems most of all the Nemesis stuffâŚdidnât think Iâd get around to it, but the accolades grew too strong.
I uh am Lv. 96 in Nioh and havenât played it in nearly a year, which was for an hour since the year before that. Shit I pretty much have to start fresh for any return to formâŚmaybe Mordor first.
Yeah, thinking more about it, Iâm really admiring how all the themes and substrands of this game cohere around the idea of life in a time of total war and what that does to people. Not just in the obvious horrible ways but also what it does to individual identity (either aggrandizing or negating it), how it can bring a deep respect for oneâs implacable foes, as well as a paradoxical inner peace and acceptance of the impermanence of life
Felix asked earlier why From finally abandoned the brilliant theme of being a nothing in a nothing world. Because they have found a new theme: being a part of a family and a community, in a nothing world
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And another thing âHesitation is Defeatâ is about is decisively following what feels right and human and true, no matter how difficult it is. In a hellish world constantly presenting everyone with sophieâs choices, hesitation is an opening to get lured down the path of bad faith, hollow ambitions and false hopes
every build is âviableâ in souls games in the sense that some souls maniac at level 1 with a stick and nothing but his underwear has beat every souls game like that so surely itâs impossible to screw up bad enough to be stuck. for a normal person who just wants to play a videogame and not achieve enlightenment it doesnât really work like that, especially if itâs your first souls game.
also I played a boxer in 2 and you canât even play a character anything like that at all in 1 or 3
also playing a boxer in a cracked version of 2 with no online help or previous souls experience, with no guides really accounting for being a boxer, not sure if I was playing a ârealâ way or taking a joke too far, was the most miserable, tedious videogame experience I ever had. Also technically the last boss wasnât even doable as a boxer, you needed to equip a sword to hit those little curse orb things. Spent the whole game before then not sure if I had hit something like that or not everytime I got stuck.
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I never even beat that damned dragon
no one should have to
⌠Dark Souls 3 stole my soul a few months ago, and I disappeared from SB2.
Started streaming and shit, also did a DS2 and Remaster stream(s), but ultimately about 6 or 7 runs of DS3 because I finally got my hands on it.
When I was finally saying âOk, this is enough⌠I wonât get to this moreâ, Kasia buys me Sekiro for my birthday (26/3).
And now, here I am.
I feel like a junky who had such an amazing high⌠that I decided to quit drugs all together because my brain automatically recognised âYou wonât get any higher than this dudeâ.
Did 10 runs at Sekiro. 8 on the same save because I wanted to get at the maximum (artificial) difficulty, but between all those 8 I did 2 extra saves to remind myself of how to game is hard on the first run with all those annoying pop-ups and skills what so ever.
I think I have the system down, over analysed, probably itâs a second nature or part of my DNA because a few hours ago when I went against that first ninja with dogs at the second visit of Hirata Estate, after dying stupidly quickly 2 times, I defeated him on my 3rd without getting touched after a 3 days pause sick in bed.
This was my NG+7, the rest of the bosses through the game I defeated without real death (you know, the one you canât revive from).
Then I came here, decided âhey, itâs time to get back there and maybe join the Sekiro threadâ.
I read all up to 500, and then I just called it quits. Hovering most of the posts, stop at reading every odd 20 or 50 posts, specially @Felix ones that (I know Iâm gonna get nuked cause of this) particularly sound to me as a âbutt hurt disappointment over over-expectingâ a video game. (please donât kill me). I perfectly know that what I just wrote and whatever he keeps reading will keep reinforcing those feelings over time. This game is lost to him.
But I personally think that this is all due to one very simple factor that I figured after about one hour into the game. Dark Souls experience will work against you. Expectations twice as worst. Expectations and experience from Bloodborne⌠5x against you.
Simple example, Bloodborne: Attack, dodge, attack dodge, ocasional parry, more dodge and attack. This was also kinda like how I played on DS3, I usually go for fast aggressive weapons. But after one hour of game I threw dodge to the trash bin, I would run around enemies more than dodge. Till today, I only dodge on very ocasional bosses, for very specific attacks, with very well memorised timings because the tracking on bosses is INSANE. Enemies will face you, so I figured very early⌠you have to face your enemies.
Couldnât stop playing after that. Couldnât stop wanting to getting better.
When about after my 6th run I did a new save, I defeated the last boss so easily it stopped making sense to play the game from a fresh start, apart from exactly the start. By the point to get to Genichiro⌠the game is a breeze. When I defeated that last boss so massively and said on stream âoh⌠done? What? That was too easyâŚâ because I wasnât even paying attention to the boss health and posture bars, a friend watching the stream said âdude, are you insane? thatâs the hardest boss on the gameâ (which is not imho, Demon of Hatred or Isshin Ashina + Emma for the Shura ending).
Yeah, really feels like I am bragging, but I that is really not my point. If it was I know absolutely well that I should be doing records for speed runs and what not.
The point that I am trying to achieve here is⌠This game is more ingrained on me after 1 month, than DS after playing it for 1 year (months on each!!!). The combat system just attained a new height and you are not simply âget gudâ. You are marking yourself with this gameplay as if it was a tattoo⌠maybe a hot iron for some people because I felt that early pain.
And the pain this game gives you at first is an absolutely different pain from DS.
Both myself and a friend of mine got this game around the same time. He was the person who insisted for me to try DS. Me a couple of days earlier. Many of the posts around this thread felt pretty much like our relation with the game, but on a 2 people group.
One of the things that made him âclickâ the game was when I said âyou are just not used to the kind of pain of this gameâ.
Getting back to Felix (sorry man, you are just too good of a divergent voice for the game), most of the points that he states that worked in DS, and were not working on this game, are exactly reasons that made me enjoy this game even more.
Even the story telling. I agree with all people that say that DS and BB had a much more interesting way of story telling⌠hell I always called this a âbrain dead story tellingâ because you donât really have do chew on it at all, just swallow it. But I never demanded anything else for this game, I didnât even expected it.
Because for me, the story I always had to tell from DS was the story of my fingers in the pad. I am terrible wording all that⌠as you can notice on this post. I canât talk about it properly, only feel it. And Sekiro⌠had for me a much more interesting story, more to my taste. Do I like DS less after Sekiro? Not at all⌠it is still a finger story that I very much like to experience.
But Sekiro absolutely fill my bill.
This might not be the best example of it, but @Tulpa mentioned many many times how to âgo to the undead dude and trainâ. Tutorials are horrible?!?!? I would go through another approach. The âtutorial explanationsâ are only there because otherwise it would provoke absolute rage and it would be considered âbad designâ from everyone. If FromSoft was a slightly smaller company, and this game was slightly less expected, I believe they would risk to absolutely take out thos big screen annoying combat explanations.
I would read them and say âooook⌠I think I understand but I actually donât⌠Iâll try it outâ. So yeah, first samurai dude killed me a few times⌠it was necessary. You will die many times, heâs just there as a reminder of that. But then the âexplorationâ for the combat system started with our undead fellow. Again the text explanations were meaningless, but he introduced me carefully, gently even, through the basics of combat. I started having a feeling for what I could and could not do. I was even able to get back at him one I learned the mikiri counter. He was a good fellow⌠and he deserves the death we can provide him.
Enemies along the way them shown me how times vary. Buildups are subtle an fast, but always present. Quickly learned that the perilous attack warning on my head had as much significance as a red ball on top of me, because just like every other attack, it was all about what buildup animation was going on and counter it accordingly.
Still⌠Shinobi Hunter, Hirata Estare⌠is cancer. Still canât do it without getting hit. His moveset⌠no⌠the moves he gets out and the timings are absolutely wack. Should he not be there so people could enjoy the game more? I was never much of the opinion that moving forward on a game equals enjoyment. I was always more âlearning is enjoymentâ in video games, and that usually pairs with trial and error. I also think he that mini-boss was a remarkably well placed forewarning forâŚ
Your first great teacher, Lady Butterfly.
Your undead friends taught you the basis? She is here to teach you real combat.
Your many deaths by her hand are but a lesson in how to expect everything during this game. In how the AI doesnât simply follow a few continuous combos, but actually interrupts them, varies them, builds new combos from various moves depending on the pressure you put on the boss.
I have actually realised this after a few runs, but to it is possible to get much more stable responses out of bosses if you up the same kind of pressure on the. They actively respond to how much you are being aggressive toward them
One good example for that would be Genichiro, if you put a lot of pressure he is a pushover, but if you stop putting pressure on him he starts getting creative and doing weird moves in weird orders, and too far from you for you to stop him. This boss tells you that, but he also teaches you another thing. Despair. After you are all happy because you did those 2 HP bars and get a cutscene, he gets a 3rd rather variable phase out of his ass. You feel despair, and you feel fear from that point onward that any boss might have that. I felt that fear for almost any boss⌠and imo FromSoft didnât overdo it.
Then you open the way for the Lords Soul bosses. Each with itâs own gimmick of sorts.
Folding Screen Monkey is gimmick itself as a boss, and imo the first fun and well done puzzle boss since they started Demon Souls.
Guardian Ape, absurd and overwhelming aggressiveness. Also one should always expect that bitchslap followed by a huge back dodge.
Corrupted Monk⌠Range range range range range RANGE RANGE, that surprise attack. But range is important.
After all that, and beautiful landscapes, wonderful explorable areas, each section with itâs own âpuzzleâ of stealth that I am betting thereâs many various ways to solve, the game changes.
The umbilical cord choice. And for each of the choices is that boss. Time to master what you have learned (iâll go the âgood endingsâ way).
Owl. Have you finally learned all those combat skills? Have you filled your skill trees with useful stuff? No? Then you will here. For me, this was the spike. This is when I felt that shitâs got real. You use everything, you are on equal terms (except for the HUGE SWORD WITH RIDICULOUS RANGE). You attack, you parry, you attack again, always hearing that extra sharp âclingâ sound to warn you for that perfect parry opportunity. The boss posture bar barely moves.
If you havenât learned by now, you do see how the boss health matters for itâs posture recovery (very much as your own).
You see the deviousness of the devs in tricking you with faints, back jumps, insanely quick dash attacks, very weird timings for swings, unique status effects, a second phase where all that gets multiplied by 2.
But you beat him. You learn, you master, you feel like a bad ass shinobi with all the silent fanfare implied. You feel good for defeating him, but still so much of that bitter taste of multiple defeats in your mouth.
You then go to do your lords objectives. But how? You can get various endings, but one⌠gives you an extra boss.
Again⌠Owl. But this time on speeds. So fast, get better, think faster, act more naturally. Here the game teaches you âyou can keep aiming higher, you can always do betterâ. Itâs a massacre, however you defeat him again. No player⌠you were not a master if you thought you had it all. That was the point when I started feeling I couldnât stop playing this game (it was actually the 2nd run, 1st I missed it).
Still the game progresses, again a repeated boss.
You think âhey⌠dev people, come on⌠be more creativeâ. Not imo. They show you how they can get more creative with the same boss, specially adding weird phases. Also⌠BTW, I absolutely DETEST the second fight with the Corrupted Monk. I always mess up so much. Still love the boss fight obviously, but if I get to say one boss that is PAIN, this is the one.
And that last phase. So aggressive, always on top of you. And RANGE RANGE RANGE RANGE.
You learn to run for your life.
And finally, a wonderful huge new area.
Foreshadowing? No⌠it fully presents you the entire area you will be playing for the next odd couple of hours. You get down to it, and weird enemies, new status effects. Timings? Just forget the previous enemies because these new guys will dance around you, while others will suck your life and make you feel like an old man.
Fantasy just got real, and this huge new area is amazing to explore, but also so hard.
You keep going, and you are finally presented with the boss.
This one⌠well⌠I am kinda happy that they did a cinematic boss this time.
Iâm already going way past spoilers here but, this one feels so absolutely beautiful that I canât really be disappointed or hate it. You do it, you are happy with it. Also you donât actually kill it, still has some life left, and if it doesnât it is an undying dragon anyway.
Finally⌠the end game.
Hard enemies are hard. Opportunities for stealth are very few, hard to perceive, and most of them you risk yourself to get some collateral damage (quite literally).
But you still want to find all mini-bosses to get as much HP as you can for the last boss.
So you explore, you see paths leading you to old places⌠and you come face to face with hatred.
Demon of Hatred can be reduced to one simple word. Overwhelming.
Aggressive, huge area attacks, status effects, fearful presence, chip damage when parrying.
You have again to forget all your skills.
All you learned, throw it into the trash bin again. Run for your life. Run and keep running, and endure.
Before you have battles of technique? Now it is a battle of endurance. Slowly reduce your enemyâs life, while keeping yours the max you can. You find the openings, you run behind him⌠Dodge starts being kinda useful and parry is usually not worth much except for emergencies. But run⌠you really learn how to run and jump.
Felt peace the first time I defeat it. Probably because of the plot, but I really want to believe that the fight itself gives you that after you are finished with it. The relief you feel after long fight, the stillness of a destroyed battlefield after so much flames, chaos, cleverly (but not always effective) cameras. I was just rotating the camera around the character with my hands trembling from so much stress. That release felt great⌠peaceful. I was lucky to feel it a few more times in consecutive runs, and I still get a remnant of it every time I do that boss.
But done with that, you clear all the areas on this old landscape filled with new desolation and destruction. You have nothing else to do⌠grinding skills is just plain boring. Only the last boss is left. You build up confidence and you go.
You find a boy. You have to fight that boy. Yes a boy with a new toy, that even then can hardly do anything to you because you have already learned so much. You defeat that boy, that first phase.
Then it all gets weird. Weirdness is real, and you are presented with the one that over the entire lore of the game you could imagine as the pinnacle of sword fighting. You clash swords with him. Elegant, smooth, decisive and ruthless. This boss will give you no mercy at any time, and he will keep coming for you every single time. Running hardly matters, he just closes up on you and punishes you for turning your back to the fight. You have to face him, pressure him, pressure harder. Makes his life as difficult as he does you, learn how to read it. This is a real sword fight, the most read in the game. But you also defeat him, the second phase is done.
He fools you into believing you will get more of the same on the second phase. Until he overpowers you into the ground with a new weapon on his second hand. It is huge.
His moveset changes drastically, nothing to do with before. His power and movements and deceiving and the attacks can only be described as âoverwhelming techniqueâ. You thought you didnât had breaks before? Now add that but to a longer ranged weapon with absurd power.
He keeps throwing you out of balance, or simply smashing your posture because you simply canât perfect parry those attacks. They never hit when you feel they will, and you even get a few hits on the way. So hard, so powerful, such delicate fury. Hesitation is null.
But you get past that phase, and you enter the final phase. But you feel despair because you hardly have any healing left. You are so low on resources to keep this fight, what can you even do? And the fight is more of the same, no breaks.
However⌠the enemy makes one huge miscalculation. He gets too powerful, so powerful that you can return that power on him, bringing him eventually to his knees because his creativity stopped on the last phase. Overpowering made him less strong. He never needed that power that was not his in the first place. So he finally makes himself ready to accept the fate of defeat.
What a wonderful fight, beautiful and engaging in every sense of those words.
You feel you achieved something greater there.
Then the fallout. You chose your ending. Canât say any of them is actually a good one, but I can say my favourite one is Purification.
Never in any of the âsoulsliteâ games I felt the story was as much as decoration around the narrative of increasing your control over sets of rules that are these games combat engines.
For me that was always the real narrative of these games. I will never say I didnât enjoyed the rest, but both on combat and exploration, your fingers tell the story.
I really didnât wanted to go much into the exploration, too many spoilers.
Also didnât wanted to get into mini-bosses cause I would never get out of here.
But these deserve honourable mentions:
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OâRin of the Water⌠FUCK YOUUUUUUUU HATEFUL BITCH⌠I donât care if I am labelled a misogynist because YOU ARE ONE HATEFUL CRAZY BITCH ON SPEEDS WITH UNFAIR INTANGIBILIDADE. You deserve to die a thousand deaths because twice is definitely not enough. ProTip: Run a lot, until you get on her back to get one or two attacks, around half health you can simply keep going for posture.
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Snake Eyes: Both⌠stop hitting me so hard⌠please stop. Those attacks really hurt a lot⌠NO NO NO NO⌠damn she got the grab attack. DEATH. ProTip: unleash Poisonous Dagger full combo and watch them suffer.
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Drunk Huge Dudes⌠=D Canât stop loving them. Dunno why, they are stupid and basic⌠but I love them all so much. ProTip: Have you tried to just walk around his right (your left) as closest as possible to him and punish when he fails his slower attacks? Just donât forget to parry the wide swings.
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Small mention for Huge Spear Dudes⌠Hard asses.
At around the 4th run, the mini-bosses actually became much more interesting to me than the actual bosses. These are absurdly well design imo, and their AI is much more interesting than bosses. But then I figured them all and things kinda even out. Still, you have to have into account that you have various of them, for them to stay interesting for that long, has worth on itâs own.
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GOD DAMMITâŚ
Now I really want to do my 11th run D=
If I ever do on this following days, Iâll start from NG and record it, upload it, and annoy you all for views.