SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE 💀

[toups]

Valuable advice for this game that someone gave me. Again i’m sorry if this has been mentioned here before, but in this game it’s actually far more beneficial to turtle. As long as you keep an eye on your posture you don’t get penalized for it at all, and your posture recovers more quickly. In fact, even if your posture is broken, with many enemies and even bosses you still have a decent chance of rolling away unscathed. You don’t take chip damage when blocking and you can be holding block and tap it again to get a deflect in with much lower risk. The game doesn’t explain this to you and I was having much trouble trying to go from not blocking directly to a deflect and leaving myself much more vulnerable as a result. I feel like having soulsborne muscle memory works against you in this regard and you have to really put effort into unlearning that. I was stuck at gyoubu until I applied this idea and I beat him much more easily and mostly by using deflects.

I agree that the first few bosses are not ideal for training you in fundamentals. They test kind of esoteric skills that are useful in specific situations but not universally. Obviously if you are skilled enough at your fundamentals you can handle them easily enough but for a novice player they are kind of weird curveballs in an already unfriendly game.

[toups]

HONESTLY I feel like where this game is the most difficult is that you don’t get little messages from other online players, which really helped fill in the weird little gaps in explained mechanics in from’s past games in this style. Instead sometimes you will eavesdrop and get a hint but these are not nearly as useful.

Also I miss the shitposting :(

[parker]

not having to read a bunch of sexual assault messages around every female npc is another reason sekiro is better than every souls game

[toups]

that’s fair

[anothersphere]

It’s nice to not see that all over the place but I personally don’t agree with being that sanitary as an approach to elevate Sekiro so.

I experimented with this a few times, how I feel in most battles though it’s another one of those things I find more trouble than its worth; tending to err on the angle of “doing better faster” than prolonging messy fights and resources. On the other hand, keeping it around as plan B for certain drawn out fights would have saved some time and pain for sure, so…

[Felix]

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Sekiro

[Brooks]

Holy shit I wish I’d known/tried this

[anothersphere]

Deadass, Killer Idea, great to imagine antics with even more stealth or somewhat Tenchu/MGS guard types and behaviors

[Broco]

I do love the item theme of useful self-administered poisons in this game, like Contact “Medicine”. Also I have to wonder what the heck those mad monks put in their “sugars”

[Decinoge]

I feel like having soulsborne muscle memory works against you in this regard and you have to really put effort into unlearning that.

This was kinda what I tried to talk about in my post. Muscle memory (see how bad I am wording my mind?)
This is the thing I figured on my first hour (maybe 2) of playing the game, exactly with Gyoubu (lovely drunk guy nose). I was still fresh from DS3, but I imagine it is even worst with people who haven’t played for some time (only muscle memory remains).
I personally am a very heavy dodge player on DS3 (never played with shield, always 2 handing), and the same goes for DS1 and 2 (these I used shield a few times).

The thing is… Dodge on Sekiro is absolute RUBISH. And even if you think that, you keep on dodging and wanting to dodge, and the brain working on dodging for a very long time. It was on about my second run that I actually had it in me, and stopped doing “stupid” mistakes over having my brain think about dodging for that fraction of a second before thinking “parry”.

I imagine this will be even harder for people heavy on Bloodborne because the dodge is your biggest strength no matter the build.
Again, you face your enemies and endure the pressure. You learn how to pressure them more than they pressure you. And ultimately, as Lord Isshin says, hesitation is defeat. If you make a mistake you will not have the time to fall back and think on it. You better stick to it, take the hit, and work again on building the pressure.

Eventually this “balance of pressures” becomes natural, and you will be thinking about your next move while doing this “parry > parry > attack > attack” routine not even thinking about it very much.

[edit]
Also, your “rest” stance should be blocking. As Toups said, recovers your posture much faster, even when you have damage. It’s not so much about tourteling as much as to get into the mind set that when you have some breathing time, block to recover posture.
Toups noticed pretty well that most enemies don’t punish you for that, but on the off chance that you lose your posture mid-combo, enemies will still hit you and those attacks will give your between 150% and 200% damage. You probably don’t notice that much on the first run, but in NG+4 or 5, you just see your full health bar disappear from a hit and you panic.
[/edit]

[Broco]

Yeah it’s honestly a bit weird how the enemies don’t punish you for breaking posture 2/3ds of the time. Whereas the other way round, they instantly die. The fighting principles are more asymmetrical than they first appear.

[anothersphere]

I never recovered posture faster when blocking, than at full stop or unmoving rest? Everyone’s saying that’s key and it’s entirely possible I misgauged something but it’s been confusing me.

I took big note of Con Meds then never once got around to using 'em! Could be useful against triple strikes from lone shadows and a place like the narrow poison swamp, too bad there’s nothing going on here intense as Valley of Defilement or Blight Town to bear more significance.

That “Some shinobi also use this medicine for a specific technique. Poison is said to expand the mind.” Haha-

The secret technique is using Mist Raven at will while you are poisoned, since every tick of damage counts as an attack.

whatttthefuckkkkk

[Tulpa]

posture recovery is a significant speedboost if you’re blocking at >75% vit, it’s less noticeable at lower vit but still present.

[anothersphere]

But compared to…not blocking and standing still?

[Tulpa]

yes, in comparison to that.

[Decinoge]

Also that is not as significant on the first run as it is in NG+ (pluses).
Around the run #6, a few non perfect parries, and my posture is almost at 75%.
Enemies do a lot more posture damage and have more posture themselves in consecutive runs.

I.E: at the Centipede dudes, doing the usual about 90% perfect parries is not enough already around #5 or #6 run. It’s more important to focus on doing a perfect parry on the last hit of the combo, because only then the enemy is forced to back off giving you time to assume block stance and recover posture. If you don’t, he will attack you very soon after the combo is done, with another combo. Even with perfect parries you posture damage raises so much, that you will get posture break mid combo… and that… is really really bad on that enemy because the combo is HUGE. He will give you quite a few hits with extra damage, and almost sure kill you, specially if you panic and try to dodge because the enemy has super long claws with huge range and… lol… this is not BB or DS, tracking is perfect.

On a situation like that, your best choice is to take that couple of hits, and try to get back to the rhythm of the parry-fest as soon as possible, because your posture resets after breaking anyway. Again, confront the enemy and not hesitate.

Another solution on that specific enemy would be to actually do double jump on him. Doesn’t do posture damage unless it is a sweep attack, but it always staggers him and forces him to reset the combo. Works for panic. Also it is very easy to do on him because he is wide, and not tall. Normal human enemies is harder because you jump rotate to the side many times over a slightly turned left analogue stick.

[edit]
Also, @Tulpa is very right. You sure do notice this when you are at full health. Which is also why it is important in consecutive runs. Enemies do a lot of damage, so you tend to be full health, but your posture raises way to fast so you take very short breaks with block. Basically you learn to assume block posture and every little break helps.
However, when you’re with low health… that’s when blocking becomes really important in early runs. It is basically the difference between SLOW recover, and NO recover at all.
[/edit]

[Decinoge]

Also… with the Owl boss fight, you can actually take advantage of your posture break.
He always does a stomp kick on your when it breaks your posture (and doesn’t continue with a combo). But it is just slow enough to always dodge out of posture break to the side, and give him a few hits.

Also… this reminds me.
Has anyone noticed that both you and every enemy is unable to parry/block from behind?
Even a bit more to the side? That’s my trick for O’Rin of the Water.
She has really very small openings, and she always blocks if you hit her from the front, and she does a damn good job at constantly be facing you (when she doesn’t is rotating to quickly unleash an attack, literally no time to react, you have to be luck to be attacking before she does).

However some attacks are slower, and if she can’t hit you with her main combo, she interrupts after the 2nd hit. So in there dodge is out of the question, to have the dodge fast enough to get behind her you have to be close, and she will unleash the full combo. So run away, let her hit the air, because you really run fast, enough to quickly run into her just before the combo or a specific attack finishes.

The one I exploit most is the one she actually “flies” into you. She flies with one attack, and right after gives you another. That second one has the longest recover time I’ve seen on her attacks, and if you are constantly running out of her reach, you have time to turn into her after the second attack, and do a run-attack on her back, and maybe even a second normal attack.

From NG+3 you HAVE to give her damage, because she simply recovers too fast, and her posture bar is HUGE, and you take A HELL of posture damage. Also… she combos a lot meaning that the risk of posture breaking while she is doing a combo is great, taking a ton of damage.

Having her go till 2/3s of health is necessary for her not to recover fast enough.

[edit]
DAMMIT… I REALLY WANT TO DO A NEW FRESH RUN NOW D=
[/edit]

[Decinoge]

Fuck me… I’ll goddamn do it.
Full cutscenes, full lore (gonna be hard to get that dialogue with the sculpture askign us to kill him), and possibility to chose from the 3 good endings after final boss.

Gonna stream it, but it is mostly for recording.

At the expense of sounding like… something shameless, go watch my skills @ https://www.twitch.tv/decinoge

[anothersphere]

Okay got home and had to run some tests, really curious why I never prioritized that generosity.

It’s not that I didn’t recognize the system’s markers for recovery (I partially detected early on then read about the exact math by ng+), it’s more that in my first play through I jumped and zagged (literally) around most encounters with keep away probably 3rd in the chamber. To reassess spacing and posture when the moment called for it, incorporating the most up and close tug of war usually for one-on-ones and certain quickly readable bosses. My shift after beating the game was go wild, so that looseness got me more Hayabusa-Rikimaru with everything at my disposal and that’s why I dropped the hud, meters for my 2nd/3rd run.

I ran the first few areas on ng just now and compared the recovery time when holding block, which is immediately visible as faster - while my ng+4 looks…marginally faster than standing still? Seems like it’d have to be calculations wise, but theres a lot more variance on stats and such at that point.

I don’t know this is funny. I feel like I underestimated and ignored this kind of advantage early on, and I can tell trying to consciously utilize it wouldn’t have made much difference by the way I played lategame anyways. But (and I know this isn’t the median take) it’s like, objectively this game at base is easier than I thought.

[Felix]

I think that’s actually the developing consensus – that if you notice A, B, and C and take advantage of X, Y, and Z, it’s all quite tidy. that they’ve made those as challenging to learn as they have is an unusual way of trying to establish a feeling of mastery.