I have found that particular mikiri counter to be very difficult to execute. I feel like he is definitely an encounter where having higher posture makes a big difference because he is very relentless and is more likely to punish you fatally when your posture breaks.
Yeah he makes you feel especially fragile early in the game and most of the sword/kicks could wear posture fast. Purely for the sake of beating to start, I think mostly dodging then waiting till you see his leg wind back for the perilous āair burst forward kickā can help a lot. At least for the posture kill, otherwise itās a ton of nick away vit, get the hell back
Ninja Gaiden had tons of iframes across the moveset of certain weapons. Skills like Izuna drop, Flying Swallow had glaring ones, the former allowing you ignore everything else going on for maybe 1-2 seconds while Ryu piledrives something fierce.
I never felt bad exploiting iframes in those games because the speed and relentlessness of enemies makes you want to get every edge back possible. I donāt remember the basic roll dodge or dash equivalent giving much escape from damage other than the very quick initial quarter of a second.
Handling was much jerkier but NGās use of constant blocking up close, really is one of the nearest to Sekiroās feeling.
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I think he is. It was a pretty enjoyable fight to master. Although it did feel REALLY out of place in this game. I felt like I was playing Dark Souls.
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Absolutelyā¦ I use 0 parry on that boss, and even a decent amount of dodging.
But running is what I mostly do (through the right guys, if you are having problems with this boss, first phase almost every attack can be avoided by running to his left, your right, as close to him as possible. So you actually have to be aggressive with him, not on attacking but positioning yourself. But still OāRin is the one that actually teaches you much more methodically how running around to avoid stuff is important because you still have to be able to quickly stop, face her, and deflect when she gets too close. Toups probably also learned that already with Juzou, works kinda the same from a distance, but you can do even better by just walking to his right, your left, as close to him as possibleā¦ he even misses part of his combos).
BTWā¦ entire recording I was doing came out crap.
I never noticed it that I was using my laptop microphone, because my clip-on one was connected to one of the output mini-jack plugs and not the microphone one. I was already at the Fontainhead Palace when I noticedā¦ so Iām just finishing my 11th runā¦ and Iāll be recording all over again my 12th run. -___-
This game just doesnāt let me leave it.
I liked the prologue to Mibu Village due to what you mention, itās quite deceptive on where to go so I ended up carefully engaging enemies and trying to get my bearings without a nearby statue to fall back on. Probably trivial on replay though, I know exactly where to go.
Is it possible to backtrack to the main part of Mt Kongo after ringing the Demon Bell or are you just supposed to teleport out or take the shinobi passage? Iām guessing the latter since I believe you can actually ring the bell quite early, but itās weird because the ledges and grapple points along the cliff suggest you can make your way back to the main part of the mountain yet I wasnāt able to do so and just kept falling short of the grapples ā probably the sloppiest environment sequence in the game.
While on the subject of different environments, I think Ashina Castle has to be the most impressively conceived and executed area, not just on its own but how it fits into the rest of the game. I can think of three structural tricks up its sleeve:
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Across the early game the castle persists in the background and is built up as this oppressive final destination, yet that flips around mid-game and it becomes central HQ, a breezy place to whip through on your way to other things.
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The moment the quest appears to narrow into an assault on the castle (right after blazing bull) is precisely the moment the world has opened up to you! You just donāt know it yet, but if you become fatigued at the castle or when fighting Genichiro, youāre likely to wander down into these rabbit holes. I like that generosity; they could have easily added a bunch of gating there but didnāt, and it means some mid-game areas have a good chance of being serendipitously stumbled upon with helpful stuff to find earlier despite eventually becoming the main quest.
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The late-game begins with the invasion that makes the castle interesting once again, but it also felt a bit underwhelming ā you might expect something like that at this point in the story, itās foreshadowed by deactivated teleport points, and oh, okay, a few ninjas got in. But that made the real invasion later that much more surprising since I assumed that card was already played out.
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This is another boss where everything just about can be parried, even though it seems like you canāt / shouldnāt be able to. Spam deflect, it works (AoE cannot be parried, and ranged attacks canāt be parried either - but all other attacks can be, and perfect blocks prevent all fire damage, while imperfect ones still prevent a lot of it).
The bigger issue is more in the giant AoE attacks and getting close, but thatās basically every boss in this game. Stay up on the boss and itās actually a fairly trivial fight. The difficulty lies in getting close and staying close.
Mibu desires: the pre-main village areas are very cool, art inhabitant and layout wise. I keep wishing itād been larger with more hard stops/bottlenecks that could slow you down. Itās all very practical for an overhead realistic look with actually very little to impede (aside from the Super Tough Encounter Mist Nobleā¦and Real Deal Dance with OāRin). First time through, it definitely carries more āsneak around and be carefulā effect, but even by the end bit I felt there was so much more threatening, looming, absolutely creepy stuff they couldāve done with it. Thin. That town hallish building before the Monk, with the shinobi floor panels and attic shrine, made me wish thereād been a muuuuuch larger dimly lit building to navigate through - some Souls type traps, dangerous foes stalking to and fro, trickier placement and secrets via those panels. Ah it all scratches my imagination and doesnāt seem far from their detailed craft of the previous games, important DNA that couldāve thickened and not hurt the experience.
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finally beat this game holy FUCK
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Me too!
Last boss took me a frickinā age. Picked the Purification ending so I can skip Owl (Father)
One hour into NG+ I am already past Gyoubu
https://www.sekiro.jp/news_detail_190422_01.html
All Platforms
Release Timing
April 23rd, 2019 10:00 JST
April 23rd, 2019 03:00 CEST
April 22nd, 2019 18:00 PDTRelease Notes:
Improvements to Strategic Approaches
- Adjusted the efficiency and Spirit Emblem cost of the following to encourage usage and diversity of approach:
- Prosthetic Tools: āLazulite Sacred Flame,ā āLoaded Axeā series, āSparking Axe,ā āLazulite Axeā
- Combat Arts: āAshina Cross,ā āDragon Flash,ā āOne Mind,ā āFloating Passage,ā āSpiral Cloud Passage,ā āMortal Draw,ā āEmpowered Mortal Drawā
- Items: āSpiritfallā series
- Reduced the Posture damage dealt by the first hit of the Combat Arts āSenpou Leaping Kicksā and āHigh Monkā as it was causing more damage than intended in certain cases. Posture damage dealt in the latter-half of the combo has been increased.
- Increased the Poison build-up dealt by the Prosthetic Tool āSabimaruā against enemies that were intended to be weak against it.
- Increased the drop rate of āDivine Confettiā for Fencers in Ashina Castle.
- Adjusted loading screen tips and tutorial text, as well as adding new text.
Other Fixes
- Slightly reduced Posture and Vitality of Blazing Bull in order to improve game pacing and balance time in combat.
- Lowered the price of information sold by Anayama the Peddler.
- The Chained Ogre inside Ashina Castle is now Red Eyed.
- Fixed a bug where āGokanās Sugarā and āGokanās Spiritfallā were not mitigating player Posture damage taken while guarding or deflecting enemy attacks.
- Fixed a bug where system crashes could cause save data to become corrupted on PC.
- Fixed a bug where certain enemies would sometimes stop attacking the player.
- Fixed a bug where certain actions could not be performed after reconfiguring the controls.
- Fixed certain bugs that were allowing the player to access unexpected areas, which could result in becoming unable to obtain items or make further progress.
- Fixed cases of certain text being displayed incorrectly.
- Improved stability.
- Improved performance.
- Other various bug fixes.
After applying the update, the version notation in the bottom-right of the title screen will display as follows:
App Ver. 1.03
We hope you continue to enjoy Sekiroā¢: Shadows Die Twiceā¦
7 Likes
this game is a masterpiece! the final boss was brutal and took me a very long time, but after the dust has settled i think this game is basically everything i wanted and more. every other game, including souls games, seems like it will be a chore after this one. i think i might stick around and play some of the optional stuff and try NG+? maybe go for another ending? iām not looking forward to playing literally any other game, everything feels like trash after touching this
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also the rematch against seven ashina spears where dudeās got a buddy isā¦
yeah idk. is that fight even possible without cheesing lol
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this is encouragingly on the nose!
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Quick question. Iām not familiar with how games work nowadays. Is there a scene of people preserving the original versions of games before they get updated? Iāve never seen pirates deliberately offering early versions before so I assume not. Seems like an oversight.
generally most scene releases will be the day 1 unpatched version and theyāll do an OK-ish job of making torrents of later patches separately, at least for single player games that donāt get infinitely many. itās not ideal and Denuvo being more difficult to crack has thrown off this cadence to the extent it was there in the first place because many games only ever get like one crack a month or so down the line now.
I really think Steam should offer versioned checkouts of games that donāt need to go online as the commit data is already all there but theyād need to sandbox local save data per version &c. &c. to avoid making assumptions and not all games use Steamās APIs to save to predictable locations.
I keep a cracked iso of max payne 3 around in case I ever want to play the game back before it had LOADING or PRESS START TO SKIP added to the corner of every cutscene because of big babies whining about cutscenes
watching videos now that iām done, holy shit the english voice acting is downright awful relative to the japanese
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Absolutely! Lowering cost to invite more tool usage is like an immediate response to one of my biggest criticisms. Honestly itās probably the only major change they can make in that regard, the rest are more complex shortcomings (the thinness) I personally feel in some stage setup and enemy behavior.
Making those endgame combat arts cheaper is a great change imo. It would be nice to use something besides ichimonji
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my summary thoughts on the game:
a better action game than any of the souls iāve played, by a long shot. this may be part of why iām reminded of ds2 so much; that one really leaned into the combat-as-core experience where demonās (afaict) and dark 1 were more comfortable keeping it as one (major) ingredient in a more complex stew. this could be seen as a negative (and clearly is for some) except a lot of elements that make souls good are still present in some form, and the level design which carried the day in the strongest From games is back in full force. honestly, sekiro touts perhaps my favorite level design in any From game ever (which is really saying something).
i feel very comfortable saying this game is both a masterwork of craft and one of my personal favorite games. what it lacks in mystery and role-playing freedom versus souls, it far makes up for it in clinical level and encounter design, and the perhaps initially-offputting way it puts on a more serious face than those games is paid off in its (hopefully) eventual success in immersing you in the concerns of its actors. i was surprised at how much i ended up caring about the happenings of the plot and motives of the characters despite initially really only being here for the action.
so, what weāve got is Fromās tightest level design and tightest combat mechanics, along with art and sound design on par with anything theyāve done. in my opinion, anything it conceivably ālacksā is really only in contrast to its towering forebears. it stands on its own exceptionally well when you consider its aims.
iām very deeply considering getting into speedrunning it? but i want to explore a bit more first.
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