Yeah that boss is way too tanky for how simple it is, and the fight is a bottleneck for a huge chunk of the game.
Plot detail I just noticed on a replay: when you first meet Isshin in his room and he congratulates you on beating Genichiro, Sekiro says âI was just following the Iron Codeâ, and Isshin reacts by saying, âoh, so youâre the Son of Owlâ. I think this hints that Owl invented the Iron Code and itâs not really a wider shinobi principle, although Owl would like it to seem so.
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I could be mistaken but I believe that it is possible to obtain previous versions of games via steam in at least some cases, although it is more than a bit tricky.
At the time, I took it to mean that this was a school of Shinobi that Lady Butterfly also likely subscribed to, probably separate from Isshinâs Tengu.
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Some cut content, for those interested:
Thinking Iâd be of two minds about this - mostly because the quests arenât meaningful and there are only 3 (4/5?) useful items you get from NPCs. At the point of them being able to die I think theyâd be better suited for just existing for flavor (which is largely their purpose for existing now).
Maybe that offering box was where the unacquirable items (such as the Phantom Kunai) would end up if an NPC died from Dragonrot?
my favorite thing about the level design in this game is how little it relies on the loop-back-around-via-shortcut formula of past souls games. different areas integrate much more organically. itâs both more linear and more open-ended at the same time and I think thatâs really neat.
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everything is spreading out of a hub, but the hub is the castle rather than your starting area
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That Distortion2 kid is making a fool of this vidcon daily. Sub 25 now
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Yeah I watched a couple of those and theyâre fascinating runs.
1.03 patched some of the tricks used in that run, including âstealthâ deathblow being possible on false corrupted monk, and all(? most? some? of the) the air-swimming abuse so it will be interesting to see how things shake out moving forward.
Boooo
I donât think airswimming is used in his runs anymore, actually. Iâll have to watch the most recent one again, but the main skips were the snake skip, monkey skip, and a few out of bounds skips (that werenât air swimming)
i just watched the 24:37 earlier today and there was a ton of airswimming. i donât think itâll affect that category; dist2 has already said heâs going to continue running on the same patch heâs been on and not update
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so itâs like ⌠the Cathedral Ward?
Just like the Souls games and Bloodborne, just /existing/ in the world they have crafted for Sekiro is a joy. There are certain games that I put enough time into that just thinking about the world makes me physically ill (Oblivion). Iâve never gotten that from anything in the Kingâs Fields or Soulsbornes.
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I kind of hate when runners get patch shy
The gameâs prologue sees Wolf waking up in a hole, chasing after Kuro, and losing his arm fighting the villain Genichiro. In the warm light of the Dilapidated Temple, he is nursed back to health by the doctor Emma, and the hunched and gnarled Sculptorâwhoâs also lost a left armâgives him the shinobi prosthetic. With a stock villain, a kidnapped magical child, and a chosen hero, the broad strokes of the plot are extremely videogamey. But Sekiro goes on to layer these obvious story elements on top of each other over and overâthe result is a haze through which certain repeated figures, each engaged in their own struggle against stagnation and decay, come into focus.
The Hirata Estate section isnât Wolfâs memory and itâs not time-travel either. The near-sighted old woman who gives him the bell is there in the estate, too, and her nearby son looks mortally wounded in both the present and the past. The night of the Estateâhellish, apocalypticâ seems immediate and pivotal to other characters who mention it, and details spill into the present, and back into the past. When Wolf does stumble into Anayama mid-burgle at the Hirata Estate, killing him means he disappears in the present. Defeating Lady Butterfly also affects characters in the Ashina area, but whether the player beats her or not, Anayama sells her kunai as an upgrade for the shinobi prostheticâhe must have looted them after the raid.
After climbing Ashina Castle a second time, Wolf faces Owl, the father figure who turns out to be both alive and evil all along. The old shinobi drops a withered branch from a tree that no longer grows. If the player eavesdrops properly, she can get another bell that sends her back to the Hirata Estate, this time slightly later in the night. The fires burn higher. Lady Butterfly has been replaced by a younger and stronger version of Owl. If beaten this time, he drops the branch again, but this time itâs flowering, and a usable item in one of the gameâs four endings. Wolf may be the character who explicitly stands back up after dying but really nobody in Sekiro accepts death lying down.
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The re-encounters of story characters in this game are a surprisingly brilliant touch and serve many purposes.
First, the game mechanics angle. The animators have produced such a large moveset for many bosses that itâs too much to learn for a single boss, and it would be unfair to backload too many unfamiliar moves onto second+ phases. By the jujitsu of spreading the moves across âdifferentâ bosses, the fairness problem is reversed: the next boss starts with some familiarity as you know half its moves, and can be objectively harder without feeling overwhelming.
Second, I see the thematic angle of this as superficially about resurrection, but really about aging. What happens to a warrior in between their youthful physical peak and their wise golden years? Which version is stronger? And as a young trainee of such a warrior, you wonder: perhaps I have surpassed my master as they are in their old age today, but have I surpassed their peak? And the old master pridefully wonders the same thing.
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Are there textual descriptions of pride in the game? I donât remember any (Iâm at what I assume is the final push, the third return to the castle)