The good news is that the extra attack power you got from owl father should help you on saint. A 10% or whatever attack buff makes a huge difference â itâs often the difference between posture pushes that come to literally nothing and a deathblow. So the first one of the three endgame bosses you fight tends to be the hardest, I think.
You can head stomp to dodge the super high range spear spin attack (it hits everywhere except directly above him)
Owl Father and Sword Saint trade Hardest Boss title depending on how you approach them and their movesets, imo Owl might have the edge because heâs somewhat more aggressive and the pillars + camera can really trip you up.
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I had a way easier time with owl fatherâs second form than first. itâs easier to get away from him, heâs not hounding you every second, the owlâs easy to dodge. I just couldnât ever get that far. Only made it about 5 times total. I somehow did best on the first phase the very first attempt, and then didnât even get sorta close to the 2nd phase after that until towards the end a hundred tries later.
Spiral spear gang represent!
I totally cheesed Seven Spears earlier in the game thinking Iâd never see his sorry ass again, so I was quite shocked to see heâs come back from the dead with a buddy ready to take his revenge on me. I feel like I owe him an honest fight this time. I always love the weird elegance/respect/dignity these Fromsoft games have for the villains.
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Holy goddamn shit i almost just beat Genichiro on my first try. I was so close! Iâm so pissed
edit: second try!! What a good boss fight
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Thereâs a lot of top-notch simian content in this game
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a cut above
On the whiteboard of Fromâs brainstorming session for their new Japanese setting: âannoying monkeysâ underlined three times
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I think someone already posted the âis that a monkey? HEâS GOT A GUN!â Hellboy comic ITT but that was almost my exact reaction
I also was just delighted when i approached a grey-haired monkey sitting at the bottom of a ravine and it turned around and calmly drew two swords
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I keep seeing people online saying this is like if fromsoft made a souls game where youâre forced to play a dexterity character, because you are a fast guy with a katana. (Putting aside this isnt a souls game) the way it actually plays feels way more to me like a sword and board character, only the sword is also the board. And itâs a Demonâs Souls sword and board character, where your board can block a gigantic knightâs big magic lance no problem
in fact this game reminds me of DeS in lots of good ways
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i think this game would be better if the first r1 press was a horizontal slashy
As in, so you can deal with crowds better? Souls games have always made crowds tricky but this time the default weapon really, really doesnât like hitting more than one target at a time. I think they focused so tightly on replicating the deadly shinobi 2-second duel that they viewed meaningful crowd tools as detrimental to the fantasy.
I think the Combat Arts and Shinobi tools are meant to handle them, and they do, but theyâre pretty tricky still. I wonder what the game would be like if the anticipation on the shinobi tools was about 30% shorter â I find myself eating hits when using things like the axe and spear all the time, and it doesnât interrupt you, it just makes it less optimal.
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i guess i just wanna walk up and slice em slice slice real quick like not this take a stance theatrical double handed upward reel then down chop thing i am a ninja
i mean mostly unrelatedly, sure: game balance, incentivize their systems and flow, they know their fundamental choices canât really accommodate interactive group combat, etc. game is built around rewarding scripted lego piece interactions, zelda hookshot targets, simon says bosses, theyâve jettisoned the complex intentional naĂŻvetĂ©
also mostly unrelatedly: what if there is a kabal of dank git gud fucbois conspiring to total conversion sekiro into a tradsouls experience by removing posture and allowing u 2 âbuildâ ur own flavor of outsider sengoku death person be it your classic grapple-y dark ronin or purple-masked 80s movie assasin or elegant kimono dueler etc
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this is maybe why Iâm not having as much trouble with it because thatâs always my preferred build
But thatâs the thing it doesnât really feel like that, to me! i mean other than overall playing quicker and trying to get more hits in. The back and forth between guarding/deflecting and countering with a string of attacks/stepping away to refresh posture feels most similar to playing a knight with a shield in DeS or DkS1, where shields could take a lot more punishment. You could legit play kind of a tanky slow-moving knight guy in those ones before the series shifted over to prioritizing iframes and dodge rolls.
I think people referring to deflections as parries has confused things a bit (it definitely tripped me up, going into this) A parry is an all-or-nothing move, either you read their animation correctly and you get free damage, or you fuck up and eat a hit. Deflecting is more like a perfect guard style mechanic â if you guard at just the right time, you get a bonus. Itâd be like if you guarded at just the right moment in Dark Souls and took less/no stamina damage as a result. (Which, tbh would be awesome and would have made playing a sword-and-board character in 3 actually fun) Itâs not a high stakes move you have to practice in order to perfect, itâs just something you do naturally that you can better at through repetition. (So, better than parrying in every respect lol)
Idk i was really satisfied with the Lady Butterfly and Genichiro fights and it clicked for me that i was doing the same kind of motions i would use for like, fighting Artorias with a heater shield+15
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Yeah, this is key.
Iâve started referring to it as âvolleyingâ in our discussions; combat moves between your serves, where youâre pressing momentum â you attack first â and the enemy serves, after they deflect, warning youâre theyâre about to take their turn, and now you have to follow as they play.
One of the ways they vary combat is how obvious the momentum shifts are; some enemies, like the Corrupted Monk, have really long âvolleysâ of their own and confuse when the player is intended to steal momentum back.
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Itâs still really obnoxious to be mashing all the time - I think the way the inputs work is awkward. I feel like not guarding should regain posture, and guarding should be something that is closer to a read, that does cause an actual deflection of sorts - the thing about samurai fights in all the movies is that the fights are typically over extremely quickly, and theyâre usually a result of one person either parrying or timing a strike at just the right moment.
Sekiro is kind of like an anime sword battle where things just continue to escalate.
Going through Nioh again now thing #1 I would love to see implemented in the next Soulskiroborne game is an input to switch stance(s). See also: Bushido Blade, some fightanz
Two handed like in previous games would be a similar starting point.
The logistics of doing so and maintaining balanced yet steep difficulty could be intense, but itâs one of the clearest ways to advance the factors at play in a trade of blows and give more options to the player. Some combat arts flirt with the idea of stance momentarily, a single move that can be slightly switched up. Opponents already telegraph some moreso than others and now that theyâve given everyone some boxing lessons, scale up the timing and reads.
More stealth kills or fatal attacks from hanging, dropping, climbing/jumping off walls catwalks/rafters. Also next.