important thing i didnât learn for way too long: actions performed with neutral stick position are always oriented âforwardâ. you donât have to press forward when you mikiri, just press the button without moving the stick at all. not sure i would have ever been able to use them well enough without learning this.
when do you get punished for executing a mikiri counter? iâm drawing a blank on that
i think the ogre being such a roadblock is supposed to make it more likely that new players will discover the Hirata Estate, where you can find the flame vent prosthetic, which makes the boss easier (or i assume it does, since the loading screen tips kept telling me so)
you could compare how Bloodborne guides players toward Old Yharnam (and consequently the chalices), even though youâre free to skip that whole section if you know how
iâve even wondered if DS2 was trying to do a similar thing with Earthen Peak: since no player could reasonably be expected to figure out how to remove the poison on their own, and you meet the ladder-building NPC there, maybe it was supposed to be a hint to turn around, and come back after youâve checked out the Gutter. (i have managed to beat Mytha with the poison in; itâs easy enough as long as you alternate between Estus and Lifegems)
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Itâs the Seven Spears guy right near the starting area where Kubo lived
You stomp on his spear but he has enough strength to lift it even with your foot on it
Jerk
I havenât had trouble pulling the Mikiri counter when I wanted to and pressed the circle button, itâs just that Iâm already so laser focused on deflecting and attacking that just pressing circle is difficult + lunging forward to attempt a mikiri counter is an inherently extremely risky action if youâre not very good (esp. if the boss has grabs or sweeps along with thrusts, so you canât rely entirely on the red indicator)
yeah I gave this another shot recently and came to the conclusion that the theoretical reward for pushing through the early hump was just more of something I disliked in the first place
I still think it reflects badly on these gamesâ audience that weeabopit would be so universally acclaimed for cashing in its prestige to make people Study The Blade
ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Seven spears will âpunishâ the mikiri counter but he always does the same followup to disrupting the counter that is easy to deflect or interrupt (with gunpowder for instance)
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Oh sure, but i think they could have put the ogre a little further down that path. Like if they switched him with the general thatâs right after him, even. I just think itâs a swerve to have 2 roadblock bosses you could hit at once expect skills outside your core set (the other being the shinobi hunter) that early in the game. A boss or two more that really emphasized deflection and posture recovery would have been ideal.
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Yeah, but the next level of that is that Mikiri counter needs to go into the enemyâs sword arm, and sometimes the neutral Mikiri from lock-on-camera is too centered to work. When this happens you might wrongly assume it was your timing. I started always holding forward with a slight angle specifically towards the enemy sword and now my mikiris are more reliable.
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Iâm pretty curious to see how Elden Ring will counterpoint Sekiro. By DkS3 the series devolved into on one hand rote exploration where you ran through two-path levels to harvest all shiny motes, and rote boss battles where you stayed out of the way of any attack you didnât understand and punished the couple you did. It seems they reassessed where they were and made a decision to split into âStudy The Bladeâ and âOpen Fieldâ and go deep into each of those separately.
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firmly on the âsekiro is the best thing theyâve done since demonâsâ side of this one
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the Ogre is the good old trolling side of From peeking out, and I love it and I love watching people get the peopleâs elbow off a cliff. Putting a huge character with flying moves on stairs is perverse in a very From-esque way; itâs guaranteed to show off the game in the worst light, with drifting, sliding mid-air corrections.
Of course it presupposes a knowledge of Souls combat, especially rolling into attacks, that the rest of Sekiro mostly ignores, but itâs so stupid I can forgive it for screwing up the learning process.
I agree with the sentiment that the centipede should have been an early boss. Or maybe Iâd go as far as putting a parry back-and-forth minigame on Hanbei and really pushing the turn-by-turn nature of the combat. When Iâve taught people to play, the most helpful thing Iâve said is that itâs like tennis: return their serve, then take your turn when it comes up. Getting players to drop dodging and spatial awareness from their toolkit usually improves them markedly.
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Fromsoftâs_trick is that they make the game troll you and kill you a lot early on and then level off once you get past the first couple areas, and itâs definitely in effect here, but i think it gets in the way a little more than i usually like it to.
I think the chief thing anyone playing the game really needs to internalize is that posture is basically a second health bar, and that plus deflection tennis are the secret weapon that makes me enjoy Sekiro bosses more than later Souls bosses. When youâre, say, fighting Champion Gundyr in Dark Souls 3, you have to respond to his roulette of attacks by dodging/blocking and retaliating when you have an open attack window. Since you can cancel into a block/deflect in Sekiro, you have more license to attack, and either you land a vitality hit or a posture hit; if you get the latter, you force them into a deflection tennis match. Bosses will almost always end one of those matches in a predictable couple of ways, ex. Genichiro will deflect, jump attack and then always do a thrust or sweep attack. What that amounts to is having more control over the rhythm of the fight, whereas if you try to dodge and retaliate Souls style itâs much harder (it doesnât suit Sekiroâs âbuildâ! he has too short a weapon and too limited a dodge). Itâs awesome! âŚonce you get it.
So when you put a boss like the ogre that early on youâre encouraging players to play the game âwrongâ, and making it harder for them to âget itâ. Itâs risky to stand up in front of the ogre and deflect his attacks, his grabs are quick and a nascent player will have a hard time switching gears. I mean hell, you just learned about perilous attacks in the last general fight, which you could have easily missed or skipped. I actually made myself more annoyed about his location while writing this post! If they switched him with the next general youâd even have a better arena for him, more possibility of him fucking up other soldiers which is just fun and emergent, could skip if you had a hard time and go on to a boss thatâs much easier (Gyoubu)
Ftr i think this game is really cool and what From was going for with it mostly worked for me, most of my criticisms are little nitpicks and tweaks like these
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No, youâre absolutely right that itâs wrong design. Because I managed to get past it, I can regard it fondly as one of Fromâs personality-defining defects. Itâs the kind of mistake you wouldnât find in the airless, by-the-book perfection of Naughty Dog.
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I can see that. I feel kinda the same about the ogre as i do the capra demon â audacious, memorable, not that hard once you figure it out, but not really a great fight once you figure it out either lol
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Thatâs a good comparison, and boy does the Capra demon make me mad!
!
the whole pathing around the lower burg is also by far the driest part of ⌠honestly maybe any souls game?
Iâve forgotten where Iâm supposed to go at that point every time Iâve played dks
Downhill? Its the most linear section of the game
I mean just finding it as opposed to the other non-paths available to you at that point
ran around for hours not knowing where âdownhillâ began
Yeah the path into the lower burg starts up past the Taurus demon fight, near where you meet Solaire and then get attacked by the drake. Itâs not the first place youâd logically remember to come back to, especially since the key that unlocks it is called something like âbasement keyâ
Though on the other hand, i just checked the wiki and the keyâs item description tells you exactly where to go 
Iâm probably a psychopath but getting lost and not knowing what to do next is often my favorite part of these games lol
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