The level design feels bizarre. I canât figure out what the game actually wants me to DO at any given moment.
It gives me all these stealth tools and calls me a shinobi, making it seem like Iâm supposed to play it like a stealth game, but then the levels are designed specifically to negate playing stealthily, with clusters of enemies that just stand stock still, leaving no exploitable gaps, and forced-alert chokepoints
Combat is loose and slippery and your ability to block is nearly useless, which leads one to assume that the intention is that you prioritize picking off members of packs with stealth kills, but the âstealthâ kills just alert everyone within a 30m range anyway, even through walls, so thereâs no point
And then it has the gall to punish you for dying by giving NPCs the plague?
Itâs like someone really high up on the decision-making totem pole was deliberately trying to sabotage the game by making every part of the game directly contradict some other part
Anyway you are correct itâs not a stealth game, itâs more about just crashing through paper doors and spraying blood everywhere without care for who you aggro. Because you can easily fly off onto a wall at any time and wait 5 seconds for them to deaggro. When itâs worth the trouble you have the option of beginning an engagement with stealth, especially against midbosses.
it actually just makes a really bad & unintuitive first impression on many people, youâre arguably doing many things wrong but none of that is your fault really
I would stumble to the second or third boss, take a break, skim the whole thread, then start over
I managed to physics-jank-abuse my way past a part that was making me extremely angry and just ignored that whole setpiece encounter entirely, and now there is a big snake. This partâs pretty cool at least
I went into this hoping for good stealth, good combat, and good level design and I got the opposite of all those things. Iâm very glad I didnât buy this at launch, now. What a shame
Like, honestly, I played it heavy on stealth all the way through fountainhead palace. Something peculiarly satisfying about finally finding that specific route that lets me stealth kill all the enemies in an area, finishing with a stealth attack on an areaâs mini-boss
the stealth is one of many things that makes it needlessly frustrating to fail at â the amount of consumable and setpiece prep that you need to do to repeat some encounters, especially the minibosses that require a few minutes of empty time to clear out, is pretty galling if you arenât in the mood for it and itâs not clicking for you. I wonât defend that part of it, but there is a lot there if you like fromâs other work. I would not recommend throwing yourself against it under any circumstances; for a generally difficult game, itâs a lot more fun when youâre succeeding.
also, the first 5-10 hours of the game have a lot of inconsistent and mostly optional encounters, to the point where it feels like a concession to them failing to communicate expectations of their famously tough game until almost midway through. Almost everything that blocks your progress up to then can be cheesed.
in general there is a ton of experimentation here * on their part * and itâs a big bummer that it can feel like they havenât offered that same opportunity to the player until youâve gotten to upgrade a few of the prosthetic tools or at least stopped getting so anxious about the way they communicate penalties from death and gotten a few more heals. itâs hard not to feel that it couldâve used more producer/editor work, especially early on. all signs suggest that they half expected the first quarter or so to be a mess for many people, but itâs not clear if they reached that conclusion later than they couldâve fixed it or what, because it doesnât appear initially to have the same vulgar masochistic spirit that anticipates that mess.
also, a lot of the non-combat systems (like almost anything that has an upgrade menu or an NPC associated with it) are paper thin in this one, so if you liked that aspect of these games (and I was very surprised to learn in this thread that some people didnât like it, or at least found the idea of looking up build strategies more objectionable than looking up tips for how to play sekiro), thereâs not a lot for you here initially.
outside of high level play itâs extremely uneven tbh, though it is thoroughly fromsoft if that keeps you going
I replayed this game just this last week, Iâm up to Fountainhead now. Boy, do i wish this game was a little easier just so more people could see Fountainhead, which is one of my favorite levels in a Fromsoft game and maybe just any video game, period
PROTIPS: Sekiro is very weirdly divided between the stealth levels and the bosses. the latter start off demanding and remain that way to the end, the former has its moments but never really heats up. So you can almost consider stealth and traversal an aperitif/digestif to the combat. Your Sneak Skills are VERY overpowered right from the jumpâ you donât actually need to click the right stick and sneak a lot of the time, you can just jog up to dudes and get a deathblow on them before they fully acknowledge you. Only sneak if youâre trying to come at someone from an angle and/or itâs someone like, uhh, another shinobi. Also donât bother trying to do everything perfect, this game lets you run like a million miles an hour and Batman up to rooftops instantly and no regular enemy has a long enough leash or attention span to stop you. A lot of the fun in Sekiro comes from going âwhoops!â and trying to correct on your shinobi hubris
I was not a huge fan of the boss fights with a bunch of adds on first blush but i actually grew to really enjoy them once i realized how broken the stealth is. Learning a path to efficiently clear out everyone before fighting the boss became its own fun little ritual
For the bosses themselves, you literally just have to try until you get their patterns down lol itâs the most fighting game ass game From has ever made. Hold L1, block everything you can, step away and hold L1 when your posture gets too high so it will drain faster (this is a crucial and overlooked mechanic!) Try to tap L1 in time with their attacks to deflect them, but itâs okay to âsword wiggleâ a bit before you get the timing down. The game is way more forgiving there than it presents.
Also, eat lots of candy! The blue sugars in particular are invaluable. In general the fights are balanced in such a way that youâre rewarded for coming in hot, and getting more conservative/defensive as the fight goes on. Donât be afraid to press your advantage, pop that fucking candy if you have the boss on the ropes and Finish Him
Oh and you donât HAVE to respond to the perilous attacks (the ones with the kanji) the exact way the game prescribes. Doing so usually gets you some posture damage on the boss to keep the pressure up, but if you simply want to avoid damage you can just jump fully away from the boss and avoid 90% of those attacks. Thatâs Sekiro writ large. In trouble? Just⌠bounce
and donât forget you can pause to use items, and even quit out to reset the boss if you want lol. Donât take an honorable defeat, youâre not a samurai youâre a goddamn shinobi
honestly i had more fun doing the stealth than the bosses this time around. I felt like i ran into Souls-esque technical problems a lot more â lock on breaking at inopportune moments, the camera going bugnuts, the input queue being EXTREMELY finicky. All things that sting more when the combat is this demanding. Still think itâs a rad game overall but there are definitely kinks that could be ironed out of it.
yeah you should be pausing the game to burn items and trying to cheat death at all costs pretty much all the time, which with that static fullscreen ps2 pause menu definitely goes on the list of things that made a garbage first impression on me, like I guess they werenât even going to try to integrate that with the fumbling elegance of every other souls game, very cool. and once you shift your expectations itâs fine and it fits but youâll get nowhere chafing against it
honestly half the time it feels more like it predates their last decade of work rather than following it but at least you can almost always explore more when youâre stuck if you donât get too fixated on dying to one boss over and over and that just barely keeps it light
