Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I watched Lil Aggy (souls and sekiro speedrunner) try to do a parry/guard counter only run in Elden Ring on YT and listening to him compare the two and just seeing how the fights played out, you can see how parrying in a souls game doesn't even compare to deflecting in Sekiro in terms of design.

In Souls games, parrying is very much a secondary mechanic and you quickly start noticing its limitations once you start trying to actually parry consistently. Even beyond how only humanoid enemies can be parried, it isn't always super clear what attacks can be parried and which ones can't, so you just kinda have to figure out via trial and error. Not only that, but parrying has startup frames and a pretty limited window so getting parries consistently is pretty difficult.

In Sekiro, deflecting has pretty much no start up frames, basically any enemy attack can be deflected (and the ones that can't be are explicitly telegraphed), and the timing window for a successful deflect is far more generous than even a buckler parry.

I can see why people who don't enjoy the idea of parrying in DS wouldn't like Sekiro but I think if you actually look at how the game works, I don't think the mechanics are as equivalent as is often implied.

My main complaints with it are the camera and the Dragonrot.

People have always pointed out that the camera can screw you over in Fromsoft games but I noticed it happened even more than usual in Sekiro and sometimes in ways I wouldn't expect. Even in the Demon of Hatred fight, which takes place in a massive open arena, the demon moves around such large distances with its attacks that it wasn't uncommon for it to end up in a corner where the camera wouldn't play nice. It didnt happen often enough to significantly diminish the experience, but it was very annoying when it did happen.

The Dragonrot feels like a mechanic that at one point was planned to be far more in-depth but ended up getting scaled back, and left in a state where it feels very half-baked. All it effectively means is you get prevented from getting dialogue and advancing certain questlines if you die enough and the only resource to get them back is expensive and difficult to come by.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jun 8th 2022 at 10:53:20 AM

For people thinking SSI is too easy, try the inner bosses that came out as free DLC. They make the mainline game bosses seem as easy as a basic mook by comparison, especially Inner Isshin and Inner Owl Father.

Strangely I found Inner Isshin to be the easiest of the trio, I had to use every item to beat Inner Owl and Inner Genichiro beat me several times before going down.

I remember my first attempt to do the Shura Gauntlet went well right up until the Inner boss downed me. After that, every other attempt I made had me stonewalled by the Demon of Hatred.

I haven't tried that gauntlet again since, mostly because I've been playing other games and because the Demon of Hatred is just too much of a pain in the ass.

To this day, I'm still sort of surprised that this game didn't get any expansion-type DLC. I suppose it's because the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne all got expansions, so I was expecting Sekiro to get one as well.

Still a fantastic game without such DLC, though.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Jun 8th 2022 at 9:31:45 AM

Haven't fought Inner Owl because I haven't done Shura, but aside from the Mortal Draw attack Inner Isshin felt not much harder than SSI? Inner Genichiro was definitely harder but it was mainly due to remixing his attack patterns so it threw me off, the only notable upgrades were his Sakura Dance and the lightning ping-pong.

Those three (with Owl Father, Great Shinobi sucks) are an amazing set of boss fights for the game's roughly three arcs. Any fight I enjoy replaying on its own merits is worth celebrating.

I think for the most part sekiro didnt miss with the bosses. I dont like the bull, headless dudes or dual monke but other than that i dont have much to complain about.

At least the Sakura Bull has an Easy Level Trick if you really don't want to deal with its bullshit.

I liked all the bosses except Demon of Hatred.

So, seeing as Sekiro gets praise enough (deservedly so), I thought I'd talk about the things I don't like about it. Most of these are minor nitpicks, which speaks to the quality of the game, but they're complaints nonetheless. In roughly descending order of severity:

• The input buffer/queuing system. It's so ridiculously overtuned that it made the game feel less responsive, not more. In order to ensure sensitive inputs like Mikiri counters or jumps on sweeps came out, I had to press buttons multiple times or else they might get lost in the queuing, and that itself carried the risk of unintended actions — I can't count how many times dropping a block and then attacking got read as a Combat Art input. It almost feels like playing an online game with 60-ish ms, in a single player game.
• Prosthetic tool balance. This merits its own post, but prosthetic tools are wildly imbalanced with regards to one another — some (firecrackers, umbrella) are near must-takes that you need a compelling reason not to take, some (shuriken, axe) are well-balanced in having situations they excel it and others where they're merely a useful tool to round out your moveset, and many more (Sabimaru, whistle, fan) are borderline worthless most of the time except for a specific situation where they completely trivialize a particular enemy, one of my least favorite game design patterns. It gets even worse when you factor in upgrades, which can never seem to decide if they want to be straight improvements, sidegrades or curiosities. Even the utility ones that feel like they could work as a niche option are often let down by steep Emblem costs. In a game with as focused a core combat system as Sekiro, tools feel like a wasted opportunity. Also I'm still salty over how lackluster the Lazulite Flame Vent is.
• Combat art balance. Even worse than with tools, combat arts are ridiculously uneven. There's two that stand head and shoulders above the rest: Ichimonji (Double) for utility and because of how good it is at frame trapping enemies and messing with their AI plus being the only source of posture regen, and (Empowered) Mortal Draw because it has an excellent damage-per-Emblem ratio, and that's considering it's the most expensive Art in the game, plus it deals damage through guard, can also frame trap bosses, has great range, can still be used with zero emblems (honestly, if you could equip the emblem-less version as a standalone I'd pack it in a heartbeat) and is bugged so the first hit of the jumping version deals the same damage as a fully charged Empowered. Almost every other art is at best just inferior to those two, at worst not even worth it over R1 spam. The only other arts I found real use for were (Reverse) Nightjar Slash for some niche messing with enemy AI ranges (closing in or retreating from their attacks), and Sakura Dance, which has some actual good damage and range and comes out immediately for only 1 Emblem, but is post-game only. High Monk for styling on sweeps too, I guess. It's a shame because a bunch of them are extremely cool and a player that wants to show off can do some awesome stuff with them, but you really have to bend over yourself to justify using the majority of them.
• Spirit Emblem system. Tying into the above two points, the Spirit Emblem system has a bunch of issues that make it pretty unsatisfying. First and foremost, them costing sen is annoying as hell, it legitimately adds nothing to the game other than tedious grinding, often in the middle of learning a difficult boss. Even though they sometimes drop from enemies, there would be absolutely nothing lost if they simply refilled on idols like gourd charges do, and pickups from enemies were kept as is. Moreover, by endgame all of Combat Arts, prosthetic tools, Ninjutsu and Spiritfalls draw from the same highly limited pool, which adds some massive opportunity cost and enforces a the-rich-get-richer effect because, for example, a cool but underwhelming option such as Spiral Cloud Passage isn't just competing with other Combat Arts, but all the aforementioned options. I like the Ceremonial Tanto (especially way late in the game where you have a ton of gourd charges and usually die to enemies before you can use them all anyway), but I feel like the game could've been improved by having another resource rather than laying it all on the Spirit Emblems.
• Plot and lack thereof. This might seem like a weird complaint, because the worldbuilding and lore of Sekiro is excellent, and the characters are all interesting too. But see, the actual plot of the game is incredibly thin. Start, Kuro is kidnapped, try and fail to free him, get to Genichiro and beat him and free Kuro. Sent on a fetch quest by Kuro, get a bunch of macguffins. Meet Owl, who sure is alive and nefarious, kill him and that's that. Finish the fetch quest, oh no Ashina is being invaded, fight Genichiro again then Isshin, your pick of ending. I'm oversimplifying, but not much. The overall story is great, but the actual events in the game are, well, very gamey. Just a bunch of excuses for you to travel the setting and meet all the characters and see the locales, and kill most of it.
• Dragonrot mechanic. Has been said before, but while the idea is cool, the implementation is very lackluster. In practice, it's mainly an inconvenience until you need to progress a specific questline, it being a finite resource blows, and it feels simultaneously punishing and inconsequential, not to mention flying in the first of the rest of the game which expects you to die a lot. Much like the aforementioned forced Emblem farming and boss runbacks (thankfully, largely absent from the game, in contrast to some other Fromsoft entries), it feels like a tacked-on annoyance that just adds tedium to the overall experience.
• Ashina's ludonarrative dissonance as a society as opposed to a videogame level. This is getting into the extreme nitpick area, but one thing that stood out to me was how, despite a good portion of the narrative being centered around Ashina and its impending invasion (not that anyone but Genichiro seems especially bothered by it), it's, well, kind of a shithole. Fromsoft games have you interact with the world almost exclusively via sticking sharp objects into things and cryptic dialogue, which is perfectly fine since in most of the games you're scurrying around the ruins of some long-past glories and most of what's left is insane or monstruous or both. But in Sekiro it runs in the face of the setting as presented because everything other than a bare handful of NP Cs is there for you to kill. There's almost no civilians other than the old women in the castle (who're also there for you to kill, just you should also feel bad afterwards), which makes the tragedy of the Shura ending text fall a bit flat. The fancy Ashina Castle is a brisk walk away from evil monks concocting horrid experiments on children, a valley full of xenophobic gun-toting assholes who seem to have less than zero interest in Ashina, and a village straight of HP Lovecraft's less racist nightmares. You can barely swing a sword without running into something that deserves it. Hell, the castle's moat, within eyesight of the lords' chambers, has an undead monstrosity that everyone seems unaware of! I get that it's a game and all, but in my opinion the usual Fromsoft design clashes with the sort of setting it's set in and at times it gets discordant.
• World design (as opposed to level design). Again, extreme nitpick, and this is less of a flaw than a missed opportunity, but while the level design is decent to great, the world is rather boringly put together. Outside of Ashina Castle, which is something of a central hub, most areas follow the usual single-route-until-final-checkpoint-to-war-out-of paradigm that is the norm in all these games outside of the first half of Dark Souls 1. Maybe I'm still chasing that particular dragon, but it feels like a real wasted opportunity because the increased verticality facilitated by the core mechanics feels like it should really provide an opportunity for the world to loop back around and allow you to get into past areas in the Metroidvania fashion, but such a thing is very rare, only a handful of examples come to mind and they're all optional out-of-the-way curiosities (like getting to the Sunken Valley through the cave in Blackhat Badger's questline). It's a consequence of having checkpoints be universally warpable from the get go, I guess, but I wish Fromsoft would try that sort of design again — it's the single most memorable detail about DS 1, in my opinion, and it's a shame that it never seemed to catch on.
• Base moveset variety. A small thing, but you spend 95% of the game just blocking, dodging, jumping and using your base attack. Which is fine, the game with just that would work perfectly fine, but I wish you had a secondary attack move that wasn't just your repeated R1 spam. Like, there's the charged attack, but it's very niche and rarely actually worth it over squeezing in more R1s or deflections — I wish we had, for example, an attack that hit as a sweep, or did more posture damage at the expense of vitality, or the reverse, or something of the sort. Combat Arts are supposed to fill that niche, but, well, as I said above, they don't do that very well due to the lackluster balancing. Also, I kinda wish there was an option to do the Posture-recovering stance a bunch of enemies like Owl and the Lone Shadows have, feels like a missed opportunity.

That sure is a lot of words to nitpick, huh? Well, it's a great game nonetheless and these are pretty much all the complaints I have. How minor they are speaks to the quality of Sekiro.

I definitely agree that the balance around tools, combat arts, and spirit emblems has room for improvement. If there ever is a sequel, it's the area I hope gets the most attention, perhaps to some degree of moveset customization.

Dragonrot, however, I will argue is much better off as inconsequential. I believe there's data that suggests it originally was indeed going to just kill off NPCS outright unless they were cured (individually), which is beyond absurd. Absolutely insane for a game that's already so punishing right out of the gate. Now, I'm a glutton for punishment, and I'll admit I'm curious about what it would've been like to play that version on release, but someone on the dev team was wise enough to tone it down for the wider audience.

As for the world and story, I found it serviceable enough (I've long since stopped expecting DS 1 interwoven world design to make a return), but I definitely think it's intentional to question whether Ashina is even remotely worth saving.

Another criticism I've seen is the initial boss pacing. The Chained Ogre, memorable as he is, doesn't put the game's best foot forward, especially by showcasing how ridiculous grabs can get, when the rest of the game's moves have immaculate hitboxes. On top of that, there's the first Headless, and the whole issue with confetti limiting attempts.

Edited by Eschaton on Jun 13th 2022 at 9:33:16 AM

Ashina really isn't worth saving anymore at that point. Even Isshin has accepted its downfall. Genichiro's desperation to save the land that had given him everything is meant to be seen as his Fatal Flaw.

Fortunately, Wolf isn't trying to save Ashina.

Ashina being beyond saving does tie in to the general FROM Soft theme of accepting that things end. Hence why Isshin, someone who has accepted that Ashina's time has passed, is able to face his end with a measure of pride and dignity. Genichiro by contrast falls deeper into damnation and ruin as he tries in vain to save his homeland.

Edited by M84 on Jun 14th 2022 at 12:31:44 AM

And to be fair it’s not like an invasion of the Interior Ministry, who partake in liberal amounts of Rape, Pillage, and Burn, is a favorable outcome.

The whole thing is a shitshow. That's why the best ending is Wolf getting Kuro and the Divine Child of Rejuvenation the hell away from it.

I didn't actually mind the Blazing Bull. His parry timing isn't very intuitive, but once you have it down, you can end the fight in less than a minute.

Anyway, I'm probably one of like three people in the world who care about this, but looks like someone recently modded the Total War: Shogun 2 soundtrack into the game:

The weirdest part about Sekiro is leading with the bosses best approached as if it's not Sekiro. Super confusing.

Also, oooh, Shogun 2 music.

Yup, there's a bare handful of not-Sekiro-style bosses (bulls, ogre, demon, ape kinda is and kinda isn't) and bull and ogre being fought before the first proper boss is a pretty harebrained decision. Guess they couldn't fit them elsewhere for narrative reasons.

The Corrupted Monk Illusion also feels distinctly like a more traditional Soulsborne boss compared to the rest. You're better off keeping your distance and dodging her attacks until you've gotten maybe halfway through her health bar, at which point she starts properly taking posture damage.

The monkey is like that too. Its really difficult to get posture damage to stick until you whittle down his hp a decent amount.

Not sure I agree. I always found the natural health damage -> posture damage progression of boss fights to be on of Sekiro's most brilliant design choices. You're encouraged to take your time, chip away at their health and learn their patterns early on, then go on the offensive when they've taken some damage so you can build up their posture through deflects and exploiting openings. And on a rematch, you already know how their work so you can start going for a posture kill from the get go if you keep up the pressure. It's a fantastic mechanic. But it applies to most bosses, the only reason Corrupted Monk stands out is because of her huge posture bar —you can still go for it, it's just tedious. As far as her moveset goes, she's pure Sekiro. As for Ape, it's mainly the grabs (god those hitboxes blow, especially the rolling one) and the fact that he loves to bound away on a whim —oddly enough, it's the huge bosses that have a bigger mobility advantage over Sekiro. But it's mainly the intimidation factor, especially for phase 2 — once you know the fight, you can put the screws to him same as any humanoid boss.

I think that the Illusory Monk stands out to me because of her Advancing Wall of Doom qualities. She's relatively slow, easy to dodge and has lots of openings for you to inflict vitality damage. On the flipside, her posture meter absolutely refuses to stick until you've gotten her vitality down to half, and her long combo attacks hit your posture bar like a truck if you insist on blade-tanking them instead of dodging away. The end result, I feel, is a fight that favours hit-and-run tactics and maintaining your distance rather than the in-your-face aggression that most of the game demands from you. I do think that the True Monk is a more conventional posture fight, though.

And yeah, half the difficulty in the Guardian Ape fight definitely comes down to the pychological factor: he's big, fast, loud, and the second phase turns up the intimidation factor up a notch. Despite all that, he spends as much time backing away from you as he does attacking, and the best thing you can do is staying in his face, where you can deflect his attacks and hack away at him until he staggers and falls over.

And now for something completely different: someone on Tumblr makes the power-up sugars IRL.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jul 28th 2022 at 6:35:58 AM

Got to say, this line at the end made me laugh louder than it probably should:

It's darkly hilarious that the Senpou monks' front business for supporting their horrifically unethical experiments on children...is selling candy.

I give them a point for making sure to memorialise everyone. Every failure, no matter how many there are.

Woman ahead

I really see where the "Malenia is a repurposed scrapped Tomoe fight" theory comes from. She fits right in.