Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

The hitboxes on a lot of his moves are weird - you'll notice his dropkick will magnetize toward you and doesn't actually follow physics. There are a number of enemies with similar command grab moves that will warp you into the strike zone if you're close enough.

Chained Ogre was extremely easy to me. Didn't get hit once.

Right now advanced all the way to Oniwa. Who's pretty simple, but damn is it hard to get those deflections in the chaos. So bosses on both ends now.

Ironically the Mikiri counter, which should be risky as hell, is one of the most reliable moves in the game. You can basically just spam it whenever you notice an enemy is winding up a thrust attack.

Well, congratulations to From for finally making me quit a game. The Sunken Crown didn't break me, the Fume Knight didn't break me, Nameless King didn't break me, Kos didn't break me, but trash mobs in this game broke me.

I maade it to the interior of Ashina Castle, saw what was ahead, and yeah, I'm not ashamed to give up. This game's just not fun to play. Godspeed to everyone who wants to continue with it, though.

^Note that this will not work against the boss in the Ashina Reservoir. Try it and he'll kick your ass.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 23rd 2019 at 1:18:23 PM

You don't have Mikiri in the Reservoir, it's unlocked later. It makes some enemies pretty trivial once you get the hang of it.

Kind of salty that I almost beat Genichiro in the Reservoir until I fucked up a jump.

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 23rd 2019 at 10:56:23 AM

You can go back eventually, long after you unlock the shinobi skill tree.

Anyway, last post here. Godspeed, folks!

Gotta say, I'm not having fun right now either. I'm at the Hirata Estate weird flashback thing, and I cannot beat the miniboss guy with the spear. Looked to me like he was designed for you to use the Mikiri Counter against, but as far as I can see it doesn't work against him.

Found another way to go, but the mob group there is fucking me up because of stuff like somehow the guys nearest me only have yellow awareness of me, but then out of nowhere the archer at the back starts shooting. And it's impossible to fight the guy in your face when the archer hits you almost without fail right before the melee guy attacks so you can't deflect the melee attack, but if you dodge the arrow you, at best, miss your chance at countering the melee attack.

Nothing in this game makes sense to me. Unless this is a Beef Gate, but that annoys me if it is, because even if this isn't Soulsborne, I still kinda expected to be able to get past this shit with skill, but this game seems to just punish you hard for fucking up.

Edited by artfulscruff on Mar 23rd 2019 at 1:06:10 PM

I've been watching Pat's stream and I'm itching to get hands on this game. Jim Sterling compared it to Revengeance, (in that he didn't get into that game either) and that makes me excited.

Went back to Ashina Outskirts and I am now getting my arse kicked by the Chained Ogre. I want to like this game, but I'm really not having fun at the moment. In Soulsborne, if I died I always knew what I did wrong. In this I don't.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's a bad game. At least I don't think I am. I might be just really bad at it. It's just so punishing (I say as someone who probably has something like 800 hours logged between all the Soulsborne games). Bloodborne had a rough start too, but it was never as frustrating as this.

I assume you're talking about the Shinobi Hunter just beyond the bridge where you're introduced to your first two shield guys? It's entirely possible to use Mikiri Counter on him, you just need to watch for the timing; a piece of advice would be to pick off the mooks before sneak stabbing him.

I wish Hanbei's training had options for him to mix up his attack windups, so as to more efficiently train any abilities. Training deflections with him actually made it a little harder for me to properly deflect the axe guys, since I keep missing their timings.

As for the mini/bosses, quite a number of them do seem to have homing attacks that shouldn't at all be homing, the Chained Ogre's dropkick being the most egregious.

EDIT: Wow, beat Gyoubu after two tries; he was far, far easier than the Chained Ogre itself, which took me a dozen attempts. Deflecting his spear was a cinch, and the firecrackers proved invaluable in building up his posture damage. Both of his health bars didn't even get below the halfway mark before I could already land both deathblows on him. The Grappling Hook Attack and Nightjar Slash techniques also proved especially useful in damaging and preventing him from regenerating his posture.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Mar 23rd 2019 at 10:19:19 AM

We allowed to talk about spoilers here because I saw the true ending (it took awhile for people to find it because its not intuitive but that's fromsoft for you) and man is it weird as fuck (and also mega super franchise sequel hook bait).

Well, finally managed to beat Butterfly, Gyobu and Blazing Bull in a single session. Ashina Castle is nightmare with those Nightjar ninjas, mid-air deflect can do only so much.

Those things scared the fuck out of me the first time I encountered them. I was just up there, appreciating the kite, when wham.

Yeah. I have executed it, as in stopped the attack, but he seems immune to a follow-up attack.

And I do pick off the mooks individually first and get a sneak attack in first, but that's part of why it's a bad head; it's slow work, and then the Hunter just destroys me and I have to do it all again.

Edited by artfulscruff on Mar 24th 2019 at 10:41:29 AM

Popping back in briefly, because I have friends still playing Sekiro and I was reminded of something I realized that ties in with . The reward system for stealth is all kinds of fucky in this game; you're never rewarded for using stealth, just punished for not using stealth, which isn't the same thing. You can use stealth in an enemy encampment to cut down the enemies you need to fight, and you'll still get rewards for killing them, which is fine. There are side traversal paths you can use to get to bosses faster while you watch your money test Zeno's distance paradox, which is also fine. However, in most cases, attempting to fight more than one enemy at a time is a death sentence - especially if there are ranged enemies around. For an involved camp like the one in Ashina Reservoir, you can spend ten minutes clearing out the camp (depending on how long you need to hide somewhere safe and AFK for the enemies to forget about you), only to get run through by the miniboss on the first attack and have to start all over.

Which brings me to minibosses. Minibosses feel like they're designed to be attacked from stealth first, which removes one of their health bars, but stealth offers you no benefit after that. You could just as easily remove one health bar from every miniboss in the game and prevent deathblowing them from stealth, and it would change nothing - you'd still have one health bar to kill. What it does is punish you for a poor approach, which, again, means you just need to run away and AFK for two minutes until the boss resets, slowing down the pacing and learning to a crawl.

All in all, the feeling you end up getting is that Sekiro is kind of a crap ninja, given that he can't actually kill the important people from cover, has no ranged options worth a damn, and generally just gets into swordfights with heavily armored samurai.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 24th 2019 at 8:00:24 AM

The follow-up is only possible when you've maxed out his posture bar. Otherwise, you just stop him.

I realised recently that the dodge counter is pretty much a go to maneuver against a lot enemies and minibosses. Get the timing right on that and deflect for a few select moves, and you pretty much cover most of the minibosses.

Edited by TerminusEst on Mar 24th 2019 at 5:06:57 AM

Managed to kill the Shinobi Hunter, though I couldn't tell you how. Proceeded ahead, found a bunch of archers, and in trying to find a way around them found some guy in a purple robe who promptly fucked my shit up.

Went back to the Chained Ogre, almost killed him only to fail to dodge a grab right at the end. The next several attempts didn't go anything like as well until eventually I failed to dodge another grab, and this one threw me off a cliff so couldn't even resurrect.

I'm done, for today at least. I really don't know if I can stick with this. Killing the Shinobi Hunter didn't even feel rewarding, like finally defeating a Soulsborne boss does.

Got my ass kicked by the Headless. I'll come back once I have more Prayer Beads.

Right now I'm killing Samurai in Ashina Castle since they drop Divine Confetti sometimes. The money will also help me buy that one Gourd Seed from Fujioka.

Killed the Ogre and General whatshisface right after, on only the second attempt. Have I finally got gud? Probably not.

I just killed The horse riding general myself.

Pretty fun game so far. It may be brutal and punishing, but I find it worth it in the end.

I have just reached Gyoubu too. So far, he is not frustrating me like the other bosses did. I might be starting to git gud, though I still couldn't tell you how.

I did have that thing though where your first try at a boss goes pretty well, and then on subsequent attempts when you actually try, you get wrecked. Probably helped that the first time I could resurrect a second time (I'm still not sure how that works).

EDIT - Gyoubu is toast. I don't think I even died on the winning run.

Edited by artfulscruff on Mar 24th 2019 at 1:45:39 PM

He becomes an even bigger pushover if you got the fire crackers before hand, as it startles his horse if he runs at you if you time its usage properly.

It doesn’t just startle his horse, the firecrackers also inflict pretty massive posture damage on him, making the entire fight even simpler. Thanks to them the guy was still well over a third health by the time I could use a deathblow on him

but

are Ayame or Rikimaru hidden boss fights?

Cause if there is no equivalent of the Jin Hayabusa fight I'm just gonna stick with Nioh and waiting on blood bourne 2

Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Mar 24th 2019 at 12:38:12 PM

Beat the Seven Spears miniboss. Got a third Prayer Bead Necklace, which will hopefully help when I face the boss of Ashina Castle.