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Anyone else playing this?

This is by far my favorite From Software game now. The personal skill required to succeed is incredibly rewarding.

Tried it and bounced completely off at the first mini boss.

I've never been a fan of character action games that depend on a parry mechanic to survive, and unfortunately for me that's exactly what Sekiro is. Bloodborne was probably as close to that genre as I could stand getting to.

What's even more unfortunate is that the game actively punishes you for trying to take advantage of the one conceit that Fromsoft games are basically built on: The game is hard, and you'll die a lot, but you can get back up and try again. But death in Sekiro seems way more punishing, with the loss of the skill bar, money, and Dragonrot.

Which is a shame, because the game looks awesome. But I know 100% it's not for me, so I guess I'm out of luck, and I'll have to wait for Ghost of Tsushima for my samurai fix.

No, from the handful of Twitch streamers I’ve watch playing it, it’s a gakky game, you can only kill boss with BS tactics; the developers didn’t do the players any favors either, for example there was a boss with 3 health bars; they expect you to beat all 3 at one go, what should have happened is that there will be a quick save after the first 2 bars.

 Big Mac wrote:
No, from the handful of Twitch streamers I’ve watch playing it, it’s a gakky game, you can only kill boss with BS tactics; the developers didn’t do the players any favors either, for example there was a boss with 3 health bars; they expect you to beat all 3 at one go, what should have happened is that there will be a quick save after the first 2 bars.

That sounds awful. Why would they have you quick save after two bars and then possibly ruin a save file just to fight the last one? 3 Bars is not a big deal. Just fight smarter. People are already doing no hit runs of this game, so I find the BS tactics to be a hard sell as well. Seems more like, From Software switched up the recipe and people are struggling to swap over.

 infinite_array wrote:
Tried it and bounced completely off at the first mini boss.

I've never been a fan of character action games that depend on a parry mechanic to survive, and unfortunately for me that's exactly what Sekiro is. Bloodborne was probably as close to that genre as I could stand getting to.

What's even more unfortunate is that the game actively punishes you for trying to take advantage of the one conceit that Fromsoft games are basically built on: The game is hard, and you'll die a lot, but you can get back up and try again. But death in Sekiro seems way more punishing, with the loss of the skill bar, money, and Dragonrot.

Which is a shame, because the game looks awesome. But I know 100% it's not for me, so I guess I'm out of luck, and I'll have to wait for Ghost of Tsushima for my samurai fix.

Well, let me clear up the punishing death thing. First, experience comes fast. Loosing it never sets you back much, and you never loose levels gained, only experience on the way to the next level. For instance the most exp I needed to reach a level so far has been a little over 1k. But if I wanted to farm EXP I could kill these same 4 guys over and over again for 138 exp a loop. When you die you loose half your gained exp. It's really not much of an issue.

As for money, there is almost no use for it that I have seen so far. And again, it comes fast, and again, you only ever loose half. I have had over 5k Sen (money). I just started spending it on resource items for when I eventually die. Meanwhile you get coin purse items (like soul items in dark souls) which don't go away when you die. So if you reach a merchant and want to buy something but happened to have died recently you can just pop the items and make your purchase.

Finally, dragonrot is curable with an item. It's inconvenient like being hollow in darksouls but it doesn't stop the game or anything.

It is very parry heavy. But not all parry. It's more aggression. You need to stay on the enemies and keep them engaged so they don't have time to recover. Unlike Darksouls where you patiently wait for openings. Sekiro is more a dance back and forth where proper use of aggression and deflection forces the enemy to make a opening.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Big Mac wrote:
No, from the handful of Twitch streamers I’ve watch playing it, it’s a gakky game, you can only kill boss with BS tactics; the developers didn’t do the players any favors either, for example there was a boss with 3 health bars; they expect you to beat all 3 at one go, what should have happened is that there will be a quick save after the first 2 bars.

That sounds awful. Why would they have you quick save after two bars and then possibly ruin a save file just to fight the last one? 3 Bars is not a big deal. Just fight smarter. People are already doing no hit runs of this game, so I find the BS tactics to be a hard sell as well. Seems more like, From Software switched up the recipe and people are struggling to swap over.

It's also inaccurate.

Health doesn't work that way in Sekiro.

You basically have 3 kinds of "health".

Vitality is the closest you are going to get to what you think of as a health bar. Landing actual hits on an enemy chips away at vitality. But depleting it is not a kill and it's not necessary to actually do it. It mostly slows down the recovery of posture.

Posture is their control in combat. Timing your parrys well, aggressive attacks, counters and gak. Even when you or they attack you get some posture "damage". This accumulation of posture damage is probably the most important thing in sekiro. When their posture breaks you can deliver a deathblow.

Deathblows are the little marks above their vitality bar. Most enemies have 1 vitality bar/deathblow and they are dead. Some tough as feth guys have 2. Some bosses might have 3 like he mentioned. Each time you deliver a Deathblow they recover their vitality to full and the fight continues.

Killing a 3 DB boss isn't chipping away through 3 vitality bars. It's breaking their posture 3 times. The vitality bars don't actually matter unless the enemy has really fast posture recovery and dropping their vitality is a way to slow it down so that they can't recover posture during the fight.

well, when the boss hit you once and you lose 60% of health, its a problem. You must heal, you can only self resurrect once. Its not even grinding like Division 2, its stuck at a boss for 2 hrs with no progress and mount up frustration, which leads to no fun.

It's fine if you feel that way. It's for sure a very hard game. But every death is your fault. The bosses are not running on mechanics different from yours. They run on the same mechanics you are using.

You need to actually sword fight them. Parry, dodge, and attack as need be to break their posture. Its not a grind and you never loose much from death (and you only gain dragon rot SOMETIMES from the resurrection mechanic), AND its not only once. Before I fought the first actual boss I had 2 resurrections I could build up. I have seen a video or 2 of people having 3 or more. Dragon Rot happens when you deplete all your build up of resurrections and then die again. Not on every death or resurrection.

If Darksouls was too "hard" or "frustrating" a game for you then sekiro definitely is. But sekiro in some ways cut out a bunch of DS bs and in other ways ramped up the difficulty by giving you more responsive controls and then putting those controls in the fore front of the experience.

nope, never played Dark Souls, but it was watchable in the background while I paint. The game I'm most looking to play is Wasteland 3, its like X-com.

Housemate is playing it.

Watched a bit -- especially his many many many -- Tom Cruise Day after Tomorrow style -- deaths against ..Lady Butterfly.

It's pretty but seems like a more limited version of the various Batman games TBH.

Yeah, I think Lady Butterfly is the first real boss. At least the first I ran into.

The fact that games "journalists" are frothing at the mouth demanding an "easy" mode should tell you everything you need to know about the game.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
The fact that games "journalists" are frothing at the mouth demanding an "easy" mode should tell you everything you need to know about the game.

How do you figure?

Game Journalists often have very limited experience with a game. A few hours. If the game has a learning curve they might start to glean that learning curve but never really delve deeply into it.

What exactly does it tell us that a bunch of people with limited experience wish the game had a difficulty setting?

Speaking of learning curves. I made a break through or 2 today. I went from being up to but not beating a mini boss and a boss last night. to 3 more bosses and 4 mini bosses dead today.

Watched a few hours of it being played by 4 different streamers. Maybe it’s more fun to play but it looked boring to me. Combat seems more limited than DS with less options and character builds. I may pick it up on the cheap eventually but from what I’ve seen I’d rather just play through the SoulsBorne games again.

i was never a fan of the Demon souls & or Dark Souls games, Bloodborne was up to the release of Sekiro the game I have spent most time on my Ps4 excluding the Witcher 3. I find it a good game and yes, you will be severely punished for making mistakes. But one dose not die due to faulty game mechanics. And the game offers solutions to many of ones troubels if you look for them.

 Big Mac wrote:
well, when the boss hit you once and you lose 60% of health, its a problem. You must heal, you can only self resurrect once.

Three times, actually. There's a delay between resurrections and you need to land a deathblow between each one, but still, it's not as bleak as you think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
But every death is your fault.

Except against Lone Shadow Longswordsman or Long-Arm Centipede Giraffe.

Having you fought a highly agile and aggressive miniboss in a 3 meter by 3 meter room with crappy camera controls where if you're pushed up in to a corner or against a wall you immediately lose lockon. From should be better than that. Though at least Giraffe is a very simple miniboss (you can beat him just by deflecting his blows and jumping over the sweep attack until your deflections knock him off balance), but the Lone Shadow guy? Yikes... From, waht you smokin?

I am up to the Lone shadow. Havent beat him yet. Not yet up to the centipede.

I did kill the 3 story pagoda version of lone shadow. But i needed all that room to manuever. Not looking forward to the well version.

Also 7 heavenly spears is giving me grief atm.

Im up to a few bosses in a few directions that i kind of need another "get gud" breakthrough to get past.

For that particular Lone Shadow, my recommendation is use oil jars plus fire to whittle his health down and playing it defensively and trying never to get shoved in to a corner.

 Melissia wrote:
For that particular Lone Shadow, my recommendation is use oil jars plus fire to whittle his health down and playing it defensively and trying never to get shoved in to a corner.

Yeah I did pretty good lighting him on fire and then using the Sabimaru to poison him. I just need to tighten up my defensive timing. There are times I panic and start button mashing and I pay for it every time. It's a matter of practice at this point.

Games Journalists: "From Software must respect it's players and add an easy mode because disabled games exist."

Disabled Gamers: "Hold my beer (because I can't)." (Spoilers for one of the fights) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tso8u4OJLuI

It's official, Pigeons and Quadriplegics are better at games than Games Journalists.

So I guess I had a "Git Gud" moment yesterday. I went back and restarted the game and ran around the first area before the miniboss to get some more practice.

I then sneaked around the miniboss to get a diving attack to being with, ate some Ungo's Sugar, and managed to beat him.

I felt the same way back when I first beat the Taurus Demon.

I then went through the little area that was next, managed to skirmish and stealth/dive kill most of the people (including some kind of Ogre that was hiding around a corner? I jumped on him and he disappeared so quickly I didn't actually see him). My only revival so far was when I got ganked by some kind of offscreen cannon shot.

I'm in the Hirata Estate memory now and just slowly making my way along.

You'll want to get the Mikiri Counter sooner rather htan later. It is brutal against spear-users.

It was the first skill I got. Every person talking about the game on podcasts/youtube/twitter are basically screaming MIKIRI MIKIRI MIKIRI.

Yeah, if there is any one skill that is a must have it's mikiri counter. That gak is great.

I managed to trounce the well lone longswordsman and the 7 ashina spears today. So... progress!