Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Chopper
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Chopper »

Stanshall wrote: April 5th, 2019, 8:24 pm Where are you up to, Sean? Maybe just use the initials. I'm up to GA2-2.
No doubt this is Greatest Arsehole (so far) 2, second phase :D
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Nice one, dez. BB was a real roadblock for me, never faced anything quite as aggressive in any of the previous FROM games. It's like the second phase of Gascoigne but with nowhere to hide!
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Chopper wrote: April 6th, 2019, 7:43 am
Stanshall wrote: April 5th, 2019, 8:24 pm Where are you up to, Sean? Maybe just use the initials. I'm up to GA2-2.
No doubt this is Greatest Arsehole (so far) 2, second phase :D
:D

Giant Arsehole, in fact. Already took down Greatest.
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Nupraptor
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Nupraptor »

Butterfly is down. Repeat: Butterfly is down.
My hands are slick with sweat and I think I might now have arthritis, but she is DOWN.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Good man. Congratulations...on a dead end.

That's your first attack power upgrade, though, unless you've done some mad route up to now and that was the moment I thought, yeah, I can feel some progress.

I've just done Guape 2 after probably four days of banging my head and thinking it was impossible to find an attack window. Again, playing it like Souls just wasn't the way to do it, I had to get in, be bold with the parries and do some damage to inflict a bit of stagger and a bit more damage. Second half of the fight, I had loads more emblems and gourds to play with. Down you go.
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Nupraptor
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Nupraptor »

Stanshall - I beat Gyubou first, so I got my first power up from him.
Absolutely storming now. It's just like you said about it opening up after the blazing bull fight.
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James
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by James »

I've not been getting as much Sekiro time as I'd like, but am planning to crack on this weekend. I'm continually bowled over by how many areas there are to explore from the castle; I keep finding new paths and being drawn to explore rather than climbing the castle itself.
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Nupraptor
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Nupraptor »

It really gets more fun once you get to the castle.
You've got more freedom to explore. You've got a bit more health and a few more healing gourds. It means you can relax a bit and experiment a bit more with combat strategies. You can go for longer runs before you have to retreat back to a shrine. It's a lot more fun than the opening few sections. It gets prettier as well. Some of the environments after the castle are just gorgeous.

I kind of wish the first section of the game was just a bit more forgiving. I was very close to quitting and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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I'm very close to the end now, I've had a couple of names spoiled along the way (but generally avoided spoilers, somehow) and I think they're the only ones I've got left. I do think it's a flawed game in certain structural respects, you sometimes feel it's a domino rally of bosses, but for the most part it's a stunning game. The combat makes Bloodborne feel tame hack and slash. I mean it. Every single encounter feels brutal and bloody, even against the mobs, and when you meet some stiffer opposition, you either fight well or get put right in your place. CLANG CLANG CLANG BOOOSSSHHH. It is fearsome! There are few things as satisfying as wearing down a hard bastard's posture through sustained attack and well timed deflects and then it flashes up the deathblow cue and BAAMMMM.

I'll look forward to some spoiler type chat further down the line because there's so much to rave about.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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I don't feel this is a spoiler but the final three bosses in this (two are optional) are unenjoyably difficult. This may well be the first of the modern From games that I don't finish. I'll speak in general terms about the combat but if you want to go in dark, stop reading here.

One in particular, DoH, is the absolute pits, going against everything the game has taught you about combat throughout the whole game. It seems like a Dark Souls reference, which I can appreciate of course, but this game isn't set up at all like Dark Souls, it's about breaking posture and deathblows, and so you can only go for chip damage in a three-phase fight which probably takes a good twenty minutes at least, while most of the boss's attacks will one or two shot you and AOE attacks give you no time to heal. It's a very strange endurance test of nothing you've seen so far. It's just dull attrition where any error or deviation from the one strategy results in death.

The other two are doable, fucking hard and require near perfection, but I could see myself getting there but I don't enjoy the bosses nearly as much as the 'regular' game where stealth, traversal, prosthetics and items all seem to be viable and allow you to mix things up in a really fun way. The bosses, however, feel extremely prescriptive - to me, anyway. It's like, I love Ikaruga and I love the idea of refining execution again and again and again but I don't want to do that all the time, you know? That's why I got burned out on it. It gradually erodes the moment to moment pleasure of the game with the pursuit of victory becoming the only reason to play.

Ehh, maybe a bit grandiose but I'm sick to the back bollocks of Sekiro's endgame. I've also somehow (From conditioning, probably) done everything else in the game, aside from the odd NPC quest which is either/or, and so if/when I do finish this, I'll have very little reason to go back to it.
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by ratsoalbion »

Sounds awesome!
😬
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Haha. It's a fantastic game in every respect between the bosses. There were many moments where I thought this was the equal of Bloodborne and Dark Souls, but the bosses are a real letdown for me, and the domino rally I alluded to previously is a big part of the problem. In previous games, when you'd overcome a hurdle it felt like they would reward you with exploration or some scenery or lore or NPC or item or whatever it may be. Here, it often feels like your reward is another brick wall.

I just don't enjoy that side of it anywhere near as much as the regular combat and traversal.
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by KSubzero1000 »

I'm really curious to know how I'll feel about it once I re-start the game properly. I've managed to remain pretty spoiler-free for now, but the whole mystique surrounding this game's difficulty is intriguing.

One thing I will say is that I often found the marketing of the past Souls games, DS2 in particular, to focus on the difficulty aspect too much at the cost of the other interesting aspects worth talking about. A lot of people, to this day, only know Souls as those hyper-intimidating "hard games" first and foremost. Which is unfortunate, since I don't think the series would have garnered such a devoted cult following if they were just pointless exercises in masochistic frustration.

I can't help but wonder how much of Sekiro's difficulty was FROM's vision and how much was Activision's suggestion, if there was any.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Yes, this particular boss feels like the very worst of DS2 and the Chalice Dungeons. In terms of bullshit, think somewhere in the region of Blue Smelter Demon crossed with Defiled Watchdog crossed with Fume Knight, but as dreamed up by a total bastard. It's a shame but after about two hours trying the same boss and only once reaching phase three, I'm done for now. It's irritating having it there incomplete but it's beyond unenjoyable for me now, it's actually started to ruin my day off. No thanks.
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Nupraptor »

I just beat a boss in Sekiro at the top of a castle. It was very difficult, but I like a good boss fight and that was one of the best and most exhilarating boss fights I've had. Fighting Sigrun in God of War is the closest I've had in the past year, although I have high hopes for DMC5 when I finally play it.
It's difficult to reconcile, because Sekiro is so difficult that I almost gave up on it, but if it wasn't that difficult, I wouldn't get the same rush from beating that boss.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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I would say that that's my favourite boss in the game. Everything it's taught you needs to click at that point or you won't be ready for the second half of the game. Definitely the sweetest spot in terms of challenge and reward, to my tastes.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Stanshall wrote: April 9th, 2019, 3:40 pm Yes, this particular boss feels like the very worst of DS2 and the Chalice Dungeons. In terms of bullshit, think somewhere in the region of Blue Smelter Demon crossed with Defiled Watchdog crossed with Fume Knight, but as dreamed up by a total bastard. It's a shame but after about two hours trying the same boss and only once reaching phase three, I'm done for now. It's irritating having it there incomplete but it's beyond unenjoyable for me now, it's actually started to ruin my day off. No thanks.
And in true Souls fashion, I beat it first go this morning. :oops:
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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Hahahhhaha, FLOL.
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Stanshall
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by Stanshall »

After my whining, I finished this today having knocked off the remaining secret boss and the final boss.

Absolutely amazing.

The last two basically taught me how to play the game and made me want to start all over again. I could blame Souls muscle memory and the like but it's actually a lack of confidence to apply pressure and to go on the offensive, and instead playing reactively and defensively. Until the last three bosses, I cheesed my way through and played attritional chip damage bullshit style, taking advantage of the one or two attacks I learned to deal with. I happily admit that. It's also why the game seemed to be a real slog, I reckon. The final two were the hardest by a mile, wide range of moves to learn and very little room for error but I learned more every few attempts and by the end, I was sprinting back to them in excitement at teaching them a lesson.

As satisfying as anything in the Soulsborne games, genuinely, and to be honest, I don't think I ever 'mastered' any Souls boss as thoroughly as I learned these two. I'm really looking forward to getting back into NG+ with this new approach to combat. The game has simply come alive.
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Re: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Post by ratsoalbion »

Our Jacob has the Steam equivalent of the Platinum Trophy, the young nutter.
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