Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PS4, XBO, PC) - FromSoftware/Activision

strawberry float this game so much

Captain Kinopio wrote:Come to think of it I can hardly think of a non grunt enemy whose posture meter I’ve been able to wear down at all. The game tells you it’s important then in every single encounter of any note it’s just, lol no can’t touch this.

Eh, I got most of the bosses through posture degradation; Genichiro, the Centipedes, the Monk, Lady Butterfly even. Like I said, the best tip I've seen is that a constant offence is the best tactic... Never let up the attacks, and parry when needed.

The purple Shinobis too. And the red samurai. And the little 'rat' dudes. Actually, I can't think of any enemies I don't defeat through posture rather than health.

Guess I’m doing something wrong then as everything is just chip damage then spam attack to create an opening for death blow. It’s just not fun and so stupidly hard it doesn’t feel like it was play tested properly.

A lot of fights might be tolerable if the game allowed you room to move or time to think but it just doesn’t 90% of the time which makes defeating anything an intolerable grind. I feel it’s all been down hill since the first two bosses, both of which had the best environments to fight in. There are way too many stupidly difficult sub bosses in impossible to fight in settings. I’ve just found the Snake Eyes guys and I’m straight to YouTube because strawberry float putting up with that gooseberry fool.

It seems telling that doing this produces plenty of videos titled X Boss Cheese/Glitch defeat. These shouldn’t exist if the mechanics of the game didn’t just want to punish you.

Oh...I've got it coming tomorrow but your description makes it sound like everything I hate about Dark Souls...

I've got a feeling I might end up hating this.

For me, each new encounter is a learning curve. Take the Snake Eyes for example. The first few goes yes, you're completely outmatched. But on my third or fourth go I stopped just trying to spam and watched their moveset, trained myself to recognise the first few frames of their attack animations and taught myself how to react.

It was super, super frustrating. I could not get the hang of blocking their shotgun attacks. But slowly, slowly, I got it. I taught myself how to beat them. And I did. When I faced the second Snake Eyes, I beat her on the first try.

This is a game entirely about patience and pattern recognition, about skill with timing and risk vs reward. aka git gud.

I genuinely think I'm in love with it.

I’d like to do that, but there’s a half dozen other people shooting and attacking me and I’m surrounded by poison and cliff faces. It’s like trying to learn something when your teach smacks you with a ruler every 15 seconds regardless of whether you’re doing the right thing or not. I don’t really get the ‘feeling’ of learning and overcoming that people rave over for SoulsBourne games but for those at least it’s mostly fun. In this, eh...

I think I've gone as far as I can down any paths I had open until I beat the next proper boss. I've been to the end of the gun fort and hit a locked door as well as the only path I can see in the Buddhist temple being a loop. Asked around and someone said it was story-locked.

So I guess I'll do a bit of cleanup. Still have a few minibosses kicking around. Right now I can think of two side-paths, too, but heard people talking about the one that needs divine confetti as being the worst part of the game.

And if I'm right in guessing, I've already found the other side of that path anyway.

Though knowing this game I've probably thought I'm closing off everything, only to open another 5 paths each.

What do the dragon blood droplets do if you consume them yourself? Something about restorative power, but not sure what that actually means.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lazy Fair wrote:What do the dragon blood droplets do if you consume them yourself? Something about restorative power, but not sure what that actually means.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They remove Dragonrot from the NPCs you've met. It resets the chance of Unseen Aid, basically.

EDIT: Yeah, got to another bullshit fight. The two shinobis in the castle. It's annoying (there's the boss and a mook and even killing the mook is tough) and it's badly done (the camera is all over the place and the space is tiny). When you compare this to something like Genichiro, it's amazing they let it through.

How's this for an attempt? :slol:

This was about my tenth go.

There was a super long period of exploration combined with amazing boss fights and now this... a single area filled with elite mooks and a cheap, mechanically dodgy boss.

Oh well!

You have to fight 2 of those things at once :lol:

Yeah pretty sure I’m just going to trade this in.

I’ve no doubt there’s something good in here but it’s just buried under bullshit enemy encounters.

Captain Kinopio wrote:You have to fight 2 of those things at once

There's 5 of them in one area before you even get to the boss room!

Thanks for the heads up. I have zero interest in doing that.

Captain Kinopio wrote:Thanks for the heads up. I have zero interest in doing that.

I can kill them one on one without taking damage now, but they're also accompanied by dogs that they whistle for which makes sneaking almost impossible. There's also poison shinobis (like the boss).

It's...tough.

What clicked with you? We seem to have switched opinions on the game. Not sure if there’s some technique I can’t do or just don’t have the patience or will power.

Captain Kinopio wrote:What clicked with you? We seem to have switched opinions on the game. Not sure if there’s some technique I can’t do or just don’t have the patience or will power.

I know right? I was the one getting super strawberry floating angry!

I genuinely don't know, but the same thing happened with Bloodborne. At the start it was a strawberry floating grind and I really didn't get it. Then I hit Gasgoine and nearly stopped playing. In Sekiro I disliked the boss-rush nature of the opening sections and hit Genichiro and nearly stopped playing.

I think it's that, like Gasgoine, Genichiro is a teaching moment. It's not just about parrying it's about watching. If you're hitting a brick wall it's because you're not paying attention... most of the time. The Centipede is a great example: as far as I can see you were bashing your head against him for ages, whereas I managed to kill him on my second go. This wasn't because I was better, it was because I watched a video that spelled out his flurry rhythm. I found myself counting out loud during Genichiro's attacks (one two pause one two three dodge attack one two... really) and soon after I got him.

Like I say there are some straight up bullshit fights, mainly due to camera and space issues. But for most of the time the combat is utterly sublime, and fights with even the lowliest grunts feel like epic duels. Yes some freedom has been taken from you the player, but the feeling of becoming as badass as your character that replaces it is amazing.

Can't be strawberry floated with this any more either and I'm gonna get rid. Progress is too slow and I'm not really finding it engaging at all compared to Dark Souls and Bloodborne which had all that amazing level design and environmental storytelling. Still think the combat is pish too and I'm not wanting to waste any more time on a game that I don't like enough to see to the end, and it seems like it has zero replay value too compared to From's other games that I've completed countless times each.

Bloodborne 2 next please rather than another game like this.

Wait, is Limmy trying to kill Seven Spears inside? That's like trying to do it with one hand tied behind your back!

But yeah, it's not for everyone. Like I say, I'm strawberry floating loving it though.

Beat Genchiro after following a guide. I’m just going to do that for everyone I come up against for as long as I keep playing.

If the SoulsBourne faithful were intolerable before this game, once they’ve fully embraced it :dread:

Tafdolphin wrote:Wait, is Limmy trying to kill Seven Spears inside? That's like trying to do it with one hand tied behind your back!

But yeah, it's not for everyone. Like I say, I'm strawberry floating loving it though.

He got chased into the house when he was trying to run and go out the hole at the side. I think he'd basically given up by that point anyway, I'm surprised he stuck with it for as long as he did. He dropped Bloodborne at Father Gascoigne.

Can’t see where to go now. I think I need Divine Confetti to progress but I can’t get it anywhere.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (PS4, XBO, PC) - FromSoftware/Activision

Who is online

Affiliates