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Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (22 March 2019) OT - Not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4 . . . (Update: GOTY Edition coming October 28!)


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19 minutes ago, Bacon said:

This is kind of my issue. This game and Nioh really demand a lot from me. Like, there is no relaxing in those games, where as Dark Souls and BB were pretty relaxing games outside of the bosses. 

There's just an absurd gulf of difficulty between the actual stages and mini-bosses/bosses for me at least so far. Souls and Bloodborne always made me want to "try just one more time" when a boss smashed me, this game is honestly doing the opposite right now. I was also pissed to find out that after bashing my head against one mini-boss for an hour, all it did was unlock the arena for...a worse mini-boss.  I'm hoping that changes with learning the combat system more and it's just because it's new to me. 

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5 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

There's just an absurd gulf of difficulty between the actual stages and mini-bosses/bosses for me at least so far.

There totally is. The standard mob enemy dies in just 3 hits. Almost no need to do anything buy attack. Boss are nothing like that. 

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https://www.polygon.com/sekiro-guide/2019/3/21/18256340/beginners-tips-tricks-posture-vitality-resurrection-unseen-aid-deathblow-stealth

 

Quote

Health in Sekiro works basically like you’d expect, but with a bit of a twist. Everybody has a Vitality bar for health and a Posture bar. Vitality drains as you take damage, but Posture fills as you do things like block or get grabbed. For your enemies, it drains when they block, too.


When an enemy’s Posture damage gauge is full or when they’re unaware of your presence, they’re open to a Deathblow — you’ll also see a red dot appear in their chest letting you know.

A Deathblow is almost always fatal. Stronger enemies like mini-bosses and bosses might require multiple Deathblows, but they’re rare, and you’ll see two red dots over their Vitality bar.

 

The system takes a second to grasp while playing, but understanding — and using it — will help you know how to fight. For example, if you have an enemy whose Posture damage fills with only a couple hits, you know you don’t have worry about timing your attacks — you can just swing away until you drop them.

 

To add to this, you only get one healing gourd to fill your vitality in the beginning. You refill it by visiting a shrine. It can be upgraded later.

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42 minutes ago, Bacon said:

There totally is. The standard mob enemy dies in just 3 hits. Almost no need to do anything buy attack. Boss are nothing like that. 

I guess I could say the same about Souls and Bloodborne but I feel like the actual combat tactics are so different for bosses and mini-bosses that levels don't prepare me for it. I feel like that'll change but right now it definitely feels weird to go through an entire level dying once in my case only to feel completely helpless and unprepared in terms of even strategy against a mini-boss, not just execution. 

 

That being said, the levels themselves are incredibly good and fun and it really does feel like an evolution of Tenchu 1 to me in many ways.

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The combo of the some of the games mechanics are too much when you get to sub boss/boss fights.

1. Low healing item count

2.Your posture is punished when you lose health

3.Boss posture doesnt seem to be effected the way the players is

And I cant be sure but sometimes I feel like the sub boss/bosses seem to track heavy and ive had them hit me thru my swing animation at what feels like light speed.Up unitl now all From game bosses have been hard but fair , this feels hard for the sake of annoying the player.

 

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3 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

You might not remember, but Soulsborne games have enemies with ridiculous tracking. Attacks from Black and Silver Knights basically homed in on you.

 

Yep, those fuckers would magiclly spin 45 degrees to catch you at the end of a dodge sometimes

 

So I caved and I'm DL'ing right now.  I'll just have to figure out how to make time for this, Anthem and The Show.  I simply couldn't not play a From game right away.  It just isnt' an option haha

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5 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

You might not remember, but Soulsborne games have enemies with ridiculous tracking. Attacks from Black and Silver Knights basically homed in on you.

I agree yes, but it's absolutely ramped to 11/10 in Sekiro. It's like they thought that shit was cool somehow and actually made it much worse. 

 

Regarding your post above, I'm actually employing all those tactics and I think the levels themselves have actually been super fun and not very hard. The bosses are nasty though in a bad way so far for me like I've said. I just feel like the levels don't prepare you and things get so absurdly perfection-demanding compared to the relatively forgiving pace and combat of the regular enemies, it just feels out of nowhere to me. 

 

Combine that with all the other shit @SimpleGsaid and bosses just feel incredibly brutal for the sake of it right now. The levels don't demand 1/10th of that precision or skill. It's the first time I get the feeling From bought into their own difficulty hype and went overboard honestly. I'll probably change my tune once I sink more time in and learn everything properly but it definitely just feels frustrating instead of challenging right now.

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I only got to play for around an hour last night so hopefully my early criticisms get fixed. While I like the stealth and jumping around and doing death from above kills, I hate the basic combat loop of direct one on one confrontation where it's deflect/counter attack. But I'm assuming directly engaging most enemies is doing it wrong. Hopefully combat options open up as you upgrade the arm because the basic tutorial combat is boring. 

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1 minute ago, Man of Culture said:

Eh, the bosses aren't really all that hard tbh. It's really all about pattern recognition.. That being said, the actual demand on the player being precise with dodges, parries and tool usage during boss fights is way, way more demanding than that of some of the toughest boss fights in earlier Souls games. That seems to be where most of the difficulty comes from. The actual tracking is no worse than prior games, as I said before, Knights in earlier Souls games had tracking that was easily on par with what we see in Sekiro, the only difference being that if you had decent stamina and a 100% physical damage absorbing shield, the knights were a joke.

I mean, I don't know what your definition of hard is but saying they're not that hard and then stating they're way, way more demanding than some of the toughest boss fights in earlier Souls games is...really fucking hard to me honestly haha.

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1 hour ago, Man of Culture said:

You might not remember, but Soulsborne games have enemies with ridiculous tracking. Attacks from Black and Silver Knights basically homed in on you.

But you can totally roll thru anything, and you can't in SSDT. If you could this game would be as easy as DS. 

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6 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

Ugh I’m so on the fence. I fell down the Anthem rabbit hole hard and I’m absolutely loving that game. And The Show comes out on Tuesday which usually eats up all of my spring gaming time. So I was thinking of playing this mid summer. But I don’t know if I can wait that long. I won’t be able to resist coming in here and seeing you guys talk about all the crazy stuff and it’s gonna kill me haha

This sounds like me exactly. lol. I reallllly wanna download it. 

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2 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

 

Yep, those fuckers would magiclly spin 45 degrees to catch you at the end of a dodge sometimes

 

So I caved and I'm DL'ing right now.  I'll just have to figure out how to make time for this, Anthem and The Show.  I simply couldn't not play a From game right away.  It just isnt' an option haha

Lemme know if you like it so I can cave too!!!

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I mean, there's no real reason to roll (err, dodge) a bunch here. At least in the first several hours, you can deflect most attacks, and the deflect window seems fairly generous (AND you can spam it) -- the other attacks can be avoided without too much hassle.

 

So far I don't find it terribly hard, just much more fast-paced, which means I actually do way better at this than I do in Souls titles. I have a hard time adjusting to slower combat, or slower gameplay in general. When a slow song comes on in a music game I fucking suck so hard.

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I think I need to start over. I fucking suck at this game, lol. I couldnt even make it to this Ogre everyone is talking about. I had zero issues and was doing fine until...

 

Spoiler

I got stuck at the part where you fight some General. I think its the first time they go over unblockable strikes. Hes standing next to a closed gate. On the other side is a bunch of normal enemies. Two guys at the top of a stairs where you can eavesdrop. Some big giant is beyond them. 

 

I think I havent actually been playing this game aggressively enough. I was trying to be more defensive, but i think im getting wrecked bc they are breaking my posture. My biggest issue is multiple enemies at once. I need to go back to the zombie dude and practice. 

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1 hour ago, atom631 said:

I think I need to start over. I fucking suck at this game, lol. I couldnt even make it to this Ogre everyone is talking about. I had zero issues and was doing fine until...

 

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I got stuck at the part where you fight some General. I think its the first time they go over unblockable strikes. Hes standing next to a closed gate. On the other side is a bunch of normal enemies. Two guys at the top of a stairs where you can eavesdrop. Some big giant is beyond them. 

 

I think I havent actually been playing this game aggressively enough. I was trying to be more defensive, but i think im getting wrecked bc they are breaking my posture. My biggest issue is multiple enemies at once. I need to go back to the zombie dude and practice. 

Try to avoid mobs at all costs, they'll fuck you up. Remember how much of a drop you have on these guys with your grapple hook and drop stealth kills for example, really utilize your freedom of movement and stealth to thin out crowded areas. The other guys will get startled if you stealth kill someone in front of them and take that second to grapple back out of the place if there are several guys you think you can't handle. Basically, divide & conquer stealth tactics work really well here for me at least. 

 

You can also fully sprint in this game and still get a sneak attack if their back is turned by the way, his footsteps are really silent. I've often run up on an entire group from a vantage point, stealth killed one dude, grappled out of there, hid for a bit and attack them again from a different angle for example.

 

But yeah, the General...you can stealth him and get rid of the first health bar right away leaving you to only have to fight through one. 

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7 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

Try to avoid mobs at all costs, they'll fuck you up. Remember how much of a drop you have on these guys with your grapple hook and drop stealth kills for example, really utilize your freedom of movement and stealth to thin out crowded areas. The other guys will get startled if you stealth kill someone in front of them and take that second to grapple back out of the place if there are several guys you think you can't handle. Basically, divide & conquer stealth tactics work really well here for me at least. 

 

You can also fully sprint in this game and still get a sneak attack if their back is turned by the way, his footsteps are really silent. I've often run up on an entire group from a vantage point, stealth killed one dude, grappled out of there, hid for a bit and attack them again from a different angle for example.

 

But yeah, the General...you can stealth him and get rid of the first health bar right away leaving you to only have to fight through one. 

After like 3 deaths to that guy I said fuck it.. typical From fashion they made an easy bypass so I can probably just come back to him later. So i go to the next area and took out 2 dudes, then the guy with the arrows spotted me and started shooting. that basically pulled agro on anyone in the area. So i start kiting around and ran into that giant dude. LOL. i was like "oh cmon!!" 

 

i really actually think i was being too careful and playing too slowly. I only really played for about an hour before the urge for Division 2 hit me. But now I kinda wanna take a crack at it again. 

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I have a sealed PS4 copy of this sitting on my desk now. I also shouldn't have bought it because I'm broke. I'll probably stare at the box for a couple of days then return it. It'll still kick my ass later this year when I can get it for half price, and I've got plenty of other games to play (including Dark Souls 3, which I haven't beaten). 

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15 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I have a sealed PS4 copy of this sitting on my desk now. I also shouldn't have bought it because I'm broke. I'll probably stare at the box for a couple of days then return it. It'll still kick my ass later this year when I can get it for half price, and I've got plenty of other games to play (including Dark Souls 3, which I haven't beaten). 

Treat yo self

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I played about an hour, which is the tutorialish place I suppose so it's probably not indicative of the rest of the game but it seems to be the most accessable souls-like game so far. In regards to gameplay mechanics, story, etc there is a lot of exposition, even for the healing gourd, so for folks like @ShreddieMercuryRising perhaps this is the game you're looking for.

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For anyone strugglebusing in the ogre fight: NEVER dodge when you can jump instead.  Jump works a million times better than dodging.  It dramatically reduces being grabbed or hit so much you can get comfortable and style on him sometimes.  Once you deal the first killstrike of two, grapple onto a roof or tree and unload all your shuriken into him.  You'll damage him almost as much as earlier when he was breaking out of his restraints. Have some pellets ready going in and don't resurrect until the second phase of the fight. And be sure to prioritize defense over offense.  Jumping before attacking when possible.  Usually one strike is best, sometimes two, and when he's staggered a bit three but no more unless you want to risk it. It didn't occur to me until after defeating him but it might be possible to upgrade your health gourd too.  If not, shouldn't be a big deal to get through it without it.   

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12 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I played about an hour, which is the tutorialish place I suppose so it's probably not indicative of the rest of the game but it seems to be the most accessable souls-like game so far. In regards to gameplay mechanics, story, etc there is a lot of exposition, even for the healing gourd, so for folks like @ShreddieMercuryRising perhaps this is the game you're looking for.

I picked it up yesterday, but haven't had the chance to play yet.  I know that it's going to be rough difficulty-wise, but the aesthetics and combat system seem so compelling that I can see myself wanting to really dive deeply into the game.  Impressions so far seem to be very positive, and I'm more excited about this than I have been for any game since probably God of War last year.  Although I haven't played any Souls games, I am not a stranger to difficulty, and I'm thinking that it may be an advantage having not played those since some of the difficulty people are experiencing sounds like it stems from having to adjust how they think about approaching the combat. 

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3 hours ago, Firewithin said:

Ooof I'm going to be bad at this...getting wrecked by some mini boss general guy towards the beginning after you find the first arm prosthetic 

 

I just got to that guy. It really made me appreciate the flow of the combat. He's not too hard. His attack pattern is pretty easy to recognize. Just back up enough that he wiffs all the time and come in for some slashes.

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Was able to get up to where you get the prosthetic. Not totally blown away like I was the beginning of Dark Souls but I do appreciate that it feels totally different(Bloodborne still felt like DS just with different combat to me)

 

Oddly enough I’m not a fan of the extra story and exposition so far. There’s something about the lack of all it in DS that gives the DS games this kind of aura or mystery. It’s kinda hard to explain. 

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