@efesell said:

Some of the bigger samurai dudes will smash you into the ground with their overhead jump attack if you are blocking. That one's got no kanji and while it can be parried, it can't be reliably blocked.

Then there is a samurai mini-boss in the castle that has an iaido attack that will cause you to take a ton of damage even if you are blocking. Again without a kanji, although it's at least pretty obvious he's winding up for something. I've also had that one do damage even if I parry it (which I know I'm doing because I'm damaging his posture) - but it is also two quick strikes, so it's possible I'm parrying one but not both.

@therealturk: Maybe I’m wrong and the game is really broken, I had similar issues with those two fights, but I feel like it’s that those attacks make enough posture damage to basically break it in one go unless you upgraded a lot (which is impossible at this point), hence why you take damage blocking them. You can deflect those attacks, so the kanji wouldn’t be right for it.

@therealturk: That's weird. I know I have definitely eaten say the Drunkards massive overhead on a failed parry and blocked it instead. It MAXED OUT my posture and it was a bad situation but I wasn't immediately brought from empty to on the ground from it. Even still though an attack that puts you on the ground is still an attack you have blocked and can safety roll away from. It wouldn't have been right to have the Perilous warning for that necessarily.

The elite is definitely two very quick slices that must be perfectly deflected to avoid posture damage. The upside to him is that if you do manage to do that it can very well put him into deathblow immediately.

I should've realized this sooner, but yeah, blocking an attack mitigates all damage, even if it breaks your Posture. At which point, you can just safely retreat, or even start deflecting again after a second or two.

Speaking of things the game doesn't explicitly explain: when an enemy interrupts your attacks with a well-timed deflect (you should hear a louder clang), they will almost always counter-attack, which means it's time for you to start deflecting or blocking. Once I realized this, combat encounters had a much more enjoyable rhythm. Also, Posture recovers faster while guarding.

Yeah for the longest time I treated the block as mainly the thing that keeps me from paying too highly for just wanting to parry everything.

But it's pretty useful to just sit and block while you watch what they do for a minute, you can always turn that block into a parry if they suddenly wind up for something that's easy to punish.

Funny... I've been (mostly) breezing through the game after having so much frustration with the first spear mini-boss guy. And now I've met my 2nd spear-using min-boss and he is equally as frustrating and more difficult than any real boss. Wtf. It's like you have no opportunity to hit him and you can't block enough of his hits to do any real damage to his posture (even with the thrust counter). And I feel like half the hits I do parry but it doens't count it and it punishing your posture greatly... like 90% damage.

Well, I've got this far so I'll get through it but it's more-so frustrating becuase you have to basically sneak around to kill 10-15 enemies before you even get to fight him and then you just wrecks you in 1 minute or less. I only gave it 2 shots so far but I wasn't even close to beating him.

I couldn't get those deflects timed right and was taking too much damage. I cheesed him with the Sabimaru attachment.

@handlas: If you're talking about the guy with the giant spear near the tutorial area you can take the side path you took in the tutorial, and then reset the few enemies that see you before you engage the boss. Take a left from the Idol and use the branches, then go under the hut.

Yeah, I did that. I went around and killed all the enemies and then took the side path to get a free deathblow on him. But he still whoops me when I'm trying to do the 2nd deathblow. So you just bypass all the enemies? I didn't want to deal with the spear guy + other enemies unless they don't join him when you fight.

@handlas: You can drag him back to the right side of the building and fight him in that small clearing and the other enemies won't come up the stairs. Just watch the cliff.

Damn the final boss was amazing.

What a game, what a game.

If you are talking about the general by the moon tower, you can clear out all the enemies and then just abuse his leashing. Once he gets down to the area where the big guys were patrolling he will start backing up when not attacking.

That means you only engage when you are ready, and otherwise you are safe. You can jump in, attack, dodge away and then hit him with the shuriken-slice when he is vulnerable. Takes a while but it's much easier than him relentlessly using all his moves on you in the confined space up by the tower, if you don't feel ready for that yet.

That's what I did... cheesed him hard. Oh well, doesn't feel like I learned anything and there really wasn't anything noteworthy over there (other than getting the prayer beads off of him). And then I easily beat 2 sword mini-boss guys after that. Really, it's just the spear mini-bosses that seem drastically more difficult.

This game is ding dang amazing. It has a hell of a learning curve compared to the Soulsborne games, but once you get the feel for it it starts to even out and feel really good. The combat is so cool and perfectly captures being a samurai ninja man, and I love the way the encounter and level design encourages you to use every tool you have. The open level design is also very well done and usually means if you get frustrated you can go do something else for a while, and I'm very impressed by how good the stealth and mobility feel considering it's a very new thing for From.

I don't know if I like this more than Souls because it's doing a different thing and is hard to directly compare, but Sekiro feels very focused and coherent in its design in a way that's really well done.

I think i finally started getting it today. Beat lady butterfly and the horse guy. Made a lot of progress. 2 attack damage upgrades and the extra revive thing is going to help im sure.

It just took me 3 hours to kill the Ashina castle boss. I swear that guy is there to force you to learn the combat mechanics because I think I finally get how you're supposed to play this game.

Finally beat it, after 55 hours, which is interesting because that is the time I've beat every other Soulsborne game. After 10 hours of it not clicking with me, I thought I'd never end up liking it, but I gave it another 5 hours and I finally got it. The most important thing to understand is just how punishing the posture system is in boss fights if you don't keep the pressure on.

Whenever you are fighting a boss in any other Soulsborne game, there is always that moment of respite when you back away, get some distance, heal up and look for the next opening. But when you do that in Sekiro, you immediately screw yourself over because the boss's posture bar will start to recover and you will lose all that progress you made. It's brutal, it's different and it's probably the single biggest reason it won't click with people who came to this from the other games.

I wish it had a way to respec skill points, because the costs get pretty high in the late game and the requirements for some of the late game combat arts are insane. There's a good chance you won't ever even access them on your first playthrough. Even then, I found the vast majority of them to be extremely underwhelming and cost too many spirit emblems for what they do. I think the only actually useful skills are Ichimonji: Double and Praying Strikes: Exorcism. I wish the prosthetics were more interesting too, I found a lot of them to be barely worth using until you max them out at the end of the game, in which case you only have like 2 more bosses to go before it's over.

Most of the boss fights are absolutely fantastic, and I think Sekiro has the most consistently entertaining and fun bosses of all the FromSoft games. The camera is still definitely not perfect, and just like the other games you will find yourself in a corner and not be able to see what the shit is actually happening and probably die, because in this game you can't just spam roll to get out. But despite that, there's only one boss fight that kinda sucks, and hey, coincidence, plays sort of like a Dark Souls encounter. Hmm.

The final boss is similar to the Soul of Cinder fight in Dark Souls 3, in the sense that it is a culmination of everything you've learned playing the game. I've always felt like the Souls games completely drop the ball on their final boss fights, they end up being way too easy and you end up being too powerful by the end of those games. Not the case here, it's a visual spectacle, it's supremely badass, it's hard as balls, and is maybe my favourite final boss in a FromSoft game.

Anyway, Sekiro is a fantastic addition to the lineup From has. If they decided to cycle between Bloodborne, Dark Souls and Sekiro and release a new one every 1-2 years, I'd be a happy man. It makes sense financially for them too, seeing as people seemingly buy the shit out of all 3 of those.

Is my game bugged? I had to look up a walkthrough because I seem to be at a point where I can't progress. I'm at Senpou Temple, Main Hall. There is a monk that won't talk to me. Apparently there is suppose to be a bell on a table in front of him that I ring. But it's not there. Some guide says I need to talk the little girl at the castle (where you fight the guy at the top) and it will be there but she just repeats the same thing about finding Lord Isshin.

There's another locked door down a path at a completely different part of the game (at the Gun Fort in Sunken Valley) but I read you have to do the above before that door unlocks as well. Kind of annoying since it gives zero indication of that.

@handlas: Exit through the window at the top of that castle and run down along the roofs a bit, there's an NPC in that building you have to speak to.

Ah! Thanks, found him. I figured the monk that wouldn't talk was him.

Didn't play the game all week so was a little hesitant to jump back in. Game definitely opens up once you reach Ashina Castle. Gives me the impression that everything up to this point was designed as a tutorial of sorts. I just started picking random paths and exploring as far I could go until I'd hit some sort of a dead end (pun intended). This is probably my favorite part in From Softs' games. Finding all the little nooks and crannies, treasure hunting, new environments and enemies.

Kite dudes are amusingly terrifying. Hit a dead end with centipede dude. Was fun bum rushing through the mountains there against a dozen sharpshooters. Exploration was also cut short down in the deep area? Abandoned Dungeon maybe it was called? Some kinda gun people way down there tore me up and I barely did any damage. Plus that cool looking ghostly shaman dude? Currently having a go in the Castle itself. Explored some other places, too many to remember.

After such a rough start, I'm finding the game to be maybe easier than any Dark Souls or Bloodborne. I haven't felt like pulling my hair out on any particular boss anymore once I got past the 2 spear mini-bosses.

I was wondering about one boss for people who have beat it...

Can you kill the Guardian Ape the first time? And not have to fight him a second time? I'm pretty sure you have the mortal blade at that point, right? When I beat him the second time I noticed his body twitching so I walked up to him and got the deathblow prompt and remembered I to use the mortal blade on him (got a couple of rare achievements for it meaning not a lot of people have done that so I guess it's optional?).

@handlas: Unfortunately he won't have the Mortal Blade kill prompt in the Sunken Valley, even if you went and did that before going there. You would miss out on getting two prayer beads if you could do this though so maybe it's for the best.

Nope, there's no prompt and his body disappears when you beat him the first time.

Whoof. I just beat Genichiro after a couple of hours of running my head against the fight. I've never come closer to snapping my controller in fury from one of these games, but it was an exhilarating fight and I was literally shaking when I finally took him down. It felt like a real test of everything the game had been teaching to this point.

@gazoinks: yeah that fight is right up there with the most satisfying gaming experiences I've ever had. The rhythm of it is very well tuned , once you get it down you feel like a true master.

I have a question about this too, since maybe you did it the other way round from me.

I went to the Sunken valley first, and fought the Ape there (really hated that fight, took way too long). Then I went to the abandoned dungeon and see the Headless Ape down there, and have to fight him a second time (and his friend), in order to proceed.

But, if I had gone to the abandoned dungeon first, surely the Headless Ape isn't there and you can just run through that room? Or is something else there? And you have to just randomly go back?

Yeah, the room is empty if you go through that area first.

I'm confused about why dragon rot comes from death and not resurrection. It would have been a really good way to introduce a moral dilemma into a video mechanic, where you feel guilty for getting people sick. I would feel more responsible and consider my choice of making the game easier a little more carefully.

Ultimately I don't think it's all that different. Instead of making it an active choice to fuck someone over they made it a result of using your resurrects irresponsibly. I ultimately still felt bad for getting people sick because honestly despite being a very hard game it's actually very easy to avoid actually dying.

But when that idols awfully far away and you're totally sure you absolutely have this battle in hand if you just..had a little more health..

Well people start coughing anyway.