by eldritchhorror75So being a Miyazaki fanboy, and also being a fan of the Tenchu franchise, I wasn’t really as excited for Sekiro as I feel I should have been. I honestly would have much rather had a total remake of Demon’s Soul’s and that still stands. However, I went in with an open mind and for the most part, after finishing all the endings, I enjoyed the game. However, there are some things I want to bring attention to and get other people’s opinions on too.
First on the matter of difficulty. If you pay any attention to any gaming websites, Youtubers, etc. I am sure you have seen or heard people complaining about how hard the game is. I don’t personally agree and for the most part, unless you try and play Sekiro like a Souls game, I feel it is actually easier than those. In Sekiro, almost every boss and mini-boss can be stealth attacked to remove one of their posture bars. This alone makes the entire game easier. I have heard many people claiming Sekiro was more difficult because unlike Dark Souls, it was dependent on parries or deflections, and that they were just to fast. This isn’t completely right either. Even though you don’t have to parry in the souls’ games, if you do, the parry window is much smaller and the timing changes based on every shield in the game and every attack of an enemy. Sekiro you technically don’t even have to time the deflect. As long as the button is pressed and your posture isn’t broken or the attack isn’t perilous, you will deflect automatically. I am not saying the game was easy, I am not being a typical Souls guy and saying “Git Gud” I just don’t feel the game is as difficult as the masses are making it out to be.
As for my general thoughts on the game. As I said, I did enjoy it and I think that it is a very solid game, however, it is already being praised for being better than any of the other Miyazaki games and I can’t agree with that at all. If anything out of Demon’s, Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne, I feel it is by far the weakest. I have several reasons for this. First, are the Bosses and mini-Bosses. All the Souls games have had a boss they basically reskinned and put in two places in the game, but the amount of times Sekiro does this is ridiculous and lazy. One thing that has always stood out to me and made me love the games were the deliberate placements of the bosses in the souls’ games and the way it factored into their backstory and made the game just so immersive for me. Moments like in Bloodborne when you fight Father Gascoigne after talking to the little girl who gives you the music box, and realizing he is her father and that he has killed her mother. Or freeing Lautrec in Dark Souls only to have him kill the firekeeper. Little things like that make the Souls games for me and there were little things in Sekiro, there were things you could learn about the characters of the world, but for the most part it was more standard video game stuff like here is a door, here is a big ass samurai, have fun.
This is in no way intended to put Sekiro down. It is a fantastic game overall and I did enjoy my time with it. I won’t be putting the hundreds upon hundreds of hours into it that I have most of the other From Software games because it just doesn’t have the replay value that they did, but I just wanted to share some thoughts from a Soulsborne fanboy.
