I’ve been watching a Sekiro (FromSoft) playthrough and I am reminded of how people think their level of skill is normal. This is Nath from Playstation Access, and I was watching his plat run first, but then switched to when he was playing the first two hours (for the second time). In the plat run, he talks about finding the rhythm and he makes it look effortless as he whizzes through the game. He only needed two trophies with one of them being the ‘kill all bosses on one save’ one. Plus the all skills one. The former means you have to play it at least two times through (meaning NG+) and save-scum as there are four different endings and…well, ok. See, you need all four different endings as part of the plat. You need to do different things for the different endings, obviously.
One of the endings is the ‘bad’ ending and there are two unique bosses. I have not done this ending or fought these bosses. This is called the Shura ending. The other three endings are variants of the good ending. This is not uncommon in FromSoft games, to have three or four different endings with one being the ‘bad’ ending, but this is the first time you have to fight different final bosses for the bad ending.
The first good ending is just go through the game and do the things and you can choose the vanilla good ending. For the second good ending, you have to fight my worst boss of the game and get an item from him, plus do the basic good ending last bit path. For the final good ending, you have to do all that plus a bunch more. If you are smart, you will set up everything for this ending, save, and scum the other endings. I should have done (or at least tried. Save-scumming for Elden Ring didn’t work), but I didn’t even think about the plat at that point.
Oh, all of this is before fighting the BRUTAL final boss/es of the good ending. Who is the second or third hardest boss in the game. There is an optional boss who is just a pain in the behind. Here’s the thing. I took a peek at the trophy/achievement list and it’s brutal. You have to defeat all the bosses on the same save, which means at least two playthroughs on the same character. In my case, I would have to go to NG++ on my current save because I’m past the point of going to the bad ending in NG+. It’s really frustrating. If I could summon, I would be all over it. But because I cannot, it’s all on me. And I just cannot play the game enough to do what needs to be done.
Watching Nath on the plat stream, it’s clear that he just clicked with the combat on some point. I hear that so often from people who love this game. “Once you click with the combat, it’s easy.” They don’t take into account that for some people, you never click with it. I never clicked with it even before my medical crisis because I have rubbish reflesxes, which is what this game is completely based on. I can’t deflect with any consistency, which means I have to carve away at the health. Which is not great.
Aoife and other-Ian from Eurogamer were doing co-op in Elden Ring when it first came out. They were talking about Sekiro and Aoife repeated the oft-said wisdom about how it’s a rhythm game and once you get the rhythm, it’s the easiest of the games.
I suck at rhythm games, too. My niece’s husband messaged me after beating Genichiro and said it was such a hard skill check. He said you had to learn the combat by that point or you would not be able to finish the game. Oh, I beg to differ. I beat the whole game without clicking with the combat. When I told him that, he said he didn’t know it was possible to beat the game without learning the combat. I said it was, but it wasn’t fun.
That amused me, too. Aoife also said you can’t beat the game without learning the deflect. So did Dan Tack (FromSoft guy from Game Informer before he left). You can! I did, but it’s only because I was stubborn and would not let the game beat me. I cannot say I beat the game, but I can say that I watched the credits roll.
Anyway, while Aoife and other-Ian were talking about Sekiro, Aoife said the thing about it being a rhythm game and you just need to click with it. Once you did, it was easy! Other-Ian laughed and said that he never clicked with it. He reached the Guardian Ape and after spending several hours beating his head against that fight, quit. Aoife said that was a hard boss fight until you got the rhythm. Other-Ian immediately said no it was hard period and he gave up. Aoife sounded so disappointed in him, but he’s right. It doesn’t click for everyone. And it doesn’t take into account that some of us simply cannot do it because of physical limitations.
I love other-Ian because he is very open about what he likes and doesn’t like, and what he can and cannot do. All this ‘oh, everyone can play it’ is bullshit, but I don’t think the people who say it understand how bullshitty it is because to them, it’s true. If they can do it, anyone can. It’s because we are our own norms. That’s why the Dunning-Kruger effect is a thing, though I prefer the lesser-known secondary finding. People who are good at something underestimate how much better they are than the norm. I know someone in the RKG Discord who is preternaturally good at From games. When I was doing my Bloodborne plat, he decided to do the DLC because he had gotten stuck against Ludwig the first time he played it. He was 12 at the time.
I think he went to his old save to do the DLC? At any rate, he chose the Hunter Axe in my honor and kept a journal of all his deaths. It was hilarious because it was like ‘BIG FLY HUGGED ME AND KILLED ME’. ‘I FELL DOWN AN ELEVATOR.’ He shared his list and it was hilarious.
He died like three times getting to the first boss, which is Ludwig–and he killed Ludwig on his first go. In fact, he killed all the bosses in the DLC on the first go. He showed video clips of each one, and it was fucking amazing. But, it also made me fele like a schmo. He was me–but better. But it was more cool than not.
He said that the Guardian Ape in Sekiro was his hardest boss in any of the games–it took him 8 tries. EIGHT. I sneezed 8 tries against the Guardian Ape.
He’s the creme de la creme in playing these games. I think he took 2 tries against Malenia in Elden Ring. I wonder if he actually gets as much out of these games as other people, but it doesn’t really matter if he does because he won’t know either way.
I am done for today. I will continue down this road tomorrow.