Sekiro* dropped last week–has it really been a week?!?–and as a huge FromSoft fangrrl, I was nervous, excited, and antsy waiting for it to be released. I bought it, pre-loaded it, and then spent an hour troubleshooting it to get it to run on my laptop. When it finally started running, I got that thrill I always get when I first start a new Soulsborne game. The opening cinematic sent a chill down my spine, and once I could actually play, well, I’ll get to that in a second.
One of my issues before starting was that I felt there was no way Sekiro could live up to the hype. Not just my personal hype, though I had a lot of that, but the hype that the games community (professional and players) has frothed up. Seriously. So. Many. Opinions. All the opinions in the world. FromSoft has built up a reputation for making uncompromisingly difficult games with a certain vision (Miyazaki’s), and they have surpassed the cult status they acquired after Demon’s Souls was released. They are now a Triple A dev team, although, strangely, they feel a bit mercenary gun-for-hire in that they keep changing publishers, though that might be the norm in the industry–I wouldn’t know.
As I’ve said before, I like to go into these games as unspoiled as possible. I saw the first trailer, but I ignored the rest because FromSoft likes to put allllll the bosses in the trailers. People love it, so I understand why they do it, but I prefer to encounter each horror/delight on my own. I had a million expectations going into this game, and a million fears. That’s because I’m an anxious person, but that is neither here nor there.
Did the game live up to the hype? Was it everything I’d hoped it be?
In a word, yes.
In another word, no.
“Minna,” I hear you say. “How can it be both?” I’ll make it even more complicated. It’s both–and neither. Bear with me as I explain my very complex feelings about this amazing game. Oh, did I forget to mention this? It’s a fucking incredible game. That’s the part of yes, it met the hype. It didn’t just meet it–it blew my mind completely away.
Let me take a step back. Before the game came out, part of my trepidation was that there is a very set Dark Souls formula. They broadened it for Bloodborne in a way that was refreshing, and it made the old formula seem new again. Sekiro was going to be set in a very different world than Dark Souls or Bloodborne (and, come to think of it, they were completely different worlds from each other, but Sekiro is even more so), and there was very little information about it after the trailer. So, of course, everyone read the tea leaves and parsed the trailer for everything they could get from it.
Side Note: Back in 2017 I believe it was (or maybe last year), right before E3, everyone got it in their head that there was going to be an announcement for a Bloodborne sequel. I’m not in the industry, but I didn’t think there was going to be a sequel. I never have. Again, I have no insider knowledge, but I just didn’t feel it. I was right, of course, but there was a teaser trailer for a new FromSoft game at that E3 that many people in the industry was convinced was for BB II. Listen, I know most people lost their freaking minds over BB, but to me, it seemed clearly meant to be a one-off. Now, I’ve heard that supposedly Miyazaki said he wasn’t done with BB yet, but we’ll see.
Back to Sekiro. The game looks fantastic and lush, and the fact that it’s set in feudal Japan is really cool. Initially, I had the spoken language in English (Japanese is the default), but I changed it back to Japanese because the English actors were…I don’t want to say not good, but they were not British, so it sounded weird. I think the voices were American, but maybe Canadian. At any rate, they weren’t British, which is what I’m used to in my FromSoft games. Also, it’s set in Japan, so it makes sense to be in Japanese. It’s much better with the spoken language in Japanese and the subtitles in English, and that’s my recommendation for anyone who is playing it. Spoken language, Japanese. Subtitles the language of your choice.
Before I go any further, I want to issue a huge, giant
*SPOILER WARNING*
For the rest of the post because I will be taking about mechanics, storyline, and bosses, all of which will be spoilerific. Since one of my joys is going into the games as unspoiled as possible, this is your fair warning. I cannot talk about this game without spoiling it to a certain extent, so let it be known.
One thing I was worried about before going into this game was the control scheme. I cut my teeth with the controller (Xbox) on the first Dark Souls game, so it’s in my DNA by now. B is roll (dodge in BB). A in pick up item/talk/etc. X item use. Y is two-hand a weapon. RB is light attack, and RT is heavy attack. LB is block, and LT is parry/weapon art in DS III. I was pretty sure the controls were going to be different in Sekiro, and I was concerned that it would be completely different, which would make it difficult for me to play the game.
I’m here to tell you with relief that the control scheme, while different, is mostly intuitive. A is jump, B is dodge, Y is to switch prosthetics, X is hang/grab the ledge. Up on the D-pad is item use (which is the hardest one to get used to). RB is attack, and RT is to use the prosthetic. LB is block/parry, and LT is grappling. That’s the basics before we even get into all the combos. Lord. I thought Nioh was hard (and it was), but it’s cake in comparison to Sekiro. Which is interesting because I quit Nioh in part because I couldn’t get comfortable with the combat system. I could not gather my ki for the life of me, and I played most of the game in high stance (I think it was called).
I was such a naive child then. Three stances and regaining your ki would be luxury now. I’m not going to go into the details of all the moves you can do because frankly, it’s not something I’m all that interested in. It’s the kind of min-maxing that I don’t focus on, and it’s something I’m struggling with. Knowing which move to use when and remembering all the counter to the moves the enemies do–it’s not easy to digest.
I know I’m all over the place, but I have many thoughts about Sekiro, and it’s not easy to present them in a neat and tidy way.
The first half hour or so in tutorial world, I was blown away by how good the game felt. Yes, it was a new system to learn, but the bare basics were fairly easy to adapt to. Tutorial boss put me on my ass firmly–I don’t think I got even one hit on him, and I got out of tutorial world and into the game proper. I’m pretty sure you can actually beat tutorial boss at this point, but you’d have to be a way better person than me.
Before the game came out, I was worried about a few things. One, the grappling and stealth aspects. I suck at stealth games, and more to the point, I don’t enjoy them. I don’t know why, exactly, but something like Assassin’s Creed really puts my teeth on edge. Two, no shield. I am a turtler through and through, and not having a shield is one thing that dampened my enjoyment of Bloodborne. Three, my slow reactions. One of my biggest problems with the Soulsborne games is that I have a hard time reacting to faster enemies. I used to think it was because I’m old, but started to realize it’s more because I’ve been trained not to react by various traumas in my childhood.
Going into Sekiro, I brought in all that baggage. Watching the trailer, it looked as if all my fears were going to come to life. Within the first hour of play, I totally bought into the grappling hook/stealth aspect, which surprised the hell out of me. It was my biggest fear, and I’m enjoying the hell out of finding ways to creep around before getting a deathblow. That surprises me a great deal, but I’m glad that I’ve embraced this aspect of the game, especially as it’s such a huge part of the game. I feel fantastic sailing high above everyone and landing with a quiet thud. I’ve bought the skills that make it harder to detect me and my footsteps more quiet (Hidden Body/Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring combo FTW!), and it helps me stealth around like a semi-pro.
I know I sound muted in my response to the game, and I want to emphasize that my first reaction after playing for an hour was, “This game is fucking amazing!” I was blown away by how FromSoft looked at all the expectations squarely in the eye and didn’t blink. There has to be a lot of pressure on them to dumb down their games to make it more palatable to the masses, and, indeed, any time a FromSoft game comes out, there are thinkpieces about how they need an easy mode. Which defeats the whole purpose of the FromSoft games. To put it bluntly, not every game is for every player. I hate multiplayer games, so you know what? I don’t play them. I don’t like horror games (not really into jump scares), so I don’t play them.
I get it’s different with FromSoft games because they’re amazing games for other reasons than the difficulty, but what all those thinkpieces miss is that the difficulty is part of the reason the games are so amazing. I cannot tell you how euphoric I was when I finally beat Biggie & Small, and it’s still one of my best video gaming moments ever. I don’t think I would have the same feeling about the games without the brutality and overcoming each huge obstacle. I will say that being able to co-op in Soulsborne games made it so that the difficulty was rarely completely overwhelming, but it didn’t mitigate the difficulty completely because I played too late to always get human summons. But, the sense of accomplishment in learning a boss and finally overcoming said boss is so goddamn satisfying.
Which brings me to one of my issues with Sekiro and why we are on a mini-break right now. The bosses. Oh lord. Let’s talk about bosses because they are absolutely brutal in Sekiro, including the mini-bosses. By the way, I’m not sure I know who is a mini-boss and who is an actual boss, but that’s besides the point. The line between fair, but hard and brutally unfairly hard is thin, and, of course, it varies from player to player. I think that FromSoft has straddled that line very well for the most part in the past except when it comes to the DLC. I’ve written about that extensively, so I’m not going to belabor the point.
I will say that I find many of the bosses/mini-bosses in Sekiro to fall firmly on the side of too hard. I’ve been moving through the different areas, soaking up the atmosphere and getting used to the combat. I’ve found the common enemies to be easy enough one-on-one, but there are a lot of mobs. There are also bigger enemies sprinkled throughout the regular ones, and they are annoying. I have already found my one section that is my quick farming area that nets me 500 sen in less than five minutes. I have it down cold, and it’s a good way to get money quickly when I want to buy something.
Speaking of. Let’s talk about the experience/sen system. You get Skill Experience and sen when you kill enemies (and Spirit Emblems, but that’s not part of this conversation), and once you meet a certain requirement, you buy skills with the points. Sen, of course, is currency, which you use to buy a variety of things. Here’s the thing. You lose half of each upon death unless you receive Unseen Aid (also something I’m not going to explain here), and you’ll continue to lose half each time you die (Ed. Note: I just recently learned that when you roll over a Skill XP Point, it locks in. So the loss is only on the current Skill XP Point. That makes me feel much better about the system, though still not sanguine). There is no recovery of the Skill Experience or sen on the next run, which is, I have to say, brutal. If you’re a good player, it won’t matter much. If you’re firmly mediocre as I am, it’s not great. There is a way to mitigate the sen lost, but it’s not enough.
Back to bosses. They are nails hard. The first boss I ran into killed me in less than a second. In fact, most of the bosses I’ve run into have killed me in less than a second. Here’s my biggest gripe about the bosses–I don’t feel as if I have the opportunity to actually learn them because they can kill me in two to three hits and in less than five seconds. The first boss I met, I died at least a dozen times before I saw all the moves the boss had. Well, all the moves the boss had up to that point. I didn’t feel as if I learned anything from each death, and that’s very different from Soulsborne games. For the most part in those games, when I died, I at least learned a thing or two about the boss. In this game, I don’t because I get killed too quickly. Or, if I learn something, I don’t feel able to actually put it to good use.
This is getting long. I will write much more about it later. I will say that I’ve had to use the wikis more than once, and while I don’t feel good about it, I’d feel even worse about not being able to finish the game.
*Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the full name, but it was supposed to be called Sekiro, and that’s what feels more right to me.