Ed. Note: This whole post is basically one major spoiler so be forewarned.
Hello. The last we spoke, I was facing Owl (Father) at the end of my second trip to the Hirata Estate. I had attempted to fight him five or six times and was not feeling it at all. I was contemplating skipping him, but I knew it would eat my craw (a combination of eat at me and stick in my craw) and make me think less of myself. I also knew that had he come earlier in the game, I would have tried for at least an hour or two before starting to complain. My patience is razor thin at this point, and it’s hard to make myself do the grind.
I took a deep breath and jumped in. He wrecked my shit casually a dozen times before I even felt I had even a glimmer of a handle on him. It’s strange, though, because I didn’t think he was as hard as, say, Genichiro (the boss who took me literal days to beat), but I think that’s because I beat the first version of him fairly easily. This version, however was Owl in his prime, and he was a nightmare for me. I tried the cheese from the video I had watched, but my problem with the cheese was that there was one move Father did that fucked me up every time. It’s when he threw his shuriken then raised his sword high to his left and held it. The cheese is to move forward and dodge twice, but instead, I pressed down LB (block) while dodging, which didn’t do jack or shit. Father would slice through me and because it was a counter-attack, decimate my health bar to a sliver. Then, he would follow up with another attack that would kill me. Every. Goddamn. Time. If I managed to block the attack, the followup would still devastate me.
After an hour, I knew it was the wrong way to counter that attack, but every goddamn time, even as I was telling my brain not to press LB, I would press it. At that point, it was just better for me to try to avoid that attack altogether. This is one of my issues with the bosses in Sekiro–the best way to fight several of them is to bait out one or two of the attacks and run away from the rest. It’s a viable strategy, but it doesn’t really feel great while doing it. Also, with Owl (Father) at least for me, I wasn’t able to bait out the attack I wanted on a reliable basis.
It seemed I had to fight this boss on his own merits, which, as I wrote before, I did not want to do at this time. However, my pride demanded it of me, so I girded my loin and hopped into the fray. I have written before about the five stages of beating a boss before (near the end of this post), and I’ll expand on them a bit here. The first stage is incredulity and fear, somewhat akin to denial. “I have to fight this thing/guy/gal? No. No. No. No way I’m going to beat this boss!” I have literally walked away from a boss arena and refused to deal with it for some time (if I had other things I could do) because I was just not ready. I did it with Genichiro, and I avoided him for hours. The second stage is resignation. “Welp. I guess I have to do this. Alrighty then.” Third stage is anger and rage. This stage can last quite some time. I distinctly remember with Owl (Father) during this stage, I was cursing him, his mother, his father, and everyone else in his lineage. I cursed out FromSoft and Miyazaki, and everyone involved in the game. I was an angry, angry, ANGRY gamergrrl during a large portion of this fight, let me tell you. Fourth stage is having a glimmer of hope. That moment when you realize that maybe, just maybe, you can beat this thing/guy/gal. It can be one block you’d never gotten off before. Or you get ’em to their second phase (which, by the way, was a lie for Genichiro as he had three phases. Asshole). Or you just see things in a way you hadn’t before. The final stage is the ‘I finally beat this fucking boss’ phase, which is the best phase of all.
Anyway. With Owl (Father), I was stuck in the first phase for quite some time. Except, it wasn’t in denial of having to fight the boss, it was more like a child’s petulance of, “No, I don’t wanna.” Resignation didn’t really happen until the second or third hour of fighting him. At that point, I knew I was going to have to beat him or quit because I could not just skip him. Well, technically, I could as he was not pertinent to the ending I wanted, but my obsessive traits/pride would not allow it. In all that time, I didn’t even get him to his second phase, but many times the second phase is easier than the first. I found that to be true with the other version of this fight, so I was hoping it would be true to this fight as well. I think it’s because many times, the second phase is just adding a few new attacks rather than completely overhauling the fight (with one notable exception, which has some of the best reactions in the game), so by the time you get to the second phase (or third. I’m looking at you, Genichiro), you have 90% of the fight down.
Let’s talk about the third stage, anger and rage, specifically to this fight. I am going to say something that I am not proud to admit. I get furious when I play FromSoft games. Like, way out of proportion to what is actually happening angry. Like someone just stole my cat and ransomed him raged out. It doesn’t help to tell myself that it’s just a game–it doesn’t stop me from raging. I’m not bragging about it, mind you. I’m mortified that I act that way even if nobody can see me. I’ve yelled at Shadow for meowing while I’m engrossed in a a boss fight. If he tries to climb on my lap as I’m battling, I’m frantically trying to move him out of the way while shouting at him.
Side note: I forgot to mention one thing about the game I don’t like–the combat music. It happens every time I engage in a fight that isn’t a boss fight, and it gets old real quick. It’s a minor niggle, but it’s still annoying as fuck.
The Owl (Father) boss fight infuriated me because I didn’t think it was fair. There are macro reasons that are the same for every boss–the fact that I can hit them once and take a sliver of their health bar off, and they can one-shot kill me in certain instances. All their attacks dish out more damage than they take, and I accept it in general because video games. The one-shot kill, however, I think is bullshit no matter what. Nothing deflates me faster than me chip-chip-chipping away only to be wiped out in one swipe of the enemy’s blade. Yes, I know you’re supposed to learn the moveset of the boss, but to be so severely punished for one mistake, yeah, no.
I think that’s one of the biggest differences in this game than in the previous ones–there is so little room for error. In Souls, you can make a mistake or two, even in a boss fight, and be ok. In Sekiro, it’s much more difficult to get away with an egregious mistake. Let me clarify I’m talking specifically in a boss fight. The general scrubs aren’t that bad except when they are in mobs–which is most of the time. Even then I can usually bait one or two of them away from their friends so it isn’t so bad.
Owl (Father) has a seven-move combo that is devastating if you get caught in it. It’s more like a four/three combo, but the two sets come in quick succession. I could not do anything during this combo other than deflect ad nauseam because it was simply too fast for me. When he hit the last move–which is throwing the Shinobi Firecrackers in my face–I knew the right thing to do was jump forward, but I rarely got it off in time.
Here’s one thing I’ve learned in this game–some of my Dark Souls experience has actively hindered me from doing my best in Sekiro. I was a turtler in Souls, which meant shield up, circling around, and waiting for an opportunity to strike. None of this is applicable to Sekiro. At all. You are rewarded for being more aggressive, which makes the game more like Bloodborne, and it’s really not my playstyle at all. I can mitigate it in this game by using the stealth aspects to cover for my lack of aggressiveness, but I still make things harder for myself by not attacking more.
Another way I hurt myself is by following the sage adage in Souls, “Circle to the right (the boss’s left) and smack dat ass.” It’s a meme because it’s true. You can defeat many a boss by circling and smacking. In this game? Yeah, no. During my grueling fight with Genichiro, he had a move that punished me for circling to the right. Even though I knew he was going to punish me, it took hours for me to break myself of the habit.
With Owl (Father), he was programmed to react to my movements. There was one move he did in which he held his sword high above his head then brought it down with a great chop. He did that in the first fight as well, but in that fight, all I had to do was wait to his side until he did the chop to get in a Whirlwind Slash. In this fight, if I went to his side as he was raising his sword over his head, he would quickly turn and slash at me instead. From a gameplay perspective, this was a smart thing to do. From my perspective, it was infuriating.
I want to emphasize that I am not good at FromSoft games at all. I’ve watched people who naturally grasp what is happening, but that is the opposite of me. I don’t know if it’s because I came into FromSoft games fairly raw–only having played Torchlight, Diablo III, Borderlands (original and sequel), and a few other games like that before trying Dark Souls. In addition, I have shitty reflexes for many reasons I’ve mentioned before, and these games tested all of my mettle. Also, the original Dark Souls was the first time I used a controller, so that was an added layer of difficulty for me to overcome while playing it. I’ve wondered from time to time why I stick to these games when they are so not my forte, but there is something about them that sucks me in.
Back to Owl (Father). I got some good tips from a few of the RKG FB group members, and I tried to incorporate them into my play. Baiting out certain moves was one of them as was moving forward through the Shinobi Firecrackers rather than backwards. By the way, I didn’t use any Prosthetic Tools in this fight, which is not a good feeling. I tried, but none of them were very effective. I really just had to fight him mano-a-mano. I made it to the second phase after hours of fighting, and just as I suspected, it wasn’t as hard as the first phase. Why? Because there were only two added elements, and they were both easy to avoid/punish.
I fought him for two more solid hours after commenting on FB about the fight. I’m not counting all the bullshit one-and-done runs in which Owl (Father) caught me in one of those ridiculously damaging moves within seconds of the fight. I felt like I was making some kind of progress, but it was frustratingly slow. One of my biggest problems with the FromSoft games is that it takes so much effort for me to get through the first phase, by the time I reach the second (or third! Fucking Genichiro), I’m exhausted and out of resources. However, I persevered, and I made it to the second phase and got him down to about a quarter of his health. I had no heals and no rezzes (and, yes, I had all three to start with, but having that third one really isn’t a boon at all), but I was feeling good. I went towards him, and he did one of those shitty change the move in reaction to what I was doing bullshit, and my full health bar went down to nothing in less than a second.
I was so furious, I cursed him, Miyazaki, FromSoft, and everyone else I could think of before smacking my laptop monitor with my hand. Hard. Fortunately, I didn’t damage it any further than it was already damaged, but it still was not good. I took a few deep breaths, reminding myself it was just a game. There was no reason to be upset, and I needed to chill out. By the way, I mentioned the five stages of beating a boss further up–I want to add that the stages are fluid. During this fight, I went back and forth from anger to hope several times.
Anyway. I calmed myself and girded my loins once again. I reminded myself it was just a game as I fought, and it seemed to help. I still couldn’t finish him off, though, so I brought out the big guns–I put on The Pina Colada Song on loop*, and I sang my way through the fight. He got me the first time, but I felt like it was just a matter of time. The second time, I felt calm during the fight. This is one of my signs that I know I’m about to do well–a preternatural calm. The second is when the boss inexplicably does not do the one move I cannot master. There is an argument to be had whether he’s not doing the move because I’m avoiding the thing that procs it or just that it’s RNG, but either way, it’s a part of a winning run for me. The third is that my attacks are strong and true.
Side Note II: During the last hour of fighting this boss, I knowingly switched it up so that I was being more aggressive than I had been in the past and that I was running as I dodged rather than just dodging. Both of these things massively helped, and it’s just one example of me adjusting to the game rather than expecting it to adjust to me. Even when I didn’t win, I did much better than I had in the past.
During the pure run of this boss fight, I got through the first phase with little problem and maybe three Healing Gourds left (out of ten). I kept singing as I made my way through the second phase with his owl flying around and the fire-slinging bullshit he was throwing my way. I couldn’t time my jump over the fire very well, so I just hid behind the pillars or ran like hell to avoid the attack.
I was singing almost the whole time, which allowed me to concentrate even harder, ironically. I kept chipping away at his health, baiting out one or two attacks, and running when I knew I couldn’t deal with his attacks. I was focused in the way I get when everything else just fell away, and there was nothing but me and the boss in front of me. When I happened to glance at his health bar, I had one or two hits before his second Deathblow. I noted it without comment, and went back to singing and focusing. By this point, I had used all of my Healing Gourds, Pellets, and I had used one incredibly rare and powerful consumable health items. If not now, when???? I had one more powerful consumable health item and one consumable rez left, and that was it. I reminded myself not to get greedy, and I attacked.
Readers, I did it. I got those last few swipes on him to get that lovely red pulsing circle, and I plunged my sword into him. I got another lovely red, pulsing circle, and I plunged my sword into him again. I triggered the animations, and I finally beat Owl (Father) in a properly epic fashion. I laughed. I cried. I cursed words I never even knew I knew. I raised my hands in triumph as I set down the controller and watched the animations, then I called it a day. This is why I play FromSoft games, and it never gets fucking old.
*This is my FromSoft fight song. I put it on and finally beat Biggie & Small in the original game, and I pull it out when I need to relax during a big fight. Last time I used it was during the Genichiro boss fight, and it worked!