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[nenjin]

Centipede Giraffe was easy.

Currently fighting Guardian Ape. First phase I understand, second phase.....well, I'll get it. I just need more time to figure out how to deal with silly sword.

Genichiro took me 7 or 8 tries, mostly because of:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

His bullshit second phase moves with the Lightning. Also that stupid move where he gets airborne and shoots you five times.

Centipede Giraffe and the Elite are basically the same fight done in two different ways.

After the Elite w/e in Ashina Castle, I realize that many bosses are puzzles. Some are just straight fights but others require you to leverage posture in some way. Sometimes directly. Others are straight up slug fests, still others are "forget blocking and deflecting, just move your ass and deal damage when you can."

I gotta say. If From Soft decides to do another Souls game, I really hope they incorporate some of what they've learned from Sekiro. The combat in Sekiro is just so much more engaging and flows so much better. You have tons of options and those options look good, sound good and feel good. Part of me almost wishes there was MP in Sekiro because it'd make for some dank-ass duels.

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler: ok so basically im monky strat (click to show/hide)

second phase you deflect where you can and wait for him to rise all the way up for a downward swing.  if you deflect it he falls right in front of you and you can hit him like five times, but he screams immediately after so be ready to gtfo

The lightning phase is easy, if you jump as soon as he charges and block it you can redirect it at him for massive posture damage and a stun.

Like dark souls a lot of bosses are impossible until you figure out the strat but the strats arent as gimmicky as dark souls and its more satisfying when you beat him.

The easiest boss so far has probably been the ghost warrior in the cave, the one that summons ghostballs.  Anti air deathblow him when he floats and he dies in two hits.

ashina elite was like a brick wall until i just ran up and poisoned him as he was standing up, he takes insane damage from poison and stacks it fast even if he blocks

[nenjin]

This game has this push pull effect when it comes to being aggressive. If you're not aggressive enough, enemies will just wear you down and break your posture or hurt you when you miss your blocks and dodges, because unlike Dark Souls they don't just stand there circle strafing you on a big cooldown, inviting you to attack. The gaps between their attacks and movement in Sekiro are comparatively short. (Or non-existent, in the case of the Guardian Ape.)

On the other hand, enemies that matter are designed to punish greed. That was my problem with Genichiro Phase 2. Get greedy, be out of position or mid animation when he does the lightning, get fragged. Also the same story with Shirafuji.

However the time I beat Genichiro, I just....R1'd him one strike at at time, no combos. I'd hit him, he'd jump back to do the bow, I'd hit him again, he'd go to swing, I'd hit him again, he'd jump back to use the bow...it was almost kind of laughable after all the running around and deflecting and whatnot I'd done prior. It almost felt like roll catching someone in Dark Souls.

So generally you just have to play very tight, be aggressive but also be ready to nope out or deflect or jump or w/e at a moment's notice.

Also it seems like what you have unlocked kind of matters in relation to some boss fights. I've unlocked about half the shinobi tree and nothing else.

On that note....I really like the economy in Sekiro in some ways. I've yet to unlock a ton of stuff because I die repeatedly. I'll get through a level section pretty well, but not have enough to spend XP on, then die a shit ton to a boss and lose it all. That's kind of kept my growth stunted, but it's also continually given me stuff to look forward to. Same story with the Tools Ammo. (I just call it Hearts.) I don't use my tools that often in regular play because I find the sword play a way more satisfying way to end fights. But then I try to get all I can out of them during boss fights. (The firecracker tool is a guaranteed spot of damage in pretty much every boss fight.) So I'll end up mowing through all my hearts. To be honest, the Firecrackers tool is the only one I use with any regularity. The rest are nice, and fun but often don't seem to be worth the effort to use.

That makes pretty much everything: money, XP and ammo feel meaningful because you can lose it easily. If you're the kind of person that is motivated by unlocks, and likes your money to have context instead of just "a big fat pile of gold always sitting around" Sekiro really makes the scarcity feel meaningful....unless you're super good I suppose and rarely die.

[Cthulhu]

If you've got the ashina esoteric text dip into it asap.  The helmsplitter combat art is pretty good and the passives increase your posture game (more posture damage on deflect, less gain, etc.) which is huge for a lot of bosses

[Jopax]

First off, fuck that fucking ogre fucker and his fucking homing lunge grab. Doubly so whoever wrote the tip you get right before you fight it about grabs being avoidable with the dodge, because the only way to dodge that lunge grab is by jumping, dodging sideways does nothing and dodging backwards is very unreliable since he might decide he wants to fly a bit further and still get you.

Also is it just me or is it nigh-impossible to get the thrust counter timing right when using a mouse? There seems to be something of a delay and it's hard to nail it down (same was true in DS but there the timing didn't need to be this precise)

Also also I love the way the game organically throws hints at you if you take the time to sneak around and listen in on people, and how different zones tend to give drops that make the other zones easier (ie, you farm oil in Hirata to have an easy peasy ogre fight in Ashina).

Also also also, I'm not too far into it still (Just reached the big fuckoff dude on the big fuckoff horse) but it feels like the shuriken went from marginally useful for sniping off dogs to utter cheese once I got the followup slash for it since even some early elites can get interrupted by them mid-attack and the follow-up is fast enough that you can get a hit or two in before dashing back and repeating the whole thing until they just die.

Anyways, super fun so far, loving the combat and the sneaky stuff as well, can't wait to see more.

[nenjin]

Yeah, the Ogre's grab is bullshit. I think I died about 10+ times to him.

I hear you about dodge versus jumping. That alone is a learning point in some boss fights. Like I couldn't avoid either Shirafuji's grab OR Guardian Ape's grab with dodges. Just couldn't do it, Left and Right were a no go and backwards only worked about half the time. (Ironically a forward dodge can actually work sometimes if you get the iframes just right....but who has the patience for that shit?)

So I just started jumping. And lo and behold, half of the moves that would end your fight suddenly became just another thing to memorize and avoid. Basically any time I get that warning kanji in a boss or miniboss fight, I jump now. 90% of the time, it's the right call. If it's a sweep attack, jumping was the right call. If it's a pierce attack, side jumping is the right call. If it's a grab.....of the 4 directions you can dodge out of the way, three of them are a probably a trap. So jumping....is almost always the right answer if you're not sure about an attack. The only downside is it fucks up your positioning but I think that's a small price to pay for not getting insta-wrecked.

You can often deflect many of those big attacks too but it's not worth the risk to figure out the timing usually.

Maybe I'll spend some time grinding skill points after I send Guardian Ape to Monkey Hell. I've avoided straight up grinding for anything but required cash but I'm probably making the game harder on myself at this point by not having many skills unlocked. I did plenty of grinding in Dark Souls because I felt like it was necessary but here for some reason it feels even more cheesy.

I'm also really looking forward to the Sekiro Speed Runs, No Hit Runs and No Leveling Runs. I feel like there's A LOT of room for mastery in this game.

[nenjin]

Double post because why not:

SPOILERS

Spoiler: Shadows Spoil Twice (click to show/hide)

How are people thinking the Dragonrot is going to play out from a story perspective? My take on it is that once someone has gotten a Dragonrot card, it counts for something toward the ending. Because it's never mentioned again after they get it and you cure it.

So I'm thinking the game really is tracking all your deaths and that has meaning for the ending. How delicious would it be, if from a mechanical and story perspective, Dragon Blood resurrection is a bad thing from top to bottom? We're trained by Dark Souls to accept deaths as a natural part of playing the game. You HAVE to die to win. But what if Sekiro is like "the best ending comes from absolutely minimum deaths." Lord Kuro I think even alludes to it. "How many times have you died for me? Two? Three....?" HA HA.

Normally I don't replay games like Sekiro. I get my jollies, beat it, feel good about it, maybe come back a year or two later and faff around a little more. But what if the game is actually challenging you to not die at all? What if that's the only way to get best ending? I'm picturing an ending where it goes back by all the NPCs you've met, and for everyone one that got a Dragonrot card it's like "Died of Cancer." What price, victory? That might get me to playthrough the whole game again and try for as little Dragonrot as possible. I imagine it'd be a hell of a lot easier the 2nd time through too. But it'd also be the kind of challenge where, once you've fucked it up, you've fucked up your whole game.

It's clear that Dragonrot is related to RESPAWNING not RESURRECTING. I tried to do some experiments early on where I refused to use my rezzes, thinking that was the cause of the Dragonrot. Nope. Just dieing and respawning causes Dragonrot. So anything that increases the number of rezzes you get in theory will help keep you from giving too many NPCs the cancer.

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler: post monky spoilers (click to show/hide)

once youre past the monky things start getting weird.  My working theory is the fountainhead waters ashina worships are infested with a parasite that grants immortality and the real endgame is going to have to do with it.   Monky has a centipede in it and actually comes back later on, and if you have the mortal blade from senpou (also full of infested immortals) you can permanently kill it, which gives a big IMMORTALITY SEVERED killscreen which makes me think the endgame will heavily involve killing immortals.

Big theme in the latter part past genichiro is immortals are no longer human.  Isshin mentions he can see the shadow of the shura (i.e. murder demon) in sekiro's eyes

My fave prosthetic is divine abduction which turns enemies around and opens up a backstab.  Combined with bloodsmoke you can really tear through big groups.

Hardest basic enemy ive seen is the glaive monks in senpou, i dont thini ive ever killed one in a fair fight

[nenjin]

Agreed on Glaive monks. I've beaten them in a straight up fight but I think they're honestly tougher than the Generals, even with only one Deathblow. What seems to work is staying very close and just pounding on them until their posture breaks. If you're outside of sword slash range, they will just start ruining you with repeated thrust attacks and the odd sweep attack just to keep you off balance.

Also I like how you learn the Mikri(sp?) counter, then basically every guy above the rank of filthy hobo with a sword can't be hit with the follow up attack. Maybe you need to buy the Advanced Mikri counter skill.

[MCreeper]

Doubly so whoever wrote the tip you get right before you fight it about grabs

,because one and only reason grab caught me off-gaurd was that freaking tip popping up right before it.

Everyone haves their own That Damn Boss, i guess. He caught me with a grab, what, four times? Probably because i always use jumping for dodging, screw another situative button press to learn.  Also, safer, since dodge invincibility appears to be gone. On the other hand, i died against Lady Butterfly 20-30 times. Partially because i did fight "proper way" (pressure, pressure, pressure!) in first try, then tried to play it safe for quite a while. Wrong!

[nenjin]

Too bad that jumping out of combat doesn't look nearly as edgy as dodging and counterattacking.

Oh, also. Dodging then counterattacking is how you beat like half the Posture Lords in this game. Like the Shinobi Hunter. Can't touch that guy with literally anything except dodging counterattacks.

[Jopax]

Ok I'm an idiot. This whole time, for whatever reason I've been reading the Mikiri blurb and interpreting it as "super precise deflect" so this whole time I've been thinking I can't hit the timing because I've never performed it. Then, I suddenly realised that the key mentioned in the blurb is actually the dodge. Lo and behold it was actually rather easy to do after all once I got the hang of it :V

[Cthulhu]

I like that aspect, there's enough room for different playstyles that everyone has different bosses they do or dont have trouble with.

genichiro and monky were easy, orin was easy, but snake eyes, seven ashina spears, lady butterfly all gave me hell.

[nenjin]

Spoiler: Lady Butterfly (click to show/hide)

See and I smoked Lady Butterfly in....three attempts? The first two were figuring out her bullshit and quickly going "I don't have enough snap pods for this, guess I'll just have to deal with the illusions." The last attempt was a combination of pressuring the shit out of her, and using Shurikens to knock her off her wires so she couldn't do all her stupid rushing attacks or kunai spam.

Every boss has a gotcha in the form of either a core combat mechanic or a tool. It's really just figuring out what works, and I gotta say I think I enjoy this way more than Dark Soul's variety of just learning which way to roll dodge a given attack. Although, that said, as a Dark Souls player, Dark Souls mmmmaayyyyybbbeee feels a little more honest and straightforward with its fights than Sekiro. It took me a while to realize that just "playing tighter" isn't the answer to all boss fights in Sekiro. Knowing the thing to do, how to do it and when to do it seems the name of this game. Sometimes that's pretty straightforward, like with Centipede Giraffe or the Elite Samurai, where the game doesn't give you many options except to do the one thing you need to. Other times, with other bosses, it's a little murkier.

[MCreeper]

Too bad that jumping out of combat doesn't look nearly as edgy as dodging and counterattacking.

Oh, also. Dodging then counterattacking is how you beat like half the Posture Lords in this game. Like the Shinobi Hunter. Can't touch that guy with literally anything except dodging counterattacks.

Hence "situative". About only place where i used dodge so far (first two locations).