Sekiro

Finally beat that motherfucker. It just took forever of playing super, super conservative. Didn't use the other samurai but it took ages and ages of getting two slashes in when one of his couple moves proced that give you a window during/after.

Now onto the next boss in the fiery room. Beat the first phase on my second try. A lot like a bloodborne boss (dodge/counterstrike, then retreat and block) so wasn't too hard, though I'm sure doing the second phase with all the adds will be difficult.

Lady Butterfly is an asshole. Took me like 10 tries. At least her checkpoint is right there.

Speaking of, make sure to really explore the rest of the pre-Butterfly floor. There's a lot of goodies in there that aren't immediately apparent. Keep an eye out for a weird wall.

Yeah, I caught that thankfully, though I couldn't figure out what yo do with that wall for a bit.

Do the adds die permanently in the 2nd stage if you kill them?

I'll be honest, I won that fight by ignoring them and clobbering the shit out of her. I have no idea.

It's interesting. I beat the lady butterfly by just realizing that on early bosses at least you can just hold block and get counterattacks in, maybe a deflection if you're feeling very confident. I mean, you might as well---there isn't much point in doing posture damage until you chipped the health down over a couple of minutes...

I dunno. It's early, but so far the glacial pacing on the boss fights which take minutes and minutes of defensive near perfection aren't totally working for me, though I'm still enjoying the game. The stealth and levels are very good though, as is the art direction (usual).

I must have been going the harder road, post-butterfly I got to the next boss (horse) and aced him on the 2nd try. Then I did the next miniboss (giant animal) in 3-4 tries or so.

Yeah, I did similar. Easy mistake to make.

Regarding the bosses in this game, I've found they're susceptible to constant aggression combined with parries. So far the mini bosses have been harder because they tend to have a gimmick that you need to learn or you explode.

I just got to the place it opens up (castle) and it's making me very happy about the game. That leans into its strengths imho. Different environments, mysteries, etc. Moreover, when you get to an asshole of a boss or miniboss (dude at tower in reservoir), you can go off in another direction if you want.

I get what you're saying about keeping up the pressure. I just don't deflect and counter special attacks consistently enough to pull it off. I can see how it would definitely work; you wouldn't even necessarily have to grind their health down either. I got about 2/3 posture up on the reservoir tower miniboss once without hitting him. You just have to be super aggressive and hit your precise counters.

Still hate the circuitous rope routes you have to the minibosses. They don't get back into the fights fast enough and are frustrating.

Still unsure where I stand on Sekiro. I'm DEEP into it--two late-game bosses took me 4+ hours to beat respectively, which never happened in the Soulsbourne games. There's a fine line between "challenge" and "relentless slog where I have to deliver FOUR deathblows to finish a boss".

Though to be fair, Andy watched me fight the other day, and he said it was "very exciting" as a viewer.

Finally got to sit back down with this over the weekend and made a whole ton of progress. Decided to take a break when I hit the big plot choice which I won't spoil in case anyone's worried about that.

Some of the later bosses seem best fought like Bloodborne, which is to say you don't walk forward and just wait for parries/counters. Figuring out whether a boss is vulnerable to health or posture damage and when is a tricky puzzle. Also if you aren't using fireworks much yet you should start getting into the habit.

Also I think I did some kind of unintentional sequence break or maybe did things so far out of order that the game didn't know what to do with me, because I hit a point right before the choice where absolutely nothing made sense. Characters were in weird places with literally no reason given and short of me getting curious as to why I couldn't take shrines or shortcuts to Ashina castle anymore I would have had no idea where to go. Maybe the game's just wonky at that point. Not sure.

I can't figure out if the upgrades are strict upgrades or not. Seems like some are, some aren't? My favorite is the spear right now but it's pretty obvious even this early you should be pushing the fireworks hard. I've been using very few special weapons just to train up my skills.

Got to the top of the Buddhist monastery which was great thematically.

I'm having fun but I think I'm going to be as frustrated as Jonathan is with the one additional, too many, crank in difficulty in Sekiro. Gary Butterfield, who does the watch out for fireballs and bonfireside chat podcasts, captures some of my frustrations as well. He talks a lot about how long you need to "sustain perfection" in the game and I think that's my problem with it too. The souls series keeps demanding longer and longer sustained perfection. I can see as deathblow counts go up I'm going to be very frustrated by just how long you have to execute near perfection to win.

But right now I'm past the initial wall and really enjoying the game!

I loved Senpou. I discovered it too early and got pretty far before realizing that I should probably do other things first, but I explored anyway just because I was so taken with the visuals and kung fu monks. The last boss was disappointingly easy but otherwise it was my favorite area. Figuring out what happened up there and why everyone hates the monks was a good bit of storytelling.

I go back and forth on the difficulty in Sekiro. One one hand stuff just kills you and it demands consistency for extended periods, but on the other you have so much health regen and rezzing is a thing so there's a lot of margin for error. I don't think this game is as punishing as Bloodborne. You get a lot more chances to learn per run here and that means fewer deaths that actually force you to take the walk of shame. Also the shrine placement is generally better, which helps a lot.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. I found bloodborne less punishing, but also I could audible to cooperators on the couple bosses that were too much for me.

I will say Sekiro is a breath of fresh air in how much they changed the actual mechanics. I look forward to them making as big of changes as they made in Sekiro in future games---I like Bloodborne better thematically but they could have strayed just a little farther from the DS formula in gameplay imho.

I'm not quite done but unless Sekiro changes significantly in the last act Bloodborne is still my favorite. If BB2 takes cues from Sekiro on its combat while having setting and writing as good as original BB it'll be my new favorite hands down.

Your advice on aggression was really helpful, Vysetron. Winning battles requires deflections and timing but holding block and getting a few deflections without aggressively attacking/counterattacking accomplishes nothing from the long view of a fight.