Sekiro

I just beat the samurai miniboss, which was immensely satisfying as I easy parried him into submission without even doing any damage to him. Just dueled the mfer. Felt good. I then stopped at Genichiro and decided to go down into the sunken city (which was a huge surprise to find in a random fall). I killed the ninja with the big cannon which was a tough as nails fight.

I ran into the Buddhist monks with centipedes and worms in them earned apparently while... seeking forbidden knowledge of immortality.

There's a TON of stuff you have to do to get the better endings. Somehow, inexplicably, I bumbled into almost everything I needed for the most complex one just by exploring and eavesdropping a lot. I only had to go out of my way to get one item, and the game outright told me that I needed it and where it was. Sekiro is way less cryptic than previous FS games and I kind of appreciate that.

What I don't appreciate is the last thing I had to do to secure that route. You have to revisit Hirata Estate with a different bell, which culminates in you re-fighting Owl with a different moveset. This fight. This FUCKING fight. It took me more tries than most of the bosses combined. It feels like a Bloodborne boss only you don't have a roll anymore. I got inhumanly good at dodging through his bullshit and stabbing him in the back, and ended up using some super rare consumables on my winning run to secure it. If there's a trick to him I never figured it out. Probably gonna skip him on NG+. I hated him that much.

Fountainhead felt like the game was apologizing for Owl 2. That whole section was a blast. Gorgeous, consistently fun new enemies, a good amount of side stuff to do (CARP), and one of the most visually amazing bosses in any FS game at the end. I beat it on my first try and in that regard it was kind of a let down, but I had so much fun doing it that I didn't care.

Now I just need to get consistent enough at Isshin that I can close the fight out. It's actually a really entertaining boss (especially bullying Genichiro in phase 1) but damn it's long.

I beat Genichiro, which was a good, fun fight that wasn't overly difficult. Took me maybe 20 tries? Still, I made progress in most tries so it wasn't as thankless as just beating my head against a wall.

From there, I'm branching out into other stuff. I did the quest with the kite, which was cool, then I did the spirit realm thing with the moneys and get the mortal blade. Got the fat guy to move to the spirit realm as well, I assume I'll be doing something with the fruit he gave me. As you said, even though I'm missing some, the quests in this game are far less opaque and timing based than, say, DS3's marriage quest. I appreciate that. Still don't know if I should have given the infested tome to the divine child or whatever.

So now I'm on the headless monkey, which we'll see how that goes, I got his head off in my first tussle with him but it looks like the second stage is harder. The area is good fun though. I find myself extremely frustrated by the terror mechanic and terror attacks. It's less annoying than frenzy, of course, but I didn't like curse in DS either. I try to fight the headless and the sorcerer guy in the underworld and they are both spirit based and it is incredibly frustrating. I looked it up and I'm told that I need to use the divine confetti and that is just fucking annoying. There is not that much divine confetti, and to know you need to use a very limited use item to beat the boss is just aggravating as fuck. It's also very stressful in a bad way to know that THIS run you're commiting to beat the boss and if you don't... well fuck you you don't get many more tries.

Save the persimmons. Also give the Divine Child the book. These are related, you'll see why.

Divine confetti is a weird consumable. I didn't use it on ape. The reason you see people use it is because it gives a flat increase to damage no matter what, kind of like Ako's Sugar. It's also mega effective against certain enemy types, but IIRC ape isn't in that group. Also FYI as the game goes on you'll be getting plenty of confetti and eventually be able to just buy it. Regardless, you don't need it here. I wouldn't waste it.

First phase ape is the harder one because his movement is so weird. I recommend running around at middle distance to bait the shit throw, running under him to avoid it, hitting him a few times and getting ready to block. When he does the tantrum on his back it's always 4 swings IIRC, then you can punish. Also fireworks mess him up because he's a beast.

Second phase is secretly a breeze and why I really enjoy this fight. The scream can be countered a couple of ways:

- run back and just let it pass, remembering to use the anti-terror powder if you get caught
- run past him, the hitbox is mostly in the front so you can punish if you run behind
- umbrella. Not even joking, you can just umbrella. I don't know if it has to be the purple umbrella or not, but you can just wait him out and then swat him with the umbrella R1 after for a chunk of damage.

If you back off, take a sec to hold block and get your posture back. You absolutely have to parry his sword strikes because this is a posture fight. By far the most important thing is his gigantic overhead chop where he stands straight up and brings the sword straight down. If you parry it Sekiro will go into the "oof that was a big hit" crouch, but the ape will be flat on the ground. Use the spear and hit R2 to pull like you would an armored enemy and you'll yank the centipede out of the ape for a metric fuckton of posture damage.

Getting there on the second phase. I can get through the first phase pretty easily at this point by staying extremely close to him and blocking and swinging when in doubt. Most of his attacks that he does at close do very little damage so there's no point in being super cautious to try to be perfect---you'll save more health by swinging a lot if you're like me.

Second phase, I'm having a hard time finding the openings that let me swing. When he jumps and worms toward you, you can dodge at him and get 1-2 hits in. If you deflect his HUGE overhead strike you stun him too. Besides that, I'm still trying to figure out when to get the pokes in. They obviously made the 2nd phase sword attacks absurdly erratic to challenge your deflect skills.

I do very few actual swings on ape. It's primarily a posture fight, which means your "damage" comes from deflects and the spear pull trick I mentioned when you parry the overhead swing. Unfortunately that means the best I can suggest is just getting the hang of the parry timing.

Trust me, you'll definitely want to be comfortable with ape phase 2. For reasons.

Beat the ape. It was really weird because I only got the centipede pull with the spear to proc once in the 20-30 times I fought him. I don't know if I had to be standing somewhere else, or my timing was wrong, but every damn time I stuck the spear in it just hit him and didn't do the pulling the centipede out animation. Kind of a bummer.

Don't know where to go next. I'll have to run around and explore.

made me fight a headless ape with an ape add so close to beating the ape, it was a real out of ideas move.
I beat them on my first try, I'm glad too, there wasn't anything I really needed to learn about an enemy I had just defeated with a slightly more difficult add. On top of another puzzle snake scene; weirdly, I had already killed the snake using the kite which led to some *extremely* strange continuity problems for the game.

Then I follow with two areas in a row (ashina depths and mibu village) with respawning apparition enemies. Fuck that shit. I'm still avoiding fighting the headless guys and the ghost wizards because I find them kind of infuriating.

I ran into the exact same thing you did with the back to back ape fights. I think FS assumed people would do stuff in a different order? I'm honestly not sure. I like the fight quite a bit but 4 bars of ape is just too much ape.

On the subject of doing things in the wrong order, the game seems to think it's much more linear than it really is. I happened to do the kite puzzle after the second snake segment but knowing that you could do it the other way doesn't surprise me at all. There's a lot of janky plot/event triggers in this game. I mentioned in a prior post that a particularly important event, close-ish to where you are I think, happened without informing me. I'm now fairly certain that the game just doesn't tell you but it's so strange to leave something that huge out. No other From Soft game that I've played leaves you in the dark when stuff that significant happens.

Regarding Headless and Shichimen Warriors, bring the purple umbrella. It gives you room to breathe against the former and COMPLETELY trivializes the latter. I don't think the warrior has a single move that the purple umbrella can't block fully, including the terror laser. You can even use the anti-air deathblow technique on him when he decides to float and take off an entire lifebar instantly. I figured that out on my second playthrough and it was probably my favorite moment of the whole thing. Also buy the purple gourd from the memorial mob at Mibu Village. It makes terror way easier to manage and you won't have to churn through the powders anymore.

I like the overall vibe of the ninjas and national government coming to take everyone out but the new forces can be frustrating to fight if you stack more than one. I got up to the back antechamber which is good, but then I cut through a bunch of dudes to get to the miniboss and... the save point right in front of him is out of order for no reason? Fuck that.

Anyway, I went the other way and fought Owl once but I have a lot more work to do before I get to that. The save point makes you go through a shit ton of dudes, which even if you run past them requires a long time for a big boss fight. Ugh.

I found the two interior ministry minibosses and they are super, super hard. The one in the castle proper even has a shitty add! I have a hard enough time with one of those ninja dudes hanging out much less adding in the miniboss ninja. Worst of all this is the one the save point outside his room just doesn't work for no good reason whatsoever. Makes me so mad. I had to stop because I got so frustrated with all my dead ends. My first move is probably to beat the miniboss you can assassinate to get a deathblow off that is in the monkey temple, I'll have to learn his pattern better. Those dudes are tough.

Do you know where I get the document that lets me build the purple umbrella? I have all the resources for it but I apparently can't build it yet.

I ran into some weirdness with the shrines in that section once it gets taken over. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. I didn't manage to figure out why. Good luck on that front. Owl is kind of a fucker at first but once you get the rhythm of the hit and run you'll be fine. It's not a fast fight but it's fairly safe once you learn his moves.

When you have the base version of a prosthetic you shouldn't need to do anything besides finish all the prerequisites in the tech tree. That means you're gonna have to make some stuff that isn't umbrella-related first. If it's not letting you make it you probably have some random other prosthetic before it that isn't made yet. You'll definitely want the purple umbrella ASAP and the red umbrella for late game. No rush on the latter.