So I've been playing this recently...

[eddyak]

Juuzo's annoying as hell, but he can be handled.

Sneak round the left side, into the building, kill off the nerds in there before they can raise the alarm, then sneak through the rest of the building, hop out and quickly sneakmurder one of the shield guys, and you should be able to sprint over and get another quick kill before Juuzou & Friends come after you. Then it's a matter of taking down archer boy, then kill off his minions one by one, hopefully getting the second shield guy in the process (he can and will shove you at exactly the wrong moment if you don't), then run and get the old man waiting in the pond. The two of you can DP Juuzo, and from there you've got free rein!

...to go into the building and find the bloody door locked.

I'm gonna reiterate- I LOVE this combat system.

When you get into it with a strong enemy, and you learn their patterns, and you fall into the zone and get that rhythm going, just that ridiculous chain of strike strike deflect strike strike deflect deflect, it feels incredible. I just had a couple-minutes-long slugging match with some speedy bastard where I just refused to knock his posture all the way down to zero, because I was having so much fun just admiring how cool the characters looked in the middle of that.

I've just run into my typical Metroidvania hump, though, where I've got a handful of ways I think I can go, but on one there's a ridiculously tough enemy (holy shit that fuckin guy in the tower where they kept the kid, this dude is midboss material, what the hell am I doing here), on two others there are locked doors, one heads right down into the Tomb of Giants where there's no light and I really don't wanna go, and I've forgotten the other routes I can take.

[Mattias]

All the DMC V hype convinced me to go back to Bayonetta since I have it on the Switch now. I love the combat, all the dodge mechanics feel so good. That said those Hidden Alfheim missions are annoying as fuck. Screw you "you can only kill enemies in timestop, you have three minutes".

[Skull]

Juuzo's annoying as hell, but he can be handled.

Sneak round the left side, into the building, kill off the nerds in there before they can raise the alarm, then sneak through the rest of the building, hop out and quickly sneakmurder one of the shield guys, and you should be able to sprint over and get another quick kill before Juuzou & Friends come after you. Then it's a matter of taking down archer boy, then kill off his minions one by one, hopefully getting the second shield guy in the process (he can and will shove you at exactly the wrong moment if you don't), then run and get the old man waiting in the pond. The two of you can DP Juuzo, and from there you've got free rein!

...to go into the building and find the bloody door locked.

Interesting to see another's take on him. How I did it was have the Ally NPC charge in and attack Juuzo whilst I sneakily circle around picking off his men one by one starting with the archer, once you get the Axe Arm then the shield guys become laughably easy. By the time I'm done the Ally NPC is usually dead so it's just a matter of taking on Juuzo one on one which is incredibly difficult as I have always been using an all-stealth approach where possible so my combat skills became really rusty so I spent a good hour training with Hanpei the Undying until I was certain I could take on Juuzo.

It's really cool all the different ways you can approach infiltrating places. This is a really good game, I'm glad I picked it up by chance.

[Sesto]

Sekiro is pretty good but the combat is a bit hit or miss. When you get into the rhythm it feels really good, otherwise it can just feel frustrating. Some enemies in this game are simply not fun to fight whatsoever, fuck those purple swordsmen. At least the game kind of promotes cheesing a lot of stuff.

Also Divine Confetti is such bad design. Adding a bunch of damage sponges bosses that require you to use a consumable is stupid.

[Orange]

I keep getting my arse kicked as well, but it's so gooood.

I got most of the way through Nioh as well a while ago, but the repetitiveness of the enemies and the almost constant crashing just wiped me out on it. A shame, really, the combat system there was interesting as well.

I have crashed a few times as well. But the more pressing issue was Steam seems to have reworked how controller compatibility works. They seems to have tied that to big picture mode and in some games it locks the controller sensitivity to max making it unplayable.

[You]

big picture mode is the fucking worst

[Mcjon01]

Sekiro first impressions: Oh fuck there’s no language menu in the Japanese version I should have studied more kanji

[Imperial]

Sekiro is pretty good but the combat is a bit hit or miss. When you get into the rhythm it feels really good, otherwise it can just feel frustrating. Some enemies in this game are simply not fun to fight whatsoever, fuck those purple swordsmen. At least the game kind of promotes cheesing a lot of stuff.

Also Divine Confetti is such bad design. Adding a bunch of damage sponges bosses that require you to use a consumable is stupid.

Yeah, I like to see FromSoft experimenting a bit, but not all new things are good things. There is a thin line between challenging and frustrating, and stuff like the Headless and Divine Confetti comes down on the wrong side of the line.

The early game hell is real, and I nearly returned the game. Games are meant to be fun, and I just wasn't having any fun before the Hirata Estates. Thankfully, that's when it all started to click for me.

[eddyak]

Interesting to see another's take on him. How I did it was have the Ally NPC charge in and attack Juuzo whilst I sneakily circle around picking off his men one by one starting with the archer, once you get the Axe Arm then the shield guys become laughably easy. By the time I'm done the Ally NPC is usually dead so it's just a matter of taking on Juuzo one on one which is incredibly difficult as I have always been using an all-stealth approach where possible so my combat skills became really rusty so I spent a good hour training with Hanpei the Undying until I was certain I could take on Juuzo.

It's really cool all the different ways you can approach infiltrating places. This is a really good game, I'm glad I picked it up by chance.

Juuzou always rekt my old man before I could get round to fighting him. I wanted to 100% keep him alive by the time I finished the fight, so I waited till it was just Juuzo before I brought him into it. I haven't found the axe prosthetic yet, so shield boys are still an issue for me unless I pull off the sneak kills.

Sekiro is pretty good but the combat is a bit hit or miss. When you get into the rhythm it feels really good, otherwise it can just feel frustrating. Some enemies in this game are simply not fun to fight whatsoever, fuck those purple swordsmen. At least the game kind of promotes cheesing a lot of stuff.

Also Divine Confetti is such bad design. Adding a bunch of damage sponges bosses that require you to use a consumable is stupid.

I think they meant for us to cheese a lot of enemies. There are enough annoying mechanics and the stealth system's functional enough that it seems like the intent was for you to be able to knock off a lifebar before you fought anybody without a great big boss name at the bottom.

[Zurvan]

Sekiro Thoughts:

Going through this game, it looks absolutely amazing, I find myself stopping for the view pretty often, and I keep exploring to find other visages and secrets.
So far, there's only been a handful of bosses that have really gotten to me, most mini bosses can however be eased up through stealth.
The shinobi tools are either hit or miss, some I find very useful (shuriken and mist raven) while others seem rather pointless in comparison.
I absolutely love it that you (seemingly) can take 5 different paths before actually finding out that, yes, that's where you have to go now. Though with it I get the sense of losing out on NPC moments, or in game events.
I strangely find early game to have been a death sentence, but after a while its hard to die at all during exploration considering some mechanics.

bossfights

[Favourite bossfights so far are probably the guy on the bridge, the ape in the forest, and the Genichiro fight on top of the castle, hardest probably lady butterfly, genichiro, and maybe the boss I'm fighting now that I won't namedrop becuz spoilers]

And yeah, divine confetti is a dumb mechanic, that I only found out after killing one headless already...

[Historia]

i still have to play bloodborne before i try sekiro, but no ps4

though the only game i'm really interested in right now is three kingdoms total war but that doesn't come out till may
hmm

[Imperial]

I haven't found the axe prosthetic yet, so shield boys are still an issue for me unless I pull off the sneak kills.

stuff

Hirata Estates

Eavesdrop as much as possible

[Skull]

I haven't found the axe prosthetic yet, so shield boys are still an issue for me unless I pull off the sneak kills.

I've found that so far every Prosthetic Tool is strategically placed just before whatever it works best against wherever that be a new enemy type (like the Axe for Shield enemies) or specific bosses (such as the Firecracker for the Ogre).

From the sounds of it you're much further ahead then I so telling you that was probably worthless, but to anyone else starting out I'd definitely recommend taking the time to collect all the Tools as while they don't make the game easy, they definitely take some of the edge off of the early game hell.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, sniped.

[Imperial]

Bosses and minibosses killed so far

General Tenzen Yamauchi


The Chained Ogre


General Naomori Kawarada


Shinobi Hunter Enshin of Misen


Juzou the Drunkard


The Chained Ogre wasn't nearly as bad as he was made out to be, and Juzou was a wonderful comedy of errors. I accidentally triggered samurai guy by leading the bandit mob too close to the pond, so he wound up dying way earlier than I intended. At least he pulled focus and wore down the mob to a point where I only had to kill one more goon before going 1v1 with the big boss man himself. I panicked and fell back on Dark Souls starts: Stick and move. Better yet, stick and move while circling around to his right/my left, going under his sword arm to dodge 99% of his swings as they go right over you. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the game to punish me for playing it like Dark Souls instead of going for the deflections, but I got through him without too much trouble.

Bosses that eat me alive no matter what I try

Gyoubu the Demon


Lady Butterfly


I just can't get their timing down no matter what I do. I'm doing marginally better on Butterfly than Gyoubu, but that's not saying much.

Most valuable Skills of the game so far

Mikiri Counter - Trivialized the Shinobi Hunter fight, taking the fight from a ballbuster without it to an absolute breeze once I had it


Suppress Presence - Stealth became way more useful once this was in play, and I'm dying to get the Suppress Sound upgrade/add-on.


Breath of Life: Light - Getting a (small) regeneration every time you deal a deathblow? Yes please.


Chasing Slice - Great for closing on pesky ranged enemies like archers and riflemen

[Deathhappens]

Not an AAA game by any means, but I found a little gem of a fighter on Steam titled Karate Master 2: Knock Down Blow. It's a great nostalgia ballad to the old '80's martial arts flicks, and it's actually pretty serious about its karate terminology as well. Very satisfying fights, and the trailer deserves mention on its own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2t79umkvrU

[Orange]

From the same guys who made Age of Barbarian. They seem to have a knack for this sort of thing.

I'm still torn on buying Arena: An age of Barbarian story just to get the theme song.

[Sesto]

Bosses that eat me alive no matter what I try

Gyoubu the DemonLady ButterflyI just can't get their timing down no matter what I do. I'm doing marginally better on Butterfly than Gyoubu, but that's not saying much.

I never really had much issue with Lady Butterfly. Granted I did avoid fighting her for a while because of her notoriety, so when I eventually did face her I might have been overprepared. Some tips if you want them:

boss tips

Shuriken when she is in the air. It will cause her to fall to the ground. I discovered this accidentally and it definitely made the fight simple.

In phase 2, you can use snap seeds to get rid of the illusions. I wouldn't bother unless you're especially having trouble with them though. All you really need to do is run in circles for a while as they'll naturally disappear.

Also I've been told you can cheese the fight very easily if you just do dodge attacks the entire fight as she can't block it. I'm not sure if this is true though.

Gyoubu, on the other hand, is mostly just about learning to parry I think. I guess the main tip is when he starts doing his "frenzy" and charges in a circular motion doing constant attacks, don't bother trying to parry, just run. You could also grab the firecrackers if you're really struggling.

I'm nearly done the game and overall I think I've had more trouble with some minibosses than a lot of the bosses. That goddamn spear samurai. And the purple shinobi are still the bane of my existence.

boss spoiler

Using puppeteer on the Lone Shadow's buddy in the Castle and tagteaming him was such a great feeling.

[Imperial]

Thanks for the tips, Sesto.

I was able to beat one of those by remembering I had the firecrackers, which turned the entire boss fight into a joke. The other one I beat by treating her like a Dark Souls boss. Forget parrying. Just stick and move, dodge and slash. It's funny how the game punishes Dark Souls habits in the early going, but going back to that well has allowed me to turn total disasters into some of the easiest bosses in the game.

Of course, now I'm stuck on the Blazing Bull, which has killed me more than any other boss in the game. I have the feeling this is going to be the game's idea of normal. Just when I feel I have mastered the combat mechanics and gotten gud, some new boss or miniboss will come along to violently disprove that notion.

[Skull]

The only thing that I think Sekiro is missing is some kind of hint system where a character offhandly mentions stuff you may have not noticed when going through the giant levels.

Because only after like 8 hours in did I realise there was a shop in the first area, that I had missed and as a result I had been taking on all the bosses without any items. T_T

[Sesto]

Yeah, the extra vertical layer to Sekiro makes it far easier to miss things.

Blazing Bull

Blazing Bull is just a matter of hugging his ass. He might try to attack you while you do this but his side sweep can't even hit you if you're hugging him. Don't even bother parrying, just keep running to his behind. Also, Firecrackers.

I don't like the fight because his hitboxes are so wonky.