It’s just the way the attack is designed. It’s a high posture damaging attack that also pushes/staggers you.
That’s cheese, because it violates the rules.
It’s my man’s special move! Also, it’s the game telling you to get up in his face and beat on him.
Counterpoint: Never be that far away from him. You can hit him and cancel that attack and he’ll usually attempt to do it 2-3 more times. Any time he’d start to wind up that shot I knew it was 3-5 free hits.
This.
Counter-Counterpoint: shut up
Thank you for the advice and encouragement, Scott. I just beat the Purple ninja. I thought he was a mini boss, and maybe he was but he messed me up after I got some good shots in, I had to rez and run away to heal, but then I back stabbed him and got a new prosthetic for my trouble :- )
Now I’m back to Gyoubu. I’m using the firecracker mod per the strategy guides. I’ll keep trying for awhile. I really really want to explore more of the world.
Side note: Ya know, I actually beat Demon Souls (don’t know how), but I quit Dark Souls after many hours and have never played another From game since, as I saw it as a waste of time, money, and pure frustration. Some games are just not for certain people. But I felt the same at literally the 1st mini-boss general in this game and was ready to quit…and then I beat him…and almost every mini/mid boss since lol
Personally, I feel like (this far at least), that this game is more “fair” than a lot of the souls games, in that there are no things that I’ve seen like “You can kill this dragon,but it takes literally 500 arrows”.
The enemies generally just fight you, and you can learn their moves and get good at defeating them.
The biggest hindrance to winning is that when you encounter a new enemy, your instinct is to stay back and try to learn them. And basically EVERY enemy senses this hesitation and punishes you for it.
That’s what this thread is for! Here’s some more encouragement. If you’ve beaten the Purple Ninja, you are better than you think. That area is a secret, and you’re not necessarily designed to find that right away. That Mini-Boss is one of the advanced fights of the early game. You’ll see what I mean a bit later after you make it passed Gyoubu and The Bull.
Quick thing about Gyoubu. Besides the firecracker, keep an eye out for a green indicator over his head, this is your queue to use your grapple. Took me forever to realize this, so I’m pointing it out in case you missed it. Grapple in, hit him a few times, then blast the firecracker to hit him a few more times. Back off, block/deflect, repeat.
I dunno about you folks, but Long Arm Centipede Sen-un seems REAL familiar… 
Turns out its hard to be a long arm centipede with my FOOT UP HIS ASSSSSS
Countercounterpoint: He doesn’t give a crap how close you are and will jump back and do it in melee range.
Now being in melee means you can probably hit him with a swing and stop him, but not always. Sometimes he does it after an attack you have to block, and that’s when it feels extra cheap.
It was easily my least favorite move he had. Mostly because it was silly from just an ergonomic point of view. The bow just appears in his hand, his sword just sheaths itself and he fires it like it’s a revolver all instantaneously. It never stopped being cheap, but just beating on him is the best counter. That said, he can just hit you with it when he feels like it. Hell, he can do it 12 times in a row and kill you if he feels like it. Though, thankfully that’s stupid rare.
The main thing is that even if you miss the block early, you can still block the last 2 shots. Your instinct is to jump or roll. Don’t. Block that cheesy shit, it’s the only real defense.
I’ve run into a mini-boss that seems to punish that, but it just might be I don’t know the ins and outs of it yet. Still for most enemies this is accurate. You need to pressure them. Find out how many hits before you need to block. That’s step one. Then it’s how many times you need to block. Then it’s what you can’t block.
I get how people can get frustrated, but something about it appeals to me now. At first it was a big turn off, but ironically Genshiro, the bastard, made me appreciate it. I could SEE how good I was getting. At first I thought it was impossible. I couldn’t get past the first pip. Then I could. Then I knew there was no way past that 2nd one. Then I was. Then I was like… I can do this. Before long those first two pips were mostly a formality. I was beating them both in a minute or two tops. Hell, I often wasn’t taking any real damage.
The progress from, “WTF is this nightmare, I’m getting 3 shotted and doing nothing,” to “I just need to nail the timing on this one thing a couple of times and I have this,” is… downright amazing. I felt like a ninja god.
Of course that godhood was put into serious question by regular fucking mooks a few hours later, but still. That’s only because they were new. I basically got around them without really fighting them, but if I wanted to learn them I could isolate one in a few spots and train. And in a lot of ways that’s the break from say Dark Souls. In Dark Souls if you run into an enemy, generally they have one trick. They have some big attack that you need to roll from. But even then you can just roll around probably and land hits and win. In Sekiro, that almost never works. You need to know you enemy and counter their moves. You can’t just jump and dodge away and land a hit here and there and make progress.
He was, minibosses all drop a prayer bead.
I DID IT. I JUST DID IT!!! blurring spollers doesn’t seem to be working
Eh, not all. But most.
Hell yeah! Wipe that blood off and keep going.
I assume you mean Gyoubu?
This is the key expectation everyone needs to set if they want to get through this game. Everyone look at this sentence and prepare yourself mentally.
Sekiro boss fights should be a relatively linear learning process. But that means there’s a start and and end. At the start you are going to suck. At the end you should be able to beat the fight pretty reliably. It shouldn’t feel like luck.
If you got through on luck then your brain hasn’t finished the pattern recognition process for that boss.
It shouldn’t, but it sure does.
Shiva’s description here is good:
This is what you need to start doing, in order to actually get better.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed, especially by the bosses, and just not learn anything… it’s just, “oh shit oh shit oh shit ohshitohshitohshit DEAD”.
If you go in with the expectation that you’re probably going to die, and you’re just trying to figure out what they are gonna doe, then you start making progress. You learn what they’re gonna do, and you get good at countering it, and it feels GOOD… and then they do a new thing and you die, and it pisses you off. And then you eventually learn THAT… and this progresses until you finally kill them.
And then at that point, you realize that guys who used to be challenging are now cake, and you can just murderize them, because you have actually become better at the game. And this is cool.
It’s a very rewarding system, but it requires investment, and it requires that you get past the point of sheer panic, to the point where you are actually processing what’s happening.
Honestly this sounds about as much fun as memerizing patterns in a bullet hell top down shooter from the 90’s. It’s no wonder I’m not having fun with the bosses, I’m just trying to play and have fun, not count frames. There is also a reason I haven’t enjoyed fighting games since Super Street Fighter II.
Not really - it sounds like you just got better at that one guy, and the ones before him, and now you have to relearn all over again the next pattern. Ugh.
I think for a lot of people this is a rewarding system, and that’s awesome for those folks, but for me it’s just work. And not fun work, at that, the more progress I make. Last night I played for an hour and wrapped up two tough mini-bosses, leveled up my viality, bought a few cool toys and upgraded my prosthetic tools a few times, and that stuff was really fun, but it also doesn’t feel meaningful because the enemies don’t really care what your attack power is or what your vitality is - you can either master them or you will RB until you do. The progression stuff is almost meaningless, and it’s killing my interest almost as much as the fact I’m bad at pattern recognition and memorization.