After not playing for much of last week, I made what I consider decent progress this Saturday and Sunday. I got past the second Samurai General mini-boss way quicker than the first (3-4 deaths vs 10+); I beat the Shinobi Hunter; I took out the the Drunkard with the help of the NPC standing nearby.
Now I have two options: A giant snake who has killed me twice already or the infamous Lady Butterfly, who wrecked me to end my weekend last night. I think I’m choosing the snake.
Yep. Seems like that’s my likely result as well. So the snake it is!
I still don’t feel like I’m playing this game right. I’m way more lucky than I am skilled. And I’m sneak-killing everyone I can because that’s the only way I survive. But progress is rewarding nonetheless.
I got past the guy on horseback after I upgraded my prosthetic arts to allow for attack. He wasn’t that bad after all.
Then a little bit later a flaming bull f’d me up. So I’m back in the same situation of bosses on either side. Butterfly time? I’m kinda scared to face her.
Butterfly is still harder than flaming bull, which only has one health bar. My tactics: You can run around and kite it forever, get in 1 attack or 2 when it hits a wall or snag, and stun it for extra attacks with firecrackers. Although you can’t spam them and have to wait like 20 seconds after use for the stun to work. Hitting the bull’s head deals more damage than its body.
I started NG+ because dammit fuck me of course I did. What an idiot.
And no I didn’t give up Kuro’s charm (NG+ item which if given away means you take chip damage from blocking for more XP. You have to deflect or you are damaged!) but I probably should have because you can always reclaim it later after the fact. For the good news I’ve cleared all bosses first try up to before Fountainhead Palace except for Genichiro and Owl Great Shinobi. Both took several tries. Owl significantly more so. Enough to spread dragonrot around. That fight is still very difficult. I thought I would die to Lady Butterfly and the two Ape fights but somehow pulled through one-off.
But now I got to the secret hidden boss I missed the first go-around…and it’s so difficult, and I’m not sure if NG+ helps or just makes it worse. At least we got more dragonrot!
This feels like a very similar character arc to what I went through. I don’t recall if I thought the charm was actually “worth” playing with in the end or if it just pissed me off for very little sense of achievement. I’d have to go to my old posts.
I guess I feel like I haven’t truly finished a FromSoft game until I’ve beaten it a second time.
With Sekiro it is crazy fast to blast through areas. Skip. Skip. Skip all the things. STOP: Boss/Required mini-boss. And a few of them are total blockers!
Dark Souls only really had one. O&S. The rest, not so much. Going through the level was harder but I can’t think of another boss that took 50+ attempts over multiple sessions.
P.S. Also getting royally fucked in the ass for not getting the end game achievements (thanks Steam!) is AN actual motivation for plaything through this nightmare again! I want my achievement Steam you fuck! As petty as it is, this pisses me off.
After 100 hours of game time I finally have arrived. My third eye is wide open.
All the bosses and mini-bosses have become manageable. I can even toy with them to certain extents. (but that is the kind of hubris that will get me killed for sure)
P.S. The game is still harder than the rest in terms of bosses, mini-bosses, common street toughs (skippable)
During my NG++++ playthrough, I only died to death once. Armored Warrior for some reason. Never died on him ever before in any of the previous runs. (maybe because I tried to light him on fire) The funny thing is I never learned how to cure dragon rot this playthrough, but I never needed to because I never died again. Also the Sculptor while auto-dragon-rotted on the first death gets auto-cured when I progressed the purification sub-plot.
OK, starting my second attempt on this after finishing Wo Long. Parrying seems more difficult in this - I lost to the first mini boss a dozen times or so before beating him. I have trouble when they have the dangerous attacks where i need to pick from defensive choices instead of just trying to time a parry.
Good luck! I saved this for last of all the from games and it is indeed really hard! I enjoyed it a bunch though. It kinda felt both good and bad that the reason I couldn’t progress was always I had to learn/git gudder and never that I had the wrong build or should grind a higher lvl.
I’m already enjoying it more than I originally did when I played for 2 hours. I started over. I think playing Wo Long helped me prepare for this by being a parry-heavy game. Wo Long seemed more forgiving about the timing, but I still think it helped.
I just beat the Chained Ogre, which I encountered the first time I played, but couldn’t beat it. I already bought Nioh 2, so that will be another game in the near future.
I haven’t played Wo Long so I can’t speak to it but Sekiro has a very high learning curve, but it does become a lot easier once mastered. And when I say mastered, you have learned how to handle all types of attacks and basically know everything :)
Generally though, always be deflecting. Dodging can get you killed. Disengaging the enemy is suboptimal because for most of them you want to be highly aggressive and break their posture for a death blow. When I’m not deflecting, I am attacking, or Mikiri countering or jumping over a sweep. I almost never dodge. (unless it’s a grab attack, or a well known attack I can brutally punish by side-stepping).
In Dark Souls, you can learn a boss by only dodging, never attacking; in Sekiro you can do the same thing except you try and deflect everything. (except the perilous attacks of course you need to counter another way) Also as you might have noticed a deflect is nothing like a Dark Souls parry, because that triggers a riposte. In Sekiro it’s just a “perfect block” that does posture damage only.
It’s probably the only From game I can actually play through without dying now because it’s 100% skill execution but I wonder if that will remain the case if I am out of practice…
It is kind of freeing. There can be some grinding for skill points. I only do it if I lost a bunch. Once I beat the boss I may back track and kill a section of enemies to make up for me loss. If I get through a section clean then I don’t.
I’m very far from mastering, but I do seem to be improving in that I can encounter a new mini boss and sometimes beat it in a couple tries instead of a dozen :-)
I’m liking it a lot more than I originally did and I think I have Wo Long to thank. It was good training.
