When I performed my 1st playthrough, I went through using only my katana and mikiri's. Now after having played it a while longer, all I do is start up a boss fight and attempt to see how many prosthetics and shinobi arts I can stuff seamlessly into a fight to make it as cinematic as possible. Perfect game.
@RAYHAN REHEMA PUTRA yeah but most people hesitate to use prosthetics on the first play through. But I don't think its bad. I did the same and i fell in love playing with only the katana... The parrying and attacking is also so addicting, its probably the best part
@rayhanrehemaputra1719I think it's cause you have to pause to change what you have equipped it's a odd thing to think about. Especially on your first playthrough. I agree once the becomes amazing wants calm your nerves and begin to think of the combat as a rhythmic puzzle
fun fact: the only gourd seed you can't get before genichiro is deep in the divine realm. ever since my first playthrough, i tend to show up to that "2nd boss fight in the game" with nearly the maximum number of heals.
One of the things I adore about sekiro is how you can ALWAYS beat the game at any stage of health or gourd amount. Because of the way posture works, if you always get perfect blocks you could likely beat the whole game at base vitality. Also it’s funny as fuck to fight owl with a single gourd and kick his ass six ways to the Hirata estate
You can. Base vitality, bell + charmless is possible. Not a lot of room for errors or experimentation, though. Some true masochists do base attack runs without skills or prosthetics on top of everything else, but this is where I draw the line.
Only picked up my first FromSoft game a month ago with Elden Ring, went straight to Sekiro after finishing NG+4 and haven't looked back once. Clearing this game was the most intense and satisfying few days of my 20+ year gaming experience. Mastering the teleport timings from the old DBZ Budokai games really helped a lot with the parry timings as they're basically identical.
Hey man i know this is two days old but I PROMISE you WILL kill demon of hatred, if you have the patience to try and try again, you have the patience to win
@@bofa722 He’s not that hard tbh. Just face him like a bloodborne boss. You can use the whistle to stun him too, and if you pair that with that sugar that takes half your health but gives you massive damage he dies super quick in his third phase.
I recommend the flame umbrella for his fireball throw. Stay close to the boss and keep circling right. Sprint when you can to get behind him and get 1-2 hits in before dodging right and trying to get back behind him. For phase 3, save your spirit emblems in the first two phases and use Malcontent to stun him 3 times (you can get it from a shichimen warrior in the double ape room) and chunk his health with prosthetics or mortal draw.
Wild how I just started playing sekiro last week and was talking with a friend about how tightly balanced it is, then this video drops. Nice timing lol
@@HidinginPrivate Now that I finished the vid heres some of my thoughts from my personal experience: From playing Elden Ring (my first Fromsoft game) I got the impression that the concept of having different "builds" available to the player is more of a detriment to game balance than a boon. I played as a pure mage (since before this game my main other dnd-like rpg series was the elder scrolls,where I always play spellcasters) and I noticed that the balance of the game felt very off to me: the dungeon-y areas always felt really tense and tedious to traverse,since if I ran out of mp flasks I'd be doomed,and a bunch of the dungeons also had enemies that were hidden behind corners or just out of view,just so they can do a surprise attack on you if you aren't aware they're there (which I also think is a very mean way to design a dungeon but alas),which was doubly bad for my mage because my health bar was always pretty small until very late-game, I just didn't have the extra stat points to spend on extra health. Conversely, once I got some decent spells I thought that all of the big bosses were really easy, since mages are long range fighters but most bosses only had melee attacks, I was able to cheese most of them by just staying at a safe distance the entire and spamming spells (doubly so after I got some good tanky summons to distract them,and triply so after I got comet azure). I remember talking with some friends about my struggles and reading up online about other people's experiences with the game and I was very surprised to find that they were different from mine: I haven't really seen anyone else have the same issues with the dungeons I had, and I saw different people complain about struggling with different bosses instead. Stuff like Mohg and Rahdan, which I've seen people say are some of the hardest in the game , I beat 1st try without even getting hit. All of this made me realise that while the game gives you the option to build your character in different ways, the actual content of the game seemed to be balanced around a melee fighter build,and any other build will have widly different milage with the difficulty in different sections of the game. Now with Sekiro, the lack of the rpg character building elements means that we're all "stuck" using the same meele swordsman "build" (with some slight variance with the consumables and tools,but still relatively self-contained due to all of them having limited usage per fight) now the devs can balance the content of the game specifically just for this playstyle, so everything in the game feels *just right* in terms of difficulty.(also Sekiro dungeons have next to none hidden surprise attack enemies which is a plus for me :P)
@@alexg.9250it honestly sounds like you’re complain about the way open world rpgs in general, (especially the souls franchise) allow you to have freedom when it comes to builds. If you don’t like the idea of different builds having strengths and weaknesses idk if you like rpgs tbh, and maybe that’s why you like sekiro more, it’s not an rpg it’s an action game that allows you a few choices. Also don’t really understand the dungeon complaint if I’m being honest, souls games aren’t really known for being fair for newcomers
@@IzzyZil20 my comment wasn't a complaint, just an obversation in regards to the video topic of game balance in souls games and my personal experience with the series so far. I love rpgs and ive played loads of them (but addmitedly I mostly play jrpgs , my only experience with western ones before elden ring was the TES series)
@@alexg.9250 i will admit it’s hard to balance when you can break the game if you try hard enough, the elder scrolls makes even the most broken Elden ring build seem silly by comparison
My only gripes with the game is that there's no shortcut or quick switch system for the arts, luckily there's a mod that fixed it, It makes combining Arts move so much fun when you don't have to go to the pause menu to change it manually
@@rofl_waffl it’s called weapon wheel mod I think all the mods are on nexus mods their are some really good ones, especially the ones I highly recommend sake of Ashina if you want to take Sekiro to the next level
Excellent video; really illustrates why, for me at least, Sekiro has the most tightly tuned and satisfying gameplay of all Fromsoft games that I've played. It's one of my top three favorite games for a good reason, after all!
I feel like thats the point, fromsoft combat has always been simple, and not really deep, its always been a “focus on the boss more, and level cool weapons”
@@LuisRodriguez-kh8qmi know you asked him but for me one of the only games in the same genre that competes with sekiro is nioh 2 and I like both equally
This game is like the Formula One car of videogames. It's a perfectly tuned machine capable of extreme levels of performance with zero hiccups (except occasional camera issues, my only real complaint) with ALL of the fat and luxuries trimmed off. Stripped down to its most basic performance parts and hardly recognizable as a car (aka a Fromsoft game). The only similarities Sekiro has with the Soulsborne games is the look of the graphics and the "bonfire" aspect. Even the esoteric lore has been mainlined into your veins, as if Miyazaki is saying "Don't spend too much time thinking about who the hell Tomoe is, get back out there and fight Genichiro 10 more times".
It’s crazy you dropped this piece the day I beat Sekiro for the first time after having bought it 4 years ago. Had to get over that mental hurdle before I could appreciate it. Definitely love this offshoot from the main channel. Would love to see more videos in this style whether it be about FromSoft games or not.
just started my first sekiro playthrough a bit ago and haven't gotten much done yet but the chained ogre fight definitely makes me disagree with prosthetics being useless already probably gonna have a lot more uses too once I get more/master the ones I have right now
After starting to play Sekiro, one of the things I liked the most about this was that I didn't have to grind to kill strong foes. If I can't kill something, I can just kill something else instead of grinding the same NPCs for hours to level up.
There's so much to talk about with Sekiro, this was so well done and it didn't even get into how either the posture system or resurrection system interacts with balance and healing, ie the posture system rewarding maintaining higher health and earning back reviving by dealing deathblows. Also the stylistic choices with the boss bar for the video were fun!
Great video! I'll admit I had a rocky start to this game, but once I stopped looking at it like a Dark Souls game I really started to love it. I'd say its my favorite game, and I've been gaming for about 25 years now.
Just looking at the character select screen and then all the overwhelming options in Elden Ring and Dark Souls, I just couldn't pick them up. It feels like I need to make an excel sheet and keep track of everything and decide what to do and what not to do instead of actually playing the game. Basically reminds me of working. I want to have fun not feel like I am working for free. That's why I am suffering in Sekiro now.
Great video man🙏🏾you made me appreciate this game way more than I already did. This is the only souls game that I’ve played three times and still looking forward to playing again
The inclusion of the Demon Bell is so great and I wish it was an option in the other games, especially Elden Ring. You can toggle the enemy damage/difficulty up a notch in exchange for higher item drop rates, and that balances out perfectly for a more rich and dynamic experience. Not only do you get more healing Pellets, which can mitigate the difficulty and eliminate any need for farming Pellets, you also get more Prosthetic upgrade materials which encourages more playstyle experimentation with more tools. This would be really nice in Souls/Elden Ring because it would also kill two birds with one stone - it would give the games this nice tradeoff in difficulty/faster upgrades, and it would also help deal with the annoying RNG of enemy drops. In so many of these games, From has included an annoyingly strict RNG system for armor, weapons, and other gear dropped by enemies. I’d kill for more options to mitigate that.
Well elden ring has summons that eliminate any type of difficulty or bleed builds that make it really easy aslong as you know the boss movements and magic spells that allow you to just stay away from bosses making them easy too, honestly both elden ring and sekiro are amazing displays of fromsoft further perfecting their craft
Little addition the veriety part at the end; there are multiple secret combos with some of the arts(sabimaru) and prosthetics or even secret combos using prosthetics with arts. The depth is insane and even after 6+ playthroughs I feel like I've still only scratched the surface of what's possible with. The combat system. Shout out Ongbal on youtube, he is the true embodiment of wolf in his gameplay.
I am really glad you brought up "build variety". I think a lot of these "builds" are only cosmetic, in that they don't differ from each other enough to be relevant. In Dark Souls, you start out as a dude with a sword and shield, and can often end as....the same guy with a sword and shield, just with higher numbers. Different weapons also don't operate any differently, besides damage and attack speed. Dark Souls 1 was the only where I felt it mattered, because a Zweinhander handles very differnetly from a Balder Side sword, but in later games, there seemed to be little difference between which weapon you use, or which stats you raise to do so. Sekiro offers combat arts, prosthetics, other moves (like Mikiri), Ninjitsu, abilities like Living Force, etc..... If I play with a different Ninjitsu, different 3 Prosthetics, and focusing on a different skill tree, why does this not count as a different build? Is it just because you can use everything? As opposed to being blocked to some spells/weapons? Why would restricting player variety be considered an improvement?
I think you just might need to stop using basic ass shields and swords. DS2 in particular has incredible build variety with like twice the weapons of ds1 plus the addition of mechanics like powerstancing. Plus, all magic is fairly good in DS2 and there are weapons that double as staves or talismans for further variety. DS3 though, I could see the argument of it being just a str, dex, and quality builds with nothing in between.
@@HidinginPrivate The greatest Mech customization Game franchise will return with its best Combat yet Its also Confirmed that Something like the Posture mechanic will be present and It will be Affected by Ranged and melee attacks
Sekiro is probably my second favorite form soft game, after watching this I really need to revisit it. It undoubtedly has my favorite combat and story tbh. (Dark souls Lore is Breyer but sekiro’s story just means more)
That’s funny, I was just playing sekiro. 3 achievements away from platinum (homecoming ending, all prosthetic upgrades, all skills). Finished all gauntlets (even the mortal journey) with demon bell and no lurk charm. I would love to see more FromSoftware content, how y’all feeling about the elden ring dlc? FromSoftware’s best works usually come in the dlc’s
I think Fromsoftware knows how important it is that the Elden ring dlc is great. It's their biggest game of all time by far so i'm expecting them to really bring out the big guns for shadow of the erd tree.
I just started playing, it's my first FromSoft game since Tenchu. Did the Blazing Bull and Lady Butterfly last night. I don't mind dying and learning, or being punished for death with losing Sen/exp. It's been a mostly enjoyable challenge so far. But I don't like the lack of checkpoints before mini bosses. I know it only takes you a couple of minutes to get back to them after you know the path, but it's kind of annoying to spend 3 or 4 minutes getting to the boss only to then die in like 2 seconds 😂 That's my only complaint so far.
Sekiro was my first fromsoft game and I loved it. Afterwards I tried out the souls games and thought they played too slow and the combat wasn’t nearly as fun.
Very good video, the points were really well explained and the little edit to symbolize each segment and life bar was funny. I do wish you had talked about some more stuff like hit boxes and dodge animations but I can see how they wouldn't fit the balancing criteria so maybe in a future video
I definitely want to expand on my thoughts for sekiro in the future. As you said though, I just decided that was out f the scope for the specific 'balance' topic I was trying to cover
Great video essay. I finished this game a month ago now and it did feel like a culmination of the Soulslike titles I had played up to this point. I still want to play Elden Ring someday, but this game is a great stopping point for an era of Souls in my opinion, and games I played this year in general. Also always appreciate the BGM, Persona of course, but also nice to hear Hades (I think), I just got back into playing that game for what will likely be another 50 hours.
As someone who’s played every fromsoft title, Elden ring is easily the best. The only one even close is sekiro. The only reason a dark souls could be better is sentimental value and personal memories. But it’s objectively better. But it’s Dark Souls refined. I call it dark souls 4. The story has been refined, battle mechanics were refined, everything is refined to the best of it. It’s an excellent game. I put 250 hours in before I switched to another game, and I only did that to try sekiro. I’m stuck in 3 ways. The white suited cross lance weilder in the memory. The giant drunkard in the memory The horseman. Any tips for passing these?
I love Sekiro so much, man. I quit playing it like 6 months ago and picked up Nioh 2, then bought Nier Automata, but like 20 hours into it, I was looking at 2B's katana and I was just like...."Yeah, I wanna go back to Sekiro", and then played Genichiro and Owl like 50 times each before finally starting a fresh playthrough lol. Weirdly enough, it's my comfort game.
when you shoed the gameplay in sekiro of you hugging the way in that temple for it to flip around i was like wtf and when in and tried it and it worked i was so happy so thanks :)
Sekiro truly feels like a game from back in the early 2000s, a tenchu per say as in no DLC no extra shit u gotta buy just straight up unlocking shit through diff playthroughs. This n bloodborne are my fave soulsborne games period
Started playing though Sekiro two days ago , after not touching since I beat it when it just came out . The Game is amazing as I remebered it to be . Though it seems way easier than it was before , beat Genichiro on my second attempt , when at release it took me around 7 hours .
@@NoobAMV Nah he still the same . My point is that the game is easier since after you beat the game onec , you have already mastered the core mechanics , making the earlier fights easier.
Just beat this game yesterday, and I’m glad I finally came back to it after several years, when I initially dropped it halfway through. It finally clicked with me and now I love it ❤
I look at the "no build variety" argument this way, in Elden Ring, if you wanna try something else, you may need to respec by spending the limited resource that is Larval Tear. But in Sekiro, you can switch to what ever you want in the pause menu at any time without any cost. With that said, I think the intended progression hurts itself. You see most players will only complete the game once and then move on. But I am pretty sure that From designed Sekiro in such a way to make players get the basics right before exploring even more advanced stuffs. Prosthetics, combat arts and consumables usage can vastly change how a fight goes. BUT, new players who are still learning will often not use any of them in their first play through because they are limited due to spirit emblems. So they ended up only using the sword and Healing Gourd for the most part of their first play through and then moved on to other games. So from their perspective, the "no build variety" argument is even more apparent cause they're just using the sword and that's it. What they are missing though, if they actually go into NG+ and play more, is that spirit emblems are so abundant. Especially when you've gotten the basics right from the first play through, you can speed kill pretty much everyone and mini-bosses drop a shit ton of emblems after death. So now you can freely test out prosthetics and stuffs. The fact that charmless mode is only available after beating the game once is what made me believe that this is From's instended progression. You get the basics right with sword only in the first play through and the next play through is where the real fun begins.
There is also another form of healing which is the ‘Breath of Life’ skill. It heals something like 5% health each time you do a deathblow and the percantage gets increased the more you play. This is such a huge thing that I’m shocked nobody’s talng about it. It’s basically the equivalent of Bloodborne’s rally mechanic.
Sekiro is my favourite game of all time, the story and environment is amazing and the combat is silky smooth (as long as you've gotten the hang of the rhythm). I remember the first time i played it, I quit after reaching isshin, thinking I would never be able to beat him. After starting an entirely new game a few months later, I beat him in 4 tries. Once you reach the flow state in sekiro the game just gets more and more spectacular to play. The only problem with it is the spirit emblem stock market because my god if you dont buy 10000 in the beginning when they're like 10 sen you are going to run out, go to buy some, and notice the price has skyrocketed like 50 times higher and have absolutely no more fun with prosthetics.
never head any problem with emblems, never had last than 300 in my first playthrough and NG+ always 999 on storege, if kill enemies while exploring you get tons of them, also at end game you have more sen than you can spend even at first playthrough, so just spend on them
I think you’re giving to much credit to Bloodborne. This is probably a skill issue but I hate that every time I die to a boss I have to spend 20 minutes grinding for healing since I know I can’t beat the boss without healing. It’s a very tedious time drain and it feels like I’ve spent half the game on mindless grinding even at an arcane of 50.
late to this ik but it genuinely is a time waste. Rally mitigates it, but making a healing source grindable is never a good idea. It is tedious at first, then a time waster later. It is irrelevant to a good player but that can be said about healing in any game so that is redundant. BB is good dont get me wrong but they shat the bed with blood vials, its a lifegem mechanic but the price increases with player progression while being limited in exchange for a higher heal..... but that is literally just estus/gourd/flasks, they just dont waste time.
Sekiro also has stats. In souls your damage is more determined by your weapon upgrade level than your overall stats. In Sekiro its your Attack Power from consuming memories. Your "vigor" and "endurance"(posture) is from prayer beads. You just don't have to grind those(just collect). That's not a negative tho I love Sekiro.
The only major gameplay element I would be able to critique is the spirit emblem system. It feels needlessly restrictive and disincentivized me often from experimenting since you could only do 5-6 big attacks with them in a life against a boss. Thus combos like the spear to pull out the parasite out of the headless ape was lost on me until I saw someone beat it with that as an extra. Also a lot of prosthetics are because of this heavy limitation used very infrequently and I, after 5 playthroughs, still have issues implementing them in bossfights which is kinda sad to me since the natural flow of combat is usually mixed up so forcefully with the use of a prosthetic which doesn't feel that rewarding.
When you learn the game though you realize how op it would be to have any more spirit emblems than they give you. You can still basically firecracker mortal blade spam your way through the whole game past senpou temple
@@buckyhurdle4776this is true but I still can't help agree with the above comment. Maybe it would've been better to make some tools use more emblems and others use fewer. Fire crackers with more emblems would be busted but maybe mist ravenv should be slightly fewer cuz it clearly wants you to post a certain way when using it but has probably the steps cost. Maybe the ax and spear should only be one-two emblems. I feel like if certain tools used fewer emblems and were a little less powerful (where applicable), you then get a situation where you really center a play style around then instead of emblems being cool stuff you do only sometimes
I'm on my first playthrough and just defeated Genichiro and has been revisiting the fight. I really like how the fight looks like a dance if Genichiro doesn't dash away and keeps trading hits with you (same a lady butterfly)
Elden Ring seems to always be getting the coveted "ultimate FromSoft Masterpiece" but Sekiro... well. I play Sekiro over and over and over and over over and over. I played through Elden Ring 2 times.
Sekiro is the only game that ive played where it forces you to get good, but it does so in a way where it doesnt feel like it is forcing you. And it does this by having all bosses and mini bosses sharing all combat mechanics all bosses have either a sweep a thrust or both in their moveset and most timings are the same. With little variance. With this you can learn a bosses nuances by fighting other bosses. For example the mikiri counter, you mostly with fight one of the seven spears before a major boss. Once you learn that mikiri counter timing, you have the timing for almost all thrust attacks in the game. So when genichiro uses a thrust attack its not a new attack you've never seen and you are prepared for it. So thats one move you already know and dont have to learn.
33:35 were you serious with what you said here? I don’t use the flame vent much in favor of the Sabimaru but I thought its use was supposed to be for enemies with red eyes instead of “anything with hair”
Sekiro might be the one game that absolutely adore. But I’ll never finish it because I’m simply not good enough. I can appreciate how amazing it is though
It’s a tradition to love your first From Soft game the most, mine being Bloodborne. But Sekiro comes so close, it’s gameplay is the best but I’ll always have a soft spot for the gothic/cosmic horror of Bloodborne.
I no doubt believe in your main point in Sekiro as a game of variety contrary to popular belief. I myself aspire to finish the game soon. But to say it is perfectly balanced, I am on the fence. 1. Prosthetic tool skills require spirit emblem, which still need some farming 2. You did not mention about the dragonrot mechanic, which to me is a Fromsoft signature characteristic of experimenting with various mechanics, but albeit not a good one to promote players from daring to try. As in the rest of your video, I think you missed out on a few important aspects. DS1: most older games do not have bonfires in front of boss gates, and estus flasks can often run out in boss fights for many players. That not being the case for you might be due to your good skill level. Which ultimately all players will eventually improve and find it less stressful, but 20 is not considered abundant to many, I feel. Bloodborne: the most annoying thing about BB healing is the price inflation. Towards the end, you will need to make a typical 3-pig run just to buy 20 vials, which will typically last for one failed boss fight. Imagine every time the player fails, he has to make another 3-pig run. A demoralising prospect I must say, again, to a typical average skilled player. Also, due to the location of the lamp from the boss, 20 vials is not a lot.
I have the platinum trophy on both Bloodborne and Sekiro and I can without a shred of doubt say that I enjoyed Sekiro much much more. I loved the aesthetic of Bloodborne, the cosmic horror and the gothic architecture was superb, but in gameplay I didn't see much difference between it and say Dark Souls. The difficulty spikes were jarring and some of the bosses were really infuriating. Sekiro on the other hand is not only my favourite From Soft game, but my favourite game of all time. I never felt like "the game is unfair". I always knew exactly where I made a mistake and what I need to do to beat it. Unlike Bloodborne, where I just opted to out-farm the difficulty. And the combat in Sekiro is just so satisfying. I have so much respect for Masaru Yamamura now. And he has proven to be worthy of that respect again in Armored Core 6. What a game.
in the healing segment you forgot DS3s estus also refills from killing a dozen enemies or so and a guaranteed refill from any phantom kills. So it also works effectively like Blood vials. Also when it comes to the spell variety. DS3 making pyromancy have stat requirements severely limits the variety as pyromancy changes from a full set of ranged options and general conveniences to help any build, to being a build that you have to pursue that is effectively just a mage with different animations with the same results. It might as well not exist in that game.
Sekiro is a demonstration of From's design ability when they are able to focus on a true single player experience. The thing about the Soulsborne games is they are complicated by the addition of multiplayer. Accounting for the unpredictable behavior of multiple human controlled characters adds unsolvable chaos. And also balance issues. Every Souls-type game has peaks of wonky tuning further complicated by the variety of character builds possible with their more RPG type structure. Sekiro drops all of that and the result is their most perfect game. In fact, I can't honestly think of a single significant thing I'd change about it.
I’ve beaten Dark Souls 1 and 3, and I’ve “platinum’d” Sekiro and Elden Ring on PC. I own Demon’s Souls but unfortunately I don’t have a PS5, so I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. But regardless, I think I have enough experience to say confidently that Sekiro is as close to a perfect game that I’ve ever played in my life. After about 5 playthroughs, I got efficient at the game in a way that I’ve never felt before. Aside from having virtually flawless combat, the skill ceiling is so high that you can continue to enjoy the game more and more even after several runs.
Sekiro is my favorite FS game (of the ones I've played), but I think you're doing a bit of cherry-picking in calling it "Perfectly Balanced". On healing you didn't even discuss the titular feature of the game: reviving. In my opinion the revive mechanic isn't great in the boss fight context. A situation that comes up often is dying in healthbar 1 of a boss and then making it to healthbar 2, and in the act of getting that deathblow that you unlock access to a second revive. But if you use that revive then it won't be accessible in the following attempts at the fight until you've refilled the meter. Forcing you to go without it, grind it back, or spend a rare consumable to replenish it. Imo none of those options are interesting. There's also rot, which as a mechanic discourages learning from trial and error - which is my favorite way to tackle bosses in the game so... that's annoying. On variety, yeah Sekiro has more options on paper but you didn't discuss the viability of those options compared to the equivalents in the other games. Sorceries are so viable in the other games that you can avoid melee entirely and the game does not punish you for it. Sekiro prosthetics are limited quantity and can't replace your sword. The variety issue isn't from lack of choice, it's from being forced to use that same sword for 90% of your gameplay. You can't "main" a prosthetic or combat art in the way you can be a sorcerer, glass cannon, or tank in Souls and it's like a different game. Again, I really don't mind these things... but frankly I want them to make a Sekiro sequel in part because I still see much room for improvement. I mean it's not surprising, they've been ironing out the kinks in the Souls-like games for years, this was their first try at a Sekiro-like and while I don't think all the mechanics click perfectly the core of the game is undoubtedly fantastic.
Sekiro was my first ever Platinum. Even though it's tied for my favorite souls game, after beating it 3 times, I have no desire to play it again. The other souls games are more replayable. I like playing around with different builds; beating the game with weapons from every class for example. Sekiro, while having quite possibly the best combat system I've ever played, feels solved to me.
I love the game a lot but I feel like your counterarguments to the variety problem miss the point honestly. The issue isn't that there aren't enough strategic options at any given moment, it's that those options do not change at any fundamental level from one playthrough to the next. On other Soulsborne games, demonstrated best in Elden Ring, the variety is staggering and will make different playthroughs feel a lot more fresh and unique when you encounter the same enemies using different tools. Those build options make even the same encounter feel a lot different and mastering the same encounter with different tools is very rewarding. In Sekiro the basic attack patterns and movement mechanics remain the same regardless. Your R1 attacks are always the same, your dodges are always the same, your deflects are always the same, nothing you can build for a playthrough will change their frame timings or how you're supposed to use them in combat. Those 3 constitute the majority of the things you'll do in any given playthrough, and while combat arts and prosthetic tools are great at what they do, they are supplemental and not core to the muscle memory that the game is teaching you within its combat encounters, as shown by the fact that you can only carry 20 spirit emblems max (besides what the tanto offers for HP) for boss fights, a number that unlike FP, does not refill at checkpoints and requires buying to keep stock, and you can not sacrifice healing to get more during fights. This isn't to say that Sekiro needs to have build options. It's a game that benefited from the tighter scope in many ways, and while I would've loved if there were options instead of Kusabimaru that can impact your deflects and attacks with higher risk-reward gameplay for instance, or armor options that impact movements in more interesting ways, at the end of the day this is the vision FromSoft went with and I'm happy that it worked out so well. On the question of whether or not it's balanced, there being much less variables obviously helped, so I do not fault the other FromSoft games being less balanced cuz they offer way more options in this regard.
I took a year in a half break after fighting the second encounter with the Owl. Came back and beat the rest of the game. Game is amazing but god damn did that second owl fight took a lot of my real life HP. Needed time to heal lol.
Sekiro: Player skills priority ☑ Fluid and natural movement ☑ Realistic sword combat ☑ Epic boss battle ☑ Elden Ring: Open world ☑ Huge list of spells and skills ☑ Boss with cool moves ☑ Don't want to die then grind ❎ Bloodborne: Grinding is unneeded ☑ Fast kill fast die ❎ Easy to master with enough death but the horror theme deter you to retry ❎❎❎
That snake eyes boss in the toxic swamp finght recording at 20:30 makes me feel dumb for just dying to it 4 time in NG+ with full hp and 17dmg, didn't have the mortal blade since went straight for Mibu village before the temple, but using the Dragon Flash shock waves barely did anything and had to chip away at the posture slowly and annoyingly
With Divine Grass though it is much more balanced than Humanity in Dark Souls. With Divine Grass you can only use 1 between each rest while in Dark Souls 1 each Humanity acts the same and you can not only have 99, but also 99 twin humanities. The only thing making it easier in any way is Divine Grass is activated near instantly while humanity isn't, but humanity is about as fast as Estus Flask, it fully heals each time, and it can be grinded easily.
I love this game so much yes I'm suck at it and yes I die a lot that I nearly choke on dragonrot myself, but damn I always find myself keep playing it with a smile on my face
Done with replaying DeS, Ds1/2/3, BB, ER and Wo Long, back to Sekiro it is after I quit a long time ago... Still cant get the mechanics down hahah. Made it through to the Owl fight in Ashina castle, pain in my ass at the moment Amazing game which I hope to finish soon!
I spend like 10-15 mins at the start of each BB playthrough farming vials and I never have to worry about them for the rest of the game after that usually
When I performed my 1st playthrough, I went through using only my katana and mikiri's. Now after having played it a while longer, all I do is start up a boss fight and attempt to see how many prosthetics and shinobi arts I can stuff seamlessly into a fight to make it as cinematic as possible. Perfect game.
Same
@RAYHAN REHEMA PUTRA yeah but most people hesitate to use prosthetics on the first play through. But I don't think its bad. I did the same and i fell in love playing with only the katana... The parrying and attacking is also so addicting, its probably the best part
@RAYHAN REHEMA PUTRA yes thats what im saying.
Trying to get platinum right now, once you get max spirit emblems you feel liberated to go crazy with prosthetics
@rayhanrehemaputra1719I think it's cause you have to pause to change what you have equipped it's a odd thing to think about. Especially on your first playthrough. I agree once the becomes amazing wants calm your nerves and begin to think of the combat as a rhythmic puzzle
fun fact: the only gourd seed you can't get before genichiro is deep in the divine realm. ever since my first playthrough, i tend to show up to that "2nd boss fight in the game" with nearly the maximum number of heals.
Pfffff very funny
Poor bastitch
Not only that, you can get 6 prayer bead necklaces and 3 bosses (Gyoubu, Lady Butterfly, and Corrupted Monk) before him as well
@@Bobobo-bo-bo-bobobo I still prefer my first play method of bashing my head against the Genichiro wall for 8 hours till I got gud.
@@nomercy8989 the real way to play
U left 1 more addictive feature only found in Sekiro, the 'CLANG!'
Oooooo talmbout that crisp-ass cling-clang
its better then crack
Getting 100% parry rate vs genichiro's combo is just mmm *chef's kiss* gives me a semi every time 5 years later
The formatting you used of Sekiro's Deathblow and HP counter for video chapters is incredible presentation
thats what im saying
One of the things I adore about sekiro is how you can ALWAYS beat the game at any stage of health or gourd amount. Because of the way posture works, if you always get perfect blocks you could likely beat the whole game at base vitality.
Also it’s funny as fuck to fight owl with a single gourd and kick his ass six ways to the Hirata estate
Tbf thats the case for dark souls/bloodborne series as well. You can complete the game at souls level 1
@@ponkotuu I mean it’s easier and a lot more forgiving, most of the attacks in the game have generous parry windows
You can. Base vitality, bell + charmless is possible.
Not a lot of room for errors or experimentation, though.
Some true masochists do base attack runs without skills or prosthetics on top of everything else, but this is where I draw the line.
@@jeronimo196 tbh, I rarely use prosthetics anymore, easier to just rush the enemy.
Except guardian ape, that spear is divine
@@RW5583.what does the spear do?
This is my favorite game ever. I dream of the day Fromsoftware will make Sekiro 2 or at least a new game that shares the same mechanics.
Only picked up my first FromSoft game a month ago with Elden Ring, went straight to Sekiro after finishing NG+4 and haven't looked back once. Clearing this game was the most intense and satisfying few days of my 20+ year gaming experience. Mastering the teleport timings from the old DBZ Budokai games really helped a lot with the parry timings as they're basically identical.
welp im buying sekiro now. budokai 3♥️
Brooooooooo Budokai 3 thooooooo
Im 37 and Sekiro is a Masterpiece.
You my og brother :')
Budokai tenkaichi 2 was the real deal. They made 3 a bit easier, but 2 was raw af.
As someone who is currently taking a break from the Demon of Hatred boss fight your timing with the video is perfect.
Hey man i know this is two days old but I PROMISE you WILL kill demon of hatred, if you have the patience to try and try again, you have the patience to win
I got platinum and I cheesed that bastard 15+ times lol. Same with micolash, though I did kill him legit a couple times at least
@@bofa722 He’s not that hard tbh. Just face him like a bloodborne boss. You can use the whistle to stun him too, and if you pair that with that sugar that takes half your health but gives you massive damage he dies super quick in his third phase.
I recommend the flame umbrella for his fireball throw. Stay close to the boss and keep circling right. Sprint when you can to get behind him and get 1-2 hits in before dodging right and trying to get back behind him. For phase 3, save your spirit emblems in the first two phases and use Malcontent to stun him 3 times (you can get it from a shichimen warrior in the double ape room) and chunk his health with prosthetics or mortal draw.
Fromsoft always has to throw in some weird ass boss that doesn't suit the game and just frustrates people lmao.
Wild how I just started playing sekiro last week and was talking with a friend about how tightly balanced it is, then this video drops. Nice timing lol
I was listening in
@@HidinginPrivate Now that I finished the vid heres some of my thoughts from my personal experience:
From playing Elden Ring (my first Fromsoft game) I got the impression that the concept of having different "builds" available to the player is more of a detriment to game balance than a boon. I played as a pure mage (since before this game my main other dnd-like rpg series was the elder scrolls,where I always play spellcasters) and I noticed that the balance of the game felt very off to me: the dungeon-y areas always felt really tense and tedious to traverse,since if I ran out of mp flasks I'd be doomed,and a bunch of the dungeons also had enemies that were hidden behind corners or just out of view,just so they can do a surprise attack on you if you aren't aware they're there (which I also think is a very mean way to design a dungeon but alas),which was doubly bad for my mage because my health bar was always pretty small until very late-game, I just didn't have the extra stat points to spend on extra health. Conversely, once I got some decent spells I thought that all of the big bosses were really easy, since mages are long range fighters but most bosses only had melee attacks, I was able to cheese most of them by just staying at a safe distance the entire and spamming spells (doubly so after I got some good tanky summons to distract them,and triply so after I got comet azure).
I remember talking with some friends about my struggles and reading up online about other people's experiences with the game and I was very surprised to find that they were different from mine: I haven't really seen anyone else have the same issues with the dungeons I had, and I saw different people complain about struggling with different bosses instead. Stuff like Mohg and Rahdan, which I've seen people say are some of the hardest in the game , I beat 1st try without even getting hit. All of this made me realise that while the game gives you the option to build your character in different ways, the actual content of the game seemed to be balanced around a melee fighter build,and any other build will have widly different milage with the difficulty in different sections of the game.
Now with Sekiro, the lack of the rpg character building elements means that we're all "stuck" using the same meele swordsman "build" (with some slight variance with the consumables and tools,but still relatively self-contained due to all of them having limited usage per fight) now the devs can balance the content of the game specifically just for this playstyle, so everything in the game feels *just right* in terms of difficulty.(also Sekiro dungeons have next to none hidden surprise attack enemies which is a plus for me :P)
@@alexg.9250it honestly sounds like you’re complain about the way open world rpgs in general, (especially the souls franchise) allow you to have freedom when it comes to builds. If you don’t like the idea of different builds having strengths and weaknesses idk if you like rpgs tbh, and maybe that’s why you like sekiro more, it’s not an rpg it’s an action game that allows you a few choices. Also don’t really understand the dungeon complaint if I’m being honest, souls games aren’t really known for being fair for newcomers
@@IzzyZil20 my comment wasn't a complaint, just an obversation in regards to the video topic of game balance in souls games and my personal experience with the series so far. I love rpgs and ive played loads of them (but addmitedly I mostly play jrpgs , my only experience with western ones before elden ring was the TES series)
@@alexg.9250 i will admit it’s hard to balance when you can break the game if you try hard enough, the elder scrolls makes even the most broken Elden ring build seem silly by comparison
My only gripes with the game is that there's no shortcut or quick switch system for the arts, luckily there's a mod that fixed it, It makes combining Arts move so much fun when you don't have to go to the pause menu to change it manually
Oh there's a mod for this?
@@rofl_waffl it’s called weapon wheel mod I think all the mods are on nexus mods their are some really good ones, especially the ones I highly recommend sake of Ashina if you want to take Sekiro to the next level
@Matthew Farry you play k&m then?
That’s really nice to you for not putting any late game image I order not to spoil players
Excellent video; really illustrates why, for me at least, Sekiro has the most tightly tuned and satisfying gameplay of all Fromsoft games that I've played. It's one of my top three favorite games for a good reason, after all!
I feel like thats the point, fromsoft combat has always been simple, and not really deep, its always been a “focus on the boss more, and level cool weapons”
What the other two? 😅
@@LuisRodriguez-kh8qmi know you asked him but for me one of the only games in the same genre that competes with sekiro is nioh 2 and I like both equally
This game is like the Formula One car of videogames. It's a perfectly tuned machine capable of extreme levels of performance with zero hiccups (except occasional camera issues, my only real complaint) with ALL of the fat and luxuries trimmed off. Stripped down to its most basic performance parts and hardly recognizable as a car (aka a Fromsoft game). The only similarities Sekiro has with the Soulsborne games is the look of the graphics and the "bonfire" aspect. Even the esoteric lore has been mainlined into your veins, as if Miyazaki is saying "Don't spend too much time thinking about who the hell Tomoe is, get back out there and fight Genichiro 10 more times".
This was a surprise to see in my sub box! Welcome back! This was incredibly insightful! I can't wait to see what's next!
Thanks! It has been a while! Lol
It’s crazy you dropped this piece the day I beat Sekiro for the first time after having bought it 4 years ago. Had to get over that mental hurdle before I could appreciate it. Definitely love this offshoot from the main channel. Would love to see more videos in this style whether it be about FromSoft games or not.
I’m glad you came back to beat it! Sekiro is a masterpiece
@@grimreefer213 i think elden ring is quite abit better in everything thats not combat, but god freakin damn was this game utterly brilliant.
@@flamingmanure sekiro still feels more realistic idk why
I meant graphical realisticity
Thank you! So many people call the prosthetics and skills useless and I think they're insane.
just started my first sekiro playthrough a bit ago and haven't gotten much done yet but the chained ogre fight definitely makes me disagree with prosthetics being useless already
probably gonna have a lot more uses too once I get more/master the ones I have right now
if something can kill those damn dogs, that thing is insane in my book
@@gtx1650max-q Shuriken can 1 shot most of them dw
After starting to play Sekiro, one of the things I liked the most about this was that I didn't have to grind to kill strong foes. If I can't kill something, I can just kill something else instead of grinding the same NPCs for hours to level up.
And some people wonder why sekiro is the best soulsborne game imo
Who wonders about your opinion on this?
There's so much to talk about with Sekiro, this was so well done and it didn't even get into how either the posture system or resurrection system interacts with balance and healing, ie the posture system rewarding maintaining higher health and earning back reviving by dealing deathblows. Also the stylistic choices with the boss bar for the video were fun!
Great video! I'll admit I had a rocky start to this game, but once I stopped looking at it like a Dark Souls game I really started to love it. I'd say its my favorite game, and I've been gaming for about 25 years now.
Just looking at the character select screen and then all the overwhelming options in Elden Ring and Dark Souls, I just couldn't pick them up.
It feels like I need to make an excel sheet and keep track of everything and decide what to do and what not to do instead of actually playing the game. Basically reminds me of working. I want to have fun not feel like I am working for free.
That's why I am suffering in Sekiro now.
I'll be real I don't understand the public/private distinction but I'm here for either
He thinks the videos on this channel wouldn't do well on his main channel.
Video games vs anime
Great video man🙏🏾you made me appreciate this game way more than I already did. This is the only souls game that I’ve played three times and still looking forward to playing again
The inclusion of the Demon Bell is so great and I wish it was an option in the other games, especially Elden Ring. You can toggle the enemy damage/difficulty up a notch in exchange for higher item drop rates, and that balances out perfectly for a more rich and dynamic experience. Not only do you get more healing Pellets, which can mitigate the difficulty and eliminate any need for farming Pellets, you also get more Prosthetic upgrade materials which encourages more playstyle experimentation with more tools.
This would be really nice in Souls/Elden Ring because it would also kill two birds with one stone - it would give the games this nice tradeoff in difficulty/faster upgrades, and it would also help deal with the annoying RNG of enemy drops. In so many of these games, From has included an annoyingly strict RNG system for armor, weapons, and other gear dropped by enemies. I’d kill for more options to mitigate that.
ik Dark Souls have "you take more damage" rings/talismans, though I don't think there's any actual benefit to wearing them besides the challenge
Well elden ring has summons that eliminate any type of difficulty or bleed builds that make it really easy aslong as you know the boss movements and magic spells that allow you to just stay away from bosses making them easy too, honestly both elden ring and sekiro are amazing displays of fromsoft further perfecting their craft
That and charmless which drastically increases the difficulty of the game especially on later ng+ cycles where the bell does basically nothing
sekiro forces you to “git gud” and the mechanics are amazing the deflect is prob my favorite combat system in any game
Dying also doesn't feel unfair, I've died a lot during the isshin fight but I never felt like the game was playing unfair. I just needed to git gud.
Little addition the veriety part at the end; there are multiple secret combos with some of the arts(sabimaru) and prosthetics or even secret combos using prosthetics with arts.
The depth is insane and even after 6+ playthroughs I feel like I've still only scratched the surface of what's possible with. The combat system.
Shout out Ongbal on youtube, he is the true embodiment of wolf in his gameplay.
Blasphemous. At 16:12, he deflected the attack instead of using Mikiri counter.
It's because I'm a master gamer
I am really glad you brought up "build variety".
I think a lot of these "builds" are only cosmetic, in that they don't differ from each other enough to be relevant. In Dark Souls, you start out as a dude with a sword and shield, and can often end as....the same guy with a sword and shield, just with higher numbers.
Different weapons also don't operate any differently, besides damage and attack speed. Dark Souls 1 was the only where I felt it mattered, because a Zweinhander handles very differnetly from a Balder Side sword, but in later games, there seemed to be little difference between which weapon you use, or which stats you raise to do so.
Sekiro offers combat arts, prosthetics, other moves (like Mikiri), Ninjitsu, abilities like Living Force, etc.....
If I play with a different Ninjitsu, different 3 Prosthetics, and focusing on a different skill tree, why does this not count as a different build? Is it just because you can use everything? As opposed to being blocked to some spells/weapons? Why would restricting player variety be considered an improvement?
I think you just might need to stop using basic ass shields and swords. DS2 in particular has incredible build variety with like twice the weapons of ds1 plus the addition of mechanics like powerstancing. Plus, all magic is fairly good in DS2 and there are weapons that double as staves or talismans for further variety.
DS3 though, I could see the argument of it being just a str, dex, and quality builds with nothing in between.
@@themightymcb7310 yeah but DS2 is a garbo game so it doesn't matter at all
@@rq3167 I mean true but some of its best features got thrown into Elden Ring so I can't bring myself to hate it
my favorite feature of this fromsoft game is that the menu actualy pauses the game, giving the player a chance to go to bathroom.
I got all 4 endings and I didn't know you could pause wtf lol how ?
@@Quack_attack_ Just press escape lol, basically unlike other souls games the game is paused when you open the menu.
Great analysis. Very convincing. Sekiro is my fav game ever. You helped me understand why.
Lets be honest we all use cummmfpk chalice to max out vials and bullets
Started sekiro a while ago hated it but played it again now it’s my favourite game of ALL time
Probably my favorite From game so far. I really hope we someday get a sequel its story
Sekiro's combat is masterful
That's why I'm hyped for AC6
Because Masaru yamamura (the combat director for sekiro) is the Current Director for AC6
Ohhhh that's very interesting. I didn't know that but it makes me more excited for AC6 than I already was
@@HidinginPrivate
The greatest Mech customization Game franchise will return with its best Combat yet
Its also Confirmed that Something like the Posture mechanic will be present and It will be Affected by Ranged and melee attacks
Sekiro is probably my second favorite form soft game, after watching this I really need to revisit it. It undoubtedly has my favorite combat and story tbh. (Dark souls Lore is Breyer but sekiro’s story just means more)
That’s funny, I was just playing sekiro. 3 achievements away from platinum (homecoming ending, all prosthetic upgrades, all skills). Finished all gauntlets (even the mortal journey) with demon bell and no lurk charm. I would love to see more FromSoftware content, how y’all feeling about the elden ring dlc? FromSoftware’s best works usually come in the dlc’s
I think Fromsoftware knows how important it is that the Elden ring dlc is great. It's their biggest game of all time by far so i'm expecting them to really bring out the big guns for shadow of the erd tree.
I just started playing, it's my first FromSoft game since Tenchu. Did the Blazing Bull and Lady Butterfly last night. I don't mind dying and learning, or being punished for death with losing Sen/exp. It's been a mostly enjoyable challenge so far. But I don't like the lack of checkpoints before mini bosses. I know it only takes you a couple of minutes to get back to them after you know the path, but it's kind of annoying to spend 3 or 4 minutes getting to the boss only to then die in like 2 seconds 😂 That's my only complaint so far.
Sekiro was my first fromsoft game and I loved it. Afterwards I tried out the souls games and thought they played too slow and the combat wasn’t nearly as fun.
I had a similar experience. Elden rings seems slow and boring by comparison.
Cool to know your also a huge souls and persona fan just like me
Yes I am incredibly based and cool
Very good video, the points were really well explained and the little edit to symbolize each segment and life bar was funny.
I do wish you had talked about some more stuff like hit boxes and dodge animations but I can see how they wouldn't fit the balancing criteria so maybe in a future video
I definitely want to expand on my thoughts for sekiro in the future. As you said though, I just decided that was out f the scope for the specific 'balance' topic I was trying to cover
Great video essay. I finished this game a month ago now and it did feel like a culmination of the Soulslike titles I had played up to this point. I still want to play Elden Ring someday, but this game is a great stopping point for an era of Souls in my opinion, and games I played this year in general. Also always appreciate the BGM, Persona of course, but also nice to hear Hades (I think), I just got back into playing that game for what will likely be another 50 hours.
As someone who’s played every fromsoft title, Elden ring is easily the best. The only one even close is sekiro. The only reason a dark souls could be better is sentimental value and personal memories. But it’s objectively better.
But it’s Dark Souls refined. I call it dark souls 4. The story has been refined, battle mechanics were refined, everything is refined to the best of it. It’s an excellent game. I put 250 hours in before I switched to another game, and I only did that to try sekiro. I’m stuck in 3 ways.
The white suited cross lance weilder in the memory.
The giant drunkard in the memory
The horseman.
Any tips for passing these?
I love Sekiro so much, man. I quit playing it like 6 months ago and picked up Nioh 2, then bought Nier Automata, but like 20 hours into it, I was looking at 2B's katana and I was just like...."Yeah, I wanna go back to Sekiro", and then played Genichiro and Owl like 50 times each before finally starting a fresh playthrough lol.
Weirdly enough, it's my comfort game.
happy to see another video from u hiding
Great vid, thanks for articulating the things I have trouble finding the words for!
when you shoed the gameplay in sekiro of you hugging the way in that temple for it to flip around i was like wtf and when in and tried it and it worked i was so happy so thanks :)
Sekiro truly feels like a game from back in the early 2000s, a tenchu per say as in no DLC no extra shit u gotta buy just straight up unlocking shit through diff playthroughs. This n bloodborne are my fave soulsborne games period
Started playing though Sekiro two days ago , after not touching since I beat it when it just came out . The Game is amazing as I remebered it to be . Though it seems way easier than it was before , beat Genichiro on my second attempt , when at release it took me around 7 hours .
Didn’t he get nerfed 2 life’s instead of 3
@@NoobAMV Nah he still the same . My point is that the game is easier since after you beat the game onec , you have already mastered the core mechanics , making the earlier fights easier.
That's why they added the Inner fights. Makes those bosses new again.
Great video and the SMT OST was the cherry on top 👌
Fantastic video!
Thanks!
Wow I didn't realise a lot of these things while playing, this is an interesting perspective!
Just beat this game yesterday, and I’m glad I finally came back to it after several years, when I initially dropped it halfway through. It finally clicked with me and now I love it ❤
I look at the "no build variety" argument this way, in Elden Ring, if you wanna try something else, you may need to respec by spending the limited resource that is Larval Tear. But in Sekiro, you can switch to what ever you want in the pause menu at any time without any cost.
With that said, I think the intended progression hurts itself. You see most players will only complete the game once and then move on. But I am pretty sure that From designed Sekiro in such a way to make players get the basics right before exploring even more advanced stuffs.
Prosthetics, combat arts and consumables usage can vastly change how a fight goes. BUT, new players who are still learning will often not use any of them in their first play through because they are limited due to spirit emblems. So they ended up only using the sword and Healing Gourd for the most part of their first play through and then moved on to other games. So from their perspective, the "no build variety" argument is even more apparent cause they're just using the sword and that's it.
What they are missing though, if they actually go into NG+ and play more, is that spirit emblems are so abundant. Especially when you've gotten the basics right from the first play through, you can speed kill pretty much everyone and mini-bosses drop a shit ton of emblems after death. So now you can freely test out prosthetics and stuffs.
The fact that charmless mode is only available after beating the game once is what made me believe that this is From's instended progression. You get the basics right with sword only in the first play through and the next play through is where the real fun begins.
There is also another form of healing which is the ‘Breath of Life’ skill. It heals something like 5% health each time you do a deathblow and the percantage gets increased the more you play. This is such a huge thing that I’m shocked nobody’s talng about it. It’s basically the equivalent of Bloodborne’s rally mechanic.
Sekiro is my favourite game of all time, the story and environment is amazing and the combat is silky smooth (as long as you've gotten the hang of the rhythm). I remember the first time i played it, I quit after reaching isshin, thinking I would never be able to beat him. After starting an entirely new game a few months later, I beat him in 4 tries. Once you reach the flow state in sekiro the game just gets more and more spectacular to play. The only problem with it is the spirit emblem stock market because my god if you dont buy 10000 in the beginning when they're like 10 sen you are going to run out, go to buy some, and notice the price has skyrocketed like 50 times higher and have absolutely no more fun with prosthetics.
never head any problem with emblems, never had last than 300 in my first playthrough and NG+ always 999 on storege, if kill enemies while exploring you get tons of them, also at end game you have more sen than you can spend even at first playthrough, so just spend on them
I think you’re giving to much credit to Bloodborne. This is probably a skill issue but I hate that every time I die to a boss I have to spend 20 minutes grinding for healing since I know I can’t beat the boss without healing. It’s a very tedious time drain and it feels like I’ve spent half the game on mindless grinding even at an arcane of 50.
late to this ik but it genuinely is a time waste. Rally mitigates it, but making a healing source grindable is never a good idea. It is tedious at first, then a time waster later. It is irrelevant to a good player but that can be said about healing in any game so that is redundant. BB is good dont get me wrong but they shat the bed with blood vials, its a lifegem mechanic but the price increases with player progression while being limited in exchange for a higher heal..... but that is literally just estus/gourd/flasks, they just dont waste time.
Sekiro also has stats. In souls your damage is more determined by your weapon upgrade level than your overall stats. In Sekiro its your Attack Power from consuming memories. Your "vigor" and "endurance"(posture) is from prayer beads. You just don't have to grind those(just collect). That's not a negative tho I love Sekiro.
The only major gameplay element I would be able to critique is the spirit emblem system. It feels needlessly restrictive and disincentivized me often from experimenting since you could only do 5-6 big attacks with them in a life against a boss. Thus combos like the spear to pull out the parasite out of the headless ape was lost on me until I saw someone beat it with that as an extra. Also a lot of prosthetics are because of this heavy limitation used very infrequently and I, after 5 playthroughs, still have issues implementing them in bossfights which is kinda sad to me since the natural flow of combat is usually mixed up so forcefully with the use of a prosthetic which doesn't feel that rewarding.
When you learn the game though you realize how op it would be to have any more spirit emblems than they give you. You can still basically firecracker mortal blade spam your way through the whole game past senpou temple
I would actually say, the purpose of the game is to be played more than once. Its perfection manifests as your perfection manifests.
@@buckyhurdle4776this is true but I still can't help agree with the above comment. Maybe it would've been better to make some tools use more emblems and others use fewer. Fire crackers with more emblems would be busted but maybe mist ravenv should be slightly fewer cuz it clearly wants you to post a certain way when using it but has probably the steps cost. Maybe the ax and spear should only be one-two emblems. I feel like if certain tools used fewer emblems and were a little less powerful (where applicable), you then get a situation where you really center a play style around then instead of emblems being cool stuff you do only sometimes
Get the tanto and you can sacrifice a little health for more emblems
I'm on my first playthrough and just defeated Genichiro and has been revisiting the fight. I really like how the fight looks like a dance if Genichiro doesn't dash away and keeps trading hits with you (same a lady butterfly)
Great vid man
Thanks
Elden Ring seems to always be getting the coveted "ultimate FromSoft Masterpiece" but Sekiro... well.
I play Sekiro over and over and over and over over and over. I played through Elden Ring 2 times.
Finally you released the sekiro video and it was teally good
Wellll, this was smaller scale. There's still much more I want to talk about and have notes for. This us a start though!
Great analysis
ah yes someone praising sekiro with hades background music, both my fav games of respective genre, subscribed 🗿🗿
Loved the video my friend
Thanks shaz
Sekiro is the only game that ive played where it forces you to get good, but it does so in a way where it doesnt feel like it is forcing you. And it does this by having all bosses and mini bosses sharing all combat mechanics all bosses have either a sweep a thrust or both in their moveset and most timings are the same. With little variance. With this you can learn a bosses nuances by fighting other bosses. For example the mikiri counter, you mostly with fight one of the seven spears before a major boss. Once you learn that mikiri counter timing, you have the timing for almost all thrust attacks in the game. So when genichiro uses a thrust attack its not a new attack you've never seen and you are prepared for it. So thats one move you already know and dont have to learn.
Too bad i suck at Sekiro. Couldn't beat Owl, got really angry, uninstalled the game. Just not for me. But i deeply respect the game.
33:35 were you serious with what you said here? I don’t use the flame vent much in favor of the Sabimaru but I thought its use was supposed to be for enemies with red eyes instead of “anything with hair”
Sekiro might be the one game that absolutely adore. But I’ll never finish it because I’m simply not good enough. I can appreciate how amazing it is though
Great video
My guy really left a HUD pip on his screen for the whole video
It’s a tradition to love your first From Soft game the most, mine being Bloodborne. But Sekiro comes so close, it’s gameplay is the best but I’ll always have a soft spot for the gothic/cosmic horror of Bloodborne.
Sekiro is my last to platinum. I'm loving the journey. There's a magic about this one
Bro just wanted to upload a video praising Sekiro and gushing about it. And I'm all for it because this game is sick and I want more
A very well made video
I no doubt believe in your main point in Sekiro as a game of variety contrary to popular belief. I myself aspire to finish the game soon. But to say it is perfectly balanced, I am on the fence.
1. Prosthetic tool skills require spirit emblem, which still need some farming
2. You did not mention about the dragonrot mechanic, which to me is a Fromsoft signature characteristic of experimenting with various mechanics, but albeit not a good one to promote players from daring to try.
As in the rest of your video, I think you missed out on a few important aspects.
DS1: most older games do not have bonfires in front of boss gates, and estus flasks can often run out in boss fights for many players. That not being the case for you might be due to your good skill level. Which ultimately all players will eventually improve and find it less stressful, but 20 is not considered abundant to many, I feel.
Bloodborne: the most annoying thing about BB healing is the price inflation. Towards the end, you will need to make a typical 3-pig run just to buy 20 vials, which will typically last for one failed boss fight. Imagine every time the player fails, he has to make another 3-pig run. A demoralising prospect I must say, again, to a typical average skilled player. Also, due to the location of the lamp from the boss, 20 vials is not a lot.
I have the platinum trophy on both Bloodborne and Sekiro and I can without a shred of doubt say that I enjoyed Sekiro much much more. I loved the aesthetic of Bloodborne, the cosmic horror and the gothic architecture was superb, but in gameplay I didn't see much difference between it and say Dark Souls. The difficulty spikes were jarring and some of the bosses were really infuriating. Sekiro on the other hand is not only my favourite From Soft game, but my favourite game of all time. I never felt like "the game is unfair". I always knew exactly where I made a mistake and what I need to do to beat it. Unlike Bloodborne, where I just opted to out-farm the difficulty. And the combat in Sekiro is just so satisfying. I have so much respect for Masaru Yamamura now. And he has proven to be worthy of that respect again in Armored Core 6. What a game.
“Fire keeper souls of yor” got me on the ground bro 😂
in the healing segment you forgot DS3s estus also refills from killing a dozen enemies or so and a guaranteed refill from any phantom kills. So it also works effectively like Blood vials. Also when it comes to the spell variety. DS3 making pyromancy have stat requirements severely limits the variety as pyromancy changes from a full set of ranged options and general conveniences to help any build, to being a build that you have to pursue that is effectively just a mage with different animations with the same results. It might as well not exist in that game.
Looking healthy young man!
Thanks sir
Yooooooo new vid ❤
It out!
Sekiro is a demonstration of From's design ability when they are able to focus on a true single player experience. The thing about the Soulsborne games is they are complicated by the addition of multiplayer. Accounting for the unpredictable behavior of multiple human controlled characters adds unsolvable chaos. And also balance issues. Every Souls-type game has peaks of wonky tuning further complicated by the variety of character builds possible with their more RPG type structure.
Sekiro drops all of that and the result is their most perfect game. In fact, I can't honestly think of a single significant thing I'd change about it.
I’ve beaten Dark Souls 1 and 3, and I’ve “platinum’d” Sekiro and Elden Ring on PC. I own Demon’s Souls but unfortunately I don’t have a PS5, so I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. But regardless, I think I have enough experience to say confidently that Sekiro is as close to a perfect game that I’ve ever played in my life. After about 5 playthroughs, I got efficient at the game in a way that I’ve never felt before. Aside from having virtually flawless combat, the skill ceiling is so high that you can continue to enjoy the game more and more even after several runs.
Sekiro is my favorite FS game (of the ones I've played), but I think you're doing a bit of cherry-picking in calling it "Perfectly Balanced".
On healing you didn't even discuss the titular feature of the game: reviving. In my opinion the revive mechanic isn't great in the boss fight context. A situation that comes up often is dying in healthbar 1 of a boss and then making it to healthbar 2, and in the act of getting that deathblow that you unlock access to a second revive. But if you use that revive then it won't be accessible in the following attempts at the fight until you've refilled the meter. Forcing you to go without it, grind it back, or spend a rare consumable to replenish it. Imo none of those options are interesting. There's also rot, which as a mechanic discourages learning from trial and error - which is my favorite way to tackle bosses in the game so... that's annoying.
On variety, yeah Sekiro has more options on paper but you didn't discuss the viability of those options compared to the equivalents in the other games. Sorceries are so viable in the other games that you can avoid melee entirely and the game does not punish you for it. Sekiro prosthetics are limited quantity and can't replace your sword. The variety issue isn't from lack of choice, it's from being forced to use that same sword for 90% of your gameplay. You can't "main" a prosthetic or combat art in the way you can be a sorcerer, glass cannon, or tank in Souls and it's like a different game.
Again, I really don't mind these things... but frankly I want them to make a Sekiro sequel in part because I still see much room for improvement. I mean it's not surprising, they've been ironing out the kinks in the Souls-like games for years, this was their first try at a Sekiro-like and while I don't think all the mechanics click perfectly the core of the game is undoubtedly fantastic.
Sekiro was my first ever Platinum. Even though it's tied for my favorite souls game, after beating it 3 times, I have no desire to play it again. The other souls games are more replayable. I like playing around with different builds; beating the game with weapons from every class for example.
Sekiro, while having quite possibly the best combat system I've ever played, feels solved to me.
Excellent video essay. Thanks for your work in putting this together.
I love the game a lot but I feel like your counterarguments to the variety problem miss the point honestly. The issue isn't that there aren't enough strategic options at any given moment, it's that those options do not change at any fundamental level from one playthrough to the next. On other Soulsborne games, demonstrated best in Elden Ring, the variety is staggering and will make different playthroughs feel a lot more fresh and unique when you encounter the same enemies using different tools. Those build options make even the same encounter feel a lot different and mastering the same encounter with different tools is very rewarding.
In Sekiro the basic attack patterns and movement mechanics remain the same regardless. Your R1 attacks are always the same, your dodges are always the same, your deflects are always the same, nothing you can build for a playthrough will change their frame timings or how you're supposed to use them in combat. Those 3 constitute the majority of the things you'll do in any given playthrough, and while combat arts and prosthetic tools are great at what they do, they are supplemental and not core to the muscle memory that the game is teaching you within its combat encounters, as shown by the fact that you can only carry 20 spirit emblems max (besides what the tanto offers for HP) for boss fights, a number that unlike FP, does not refill at checkpoints and requires buying to keep stock, and you can not sacrifice healing to get more during fights.
This isn't to say that Sekiro needs to have build options. It's a game that benefited from the tighter scope in many ways, and while I would've loved if there were options instead of Kusabimaru that can impact your deflects and attacks with higher risk-reward gameplay for instance, or armor options that impact movements in more interesting ways, at the end of the day this is the vision FromSoft went with and I'm happy that it worked out so well. On the question of whether or not it's balanced, there being much less variables obviously helped, so I do not fault the other FromSoft games being less balanced cuz they offer way more options in this regard.
Finished Sekiro recently so this is a nice surprise.
Nice! Hope you liked the game
Well made!
What is the song that plays on 10:37 ? It sounds really good!
I took a year in a half break after fighting the second encounter with the Owl. Came back and beat the rest of the game. Game is amazing but god damn did that second owl fight took a lot of my real life HP. Needed time to heal lol.
Man imo the second owl is the coolest fight in the game, especially the inner one, it gave me the most adrenaline out of all other battles
@@angelsqzz5072 hell ya, agreed
Sekiro:
Player skills priority ☑
Fluid and natural movement ☑
Realistic sword combat ☑
Epic boss battle ☑
Elden Ring:
Open world ☑
Huge list of spells and skills ☑
Boss with cool moves ☑
Don't want to die then grind ❎
Bloodborne:
Grinding is unneeded ☑
Fast kill fast die ❎
Easy to master with enough death but the horror theme deter you to retry ❎❎❎
Sekiro is my fav FromSoft game. I would love a second one!
I just beat sekiro for the first time and I didn’t realize you could upgrade your gourd recovery until after sword saint lol
So How Did That Mikiri Counter Go Through At 17:08
That snake eyes boss in the toxic swamp finght recording at 20:30 makes me feel dumb for just dying to it 4 time in NG+ with full hp and 17dmg, didn't have the mortal blade since went straight for Mibu village before the temple, but using the Dragon Flash shock waves barely did anything and had to chip away at the posture slowly and annoyingly
With Divine Grass though it is much more balanced than Humanity in Dark Souls. With Divine Grass you can only use 1 between each rest while in Dark Souls 1 each Humanity acts the same and you can not only have 99, but also 99 twin humanities. The only thing making it easier in any way is Divine Grass is activated near instantly while humanity isn't, but humanity is about as fast as Estus Flask, it fully heals each time, and it can be grinded easily.
Game at right corner? at 00:16
If you mean the one next to figurine I think it's persona 2: Innocent sin
I love this game so much yes I'm suck at it and yes I die a lot that I nearly choke on dragonrot myself, but damn I always find myself keep playing it with a smile on my face
Done with replaying DeS, Ds1/2/3, BB, ER and Wo Long, back to Sekiro it is after I quit a long time ago...
Still cant get the mechanics down hahah. Made it through to the Owl fight in Ashina castle, pain in my ass at the moment
Amazing game which I hope to finish soon!
I spend like 10-15 mins at the start of each BB playthrough farming vials and I never have to worry about them for the rest of the game after that usually
Came for a Spiffing Brit knockoff exploit video, stayed for the great analysis. You successfully reverse clickbated me, well done.