A look at the differences between Sekiro and the Souls series, with a focus on what the consequences of these differences ultimately are. Interview with Miyazaki that's quoted: bit.ly/2WzONbg #Sekiro
What?!? Playing it right now for the first time (Souls-Vet & Core-Gamer)...and...rather the opposite for me. It's essentially QTE all the time. You get em right, you win. You miss more than 2, you loose. More annyoing than fun. Also, all the fights are/work the same. The whole game. It's like if Nioh had no combos and just the Katana.
@@tydendurler9574 better than souls where it's press one button for pure invincibility and is your one response to literally everything that also looks lame (Yes I'm talking about rolling)
All of the tools are situational but also require spirit emblems. Halfway through the game I stopped using them all together except the shririken for dogs. Eventually I ran out of emblems and because the game was a chore, wasn’t going to bother wasting time farming. So I beat most of the game with just the sword.
Bloodborne may still be my favorite due to me being a sucker for that sort of atmosphere and it has my favorite lore, but Sekiro is so damn well designed that it never truly feels BS when it gets challenging. I think the layout of the bosses and the order of the mandatory ones are GREAT tests to help you get better and make use of mechanics as the game goes on. Level design, bosses, enemies, and progression are all so well thought out and it reminds you how Fromsoft ABSOLUTELY delivers when they get really into it. Dark souls 1 blew me away in 2011, Bloodborne blew me away in 2015, and now Sekiro is making me have an absolute blast.
@Chris Dean This is a video comparing Sekiro to it's predecessors, it's entirely about the opinion of games, saying them is the entire point. Bloodborne has some of the best worldbuilding and atmosphere in the entire souls series, if not the best. You must not read many books because your reading comprehension is fucking terrible.
Honest question for you. I hate Sekiro and put it down after maybe 10 hours, mechanically the game is a hot mess and it gets a pass because it's difficult. It's such a hot mess that I can't play it, something about being able to parry a two footed jump kick from a giant with a sword makes no thematic sense and to be treated like that is a reasonable thing is stupid. But it's not as stupid as the game making sure to tell me a monster is scared of fire, and then having that same monster charge me through burning braisers, or stand in a bonfire (And take no damage). Those kind of errors are why I quit Sekiro and have no love for it. So considering my complaints about Sekiro, is Bloodborne actually a game worth getting into? I don't want a game that is hard, I want a game that is good. FromSoft games don't have a strong enough story that I will overlook bad design and gameplay. So is BB thematically consistent and well designed? I really do want your opinion here.
@Chris Dean I like how you just pointed out how it was unnecessary for OP to state his opinion and then immediately after stated your own opinion, contradicting your own shitty comment.
Sekiro was the game I've been waiting for. I think its amazing and deserved game of the year. The same way many game developers take from DS, they are going to take from Sekiro. Jedi Fallen Order is already an example. I don't think another game has even come close to sword on sword combat the way Sekiro did it.
Well its not a representation of swordfighting like something like mordhau but its fast, stylish and hard and i love it for that. Definitely my favourite fromsoft game
Sekiro nails the feeling of lighting-fast anime sword fights. It allows and forces us to react so fast that we can barely consciously keep up with our own reactions. It's an incredible achievement in gaming.
@@derek96720 especially with the anime fight with the lightning demon. you literally had to fight against lightning and they didnt slow it at all man that fight i never actually saw the lightning come or deflect. just a yellow blob of tendrils like a goddamn yellow tangela until one of us got hit.
I played Sekiro before I played any other fromsoft game and I honestly enjoy it more than dark souls, it feels much more reliant on player skill rather than having OP weapons/armour and spam rolling (not saying I don't like that though, DS3 is one of my favourite games, I just prefer sekiro's combat)
@@manipippiri3168 If yoy don't enjoy playing it then their's no reason to keep playing it, just play it for couple of hours and see if it you like it otherwise just don't play it anymore
@@manipippiri3168 i did the same thing played sekiro than ds3 I didn't like it at first but I continued playing and once you get the hang of it you will like it + it has an interesting lore u might love it
Judging by some of the comments I’ve had I think some people might be misinterpreting the meaning of the final part of this video. I wasn’t arguing that Dark Souls is far better than Sekiro. I was trying to show how if you focus on Sekiro through the perspective of the souls games, it’s easy to find things you might dislike, things that seem like shortcomings. Not because Sekiro is bad, but because it’s only natural to make comparisons between similar games and comparisons can be harsh. Some things I mention I do think are big flaws but others are quite minor and a few things I mention aren’t even my opinion so much as things I’ve seen repeated often by other people (like that Sekiro can feel frustrating and unfair). Still, the point I was trying to make wasn’t that Sekiro is far worse than Dark Souls. When I said Sekiro exists in the shadow of Dark Souls I’m not saying that because I think it’s a bad game by comparison. It exists in Dark Souls shadow just by virtue of coming after it and being similar. It’s common for games to be compared with one another, but it’s rare for a game to be compared to something as important and influential as dark souls. And ultimately I thought Sekiro was great and appreciate that this is the direction fromsoft decide to go because it meant we got something fresh. Anyway I don’t mind if some people disagree with me, just a little worried that some people might not have understood exactly what I meant (and I accept that this might be my fault for not being as clear as I should have been). Regardless I’m grateful for all the views and comments this video is getting.
I think you nailed it with this video. It should be okay to critizise the game for its shortcoming even though it is a great game. There are things it does better than Souls and there are things which it does worse. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out.
It's no Dark Souls. And it's sure as hell no Bloodborne. I see it as a puzzle-action game. Die a million times until you learn the attack patterns, then beat the game in an hour after that.
I'll make that argument. Dark Souls is better than Sekiro (obviously my opinion). Sekiro is a goddamn rhythm game with a plot based in edginess. Dark souls has multitudes more depth and replayability. Sekiro has multiple plots, dark souls has that AND a nearly infinite number of ways to complete those plots. Dark souls also doesn't fuck with the entire story by punishing you for dying while trying to learn bosses, which adds a layer of frustration and anxiety to the entire game that just has no good reason to be there beyond artificial difficulty. I am just about finished with completing my first playthrough of Sekiro, and I'm already back playing DS3 when I feel like gaming. I'm going to put down Sekiro when i finish it, and due to its asinine artificial difficulty, that ensures I'll never pick it up again. Just because it's different, does not mean it's good. Innovation just for the sake of innovation is rarely a good thing, and we found out why with Sekiro - Sekiro with soulsborne mechanics (and maybe the jumping and verticality added) would have been amazing. The souls mechanics work because they're innately intuitive and deceptively deep. They're easy to learn (block before dodge, dodge before parry) but hold among them a ton of amazing, deep, and varied mechanics. Sekiro throws its entire toybox at you at once, with a breakneck pace that LOOKS cool, but feels sickeningly repetitive. I get no reward out of L1 spamming in sekiro, and the problem is that while block and R1 straightsword spam works in dark souls 3, it's just one of a thousand different playstyles. So once I beat DS3 with the easier method, which made many mechanics easier, I can move onto more complex and challenging ideas like parrying gundyr. Throwing me into the deep end on my first playthrough and telling me that parry spamming gundyr is the ONLY way to beat him, is going to make the boss more frustrating than satisfying. I'm supposed to want to challenge myself to beat the boss in ever-increasingly impressive manners. Sekiro needed several things - slow down the combat 15% or so, give me threefold the health, or let dodging Iframes matter a lot more. And get rid of dragonrot, which serves no real purpose in the game beyond annoying anxiety. It's a shame. The game is technically brilliant. But the combat is just a shambles. It's so tedious and unsatisfying, that it almost spoils the entire experience for me. A cool boss like a giant ape flinging shit at me that I cut its head off and it gets back up to chase me with the sword I used to cut its head off is an AMAZING idea. But the combat turned it into a boring, tedious, repetitive spam fest. It "sounds" cool to tell you that you have to be faster. But dark souls was that perfect balance of fast, frantic, and methodical. Sekiro is just a screaming child running around that you cannot get to settle down. It's a bullethell shooter. It took things too far and fell out of balance. You keep mentioning that sekiro REQUIRES the player to X in some fights and REQUIRES y in others. That pidgeonholed experience really shutters the game for me.
Sekiro is the better title for a variety of reasons in my opinion. The biggest is gameplay variety, far more open level design, it's not clunky as all hell to play, and your punishment for dying isn't nearly as severe. I absolutely hate how punished you are in dark souls for dying. It's just a god awful gams mechanic that should be a hardcore option rather than a "feature". It's never rewarding to work your ass off learning the game and tediously progressing just to be completely discouraged when your rolled back because you're stuck at a boss. The souls games actively disentivize practicing and trying again. I like hard games. Cup head comes to mind. But I want to be able to fail in hard games without being severally punished for it, making it more difficult to jump back in and try again. That is terrible game design in my opinion. Your biggest complaints came down to, dark souls is more hardcore. But a game being hardcore or not has absolutely nothing to do with if it's good or not. Nothing .
Pause is great. Sometimes, people irl talk to you. Sometime, your controller is almost out of batterie and sometimes, Your screens bug and goes black. It happened to me on Orphan while he was 1 hit away from dying. A problem with the hdmi cable...
"There's an npc that tells you hesitation is defeat. At the end of the game I saw where he was coming from". ... Vietnam flashbacks from the "Hesitation is defeat" death dialogue
This is by far the best video I have seen on this topic. It encapsulates a feeling this game has been giving me but that I was not able to verbalize. The analysis of the combat system and its different incentives finally made it click with me. I went through the game 3 times for every ending and now I wish I had a reason to do it again.Definitely managed to recapture that souls feeling.
Second death is different from extra healing item, though. It's a lot more like making you do your corpse run in reverse: after you die, if you are reasonable (and if battle lets you), you will retreat to the shrine to reset it and not lose your gold and exp (and dragonrot).
The resurrection (second death) mechanic is way more than just an extra heal. Using certain items and taking advantage of death blows (especially later on in the game when you get an extra resurrect node) can make the whole mechanic a very vital part in some of the harder fights.
Naw, world tendancy was abuseable, cling ring and makes the health penalty moot dont become human and the world tebdancy stays white making the game incredibly easy
What was awesome about world tendency was in order to lower World tendency you had to defeat one of the demons in the game the more bosses you defeated the less World tendency there would be the more you die World tendency goes up. my first playthrough it was a nightmare with World tendency because I like to learn from my mistakes which means I'm willing to try new moves and get killed a lot. My first playthrough was 242 hours now I can get through demon souls in less than 16 hours. I would like to see Demon Souls remastered for the current-gen hardware it can't come to the PC because Sony owns the game but it can come to the PS4 Dark Souls over Shadow Demon Souls but Demon Souls was better than Dark Souls but I like dark souls and I love Demon Souls.
I'm with you on this, the first playthrough was such a pain in the ass because you 1. Don't understand the system. 2. Die a lot. 3. Reattempt the same areas over and over. Latria just ruined me because of that.
@@V2ULTRAKillIt was abusable if you understood it. If you kept reviving yourself to body form only to die again while not realizing what was happening when you did so, it was a nightmare lol
Good video all around but just wanted to say that the exploration is very well rewarded in this game, or it was to me at least, there are lots of hidden areas which are well fleshed out rather than being just a cubic room with a chest, and they more often than not contain either health upgrade charms or parts for new prosthetic tools, and in some cases mini-bosses are only found through exploration, it's honestly hard to see how they could've rewarded the player more for bothering to explore.
I didn't take the hesitation part like you did from lord isshin. What it meant for me was more of a "fight or die" as the core game is just that. The game instantly became much easier when I started actually fighting bosses using mixed attacks and strategy instead of hit, parry, attack.
It's kinda interesting that Issin says that, and his first phase in the final fight can be cheesed by relentlessly attacking him, because he has 3 possible counterattack moves, 2 of which are laughably easy to counter.
@@hoontythesleepy2182 if you beat the game the first time around ng+ should not in any way be harder, you already know how to beat it and whats around every corner, the only thing that changes is stats slightly.. and you have full gourd charges and all your prosthetics, and your damage still keeps going up after bosses, you make no sense.
Difficulty is subjective. Some say Sekrio is the hardest one, some say is the easiest. Why Sekiro can be perceived as the hardest one? 1. Your playstyle is limited to close combat. No mages, no ranged combat 2. No way to level up in order to be overpowered 3. Deflecting attacks is a must. You either learn to do this or you won´t complete the game 4. No summoning, no help Why Sekiro can be perceived as the easiest one? 1. Stealth can save you from difficult situations 2. You can destroy one mini-bosses/Bosses entire health bar being sneaky 3. The Wolf (main character) is fast and agile unlike DS and BB characters. The best advice for playing Sekiro is to forget everything about DS and BB. I was too used to dodging attacks and tt is not what you want to do here.
I think, you forgot the most important point why Sekiro is easier: it is not half as cryptic. A huge amount of Dark Souls difficulty does not come from hard fights, but from thr cryptic mechanics. What is poise, where are the embers for upgrading and so on. Sekiro does not have all this stuff.
@@TgfkaTrichter You are right. The cprytic stuff in DS made me difficult to figure out where to go next. In Sekiro dialogues and instructions are clear. In DS are mysterious and end up with ackward laughs
@@TgfkaTrichter The cryptic stuff is there on purpose, not as dificulty but to create a community that give tips to each other. Sekiro has a lot of that too, like the use of the spear's pull for the headless ape. I'm actually surprised there's no soapstone mechanic in Sekiro.
It can also be seen as easier because you can parry without risk, unlike DS and most other games with parrying, and you become very powerful half-way through the game. It can be seen as the hardest because they put one of the most BS bosses (chained ogre) at the very beginning and pissed everybody off. The bosses will also take more tries than in DS, but the "overworld" enemies are easier.
@@St4rdog the only reason people thought chained ogre was hard is because they didnt eavesdrop the guards thus spurring on the thought of looking for something with fire inevitably leading them to Hirata and the flame vent which trivializes the fight
You also hit the nail on the head. The sense of exploration, the feelings of "oh wtf" when encountering a new boss, the challenge of overcoming them...it's the most fun I've had since discovering Dark Souls.
I think getting rid of different weapons and armor was a good choice, simply because now that player has only one setup, it allows developers to have a clear focus which results in better design of enemies, bosses and player's kit. In Dark Souls series, even with a large variety of weapons and armor, all the melee builds play in a very same way, specially against bosses when most of the time blocking and parrying is not a viable option, or in Bloodborne where is no blocking at all. Everything comes down to good positioning and well-timed dodges so you can put one or two most effecient hits your weapon can allow, which is often is just R1/Running R1/Dodge R1. So while you have countless options, your playstyle won't change much from build to build. There is also magic builds, but I personally think that even in DS3 they still didn't really get magic right, it's still felt too clunky and basic compared to the melee builds, you can feel that the soulsborne series was not designed for ranged playstyle, even though it gives you lots of ranged tools to play with, and if you use magic up-close, then it's pretty much the same as swinging swords, only instead you cast spells to deal damage. In Sekiro however, even a basic set of abilities can already allow a little variety of playstyles: if you focus on dodging you can win through damaging enemy's health, because dodges often leave enemy open and stop their combos, if you focus on deflects you can win through destroying enemy's posture, or you can combine these 2, since the speed of posture regen depends on how much health enemy has. And you can use unlimited sprint, jumps and enemy step in many creative ways. Add to all of that Combat Arts most of which have very different properties, that will change the way you play, with Nightjar Slash you can close and create the distance between you and the enemy very quickly while doing damage, with Ichimonji can easily stagger most of the enemies and regen your posture, which is very useful if you block/deflect a lot, Praying Strikes allow for very aggressive playstyle because they can't be deflected and force enemy to block so you can do a lot of posture damage, not worrying about getting hit back during your combo. And there are also tools, many of them also heavily affect your playstyle, with Axe you deal lots of posture damage and can trade hits with hyper-armor, Shuriken can interrupt small combos and allows you to close distance and Mist Raven allows you to create distance between you and the enemy, you can use Umbrella like a shield for easier, safer deflects and with upgrades it can also be used to attack. And that's just a few examples. Not to mention how certain enemies and bosses have their strengths and weaknesses to certain combat arts and tools, which creates a very different experience from player to player because people who prefer certain CAs and tools will have an easier time with some encounters and harder with others. And that, in my opinion, also adds huge replayability value, since you won't be able to experiment and have fun with most of the tools and combat arts in one playthrough, you wont' be able to even unlock all the upgrades and skills in one go. I love Souls, but I think that even though you technically have a lot more options with weapons and armor, with stats and levels, all of that makes very little difference, because the game itself is designed around very particular playstyle, which you describe in the video yourself. And I like the simplicity of Souls combat, but if I change from heavy armor and greatsword to lighter armor and scimitar I will still have to roll and hit, roll and hit when I'm fighting a boss, if I change from Umbrella to Mist Raven in Sekiro it will change the way I move, the way I defend myself, the way I attack, the way deal damage. The only thing I miss about not having weapons and armor is that it made exploration less exciting, like you mentioned, in Soulsbornes new location always means new weapons and armor, which is always exciting if not for the gameplay purposes then for lore and story, and Sekiro didn't really add anything to replace them when it comes to exploration, despite having a lot more little secrets scattered around the game.
Also people should stop putting it in the same box like like dark souls. Yes sekiro could pass as a souls like but its an action game and dark souls is a action rpg - stop treating them like theyre the same xd its like whining about a lack of skilltrees in counterstrike compared to borderlands
Dark Souls series and Elden Ring are great games, but just not for me. The endless amount of hidden items and npcs, spells, and covenants u gotta join to get specialties. The vague obscurity on where go next in the game. Also, the character builds turned me off. Sekiro was the only souls game I ever beat. It's the only one that got me hooked. I honestly wished I loved Dark Souls and Elden Ring. I admire them greatly.
I love the addition of more bonfires, and I am glad Sekiro continues the trend. There is nothing challenging about having to replay content I've already mastered over and over again because the boss keeps killing me. At times, Dark Souls 1 feels more grindy than a modern day MMO because of all the back tracking due to bonfires being miles away. If "fair" is the word we are going to use, that sounds more like allowing me to pick up right where I left off. Doing so doesn't make the boss any easier. It just ensures I spend less time travelling back to it and more time actually fighting it.
Yes! It's so goddamn frustrating to have to go through a bunch of ridiculous enemies just to get to a boss that keeps killing you. I haven't played sekiro yet, but I remember how pissed of I was at having to go through that goddamn elevator when trying to kill father Gascoigne in bb. One game that helps you with this, albeit rather later than it could have, is hollow knight. When you get the teleport ability you can spend some resource to teleport to an area you previously set as a destination (only one at a time), so you can teleport to a boss over and over again until you beat it. Believe, me, that was a godsent thing when I died thirty times before killing the watcher knights in that game.
Well.. thats exactly what builds up the tension and frustration leading to higher sense of achievement and reward after finally beating the boss.. Stop whining, git gud instead.
@@ethrez getting good requires practice. Practice requires getting back to the boss. There's no practice involved when you spend more time getting to the boss than you spend practicing against the boss. Consider that every streamer who plays dark souls skips most of the content. They go out of their way to find every possible shortcut. Might as well build that into the core assumption of the game since everyone does it anyways.
Nancy PeloCi Again, if it was right next tp the boss, there would be no challange, no stress, no pressure, therefore too easy.. This is exactly what makes it hard.. stop whining.
@@ethrez If the challenge comes from the distance from the checkpoint to the boss, then I'd say the boss was poorly designed. Sense of achievement isn't the same as relief. There are literally many ways you can design a game so that it feels rewarding and/or challenging (which aren't the same thing), and old-school distant checkpoint placing is a really cheap one. You're simply reiterating the angsty teenager "git gud" mentality without really considering what the OP was talking about.
I actually like Sekiro's simplicity and the nuanced combat system much better!! Dark souls got plenty of variety but the combat somehow still feels redundant! It's far more rewarding to beat the bosses in Sekiro in my opinion.
It's bc souls combat was always just dodge spam. Yes you must learn timings but once u do u won already. Every boss can be boiled down to this. Yes you can block and parry but dodge is just higher reward for less risk. Also it makes you invincible. I find it less skillful than rapid parrying in sekiro and rolling around like some monkey on crack looks lame tbh
"Hesitation is death" This really hit me during one of the major boss fights in the game. There are moments where if you decide to play it safe and block instead of attack, it opens the door to the enemy releasing a whole chain of attacks you could of avoided in the first place had you just hit them during that small opening. Learning their move sets and finding that opening is a fundamental part of this game.
Most of the difficulty in dark souls comes from level design. It is literally a maze, full of traps and spots where you’ll get ambushed. Getting lost or not knowing how to progress is also common in dark souls. Therefore knowledge is power. In sekiro on the other hand, it’s the other way around, all of the difficulty comes from combat and being put on the spot, while maps are linear and most of the enemies are visible. Also, there’s never been a time in sekiro where I felt lost.
I felt lost a lot lol. I hate maps more than enemies tbh. I can eventually learn to get around a enemy but there's been times I'm swearing like a sailor because I can't fucking find how to get up somewhere or around something
@@thedoomslayer5863 yeah, there is places in ds where you ask yourself how you’re meant to get there, and you just run in circles trying to find a way to get to it. And then you give up, and five minutes later you’re in the exact spot that you were trying to get to.
Underrated, this video is exceptionally good, I have watched more Sekiro/Souls related video than I would like to admit but this is definitely the best comparison/relation video about Sekiro and Dark Souls Very well written and greatly thought-out, I agree with most of your point as I experience them myself. Sekiro made me feels like I'm playing souls for the first time again, as much as I like DS2-3 they cannot recapture the feeling that the original created There are some changes that I don't like but that is a necessary cost. I don't think I could like DS4 as much as Sekiro, no matter how good that game is it will be just another Dark Souls game. I really hope FromSoftware did not get discouraged from trying out new things and keep on evolving Cheers and I'm looking forward to more video, it would be cool if you could do a Retrospective/critique/review/ to any Souls game or Sekiro in the future
@@NeverKnowsBest And I appreciate your video, you said and put into words my thought and feeling about the game, it definitely help in further understanding and enjoying the game
The "tough but fair" take on Dark Souls always was overblown. There was plenty of cheap shit in it. Sekiro's combat is a great evolution/departure. And far more engaging than DS's in its core. Yes it lacks Souls variety of weapons and armor. But ultimately that variety still boils down to the same core loop of dodge, wait for opening, attack. It's ultimately just different animations and skins on gear. Hopefully, Elden Ring takes Sekiro's and Bloodborne's mechanics and combines those superior and deeper core combats of both, leaving behind the getting-worn-out dodge-rolling of the Souls series. Love all the games. But if they just keep pushing out the same combat as Souls we end up with retreads like Ashen, Mortal Shell, etc. Not bad games themselves. But not long-term engaging either.
I love Dark Souls games and Bloodborne. Multiple playthroughs. Endless hours and character builds... But, if I'm totally honest.. Sekiro is my new favourite.
Yea hearing about it’s difficulty put me off it at first as I’m not the best souls player but I love it now. Does take a bit of time to get into but the things people consider weaknesses are to me it’s strengths
One thing I disagree with here is that you say that the new 2 death mechanic basically does nothing for gameplay and just functions as another healing item. Your next point shows why I don't necessarily agree with this. When you die for good, you lose everything. No chance to get it back. This, to me, is one of the main reasons for the second death mechanic. You are given a free, permanent homeward bone at the start of the game. So, if you are having trouble with a mini-boss or certain area of the game, and you die, you are given the choice: revive, run, hide, homeward bone. OR: revive, stand and fight. This gives the player the choice: Try to finish off the area or mini-boss, or try again without risk of losing your progress and perhaps infecting someone with Dragon Rot. This leaves bosses. If you are stuck on a boss in Dark Souls, as you know, the standard modus operandi is to kill all or as many enemies as you care to enemies on the boss walk, traverse the fog, grab your blood stain, and fight the boss. In essence, this means that when you finally overcome a boss that has been giving you trouble, the final reward is increased by the amount of trouble you had with the boss. The more times you wiped the boss walk, the more souls you would have in your bloodstain and the more you would have after you beat the boss. This is not possible in Sekiro. If you are stuck on a boss on Sekiro, the best course of action is to not engage the enemies on the boss walk at all, because if you are stuck, chances are you will lose all of that progress anyway. All of this comes together, in my mind, into choices that pressure the player, greatly affecting gameplay.
I’ve gotten the Platinum trophy for Sekiro & pumped in about 300 hours, and until now I didn’t know that blocking reduced posture damage faster than with the katana down…
I played sekiro first and am just now playing dark souls 3 as my first soulsborne game. Honestly if I didn’t already know I wouldn’t have thought they were from the same maker. Everything about moving is so different and the story is so much easier to understand and keep track of in sekiro
I’ll give Sekiro a chance again some day, for now I still prefer Dark souls, the world, the customization in armor and weapons and developing my character is much more appealing to me.
Sekiro is not a full on rpg as dark souls people shouldn't be waiting for mechanics like those, another reason I'm starting to hate this soulsborne shit hole of fromsoft game conparation.
@@roberbaez6153 dude, I get that, you’re stating the obvious here my guy. All I’m saying is in regards to all of from softwares game I prefer their previous work and their previous game styles as opposed to this. That’s all, I have every right to compare these games to each other and point out my preferences. If you disagree with me or think I’m wrong then move on. Lol
@@jeffryrojas4148of course you are not is an opinion and everybody that says that an opinion is less while having no argument is bad, maybe I misunderstood your message.
@@roberbaez6153 you’re good man, just wanted to make clear that I get these games are different but I still like to compare them because they are made by same dev and just wanted to put out my preferences. I understand your opinion however :)
5:50 Fun fact. This grab attack is actually a sweep attack so you should dodge it by jumping over it rather than trying to get a precise timing to get out of the grab area. P.S. I've beaten all DS multiple times and Sekiro as well (ending up with 100 % achievements in all the DS series and Sekiro), but I never felt that Sekiro was counter intuitive. It has a learning curve which is somewhat easy to learn but hard to master. I read all the tutorial windows that popped up in the key moments where these said mechanics were introduced and I never felt lost about what the game wants me to do with these said mechanics. So I think that you are wrong about Sekiro being designed to be counter intuitive to DS players. It is simply designed differently with different ways of achieving the same goal. If the next game has different weapons and gear (like DS) than Sekiro 2 would be the logical evolution of the soulborne series.... Sekiries?
I mean you cant say that completly changing the philosophy behind boss combat is not counter intuitive for Souls players. Especially since the less diehard you are, the more you are used to playing more defensive than needed, since it usually yields better results in DS. Sekiro turns this completly upside down, theres no point and in some fights no way you can really figure anything out by playing defensive, sometimes you have to just go ham, try to see which tools can be used to break through an enemies pattern without getting you killed. Especially the posture system breaks defensive playstyles and creates an environment where you have to be offensive in order to succeed. Which leads to the next point, overly offensive playstyle gets you killed just as fast as in DS, if not faster since 1 hit chain is enough to kill you against most bosses. Its not a bad thing to be counterintuitive at first, especially since it opens up for extremely satisfying bosskills (once u figured their attackpatterns out) One point he made about divine confetti being necessary in some fights is what kinda bothered me the most in sekiro so far, since any fights where its useful, it makes the fight a joke, while not using it makes the fight almost unbeatable. If you compare that to using the gold pine resin you can find for the Taurus Demon, it definetly makes the fight easier, but not that much, at the same time the fight is very much doable without it.
I feel like Sekiro is actually more forgiving, what with the second life you can just run away with that resurrection and not incur any penalties from your first death, reset, try again. Much less punishing imo. Harder game mechanics wise but they give you the ability to even the odds. And as opposed to Dark Souls where you're meant to follow the rules of the game, Sekrio encourages you to find your own rules of engagement. Cheesing is no longer as cheesy because that's what a shinobi would do, they would use hit and run tactics, traps, smoke, ash, anything to get the upper hand.
I slightly disagree with your assessment that Dark Souls makes you follow its rules. The game is so open ended in its approaches to combat and exploration that you can pretty much play it however you want. It's part of the reason there's so many interesting challenge runs for them. Sekiro is the one that demands you play a certain way to succeed.
@@whatthe9256 He means build variety and weapons, and he is right, Sekiro has no build variety at all, and its replayability factor is very low compared to darksouls games for this reason. It has no armour, no weapons, no stats, all the skills in the skill trees are either useless or essential, there is no room to vary anything. and even if you did, you are fighting every boss with your katana, and maybe using firecrackers to cheese them if you dont know their combos and timings well enough to be able to school them, the most efficient way to kill anything is to break their posture with a deflection and insta kill them. Its a shame that all of the cool weapon skills are basically useless, do almost the same amount of damage as a non charged up R1 katana attack, and cost spirit emblems, and can be blocked like any normal attack.
It's more forgiving in the early game. Where you can die against simple enemies and go back or risk it all. But not in boss battles. And there's where you need them the most
@@Jack_Sparrow_85double ichimonji totally disagrees with being useless. It does tons of posture damage and good health. I use it all the time. Shadow rush works great and does more damage. Mortal blade does really good health damage. Ashina cross is slow but does alot of damage. There's a few other good ones too.
I feel like people romanticize souls too much. First of all, only a fraction of souls players actually stick around for online play, and I think that Sekiro proves that the online element of souls was probably more of a liability than a benefit. I think that the claim that exploring is less useful is also bogus, there are plenty of rewards for exploration in this game. And it wouldn't even be possible to progress in Sekiro without exploring. I am mostly pointing this out because your comment in the video seemed pretty blasé without really explanation. There are Gourd seeds, prayer beads, shinobi prosthetics, extra bosses, extra npc's. Also, items in this game are way more useful than in Dark Souls in my experience, so getting a common object in Sekiro is more rewarding than in Dark Souls. I agree that Dragonrot is dogshit though. For a game that is so meticulously designed, dragonrot is a glaring mistake. They should have done something like in Nioh or Hollow Knight where you fight a ghost of yourself for the money and XP.
@@enzocrespin5806 Dragonrot is more a part of the story than gameplay as kuro tries to cut his ties with immortality because of the people suffering from dragon rot.. So it all makes sense that immortality and resurrection power comes at a cost which is people getting inflicted by dragon rot.. Without it kuro will be a psychopath trying to commit suicide for no reason..
Looking at steam analytics, DS3 has an average active player count of 10k, often peaking at 25k and it has been almost 6 years since it came out. There's a reason why it has that number, as it is most commonly agreed on that DS3 has the most polished pvp of all the souls games. Meanwhile sekiro has never breached 7k since the may of 2019. People DO play for pvp man.
Dragonrot legitimately doesn't affect gameplay. You might try to argue "but it lowers your chances of unseen aid!" I will counter argue by saying spend all your money on spirit emblems and finish getting your next skill point before taking on a fight you **know** is going to take several tries. Then, who cares about unseen aid? You're never losing much of anything to begin with. A player's inability to plan for boss fights does not equate to a bad mechanic.
Hey, similar to the Mikiri counter you can jump on enemies doing an unblockable sweep to maintain damage their posture. You should try giving up Kuro's Charm and ring the Demon Bell for NG+. Solid video.
@@etiennelatour3435 Why not? I just started NG+ and am already collecting the incense for Kuro. You just need to parry properly and it really isn't an issue.
I always find it sad that a lot of good games live in the shadows of their inspirations or predecessors. any 'difficult' game will be compared to dark souls, any game tagged 'psychological horror' will be compared to DDLC... any open world game will be compared to, well, A LOT of good open world games. It's just a bit sad that not many people think about how games stand on their own merit, but how brightly they shine in another games shadow.
I dunno, I found this game far easier to farm in than any of the games in the series before, and I never felt like it mattered if I died with a lot of xp. And yeah, sen doesn't level you up; it just buys items lol.
@@doctordungus7774, it makes farming less tedious when you can stealth kill any regular enemy. Going back to Dark Souls to farm levels will feel like a huge chore now. Sekiro ruined me for Souls games.
Doctor Dungus bro you lose like half your sen when dying which you need to level up your prosthetics . Dark souls just doesn’t have good combat which is why I find sekiro far better .
@@strictlypineapple9308 You say dark souls doesn't have good combat, sekiro and dark souls have completely different combat systems its just your opinion...
My only argument against the things that you have said was that Reviving was just another healing item. When you get killed and you decide to revive there is this distinct moment where you have to decide whether you are going to double down because you think you can beat what just killed you, or use that Resurrection to run away and go back to an idol to heal up and try again. If you double down you might win, but if you run away you know you're not going to lose any of your experience or money. There were several times where I felt like I did not make the right decision when I double down and lost everything, when my best course of action would have been to resurrect and run away and then come back and try again so that I wouldn't lose anything
it also increases in effectiveness based on how much health you had left before that last hit, where if you get hit by a big move on a sliver of health then a lot of that extra damage that exceeds your health bar gets nullified(while you may still die if you used a gourd instead). It also doesn't leave you open on use like gourd does.
@@Violaphobia hmm, I see your point. I guess the biggest difference is that before you choose to use your Resurrection, death automatically disengages you from combat which you cannot do easily in Dark Souls without praying and running lol
Yes, after playing all the souls games Sekiro is a breath of fresh air for me atleast, some boss fights had my heart pumping just like it once did playing Demons souls and DS1 when it was new and exiting. Indeed it was fun you mentioned the posture decrease on block stance, I only figured that out on the last boss, which I think is utter BS but oh well it's a FROM game afterall.
I feel like Dark Souls is to Sekiro what Cowboy Bebop is to Samurai Champloo. The biggest thing holding it back are the constant, inevitable comparisons to it's big brother.
The biggest problem I have with Sekiro so far is that dying is the single most tedious thing that can happen to you in the game. I don't recall the last time the punishment for dying was so mind-numbing. I picked up the bell from the old woman right at the start of the game, and immediately headed into that memory of Hirata Estate - I didn't know any better, and figured it was going to be on the level of this early-game stuff I was already doing. I was wrong. Took me some hours just to get to Juzo the Drunkard. Took me a few more hours to beat him. Most of that time was spent running from the Idol to the boss, circling around to kill his minions, and then fighting. Because I had no upgrades of any sort besides four Prosthetic Tools to choose from, I was completely fucked if I took more than a hit or two from his minions - with my skill I wouldn't be able to beat Juzo. Every time I took that much damage I had to run all the way back to the idol, and then sneak past the first group of minions all over again. It was so much bloody work just to get to fight the boss one on one that it became a gruelling chore. Not gruelling in the way a well-designed and entertaining challenge would be, but the bad kind, like I was in the Demon Ruins from DS1 all over again. Juzo himself was aggravating for me, since with no health upgrades his sumo stomp would oneshot me, his grab would oneshot me if I was below 7/8ths of my hp, and I had no antidote powder besides the one single one you get from the woman in the locked house. I got wise to his regular attacks eventually, and won in the end...but it didn't really feel rewarding. Part of this was my own fault, as I've said. But it's not especially the fight's fault - it's in the placement of the enemies immediately before him. Now, Juzo is a "mini-boss". If you have no upgrades he becomes a full-fledged boss. You can't assassinate him for a free half-hp attack without baiting him out using Nogami, that samurai dude mentioned in the video. As well as being so very stonk, he has no less than 11 men between himself and you. Easy enough to kill, very very easy to kill if you just dash back and do a dodge-thrust. But like I said - more than a couple of hits and you stand no chance against Juzo unless you can kill him without taking a single hit. By comparison, Lady Butterfly was very fun and a wonderful challenge, even with very little hp she only has one one-shot attack and it's easily countered. I even managed to beat her without using a revive on my successful attempt, because she exemplifies the perfect boss for Sekiro's combat system (so far, anyway).
3 месяца назад
Regarding expected low replayability: I replayed Sekiro more than all the rest Souls games combined exactly because it's a game greatly designed around one weapon and a narrower approach to combat, focusing on having a great single player sword dance with your enemies :)
Outside locked boss arenas, I don't think having to go pick up your sen and xp would add anything to the game with how OP your movement abilities are, just trivial busywork. Good video though, it's my first "Darksoulslike" and I beat the fiery big boy yesterday (after 10 or so hours whining at the television hehe, not having any DS/BB fighting experience probably made that fight harder for me than usual) so I only have a few bosses left to deconstruct. Love the game, among the best I've played, and will probably go for DS3 or Nioh next.
I suggest you play DS1 and Bloodborne if you liked Sekiro. Play DS3 after DS1 for the best results. Or yeah, go with Nioh if you enjoy more complexity. Soulsborne has simple combat but rewarding encounters whereas Nioh has rewarding combat but repetitive encounters.
Corpse running would've made the game too easy, I figured they added the die twice thing so they could remove corpse running from a game where you can basically grapple from tree to tree like fucking Tarzan while the enemies are as blind, dumb and slow as they've always been. If every enemy in the game was a Nightjar then maybe they could let people get their shit back after dying but alas they're not so I think the current system is fair enough. Hell in my second playthrough I never truly died to anything that wasn't a main boss so I never lost money or huge XP because I'd spend my money before the tough fights and make sure I hit the next skill level if I was already close to it.
2021 and I'm still watching - I started with DS 3 (since then I played Dark Souls 2) and fell in love. I went on to Bloodborne and then by the time Sekiro launched I had finished so many playthroughs of DS 3 I lost count. I found Sekiro's combat so addicting that it turned out to be the first From Software game that I got a platinum trophy in just from playing over and over and having too much fun to stop. Sekiro is a love letter to Souls fans however. I recently went back to Bloodborne and the Skill Ceiling is just nowhere near the same. I can confidently recommend Dark Souls to anybody with a bit of persistence. There are indeed some people whom I believe will find the skill ceiling of Sekiro too high to penetrate.
While I struggeled with Sekiro at first, I really came to enjoy it, although it was very brutal. I never liked the QTE aspect though. But I never felt the urge to play it again, beating Ishin took all my energy. It still keep coming back to Dark Souls 2. It was my first DS game and just has such a huge replayability aspect to it. Bonfire aesthetics and the build variety are unmatched.
I think FromSoft has kinda stuck us in this situation by doing nothing but creating Souls games and Bloodborne for years now, thus casing many people to pigeonhole them as "the Souls guys." This label leads to some unfair expectations, given that not every game they make needs to be like Dark Souls. This isn't helped by the similarities Sekiro *does* share with the Souls games, which can make some people feel like it *is* meant to be like those ames, and in a sene, it kinda is and is not at the same time.
For me Dark Souls was a flawed masterpiece, and Sekiro is exactly that. It's different and that means it's better in some ways and worse in others and which features constitute better or worse are entirely subjective, I think.
"the bossfights feel more varied" Sekiro's bossfights apart from a very narrow few, felt more same than any other. Every boss is just -> bash your head against it for a few hours untill you know their moveset by heart -> bash deflect in correct rhythm and occasionally dodge a kanji -> profit
I mean, you're not wrong, but also every Dark Souls boss is about learning the moveset and punishing on dodge, unless you cheese them with an op build or phantoms.
@@Rexodiak But because of that, its a lot more foward to learn. Nothing is annoying like dying 100 time to the same attack and still having no fucking clue what to do about it. In sekiro, when you die, you know exactly what you should have done. It makes it completly not frustrating.
@@poutineausyropderable7108 what? Dying in Sekiro is still frustrating... just like dying in any videogame. Although I am curious about when did you experience dying repeatedly to a boss in any Dark Souls and not knowing what you did wrong, I can't think of any and I'm not being elitist, I died many many times to bosses but never asked myself what I had to do. If anything I think Sekiro is more frustrating than Dark Souls because it doesn't allow for many mistakes, you can't bring a high poise shield and use magic, you can't grind levels and parrying is compulsory to learn. EDIT: maybe you tagged the wrong person in your comment? or maybe you misunderstood where I was coming from with my first comment.
The theme of Sekiro is deception. It starts out hard, and it doesn't inform you about the world. Unlike Souls games, there's no writing on the ground either, so it feels really unfair. That's what turned me off to it at first, because you will encounter perilous attack prompts before the tutorial blivet pops up about them. In Souls games, the ground writing that you can choose to read will tell you basic controls and give you a suggestion. I didn't know I could sprint until a few hours in. I didn't know about perilous attacks until after Genichiro curb stomped me in the "tutorial" boss fight. They only give you one gourd for healing at the start, with pellets interspersed throughout the level. You start with no prosthetics and no spirit emblems and no skills. I see it said that there's no level grinding to toughen yourself up for a boss, but you can save up for game changing skill and prosthetic upgrades at any point. A lot of the skills literally let you do things that you couldn't before, such as the Mikiri Counter, Vault Over, Any Combat Art, aerial deflect, and the list goes on. These are actually more powerful than level ups, because rather than a raw damage increase or more health to tank an extra hit or two, you are actually getting things that change how bosses react to you and how you can hit them or stop their damage. I think I've seen multiple sayings that you can "cheese" Lady Butterfly by spamming Nightjar Slash, because it will always hit her and her AI will always react poorly to it. I've seen Corrupted Monk stagger locked with items and firecrackers. I've taken 1/5th of a boss's total vitality with a single Mortal Draw combat art use. Sekiro is only hard at the start. In Dark Souls, I never had that thought. The difficulty for me was fairly constant throughout, with a problem boss here or there that I got to before it was intended. They give you a lot of healing items at the start of Dark Souls. 10 Flasks from Firelink Shrine(5 for the tutorial), and if you chose Cleric, 5 Heal spell casts. If given 5 Healing Gourds at the start of Sekiro, then almost everyone would have beaten Genichiro in the, "tutorial." The difficulty for Sekiro is almost entirely resource dependent.
GIT GUD, and never quit i remember dying on a boss like 30 times atleast , trying for 2h non stop ,until i finally got all his moves and learned that i have to fight any boss head on , no hit and run tactic . hit , deflect , mikiri counter etc . after finishing the fight i felt a satisfaction and a sens of accomplishment i've rarely ever felt in a game before .
I personally think Sekiro is my favorite From Game. I’m literally only like 2 hours in but the combat is so rewarding, exhilarating, and difficult, that bosses and mini bosses that I had trouble with give such an amazing feeling of victory when you beat them. I haven’t felt that with a Souls game since the first time I beat Quelaag.
My only real complaint with sekiro is how the reads on the unblockable attacks are a bit hard to see on human bosses. It’s not that I have trouble figuring them out, it’s that Sekiro’s body covers most of the animation so I can barely see what the boss is doing. Genichiro, for example, can either do a sweep or a thrust after he slams, and Sekiro’s body covers most of Genichiro’s body, making it hard to see him go for the attack
I found that after parrying the helmsplitter it usually pushes me just far enough to get a good view. He will always keep his blade in almost the same position when using the thrust and he will angle is to the side when preparing for a sweep. It’s definitely subtle but noticeable.
Great video man I’m replaying this after not playing since I beat it at release. Didn’t think my muscle memory was this burnt in my mind but I came back so easy after like 2 years. This and souls are great games I can’t wait for elden ring!
I love the combat in this game, it’s so fluid and detailed, I hope they use this in all their future games. I love the CLANGS and bangs in this game and really hope they add it to a future soul game or something like it.
This video perfectly encapsulates what I've been trying to put into words in how I feel about this game compared to Dark Souls and Bloodborne. It's not better or worse than Dark Souls, it's just different although much of the DNA from Soulsborne games is intact. EDIT: SUBBED.
Finished Sekiro today, but I just feel burned out - i've never felt this after any of the five Souls games, I think it's down to the lack of replayability and customisation in Sekiro if i'm honest. I love the game, and will always remember this first week of learning everything (the first few sections reminded me of 2011's DkS), however I just don't have any incentive to play again, reminds me of the latest God Of War in that way. A solid 8/10, not quite as great as Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or Dark Souls III, but still an excellent experience and arguably both the easiest and hardest of the franchise.
I think the skill trees and the prosthetic upgrades give the game a lot of replay value, but more importantly the stealth mechanic. Choosing how and when to pick your fights or avoid situation feels extremely varied for me. Also choosing what path to take is cool again cause levels are still connected.
Had to make sure I didn't post this comment myself. GoW comparison is spot on, unfortunately. Very sad if this is the future of From games. Judging from the reception of this game, it's possible.
@@mikem.e3392 I feel similarly, I am hoping they will improve on those things in sekiro 2 if that ever gets made. My first playthrough felt better than any souls game though, simply incredible and one of the best games ever in that regard.
Sekiro is a good game, but im struggling to feel any desire to play it again after finishing it, the prosthetic weapons are all just flavor.. when they are useful against a boss, they are basically just cheesing, and they are almost never worth using against regular enemies. The game achieves a lot, but i doubt ill ever bother playing through newgame+, seeing as you can skip 90% of the game with stealth and grappling, it just feels like you are running from boss to boss, and you fight all of them in basically the same way. The removal of the weapon system kills replayability, in darksouls when you finish the game you can replay it in a completely different way just by deciding on a different build and weapon, in Sekrio that option doesnt exist, you unlock every prosthetic basically in your first playthrough and you fight every boss with your katana anyway.. The Darksouls games are better. Sekrio was really good though.
@Frankie Basile does it? in what way does the combat feel so much better? sure its probably more challenging, but does it actually feel better? i dont think it does. Where are you up to in the game by the way? have you actually finished it?
@Frankie Basile Sekrio is basically just mash the deflect/block button every time an enemy is about to start a chain combo, hope that a few of them count as pure deflects, then attack, then jump/dodge/counter their quicktime attack, rinse, repeat, after a while it doesn't feel that satisfying, it does feel great when you first start to understand the flow, but by the time the game is over it just feels tedious. I'm assuming you havent finished the game yet since you didnt answer me when i asked.
This is the best video I've seen discussing the various merits/shortcomings of Sekiro in comparison to Dark Souls. Your comment about the game feeling less fair and more "difficult for difficulty's sake" is right on the money. I'm on NG+ now, and admittedly I'm moving through the game much faster now that I've shaken off that DS/BB muscle memory and really embraced how combat works in this game, but I'm still keenly aware of some problems that this game has that I never felt the Soulsborne games had, many of which you have articulated well in this video. This isn't to say that I don't really enjoy the game overall, but it's definitely more of a mixed bag for me than FromSoft's previous games, which I adore passionately.
Yeah; It even makes use more focus on an simple overwold enemy not just the boss's. It sacrificed its diversity though in which dark souls had so much of
You mean it’s better than dark souls combat ever WAS, they clearly COULD make a dark souls game with this type of combat, that’s what this game is lol dumbass
I strongly disagree. Sekiro's combat is less strategic and more about muscle memory. That's a preference; it's not a case of one being better. I prefer the slower, thinking man's combat than the skill-intensive, reaction-heavy combat of Sekiro. One is not better than the other.
This video is off base. Fans of the SouldBorne series aren't the ones complaining about difficulty. I haven't seen a single long term fan of From games that wasn't' anything but happy about the change in mechanics to make the combat fresh, new, and difficult again. I haven't seen any long term fan complaining about having to learn the new perilous attack system, the deflect or posture mechanic as being "unfair." I might be mistaken, but that is what I have seen around the interwebs. Though, bitching about headless, and the terror effect I have seen many people complain about. Use the magic umbrella and projected force. For Ichimen use aerial deathblow and confetti.
I started playing through Sekiro on a whim, and got maybe a quarter or a third of the way through before my PC died. I'll be resuming in the coming months, after I replace my long obsolete machine with a new Ryzen 3000/X570 build. In the meantime, I picked up Dark Souls Remastered for the Switch, to play while I'm saving up for my new build, where I am still very much in the early game. I think your analysis of Sekiro as a new challenge for old Souls players is an interesting one, and I've seen echoes of it elsewhere. And having kind of approached the series in reverse, I feel like I can confirm that the placement of Sekiro in Souls' shadow can obscure some of its strengths. I find that having played Sekiro first, there are certain disappointments it never held for me, and even certain elements that I miss in DSR. (So far: the much more natural parry animations, the clearer visual indications for when backstabs and aerial blows are viable, and the superior handling of the player character which allows for some fast and fun platformer-ish elements in Sekiro (yay, dedicated jump button).). I'm still forming my opinion about things like idol/bonfire placement and fast travel, but my first instinct is not that more time spent traveling through completed areas as a mandatory ritual is a good thing. Can you think of anything From did in Sekiro that you hope they incorporate into the next mainline Souls game. or the upcoming Elden Ring?
Saying there is no replacement to magic and weapons is just plain wrong, the prosthetics, ninjutsu and combat arts ARE the replacements for magic and weapons, they literally use charms, a limited resource like the mana from Dark Souls, and on top of that they dramatically change some fights and allow for interesting tactics (which is weird since you literally demonstrated that during the Guardian Ape fight in the video and how one umbrella variation could be used to block its terror attacks). Also saying there no replayability is also not true, not only does it take multiple playhtroughs to unlock all prosthetics and combat/ninjutsu arts but the game has a much more engaging story with interesting characters and multiple endings (as far as i know 4 different endings so far), so claiming there is no replayability is objectively false, also exploration is rewarded with some well hidden prosthetics and combat arts .. some consumables also act like permanent items that can be used over and over and offer some new options, finally you can TOTALLY grind in Sekiro, not just for gold which is important to buy some items and to get all the prosthetic upgrades but also for EXP which can be used to buy some important and helpful upgrades early on (like the ability to heal from Deathblows and also the critical and important move the Mikiri Counter), some upgrades increase charm count or more importantly boost your healing and your ability to recover posture (or moves that allow you to deliver massive posture damage like the Ichimonji), so grinding does objectively make you more powerful not by directly increasing your max damage or HP but by improving your healing potency, giving you more prosthetic uses and allow you to deliver more posture damage, all which help soften the diffculty of the game. Also the stealth is pretty damn fine, not only can you cross entire sections of the game in stealth you can use deathblows to cut some mini-boss HP by half ... you can use several items as well to trick enemies like the ceramic shards and the whistle prosthetic .. combined with the verticality and the ability to leap on enemies from high ground this offer plenty of interesting ways to use stealth (or later on play mind tricks on your enemies or use them against each other), not to mention positioning is really important in many fights as well as in group fights against multiple enemies (specially if you use mind control trick since controlled enemies can still hit and damage you and you can accidentally kill them as well) The one thing i will agree with you on is Unseen Aid, while it actually can be affected by your actions indirectly (i.e when your NPCs get dragonrot you get 50% less chance of Unseen Aid) it still feels too random and frankly inferior to the "retrieve your souls" mechanic from the Souls games, if they actually fix it or change it back in a major upcoming patch it would make Sekiro almost perfect. Another thing that annoyed me was the camera, it does get really weird in closed spaces and the enemy lock can just disengage and NOPE out of existence in a critical moment making you lose track of your enemy as they suddenly move out of your sight (and that could mean a swift death in some boss fights).
Well...I'm an idiot. I'm 60 hours into sekiro and had no idea that blocking reduces posture faster until you told me. Here I was thinking that I'm well on my way to mastering the systems in this game
Too bad this video is solely focussing on gameplay. Although gameplay wise FS did not fix many of DS problem Sekiro has something you barely scratch... The realisation of this game is just amazing from the story to the DA, passing by the level design (the shortcut issue is quite minor and pretty objective I think) everything feel so good. It makes it an unique experience. It is, for me, the best shinobi/samurai action game ever made by far and, unlike you, I think it is not fair to compare it to DS or blooborn... Or if you do... You should talk about the DA of these 2 games that, for me, was clearly under. Finally, talking about character customisation here is like complaining we can only play geralt in the witcher. They are trying to tell a story and make an universe. So yes they may have dig a bit more on the stuff(by doing something more like niho for example) and here is indeed the big weakness of Sekiro. A stuff system would have indeed bring interest in the loot and therefore interest in the exploration on which you make the perfect point on saying it is interesting but not rewarding (which is too bad because the level design quality is breathtaking ). Do not get me wrong this video is amazing, as always. Moreover I agree with most of the point you are making. Yet.... I love this game ao much for the reason O mentioned above that I am sad it did not resonate the same for you haha
Story is not good or interesting. The only interesting character is sculptor. There is no gear or interesting items. Only sugars and balloons in the world. The world is also much less varied (but well done for what it is). Everything is less varied. Less enemy types, less builds, less combat styles. But its ok. It is good that the game is focused on what its doing. Its just less replayable and not fit for everyone playstyle like souls was. This game is the complete opposite of dark souls.
@@HiCZoK "This game is the complete opposite of dark souls" maybe because it's not trying to be Dark Souls. I would have been Disappointed if Sekiro was just Demon's Souls 6 Again...
I like this video but I highly disagree when you say stealth is shallow, you can get deathblows on bosses because of the stealth system. Also the revive system isn't just an extra healing item, its a source of insurance that you could use if your facing a 2 or 3 phase boss fight and you know you might die at least one time, since you might not be that good yet. So you use that to your advantage and not heal as much, to save gourds, in order to get a deathblow so you can get your life back..to..die..AGAIN. I mean otherwise I love your points and about how this game makes veterans feel totally lost. Cool video man \m/
Sekiro is a game purely on mechanics. Souls and Bloodborne had variety (weapons, armor, tools, etc.) which lent to various methods (though ultimately similar) to tackling challenges. That's why you get game-runs with "torch only" or "broken sword only" as self-imposed challenges. Creativity was, in part, encouraged. Sekiro does not inspire creativity at all, but focuses exclusively on player skill. That sounds preferable at first until you realize it means much of the time there's only one way to approach a challenge and not doing it in that way results in failure. And less variety means less replay value.
Yeah I have no idea what he meant by that consumables are extremely powerful in this game, even something as seemingly insignificant as the fistful of ash can be utilized to take an entire health bar off a boss.
lmao same, as opposed armor pieces and weapons I'll never use in an entire playthrough. Also he says positioning is important but then complains about camera with footage from the guardian ape fight... The camera isn't perfect but come on...
When I first saw this thumbnail I thought It was Sekiro walking on a bridge that was hanging with one side collapsed. Now that I finally beat it, I was wondering where is that bridge, just to realize my mistake.
No time to hesitate is so right, Father Owl was a fight that I would wait for him to run towards me, then run towards him, dash behind him, and hit from behind. But dashing to his left or right was the question, I had a split second to find out which way he was raising his sword. As soon as he raised it one way I dashed to the other. It was a great boss fight, that and genichiro Ashina become like a dance. This game’s so good with combat, and so fun. I feel bad for those that loved soulsborne games and gave up on this one..
I only can compare DS3 and Sekiro as those are the only Fromsoftware games I played so far. I enjoyed Sekiro more though. The combat system was more appealing to me vs DS3
Agree so much. I played sekiro first and now I'm just past the corrupted great tree in ds3, and it's so much more sluggish, and you can beat bosses by just rolling and then slashing freely. Doesnt feel as satisfying as parrying and being more agile in general
I think Sekiro is a better game altogether, but the souls series allowed for more customization, something I take a lot more seriously than most other things.
Really? I think it has the least dynamic combat I've ever seen. In Souls you could block, roll, parry, or armor through attacks. In Sekiro you just stand in front of every enemy and parry.
@@theDiReW0lf You make it sound as if you haven't even played the game. Otherwise, you would have also mentioned the grappling hook, all of the different shinobi tools, special moves, etc... I'm guessing you just left those things out to prove your point though.
@@theDiReW0lf True. Everything works in Souls. In Sekiro, everything else is not working. Do they improve the parrying? Yes. Do they add stealth? Yes. Do they add jump? Yes. What about weapons, armors, dodge, shield and class? Well...
@@thebl00dybaron I left them out because 99% of the shinobi tools/combat arts are useless, situational, and will almost always get blocked. And what does the stealth system add? You can walk up and backstab ppl? Could already do that in souls. You can plunge attack, cool. I have all achievements and my last playthrough I died MAYBE 5 times. That's because the game wants you to play it a certain way and once you figure it out, it's done. You can try messing with prosthetics you haven't tried or combat arts, but you'll just be disappointed. This is a game built for one playthrough. It has a combat system with no depth and every boss is designed to be beat one way with one weapon. Check back in a month and you'll find everyone will be saying this. Trust me.
DS3 was my first Soulsborne game and I've played the rest minus demon souls and it might be me but I can't get into Seikiro. I already put in like 25 hours into the game and I don't have that drive to keep playing it while I've gone back and played the other games multiple times now. It might be a me thing but I want to like this game so bad but I can't find myself wanting to dive back in.
Its probably a you problem, maybe because you prefer the world of Dark Souls, the Dark and grim environments, playing Sekiro after playing previous Souls games would be a pain in the ass, there's some changes in gameplay. But overall its a great game, in fact I prefer it over the souls games in terms of combat gameplay, especially the deflecting once you get used to it. It feels epic sword clashing with the bosses.
@@gelothegogang that sounds about right the worlds and lore of dark souls and bloodborne interest me way more. Also I think the lack of variety in the combat, weapons, and play styles is another reason why I may have been not super into it.
The main problem with comparing Dark Souls to Sekiro is that the design philosophy is totally different for the two games. Dark Souls is an action RPG, whereas Sekiro is strictly an adventure-action game. The genre’s are completely different. Sekiro is a callback to older styles of games where you didn’t have 100 different weapons and armor sets to choose from, you didn’t increase your stats to min/max or make your totally unique battlemage. You were given a character, a weapon, and then were able to increase health and damage. You had to play the game on it’s terms, not yours, and the skill came completely down to how well you understood the game mechanics. There are no builds to make it easier, and no RPG elements at all. I’m not knocking DS. I love those two games (1&3). I’m just saying that comparing them 1 to 1 is the worst mistake somebody can make when it comes to making a comparison between them. This is something that I hope people do not do with Elden Ring. There was a lot of bad publicity for Sekiro because DS fans were so butt hurt that they couldn’t understand why they kept losing to the easy bosses when they were so good at Souls games. Biggest reason is that Sekiro is not a Souls game, it’s just Sekiro.
For me cutting out the fluff of soulsborne like leveling and weapon types makes this a way more focused experience. I don't miss any of what's been left out. In my opinion it clearly allowed the developers to pour all their attention and ressources into making a great variety of enemies and fantastic levels that put anything in soulsborne to shame thanks to the added verticality. Instead of exploring areas for armor types and spending hours in menus looking at stats I can explore for the sheer joy of it and to find the most effective stealth and combat routes in the game which makes me look forward to NG+ immensely. Sekiro is easily the best game Miyazaki has directed and I don't say that lightly given that I've poured hundreds of hours into Bloodborne and Souls 3 thinking both are the best the generation had to offer so far.
Wink784 PS4 i angree, i often felt overwelmed by the variaty of weapons and stats in the other game, its good for replayability, but i was always checking if my build could be any better and there were missible spells and items, and i always had to watch guides for not missing this stuff that was important for my build, in short i couldent enyoi it to the fullest, Sekiro is different i can just play it how i want and dont have to care about this stuff it was really amazing, also i like the new combat system much more.
I personally considered Sekiro considerably better than Dark Souls. The game was absolutely fresh, the new combat system is as fair as it gets rewarding multiple playstyles without the need for weapons. Combat arts add an entire new dimension of depth to the game thats nothing short of miraculous. As much as it started in the shadow of souls I believe its so blindingly bright that in the future souls will be overshadowed by Sekiro
While I fully realize the influence FromSoft's "Soulsborne" formula has had on the industry, that doesn't change the fact that the formula has become generic due to that influence. But Sekiro broke that feeling for me. As someone that only got into Dark Souls after playing Furi, I kinda expected as much. That said, Sekiro _does_ kinda drag on a bit.
By the way, EXCELLENT VIDEO! You didn't lean to one side or another but gave an incredible and concise analysis of the game, mechanics and comparison itself. This was fantastic. Seriously, mate.
"consumables you're never gonna use" clearly you haven't played the game on hard mode i.e. without kuro's protective charm during the time you said that.
i found it to be at the same time the hardest game on the franchise and also the fairer by pretty large margins, which for me is the perfect statemente as to how competent from is in their game design.
Freddie Zimmermann I find it way easier than any souls games including bloodborne. The only time I ever encounter difficulty is when I’m fighting a boss, otherwise I play the game the way it was intended. Shinobi style! Stealth kill everything in sight.
Sekiro is a perfect soulslike without copying the same gamemechanics DS had. IMO nobody could create these games so well but From Software, because at the end of the day its not about stamina what makes their games similar, but the amazing fights with amazing enemies and the memorable environments( not to mention the misteries of the worlds they create), whatever they could use as base. Sekiros fighting is different but at the same time just looks and feels incredible, i think ive never seen something like it. It truly resembles animes and movies when it comes to samurais, and being able to do this all by yourself is awesome.
