I'm getting better at Sekiro (spoilers likely)

[air_show]

It took me two days to beat the Guardian Ape which is good cuz I would have been disappointed if he was too easy. Its a shame I had the second half of the fight spoiled, it would have been fun for that particular shock to hit me unguarded.

I eventually got him with patience and wearing his health down in both forms, as it seems like his attacks are deliberately chaotic and hard to predict to make consistent deflecting difficult.

I also did the screen monkeys before that, not expecting a puzzle boss at that particular point but now I have the mortal blade too.

 

[air_show]

I got up to the fight with Owl at the top of the castle and he proceeded to wipe the floor with me enough times to make me scamper off looking for more upgrades, which I have managed to acquire. I was able to kill a few a few more mini bosses and find some extra prayer beads. I took out the Headless Ape fight as well which gives me another damage boost which will hopefully help. Particularly satisfying was using the Puppet Ninjitsu to use one of the asshole purple guys to fight another asshole purple guy miniboss. Good shit.

I've also managed to kill several Headless. One of the sword swingies, two of the casters, and one underwater guy. I think there's still one near the top of Sunken Valley if I want to fight one of those nightmares in close quarters.

Other things... O'Rin took me quite a while to beat. She's just very wily. But I got her before doing the Monk, which I also only really beat by abusing snap seeds and fireworks. Didn't feel good but I also couldn't seem to damage the fucker any other way.

I've managed to locate every single prosthetic tool and have been studiously upgrading them whenever I have the extra coin to do so. At some point my pockets just started overflowing with upgrade materials and thus the only thing holding me back from upgrading most of my shit is money, which between the rising prices of spirit emblems and frequency of vendors always feels just a little hard to come by, which feels by design.

Also the entire time I've been doing this thing... I spend every single ability point I can when I can which means buying all available 1 point skills before buying 2 point skills, all 2 points before 3 etcetera. It's kept my abilities diverse which I'm glad for but also has kept a number of probably extremely valuable ones out of reach for most of the game so far. I think I like that though, forces me to use more variety and keeps me from brute-forcing my way through stuff too often.

 

[air_show]

Aaand the salt has come back because FUCKING GODDAMN JESUS FUCKING SHITASS CHRIST HOW THE FUCK DO YOU BEAT GREAT SHINOBI OWL??

Seriously it's actually pissing me off how fucking relentless this piece of shit is and it seems like the closer I get to beating him the fewer openings he gives me to do anything. He hits like a fucking dump truck so if I don't time every fucking deflect perfectly he either just cuts me for massive damage or I take so much fucking posture damage that I'll get knocked off balance. And then the fucking piece of shit starts throwing poison around?

I'm frustrated. I'm almost certain I've killed every single other boss and mini-boss in the game so he's the only thing left to fight really and he FUCKING DESTROYS ME and the damage and health boosts I've gotten since my first attempt at fighting him don't seem to help AT ALL.

 

[air_show]

Oh my god. Oh my fucking god I can't do it. I can't beat this piece of shit. Great Shinobi Owl is going to get this game deleted from my hard drive unfinished because I Capital C Can't Fucking Do It. This is without a doubt the most relentlessly unforgiving thing I've ever done in any game, ever. This isn't even the final boss as I understand it. But it is an absolute 100% brick wall of FUCK YOU that I cannot even begin to chip away at. It demands nothing short of sheer absolute perfection that I cannot deliver.

 

[Adrenaline]

He's pretty tough, but he's not the hardest boss. If you're not having fun you might want to take a break.

 

[Regulus]

IIRC, Owl is a fight were it's actually a good idea to use the dodge move pretty liberally instead of deflecting. You also need to do a lot of HP damage before it's even worth trying to wear down his posture.

 

[karzac]

I think I grinded a bunch of divine confetti and red candies for that fight - final boss too. It helps you get a couple early big hits in the start the fight off in your favour.

I also remember dodging and keeping distance being helpful.

Maybe Owl is the hardest boss? I think Lady Butterfly, Genichiro and the final boss took me longer. Owl definitely feels less "fair" than those fights though, because he's got the same Shinobi tricks that you do.

 

[Adrenaline]

I do recall playing it a bit more like a Souls fight where you want to just avoid him and chip away until posture breaking him is more manageable.

 

[Falselogic]

I personally found the

Spoiler: Spoiley

Guardian Ape and the Demon of Hatred

to be the most difficult

 

[karzac]

Oh yeah Demon is brutal. Totally different than anything else in the game too. Really fun when you get it down, but thankfully optional

 

[Paul le Fou]

I think Great Shinobi Owl is probably the second-hardest fight in the game. I don't remember how but I got extremely lucky on my first playthrough because he didn't take much longer than other bosses. But on NG+ playthroughs when I could handle other bosses I'd learned with relative ease, even the demon, Owl absolutely clowned on me repeatedly. I think the final boss is the only fight that's harder.

IIRC, Owl is a real shit of a fight because it's when all your best tricks get turned against you, so you need to figure out ways to deal with what you normally use to fight others.

Looking up some videos, keeping distance and sprinting well away from him until certain attacks of his give you just enough of an opening to sprint in for a couple quick hits seems useful. The firecrackers are helpful at certain key moments too, iirc. I think dodging/circling around to his side is effective in one or two close-quarter situations.

There's also a ridiculous cheese strategy where you get him in a certain position on the wall, face into a corner by the door, don't lock on to him, and your attack counter staggers him by hitting him in the leg on certain swings. I know I tried it out of desperation once or twice, but honestly don't remember if I ever got it to work.

 

[air_show]

I beat Owl. I don't know if he took me longer than some of the other bosses but it certainly felt at least as long as Genichiro or Ape, and yet was a lot more stressful and frustrating than either of those fights. I feel like with Genichiro I was always learning and getting better, and by the end I was easily plowing through phases 1 and 2, and with Ape I just had to learn to avoid his attacks properly (and I learned after the fact about the Spear Trick which made defeating his 2-for-1 bonus boss form much easier).

With Owl... oie, I felt like I couldn't avoid his attacks and again, anything less than perfect deflects at all times for every single one of his attacks was extremely punishing. I watched some videos that laid out various strategies to beat him but it ended up being one of those situations where I was forced to use a mishmash of strategies and find my own flow. I could not avoid his attacks with consistency the way other players could (most of them seem to focus wholly on running away from him and nicking down his health while not trying to ever deflect at all) so I had to deflect more often than not. I used Mortal Blade as my combat art and it ended up being the best damage vs. spirit emblem cost of anything available to me.

Learning not to use thrust attacks (unless he just did the overhead smash in which case you're free to poke away) came quickly enough, so at least most of my deaths weren't mikiri counters. The vast majority of them were because of how he just WRECKS your posture. He would rarely get me with the punishment stomp thankfully, but any time he staggered me and did a quick follow-up it felt like the damage was 100% unavoidable. And then usually I'd have a hard time staying calm as I'd be 1-shottable for however long it would take him to actually give me a safe opening to heal.

NON BOSS COMPLAINING: Afterward I went to Mibu Village to get some skill points and money and started to get I Am Legend vibes. The village is full of hideous little grotesqueries but honestly it seems an awful lot like they're just minding they business and going about their lives while you're the plundering bandit raiding and slaughtering them.

 

[air_show]

Man I gotta hand it to From. They have a way of always hitting me with something unexpected and surreal in each game and I was not expecting to travel to a divine realm via creepy Junji Ito-esque rope kaiju.

Also I beat the true monk! It took me quite a number of tries but I managed to take her down quite handily when I discovered, all by myself, how to completely skip her second phase. Now that's the sense of discovery and progress I crave!

 

[karzac]

Yeah that moment is so cool.

 

[Paul le Fou]

My favorite part of the monk fight is when I realized I could grapple up into the trees and do a plunge attack(s?). I can't remember if it's like, just once at the start of the fight or at each phase or something, but it was a neat trick.

 

[air_show]

My favorite part of the monk fight is when I realized I could grapple up into the trees and do a plunge attack(s?). I can't remember if it's like, just once at the start of the fight or at each phase or something, but it was a neat trick.

Yeah! That's the skipping of the second phase I mentioned. Basically I got wrecked by her shadow clones once or twice until I figured out that you could always safely grapple to the trees and force her to end the spell early. And THEN I discovered there is a brief window if you're quick enough where you can just land a dropping deathblow. She only does it during the second phase, but notably, she ALWAYS does it at the start of the second phase.

I must admit that my strategy for beating her third phase is pretty much the same as how I beat her spectral form, by abusing fireworks. Dishonor on ME. Dishonor on MY COW...

 

[Paul le Fou]

You're a shinobi, not a samurai, there ain't no dishonor in winning!

 

[air_show]

I guess I GET why fireworks are considered useful now for the record. But they weren't useful on Owl. It just meant I was 19 spirit emblems lighter every fail.

 

[air_show]

Well shit now I'm just stuck. I defeated the lightning ball guy on the tree and have explored the lake THOROUGHLY and I can't figure out where to go.

 

[air_show]

Ok, I thought I had to find a way to get rid of the giant fish before going through the cave, not stealth past him. Also I had a HELL of a time finding the hole in the wall at the end of the cave. Part of the reason I died so many times is because I couldn't figure out where to swim.

Anyhow, I beat the dragon on the second try. Pretty cool fight. It looks like I'm almost done. From that I can tell I can face the final boss at any time as well as fight one of the bonus bosses if I have the gumption. I appear to have locked myself out of another bonus boss though (as well as two prayer beads which hurts) so the only way I'll be able to fully upgrade my health is to play through NG+. I don't think I missed much else though.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I'm pretty sure I locked myself out of that same endgame-ish optional boss and related area my first playthrough too, and only caught it on NG+. It's a shame, because it was—very surprisingly to me—one of my favorite boss fights. Or at least, the experience fighting it on one specific occasion was.

The other bonus boss is worth fighting too, but it's interesting because after a whole game of reminding you "This isn't Dark Souls, don't approach combat like Dark Souls" Miyazaki turns around and says "except this one, lol". It took me a looong time to learn on NG, but on NG+ runs I never had much issue with it. There's also some quest stuff around it that I missed on my first run, I think, but you can still fight it just fine.

 

[karzac]

Yeah I recommend at least giving the bonus boss a couple shots. It's a really fun fight and if nothing else, a super cool character design.

 

[air_show]

So far the choices I've made have been:

Send the big guy to the vendor. And their ending really got me in the feels.

I did not lure the enchanted guy to the dungeon, but that did seem to lead to him dying of exhaustion or something at the end of his questline so yeah.

I chose to show gratitude to the infested guy at the dilapidated temple and then also granted him death with the mortal blade.

I would like to beat every single boss and mini-boss available to me before going to NG+ so yeah I'll have to put down my good friend the sculptor and then my old warrior friend as his younger more arrogant self? And oh god I have to fight another one of those ashina elites and this one has red fucking eyes oh god.

 

[air_show]

Oh yeah, and I'm up to Ashina being all fucked up. And it has taught me that I am NOT YET GOOD AT THIS GAME. Holy crap a lot of these guys beat the christ out of me in proper 1v1s. I am very willing to abuse whatever stealth buggery or puppeteer ninjitsu is necessary to make things way more stacked in my favor.

Like for real, that guy in front of the pathway leading to the Headless? He destroys me. I wasted alllll of my heals on him and still died and lost a LOT of XP which hadn't happened to me in a while, I was usually good enough at cutting and running but I just wanted to beat the guy so I could explore that path again to see if I missed something on the previous visit (I had!) and I think I sunk cost myself on him because the fight just went on and on like a boss fight. I think I remember hearing that warning too, from a podcast, that the game just takes mini-boss worthy enemies and just makes them respawning regular ass threats now and I"m like hooo boy.

That said I've also looked fucking sweet taking down some of the other enemies in the area so it's not all tough times. Deciding when to start throwing myself at the bosses is the thing because right now just fuckin around and figuring out the best ways to defeat all the enemies is suitably rewarding again.

And now there's just a giant wandering around I can easily drop-kill any time I want, it's like my reward for toughing it out this far.

Oh god and there's another Seven Spears guy too, he's like in a tight spot too I think? I gotta play more.

 

[air_show]

Also I know I know "it's not a souls game" but ok it's kind of a souls game ok? I mean I literally fought an undying dragon that is connected to ancient trees and grants immortality that eventually robs men of their humanity? AND YOU BEAT IT WITH LIGHTNING I ONLY JUST NOW GOT THAT SOMEHOW??

 

[karzac]

It's definitely a Souls game!

 

[Falselogic]

Absolutely a Souls game. Just with more aggressive combat tactics.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Ehhhhhnnnn it's definitely related to Souls, but the core combat mechanics and character interaction are pretty different. It's not an RPG, it's a character action game. But it's like Souls in almost every other capacity!

 

[air_show]

True but have you considered dragon and lightning. Also I feel the storytelling is still very soulsy, it just does it with a voiced and specific protagonist. It's still all vague monologues implying the plot.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

It’s not a complicated story, it just isn’t that interesting. There’s some backstory with the older characters and the Rebellion, but it all boils down to “Everybody wants Dragon Boy”.