"No no no, it's cool, these are bad monks."
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Sekiro
- Thread starter spines
- Start date
AMAB.
I just like that a Buddha is taking the time to personally warn anyone on their way to Senpoji that you should stay away because the monks are going to try to capture you to do unimaginably evil human experimentation. I think this is maybe the most on the level interaction with a divine being in a Fromsoft game. There's no twist and you're not being used, this Buddha just wants to make sure everyone knows that this is not at all within doctrine, these monks are extremely renounced, and also they're going to try to kill you.
There's a lot of medieval Japanese literature where Buddhas pass on messages either in disguise or more directly, so it's not weird at all except that it's a Fromsoft game where a divine message is from a real world religion and also played totally straight.
There's a lot of medieval Japanese literature where Buddhas pass on messages either in disguise or more directly, so it's not weird at all except that it's a Fromsoft game where a divine message is from a real world religion and also played totally straight.
Looking at some wikis for this boss, apparently there was a 4th invisible monkey that I didn't even notice? I guess I probably killed it on accident while dealing with the spirit monkeys that spawn in gradually larger numbers over the course of the encounter. Either it's a lot less focused on running away than the visible three or I got incredibly lucky.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I believe I also just tripped over that monkey and killed it during one of my playthroughs.
The invisible 4th monkey, rather than running, usually follows along right behind you (tricky scamp). It took me a while to realize this (and it was immensely satisfying when I got it the first time) but it's also probably not too hard to hit accidentally.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Glad to see things are going smoothly, Estragon!
Zombie village is a well worn video games location at this point and the most standard Fromsoft location, but the zombie village of sengoku era peasant farmers is very well executed. Despite how weak each individual zombie is in a one on one confrontation, it creates some strong horror moments when a zombie hiding in the ground grabs your legs and a dozen others surround you. The game effectively makes them feel like an endless swarm in certain locations, like the spot where you can find a gourd seed.
On a more general systemic level, as I play more I continue to be impressed by how the interaction between posture and HP shapes the flow of battles to create narratives more interesting than the Souls series classic approach of poking a giant monster in the ankles until it suddenly dies. The systems and rhythms are obviously quite different, but in a way it kind of reminds me of how Dissidia Final Fantasy tried to make battles narratively satisfying by having some attacks that exist only to build up Bravery, which then allows you to do a separate type of attack that reduces HP, recreating that kind of shonen anime battle effect of the characters doing a bajillion showy attacks before doing one special move that for some reason actually has an effect.
Whenever I saw gameplay videso of Sekiro, I thought it was a weird and counterintuitive choice that the enemy posture meter builds instead of shrinks when the player is doing well. I understood having two separate meters for health and stamina, but why does one of them build? But actually playing the game it's definitely the right UI decision. After gradually wearing a boss down by getting in enough hits to slow down their posture recovery, eventually you're just doing some deflections to stay alive and all of a sudden that yellow bar that recovered too quickly to bother really managing becomes this huge glowing orange signal filling up the screen to let you know the moment is coming. There's so much to keep track of, and the switchover from a boss recovering stamina so quickly that focusing on that meter is pointless to that meter building up so quickly that deflection should become your number one priority can happen before you know it, so creating a big flashing warning sign in the center of the screen is definitely better than having to closely track a a second meter under HP get whittled down.
On a more general systemic level, as I play more I continue to be impressed by how the interaction between posture and HP shapes the flow of battles to create narratives more interesting than the Souls series classic approach of poking a giant monster in the ankles until it suddenly dies. The systems and rhythms are obviously quite different, but in a way it kind of reminds me of how Dissidia Final Fantasy tried to make battles narratively satisfying by having some attacks that exist only to build up Bravery, which then allows you to do a separate type of attack that reduces HP, recreating that kind of shonen anime battle effect of the characters doing a bajillion showy attacks before doing one special move that for some reason actually has an effect.
Whenever I saw gameplay videso of Sekiro, I thought it was a weird and counterintuitive choice that the enemy posture meter builds instead of shrinks when the player is doing well. I understood having two separate meters for health and stamina, but why does one of them build? But actually playing the game it's definitely the right UI decision. After gradually wearing a boss down by getting in enough hits to slow down their posture recovery, eventually you're just doing some deflections to stay alive and all of a sudden that yellow bar that recovered too quickly to bother really managing becomes this huge glowing orange signal filling up the screen to let you know the moment is coming. There's so much to keep track of, and the switchover from a boss recovering stamina so quickly that focusing on that meter is pointless to that meter building up so quickly that deflection should become your number one priority can happen before you know it, so creating a big flashing warning sign in the center of the screen is definitely better than having to closely track a a second meter under HP get whittled down.
I believe the zombies actually are an endless swarm in that location.
If so, I like that they're balanced so that I was never quite sure if they were literally endless or not. I was constantly having the "is that one new, or did I just miss one?" sensation in that area.
Yeah, by virtue of being a character action game instead of an RPG, Sekiro comes away with a much tighter focus on combat, and it's one of the best fighting experiences I've ever had in a game. Especially from a swordfighting perspective; while it's no more "realistic" than whittling down HP with repeated strikes, the flow and rhythm makes it feel more like a "real" swordfight than normal videogame combat does.
air_show
elementary my dear baxter
Now this is interesting because I don't get character action vibes from Sekiro. I still feel like it's 100% in the soulsborne genre, if you will. I feel like if I were to put it on a chart I would absolutely put it up next to Bloodborne and Hollow Knight sooner than I'd group it with Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. I can see how on paper it can be easy to say Sekiro has more in common with the latter, but everything else about its mood, presentation, and even the feeling of combat stakes and how the game rewards you for combat performed well, that's the feeling I get from the others soulsborne games.
That said the more I think about it the more I'm seeing how there's at the very least a heavy overlapping venn diagram between the two genres in this game's mechanics.
It's not super cut-and-dry, because the game is definitely built on the same skeleton as the Soulsbornes, and has a lot of other surface similarities like the storytelling style (even if it's way less obscure than the Souls games), similar items, punishing death mechanics, etc.
The main thing for me is that Souls games are RPGs at the heart, where you build a character, and the customization in Sekiro is next to nil - you get minor variations on the same basic toolkit, and the only real differences are what moves or tools you focus on (and those are limited in usefulness anyway). Character-building, meanwhile, is my favorite part of the RPGs, so I feel its lack pretty acutely in Sekiro; there is no "Ooh, next I want to try out this build!"
This isn't to say I wish Sekiro had it (although to play a game with Sekiro's combat and Elden Ring's character build variety would be fucking amazing). Just that to me it's a signifier of being ultimately a different genre despite many similarities, but underlying structural ones and surface ones.
The main thing for me is that Souls games are RPGs at the heart, where you build a character, and the customization in Sekiro is next to nil - you get minor variations on the same basic toolkit, and the only real differences are what moves or tools you focus on (and those are limited in usefulness anyway). Character-building, meanwhile, is my favorite part of the RPGs, so I feel its lack pretty acutely in Sekiro; there is no "Ooh, next I want to try out this build!"
This isn't to say I wish Sekiro had it (although to play a game with Sekiro's combat and Elden Ring's character build variety would be fucking amazing). Just that to me it's a signifier of being ultimately a different genre despite many similarities, but underlying structural ones and surface ones.
Are the black and white reskins in the fallen valley there because of some fallen valley thing I don't understand yet, or just because it's the third of the three clues I'm following up on? The time of day has also been changing as I get the key items, so clearly something about the world state shifts.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
I really wish I could remember who said it but the posture system gives an inherent mechanical narrative where the battle slowly turns in your favor and the tension builds to the catharsis of suddenly having the enemy right where you want them. It's amazing.
What do you mean by "reskins"?
They're black and white (and transparent I guess) versions of enemies that appeared earlier (the Yotaka Shinobi that were on the Ashina Rooftops, the blue robed samurai on the way to Genichiro), in different areas.
Like how FFIV has a bunch of colored reskins of slime type enemies, for example.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Oh the phantom enemies? They do start spawning once you advance certain objectives (though I can't remember if they have different triggers or one universal one)
air_show
elementary my dear baxter
The phantoms will show up in certain areas depending on what order you complete story events/bosses as the world state advances. The types of enemies that appear will also vary, for example you can actually fight the Corrupted Monk before Genichiro and if you do that you'll see phantom villagers instead of ashina swordsmen in the phantom hotspots.
Basically, whatever area you complete first, you'll fight phantoms of the enemies from those areas in later parts of the game, as if the vengeful spirits of your slain enemies are haunting you.
Basically, whatever area you complete first, you'll fight phantoms of the enemies from those areas in later parts of the game, as if the vengeful spirits of your slain enemies are haunting you.
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I think Elden Ring gives it a very strong run for its money, and I think I like Elden Ring more, but even I am hard-pressed to disagree.
honestly, i shouldn't have bought sekiro on ps4, lol, it makes the barrier of starting a play session feel way higher, and i think even aside from that it's a bit easier for me to keep playing and playing elden ring than it was in sekiro for a few reasons. but i really do think it's SO good. it keeps basically everything i always love about its siblings but also has a bunch of other parts i like even more than them...i'm going to be really surprised if it's not my favorite in the end (for now)
Finished it with the restore Kuro's humanity ending.
I was dreading Demon of Hatred based on what I heard and didn't exactly love that boss, but even that didn't change my mind about Sekiro being the best modern Fromsoft game. In general, my three least favorite parts of the game were three big beast bosses where you have limited gourds and spirit emblems relative to game progression: the first Red Oni, the Blazing Bull not much later, and then the Demon of Hatred (where you're potentially at maxed at gourds and emblems, but it's enough of an endurance test and the prosthetics are so useful that it's a return to the feeling of constraint of those early fights). I'm sure there are ways to do these without the gimmicks if you're a super player, but I'm not so for the Demon of Hatred I was clinging desperately to the fire nullifying umbrella and the whistle that stuns him three times. At least there are long pauses between phases so you can sacrifice some health to make new emblems.
In contrast to this, the final battle really was perfection, narratively and in terms of gameplay. The way the final boss emerges is the perfect counterpoint to Wolf and Kuro's quest to put an end to the immortality that's polluting the land. The first phase is a pushover warmup battle that lets you know have far you've come, followed by three phases where the boss has an enormous move variety but a generously low amount of HP and reasonable posture generation speed even at full HP, so you can make decent progress toward a deathblow even before you do any damage. This makes it feel like it's always 100% playing by the rules while also asking you to draw on every skill you picked up over the course of the game. In my ending at least, the ephemerality of Wolf dying in a cloud of scattering cherry blossoms is another strong counterpoint to the twisted eternal beauty of the Fountainhead you just returned from. It's playing with a lot of the same ideas as the Souls games, but the unity of imagery and ideas across the game reaches highs that are enabled by its relative linearity, and the final encounter and ending are a microcosm of that.
I loved Elden Ring enough to play through it twice despite how long it is, but I think of Elden Ring kind of as a very high quality all you can eat buffet, while Sekiro is more like one perfectly curated meal. There's a time and a place for both, and the drawback of Sekiro is that If you don't like what they're serving up in the first place you're out of luck, while Elden Ring lets you modify your own experience to suit your tastes. That gives Elden Ring its broader appeal reflected by its enormous sales, but for me Sekiro is the more consistent game on all levels except for customizability. But as someone who liked how Sekiro controlled more than any Souls character I've ever created, that wasn't a big drawback for me.
I was dreading Demon of Hatred based on what I heard and didn't exactly love that boss, but even that didn't change my mind about Sekiro being the best modern Fromsoft game. In general, my three least favorite parts of the game were three big beast bosses where you have limited gourds and spirit emblems relative to game progression: the first Red Oni, the Blazing Bull not much later, and then the Demon of Hatred (where you're potentially at maxed at gourds and emblems, but it's enough of an endurance test and the prosthetics are so useful that it's a return to the feeling of constraint of those early fights). I'm sure there are ways to do these without the gimmicks if you're a super player, but I'm not so for the Demon of Hatred I was clinging desperately to the fire nullifying umbrella and the whistle that stuns him three times. At least there are long pauses between phases so you can sacrifice some health to make new emblems.
In contrast to this, the final battle really was perfection, narratively and in terms of gameplay. The way the final boss emerges is the perfect counterpoint to Wolf and Kuro's quest to put an end to the immortality that's polluting the land. The first phase is a pushover warmup battle that lets you know have far you've come, followed by three phases where the boss has an enormous move variety but a generously low amount of HP and reasonable posture generation speed even at full HP, so you can make decent progress toward a deathblow even before you do any damage. This makes it feel like it's always 100% playing by the rules while also asking you to draw on every skill you picked up over the course of the game. In my ending at least, the ephemerality of Wolf dying in a cloud of scattering cherry blossoms is another strong counterpoint to the twisted eternal beauty of the Fountainhead you just returned from. It's playing with a lot of the same ideas as the Souls games, but the unity of imagery and ideas across the game reaches highs that are enabled by its relative linearity, and the final encounter and ending are a microcosm of that.
I loved Elden Ring enough to play through it twice despite how long it is, but I think of Elden Ring kind of as a very high quality all you can eat buffet, while Sekiro is more like one perfectly curated meal. There's a time and a place for both, and the drawback of Sekiro is that If you don't like what they're serving up in the first place you're out of luck, while Elden Ring lets you modify your own experience to suit your tastes. That gives Elden Ring its broader appeal reflected by its enormous sales, but for me Sekiro is the more consistent game on all levels except for customizability. But as someone who liked how Sekiro controlled more than any Souls character I've ever created, that wasn't a big drawback for me.
I did the Inner Genichiro boss rush because I looked it up and it's the only one that unlocks a special move instead of a costume (which I don't care about—none of them are upgrades over the standard outfit to me). I thought it would be a lot more punishing, and I did not expect to be able to rest to restore healing gourds and revive points between fights, or to be able to use any item in your inventory and get it back afterwards, whether you succeed or fail. I have no interest in doing the other boss rush sequences, but it's a lot more forgiving and generous that I would have imagined. It's basically just asking you to do a bunch of bosses in a row as separate events, not manage resources carefully over a series of bosses. This isn't really super necessary for Gyobu-Butterfly-Inner Genichiro because the first two bosses are relative pushovers, but it let me play really sloppily and not get too worked up during the first two fights at least when I was trying to get another go at Inner Genichiro.
A funny narrative-gameplay convergence thing is that Inner Genichiro's main change is that he gets an extremely flashy triple AoE slash that you can hard counter with his dad's own Ashina-Ichimonji double bonk to do a ton damage and instantly heal all your own stamina damage. Because the recovery to his fancy new move is so punishable, once I figured this out I think despite the new move this variation ended up a little easier than normal Genichiro. Given his father issues in the narrative, something about dishing out dad bonks to punish and neutralize all posture damage from his flashy new sword dance just cracked me up.
I agree with this. Aftering finishing the game I think a lot of the received wisdom about this game is totally wrong. I'm not saying that it's easy or anything. I died a lot, and clearly enough people have bounced off of it that it's clearly difficult in the objective sense that many people give up.
However, I do think how people describe that difficulty is wrong. I thought going in that this was a parry game about rhythm, which scared me away because I am bad at rhythm games and I think across all the Souls games I've only ever executed a single digit number of successful parries, and basically none in a stressful situation. To me, Sekiro feels not like a Souls game where you do rhythmic parries, and more like a Souls game where you start with the most statistically optimal endgame shield. And also that shield has no carry weight, your stamina regenerates whenever you hold up the shield, and you can never be guard broken if you more or less hold it up in time with enemy attacks, but not even to the level of frame perfect accuracy a parry requires. On the other hand, the encounters are all designed around Sekiro being this OP, so the game is still challenging, but not because it's asking you to do rhythmic parries. It really doesn't do that.
A funny narrative-gameplay convergence thing is that Inner Genichiro's main change is that he gets an extremely flashy triple AoE slash that you can hard counter with his dad's own Ashina-Ichimonji double bonk to do a ton damage and instantly heal all your own stamina damage. Because the recovery to his fancy new move is so punishable, once I figured this out I think despite the new move this variation ended up a little easier than normal Genichiro. Given his father issues in the narrative, something about dishing out dad bonks to punish and neutralize all posture damage from his flashy new sword dance just cracked me up.
I agree with this. Aftering finishing the game I think a lot of the received wisdom about this game is totally wrong. I'm not saying that it's easy or anything. I died a lot, and clearly enough people have bounced off of it that it's clearly difficult in the objective sense that many people give up.
However, I do think how people describe that difficulty is wrong. I thought going in that this was a parry game about rhythm, which scared me away because I am bad at rhythm games and I think across all the Souls games I've only ever executed a single digit number of successful parries, and basically none in a stressful situation. To me, Sekiro feels not like a Souls game where you do rhythmic parries, and more like a Souls game where you start with the most statistically optimal endgame shield. And also that shield has no carry weight, your stamina regenerates whenever you hold up the shield, and you can never be guard broken if you more or less hold it up in time with enemy attacks, but not even to the level of frame perfect accuracy a parry requires. On the other hand, the encounters are all designed around Sekiro being this OP, so the game is still challenging, but not because it's asking you to do rhythmic parries. It really doesn't do that.
I agree that Sekiro is mostly on par with the difficulty of Souls games or even easier, EXCEPT FOR THE FINAL BOSS.
I think the "rhythm game" thing came from one person describing the centipede giraffe boss, since its attacks follow a specific pattern that you can memorize. Then everyone started calling it a rhythm game even though it's more about just reacting quickly.
I think there's an odd sort of misattribution happening with trying to "debunk" people drawing the rhythm game parallel. It's never been, in my perception, a literal comparison--just a useful tool to describe how the mechanics of the game flow and interact and the similar feeling of pushing oneself to the limits of performance and execution both can conjure in the player. Souls has frame-exact parries, and so do things like Devil May Cry and its derivatives, but the comparison does not come to mind there because they are occasional punctuation to other verbs you're called to utilize--Sekiro can be approached with reckless "just hold block or mash it a bunch and hope the results are favourable" kind of play, but that's ultimately approximating what "high-level play" in it constitutes in timing each block to the parry window for the most meter build-up, and yes, many such instances do incorporate a literal discernible rhythm to learn and exploit, what with how the flurries and combos inherent to From's general enemy design sensibilities turn into sequential counter opportunities and are highly emphasized by the game in its encounters.
It's also just a comparison that feels natural as rhythm games are extremely difficult by their nature, and if there's any game in From's modern catalogue that lives up to their common reputation in that respect, it's probably this one.
It's also just a comparison that feels natural as rhythm games are extremely difficult by their nature, and if there's any game in From's modern catalogue that lives up to their common reputation in that respect, it's probably this one.
For me, I think the rhythm game comparison and the comparison to Souls parries is misleading because it suggests a type of difficulty that is not really present. (To emphasize, I want to distinguish between "type" of difficult and "degree" of difficulty here.) This also gets combined with a self-congratulatory attitude about the game's extreme difficulty by a subset of Fromsoft's fanbase who see things like magic and shields and summons in the Souls games as cheating and sees Sekiro as a kind of "filter" for "casuals" to create a reputation that Sekiro is a game without those "handicaps."
Again, this is not to say that Sekiro isn't difficult (or even that there's no rhythm element at all), but that the type of difficulty is often exaggerated, because the way the gameplay is discussed often exaggerates Wolf's limitations and downplays his advantages as a player-character, most significantly that the window for deflection is generous and you're often not punished that severely for missing it. A missed deflection is often just a block (consuming easily replenishable posture), while one or two missed dodgerolls in Souls often means that you die at worst or have to heal at best. (Apparently giving Kuro back his charm in NG+ makes missed deflections more punishing, but that's an optional self-imposed limitation, like choosing not to summon or use magic or shields in a Souls game.)
I think the opposite extreme view is also incorrect, though. Before figuring out what the game was asking of me, I tried the advice to just mash block and it doesn't really work. There's some degree of rhythm required in the sense that any game played in real time has some rhythm, but mostly it's just of the "react to this one a little sooner/later than you'd expect" variety mostly about how to interpret tells of specific moves, rather than learning a rhythm, not particularly different from learning how to read animations in the Souls games.
The closest it comes to a rhythm game is maybe the flurries from the centipedes (Soul Calibur Voldo-type bosses) and transformed Genichiro flipping out, but the deflection window on these are set so generously that for the most part these are just loads of free posture damage inflicted on the enemy, making those some of the least stressful moves to react to in the game, even for someone like me who can't use Royal Guard in DMC, can't pull off a Souls parry, and can't play rhythm games.
Again, this is not to say that Sekiro isn't difficult (or even that there's no rhythm element at all), but that the type of difficulty is often exaggerated, because the way the gameplay is discussed often exaggerates Wolf's limitations and downplays his advantages as a player-character, most significantly that the window for deflection is generous and you're often not punished that severely for missing it. A missed deflection is often just a block (consuming easily replenishable posture), while one or two missed dodgerolls in Souls often means that you die at worst or have to heal at best. (Apparently giving Kuro back his charm in NG+ makes missed deflections more punishing, but that's an optional self-imposed limitation, like choosing not to summon or use magic or shields in a Souls game.)
I think the opposite extreme view is also incorrect, though. Before figuring out what the game was asking of me, I tried the advice to just mash block and it doesn't really work. There's some degree of rhythm required in the sense that any game played in real time has some rhythm, but mostly it's just of the "react to this one a little sooner/later than you'd expect" variety mostly about how to interpret tells of specific moves, rather than learning a rhythm, not particularly different from learning how to read animations in the Souls games.
The closest it comes to a rhythm game is maybe the flurries from the centipedes (Soul Calibur Voldo-type bosses) and transformed Genichiro flipping out, but the deflection window on these are set so generously that for the most part these are just loads of free posture damage inflicted on the enemy, making those some of the least stressful moves to react to in the game, even for someone like me who can't use Royal Guard in DMC, can't pull off a Souls parry, and can't play rhythm games.
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there's something to be said about the way that people not infrequently get ideas about the "right way to play" a game that can conflict with actually beating the game, at least the first time. and of course the souls series has long had a section of the fanbase which is particularly notorious about the idea that you're supposed to keep going until you can do it "exactly right" rather than...using convenient tools which are absolutely in the game
obviously if you're going to keep playing the game repeatedly there are totally benefits to learning the timings for stuff in a practical sense, and the perfect parry in this game is very powerful even as it's largely safer and easier to go for than in souls or elden ring. but the sort of..."i would simply do everything in the most demanding way possible" attitude definitely also represents a really misguided way of looking at the games
obviously if you're going to keep playing the game repeatedly there are totally benefits to learning the timings for stuff in a practical sense, and the perfect parry in this game is very powerful even as it's largely safer and easier to go for than in souls or elden ring. but the sort of..."i would simply do everything in the most demanding way possible" attitude definitely also represents a really misguided way of looking at the games
I think the game exists enough outside of the common (and in my opinion, stagnant) From template that making out-of-genre similes and comparison points that are personally resonant to characterize it is an appealing way to parse it through, whether those are "accurate" or not. But it feels like I might be responding on behalf of a sentiment that I haven't really seen and my interpretation of it might not match how it's been used to discuss the game.