Sekiro is a fucking video game.

It's hard to start talking about Sekiro without talking about From Software's other series, Dark Souls and Bloodborne. A few billion words have already been written about the importance of those games, and they certainly factored into the creation of this game. But it's important to emphasize that... Sekiro is not those games.

There's a learning curve to the Souls games. Numerous builds and strategies. You can choose to sword and board, double-hand a big ass club, wear light armor so you can roll around and backstab quickly, or shoot magic sparks or arrows from a safe distance. My main gripe with the series is that most of that shit is useless. It's loot. Most players will stick to a strategy or a playstyle they like and attempt to master it. A dagger will be of no use to a spellcaster.

I played the first Souls game as a mage, and stood as far away from every enemy and blasted them until they were dead. When I came up against a boss that this strategy wouldn't work on, I summoned someone to to help distract the boss so I could stand there and pelt them with spells. I could have just as easily played a big ass tank with a sword, summoning magic users to help me fight the boss when my build couldn't cut it. I personally now play them with a sword and a shield, not too heavy so I can still roll. A good balance.

Bloodborne, I like a little more. The game has a few crazy weapons, but it's a lot more focused. You have to learn to dodge and dive, and it's very offensive and faster-paced in a way the early Souls games are not. Dark Souls III is a little closer to that style as well.

The games are hard, and require a level of competence to play. Colloquially this immortalized in the meme: "git gud."

But still, there is this sense of cheese. Overcoming a difficult boss is still an accomplishment, but if you had to summon randos or grind enemies like crazy to get your level high enough to overpower them, did that feel as good as it could have? The bosses all need to be balanced around the numerous play styles. Sometimes it feels like one strategy works better, and you don't always have that luxury.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's by design. I love those games to death, but they will ruin you.

Okami

Sekiro is about a shinobi, known as "the wolf," who protects a boy named Kuro. Kuro is the heir to an ancient bloodline that grant's immortality. Kuro is kidnapped by the Ashina clan, who want to use his blood.

The game begins with a rescue mission. The first area of the game more or less introduces you to what you'll be doing for the next 25 or so hours, whether you realize it or not. After finding Kuro and retrieving your sword, you have to face a few guards and sneak around the castle outskirts to a hidden passageway to escape with Kuro.

The tutorial area of the game ends in a boss fight in a field of pampas grass littered with broken spears and swords. Between you and freedom is Ashina Genichiro. Your first encounter with Genichiro will end poorly. He attacks much more swiftly than the piddly guards you just sliced apart, and when you lose, Genichiro slices off your arm.

In english, Genichiro sheaths his sword and says "A shinobi should know the difference between honor and victory." This line's triteness is almost offensive, and you likely wouldn't ever think about it again. However, in Japanese, he says something along the lines of, "You didn't think that was unfair, did you Shinobi?"

That is the essence of Sekiro. It's all laid bare before you.

Shadows Die Twice

"A shinobi should know the difference between honor and victory."

One mechanic that sets Sekiro apart from it's siblings is the ability to revive once after death. In Souls games, you can take a few hits and block most attacks, or in Bloodborne's case hastily counter attack to restore lost health, but death means starting over from a checkpoint. When you die in Sekiro, you can get right back up and try again, with a little less health of course. But you can only do this once. Dying twice means starting over at the checkpoint. And you might think that's really nice. But Sekiro is still really fucking hard.

My first few hours with the game were so demoralizing, I gave up for 18 months. I bought the game on release day in March of 2019, eagerly fired it up expecting to fall in love with it like I did Bloodborne and Souls, and was immediately humbled by just how bad I was at this game.

If you've played any Souls game, just... forget everything. The years of muscle memory, the strategies you've got in your head, the blocking, the rolling... it doesn't work. It might feel like it's gonna, the game is running on the same engine and it certainly feels like a Souls game at first, but it's really not. Your first few enemies are gonna be rough, but you're gonna beat them and just think "oh, I'll maybe learn some new moves later that'll help me" but you won't. Summoning for help is also not available. Likewise you won't be randomly invaded. Sekiro is a strictly solo affair.

In Sekiro you have one sword and a prosthetic arm. The arm is mostly used for grappling to things, but can be outfitted with different equipment like shuriken or an axe that can be used sparingly. The sword is gonna be your only true friend though. Most of the other tools are very situational.

You can block most attacks. This fills up a little bar at the bottom of the screen called "posture." Each block will slowly build up your posture bar until it overflows, at which point your guard will be broken and the enemy will basically murder you. It's a little like the stamina gauge from Souls.

Like, you have a health bar, and you can maybe take 4 hits on a good day, but most of the time an enemy will be able to smoke you in 2-3. You can eventually upgrade this bar to take up half the screen, but honestly they scale the later enemies damage with it so it never feels like you're gaining significant health.

Enemies have health bars too, but you'll never deplete them. They'll block most of your attacks, and counter easily if you keep spamming attacks. The same posture system applies to enemies. Knock enough "posture" off of them while they are blocking and they'll open themselves up to a "deathblow." Most enemies take one "deathblow," but mini-bosses and bosses will take two, or sometimes three.

So you think, well sure, I gotta block, but I can't block too much because of this posture shit, so for those times I just gotta dodge 'em. Wrong. Don't dodge.

This is what broke me. There's a mini-boss early on, the chained ogre, who will grapple you, and either toss your ass off a cliff or pound you into stone-ground mustard with his fists. You're supposed to dodge this. I got that. His other attacks however, cannot be dodged. He will spin with you, telegraphing every move and stomping you. This motherfucker killed me at least 30 times. I only beat him by sneaking up on him to take off a health bar, and then darting in and out of the fight until I whittled his health down.

If I can't fucking dodge, why is it there? Oh shit, this guy is charging at me with a spear, better dodge NOPE. That motherfucker will just keep that spearhead running straight toward you. Can I block it? NOPE. Fuck you.

Enemies have a "perilous attack," which will be telegraphed by a large read Kanji that reads "DANGER" in Japanese. They fall into three categories: thrust, sweep, grab. These are what keep fucking me. I have no idea what to do, sometimes dodge works, sometimes I can jump over it, sometimes a parry will work, but it's never consistent. We'll get to that.

I just quit. I played for four hours and every time I looked at the game I felt regret. It broke me. It's not that I was mad or like "fuck this game forever," I just didn't have the heart for it. It was so fucking hard.

In October 2020, I decided it was time again.

"...you will learn to appreciate its worth!"

The first thing the game teaches you is how to parry. Press the block button just as the enemies hit lands, and you'll parry the attack. It's deceptively simple. This mechanic isn't exclusive, a parry exists in Souls and Bloodborne. Successfully landing it will open the enemy up to a critical strike. I'd consider it an "advanced" technique, you can easily get through the game without ever learning to properly parry.

In Sekiro, you'll try this parry and be rewarded with a satisfying flash, a loud clash of steel, and then... they will keep attacking you like it never happened. This will in turn deal a little posture damage to the enemy, and in turn you will not take any posture damage like you would if you had simply blocked.

My second attempt with the game was just as brutal as the first. After another few hours on a fresh new game, I had reached the same point I was at when I last quit, still none the wiser. I really thought I would give up. But I struggled, and kept going.

There are several stages to development that you'll learn to appreciate. The first area of the game ends in a boss fight against Gyoubu Masataka. You will remember his name, because every time you fight him he will yell "My name is Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa. As I breathe, you will not pass the castle gate!" before robbing you of your ability to breath. He rides around on horseback swinging a giant spear on a huge battlefield. He's slow, and takes long laps around the arena. This gives you a lot of space to run around and take pot shots. You can grapple to him from afar as well, landing you a few free hits. He won't do too much posture damage to you if you simply block all his attacks and only attack when he leaves himself open. Since he's on horseback, every hit counts since he can't block.

Lady Butterfly, your second test

The second fight is against Lady Butterfly, a small old woman who will relentlessly attack, driving your posture bar up quickly. Running away isn't helpful, as she's fast and has wires running between the pillars above you that she can dive from. Her second phase will summon apparitions that will attack you from multiple angles.

Masataka is tough, but can be overcome with persistence. Lady B will make you want to quit. Nothing hurts her. She will block any and all attacks, and follow up every one of your attacks with a quicker attack. She forces you to stay on the defense. But you cannot dodge, she's too quick. If you attack her, she will block everything. While she attacks you, her posture will recover, essentially rendering all the work you've put into her moot. You can't touch her. After dozens of attempts, most of which I barely scratched her, I noticed a pattern. There was a rhythmic "ping ping ping'' to her attacks. It was consistent. She wants you to parry her. With a "tap tap tap" of the block button with her attacks, I watched the posture damage I would have taken transfer to her.

And then it clicks. The pings become a dance that you move with. If she feints left, I will react with "ping ping... ping" if she dives from above I will dodge backwards, wait for her advance, and "ping... p-ping." Soon I'm consistently getting to the next phase. Finally I defeated her.

But your next encounter with Genichiro, the man who took your arm, will teach you to play the game. Everything you learn from Genichiro you will take with you.

"This... will only take a moment."

As I mentioned before, there are three perilous attacks. The thrust, when an enemy jabs their sword or spear at you. can be parried. There is also a technique to counter it called "mikiri" that can be activated by pressing forward and dodge into the attack, where Sekiro will grab the weapon, leaving them open to attack. The sweep, a low spinning move, cannot be parried, but it can be jumped over. Jumping toward an enemy and pressing jump again will allow you to jump on their head like Mario on a goomba, which will stun them briefly, leaving them open to attack. Both the hop and mikiri deal significant posture damage. The grab is more rare, but can typically be dodged. You'll have more luck dodging forward past the enemy or between their legs than backwards or to the side, leaving their back exposed for a few quick attacks as they recover. Notice a pattern?

You'll be introduced to all of this before Genichiro. The first two bosses won't use these techniques, but plenty of normal enemies will. Genichiro is the first time that all three of these will be combined, and to defeat him you'll not only have to learn 1) when he's open, 2) the rhythm of his attacks, 3) what to counter his perilous attack with.

Genichiro is the real tutorial. In the third and final phase of his fight, he will take off his armor and reveal his true power, the ability to summon lightning bolts to his sword. This is the last technique you must learn to counter. Genichiro won't be the last person to summon lightning attacks, but the time to practice it again won't come until far far later.

You'll slowly chip away at his phases, until you can beat phase one without a scratch, and then phase two without a scratch. You'll see him step backwards, ready up and block two shots of his bow, know to square up, he's about to thrust... "MIKIRI."

Now, "you didn't think that was unfair, did you Shinobi?"

"How many times have you died and come back to life for my sake… two, three times?"

After Genichiro, if you still haven't come to God about the game and feel hopeless, it's not over. But it still isn't easy. There are many more boss fights that are tougher than Genichiro. An immortal ape, a corrupted monk, the great Owl. There are also optional bosses like the Demon of Hatred, which looks like a creature straight out of Bloodborne that forces you to fight in a completely different style. A second, optional fight with the shinobi Owl will test your reflexes. But overcoming each is just as satisfying. When their pattern clicks, and you go from barely landing a few hits, or furiously trying different prosthetics to see if one will make the fight easier, to killing the boss in a delicate dance where you parry every single attack without taking a hit... it's just...

The Sword Saint

Face me, Sekiro

I'm doing my best to avoid spoilers, but I can't not talk about Sekiro without talking about the final boss, Isshin the Sword Saint.

Isshin is the hardest boss I have ever fought, in any game, ever. In the roughly 70 hours I spent with the game over three playthroughs, at least 7 hours were spent fighting Isshin. That's 10% of the game on one boss. He took me 6 minutes to actually beat.

The final battle is four phases. The first phase is the last fight against Genichiro. He's a little tougher and has one or two new tricks, but you should be prepared. When he falls, the true battle begins.

The Sword Saint demands perfection. His attacks will deal significant posture damage if not parried. If you do not block or counter correctly, he'll take off nearly your entire life bar. Every attack must be deliberate. You will often only be able to strike him once before he regains his composure. He has a semi-automatic pistol for fuck's sake. It's beautiful.

When I fought the Sword Saint, I stripped Sekiro's skills and unequipped every prosthetic. He has no gimmick. All you need is your sword. The answer will come to you. You will hear the "ping ping ping'' rhythm as you block his attack, and he will answer your attack to the same beat. It's pure.

And it will never become easy. You might get lucky, and he won't use that one attack that you just haven't learned to counter, but the next phase will destroy you and the next round he will never not use that attack, forcing you to finally adapt. You do not speak unless spoken to. Your fingers will hurt, your heart will pound out of your chest. Every attack demands a split second decision on how to react. It's joy.

In my dreams I see Sekiro collapse. A deep red "DEATH" kanji emblazoned across the screen. Isshin sheaths his sword and walks away. His words echo every time he kills you: "Hesitation is defeat."

After countless tries, you'll feel it all coming together. Each move perfectly executed. Each phase down to a science. Slowly chipping away at him as he chipped at you.

When you land the final deathblow and the Sword Saint bows to you... I wept.

Hesitation is defeat.

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind as I type this... there are games that I consider my favorites, like Chrono Trigger or Metal Gear Solid 2, that I will cherish forever. There are games of which I recognize are incredibly good and important, like Super Mario Brothers or Tetris. Hell, there are extremely beautiful games that I played just this year, like The Last of Us Part II.

But Sekiro is the best game I have ever played.

Farewell