Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Review
Within the first minutes of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, there’s no missing the fact that FromSoftware has built its Shinobi-focused adventure from the DNA of the Souls and Bloodborne series. But this new mutated strain is as much its own stealth-action experience, one that’s more focused, cohesive, and in some ways forgiving, despite retaining its predecessors’ trademark difficulty. As I rolled credits after 50 hours of pressurized-blood-geyser executions, fantastical monster fights, split-second swordsmanship, and sprawling, secret-filled areas, I’m left with a deep appreciation for this amazing journey and the skills it demands to master it.To any Souls veteran, Sekiro’s timing-based lock-on combat of strikes and slashes is familiar, as is the way you weave through the same excellently designed levels that snake, interconnect, and double back on themselves to reveal new shortcuts between little bastions of safety to resupply. Functionally equivalent to bonfires from Dark Souls, or Lanterns in Bloodborne, the Sculptor’s Idols are where you’ll rest, recover your healing draughts, reset slain enemies, access your character progression, and of course, teleport between them for a snappy fast travel. LoadingWhile I certainly enjoy punishing games that test me and my skills (and have proudly bested everything FromSoftware has thrown at me in this genre) there’s a sense of empowerment that comes from Sekiro’s generally more forgiving nature. For example, due to the seemingly smaller, more linear paths relative to the sprawling hellscapes of other FromSoftware games, I never felt like I had to go too far to find the next Idol and bank my progress. That regular cadence relieves a lot of the oppressive anxiety in wondering if all your work will be taken from you before you can make it to the next checkpoint, and once or twice I simply sprinted through an area, assuming an Idol was just on the other side. It usually was. That relieving sense of safety in Sekiro allowed me to appreciate the mechanical complexities of it in a way I couldn’t if I was terrified of taking any chances. It’s not something I’d wish for every game of this genre to embrace, but it’s refreshing and new.
Go Your Own Way
There’s a sense of empowerment that comes from Sekiro’s generally more forgiving nature.
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Though many of the mechanics and level design philosophies of this mystical take on Japan’s Sengoku period (between 1467 and 1615) are nearly identical to the formula laid out previously, Sekiro is immediately its own beast when it comes to stealth, combat, and movement thanks to a Swiss-army-knife of a prosthetic arm strapped to your titular Shinobi character. Its most apparent trick is a built-in grappling hook that can send you flying to the rooftops at a whim, which sends ripples throughout the gameplay. Where all previous Soulsborne characters felt rooted firmly to the ground as they trudged down hallways and slowly climbed ladders, Sekiro’s level design has permission to be much more vertical. Between jumping and zip-lining between anchors, that sense that you’re only ever a dead end away from being cornered, overwhelmed, and murdered in some dark alcove is an almost non-existent concern. When I got into trouble, there was almost always a way out if I thought like a ninja instead of a knight.
And this new mobility reinforces the stealth elements of Sekiro, allowing you to get into advantageous positions for silent assassinations, quickly escape danger and hide to reset a botched encounter, or just explore the varied grounded and mythical environments. When I first reached Anor Londo in Dark Souls or Yharnam in Bloodborne, the sheer scope of the cities was astounding. When I first set foot in the Ashina Castle complex, I was struck with the same sense of wonder but also completely blown away when I learned I could zip between buildings and rooftops for unprecedented freedom in a FromSoftware megacity. Speeding up the process of exploration was a thrilling change of pace.
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That same feeling extends to sneaking and battling through the mist-covered forests of the Ashina Depths, and the sheer frozen cliff faces of the Sunken Valley, that make up a small part of the journey through Sekiro. With this freedom, complex environments like these take on an almost platformer-like carefree fun rather than the familiar sense of imposing dread that these places are yet another obstacle in your way. Sure, they’re still loaded with things that want to kill you, but your liberating movement helps to expose the world as a place that isn’t maliciously adding to the pain of getting from one point to the next.
Don’t worry: some of FromSoftware’s worldbuilding staples still make the cut in Sekiro: the bottomless pit, the poisonous (dare I say Blighttown-like) pools in the depths of the Earth, and the pitch-black dungeon in the castle underbelly are all comfort food for the faithful. But the moments spent carefully navigating these damnable places are balanced by the sun-kissed surface where swinging between trees and buildings is revitalizing.
Second Chances
And, as the subtitle “Shadows Die Twice” suggests, that focus on freedom extends beyond death. As an undying Shinobi, you’re gifted with the ability to resurrect yourself upon death, though this comes with a number of considerations that make doing so a decision you have to consider carefully each time. The foundation is essentially thus: if you die, you just lose half the experience and currency you’ve collected – and you no longer have the option to run to your corpse to collect your dropped goods. (The only exception to this is a mechanic called Unseen Aid, which is essentially divine intervention giving you a penalty-free death.)
If you die, you lose half the experience and currency you’ve collected.
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This is where things get tricky. Every time you rest at an Idol you’re given a single-use resurrection (you can normally have a max of one at a time) which you can decide to use once you’ve been struck down – and you will be. Sekiro is, after all, a FromSoftware game, and death is part of the learning experience. But if you die a second time before reaching another Idol there’s a chance your tampering with the divine forces of resurrection will cause the cosmic disease called Dragon Rot to affect NPCs throughout the world. In the fiction, these characters become visibly sick, but the mechanical cost is that your chance to trigger Unseen Aid will be reduced, each time degrading from the maximum of 30% until you hit the minimum of 5%, mitigating that hail Mary effect on death. LoadingIt’s an effective reminder that there are still consequences for dying, but because there are ways to bank your money and you don’t lose experience once you’ve reached certain thresholds that convert experience into skill points, the danger is relatively slim. Early on, I just accepted that dying meant losing half my unbanked experience and currency and so I was never bothered by the penalty. To me, the forgiving nature of Sekiro that allows you to usually get out of a bad situation meant that if I let myself die, I probably could have avoided it, and losing my resources was mostly my fault. And in the event Unseen Aid triggered, well, it was just a nice surprise. Since Sekiro is less about managing your resources than it is about raw skill with a sword, I can appreciate the penalty keeping me honest, while also appreciating that I wasn’t truly hamstrung by zigging when I should have zagged.
There are ways to use additional resurrections beyond the first, tied to killing enemies or bosses with deathblow attacks and are fairly self-explanatory once you get into the swing of things thanks to Sekiro’s uncharacteristic penchant for explaining its mechanics in a way Dark Souls or Bloodborne never did. LoadingIn the end, the real decision-making I would wring my hands over when it came to whether or not I should resurrect upon death boiled down to whether or not I thought I could finish a fight I’d lost, based on my supplies and the state of my opponent. If I’d whittled him down to next to nothing, then I’d pop back up to finish the job; but if I’d used most of my healing draughts without doing much damage to my killer there’d be no reason to rise from defeat. I’d take my death on the chin and try again, this time with a little more knowledge of what not to do.
In a first for a game of this type from FromSoftware, Sekiro is an entirely single-player experience, and that has both advantages and disadvantages. The most immediately noticeable pro is that, due to the fact there’s no persistent multiplayer, you’re able to pause mid-fight, which is its own second chance mechanic, in a way. Did you miss a dodge and eat the full brunt of a poison attack? No problem – hit pause, use an antidote item, and get back to it without having to fumble through your inventory as you’re dodging for your life. That ability to call timeout and tend to your ailing status sucks a lot of the venom out of a tough battle.
That said, I do at times miss the small notes left by others in the world alerting me to imminent threats or hidden secrets, or that vague sense that danger lurks behind me in the form of an invading player. But Sekiro is a more streamlined experience, and more direct, meaning the value of player-placed clues would already be mitigated, so the loss isn’t felt as strongly as I’d feared it would be.
The real disappointment is the lack of PvP battles, which seems like a waste of the new emphasis on skill-based swordsmanship. It’s not quite as in-depth as something like For Honor, but I could see a unique community evolving around the rock-paper-scissors formula, with sword fights between rival player-Shinobi lasting minutes at a time.
Live by the Sword, Die by the Sword
When you’re not skulking around looking to get the drop on your enemies to score easy kills with stylishly gory execution animations that spray gushes of blood in every direction like a rotating lawn sprinkler, the emphasis of Sekiro’s combat is on skill-based swordsmanship that requires a mastery of an excellent new rock-paper-scissors countering system. While parries and dodges have always had an organic feel in Bloodborne and the Souls series, in Sekiro they’re much more heavily emphasized and crucial to finding any measure of success against enemies big and small.
Sekiro’s combat is skill-based swordsmanship that requires a mastery of an excellent new countering system.
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Peppered in with the standard fare of attacks are specific thrusts, sweeps, and grapples that are difficult, if not impossible, to simply block or dodge. But these, of course, come with the fairness of telegraph animations, with a literal big red sign for DANGER appearing on screen and giving you a split second to figure out what’s coming and how to counter this specific type of attack. Thrust attacks must be deflected or redirected, sweep attacks must be jumped over, and grapples must be step-dodged. Done properly, it becomes a regularly thrilling exchange of clashing blades, precision timing, and tactics that looks as great in action as it feels to execute. LoadingThere’s a steep curve to mastering it, though, because the timing windows between telegraph and delivery are so varied and often so narrow. But once I overwrote my reactionary muscle memory of just trying to get the hell out of dodge when I saw a big attack coming I found a simple beauty in being able to stand toe-to-toe with any enemy. It took a while, for sure, to let that sink in. But after I was beaten to death dozens of times for instinctually dodging backward when my attack was blocked, I finally started to realize that standing your ground and living by the sword meant I would die less often (also by the sword). And when a 15-foot-tall monstrosity swings 10 times at you in quick succession and you’re able to not just block but deflect the flurry of attacks, there’s a sense you’re the greatest swordsman that ever lived.
Once I overwrote my muscle memory I found a simple beauty in being able to stand toe-to-toe with any enemy.
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And in time, this process actually makes Sekiro more forgiving and somewhat easier than its predecessors. In part, that’s because as you appropriately counter the attacks of towering monsters and impossibly lethal assassins they’re almost always left open to attack immediately afterward. You’ve got a guaranteed window to punish them if you can pull it off, which is reassuring to know when you’ve locked swords with a seemingly invincible enemy for the first time.
Beating your enemies into submission with raw damage alone isn’t the only option, however, because Sekiro introduces variety in ways to take down opponents with the idea of posture: composure during a fight that’s effectively a second, parallel health bar. As you exchange attacks and counters, both you and your opponents will chip away at one another’s posture meter. When you do unblocked damage, you degrade their posture. When you deflect their attacks, you degrade their posture. And when they block your attacks, you’re degrading their posture. This means that enemies who constantly block – never allowing you to chip away at their health – can still be taken down because when you eventually break their posture they’re immediately open to a deathblow. LoadingThis system reinforces the idea of standing toe-to-toe being the best way to fight because let’s say you deflect an attack, cut them with an unblocked quick slash, and then swing another blow toward them that they block. Sure, you only did a small amount of damage, but all three actions degraded their posture. Keep up that pressure and you’ll find your sword in their neck in no time, which means that fights never feel like they could drag on forever. One way or another, even a fight between perfectly matched adversaries will have a victor.
Sekiro continuously throws a variety of unique and challenging enemies at you that reliably ratchet up the pressure and complexity.
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Not all enemies need to be bested with martial prowess. Occasionally, I’d come across a monster that simply hit too hard, or too wildly, to risk attempting deflections with any consistency – as was the case with one particularly nasty giant headless ape. In these times, the old reliable tactic of sprinting in circles around it until it swung big and missed gave me the opportunity to quickly stab it in the back over and over and over. Old habits die hard.
Which route you take to get the kill matters less when facing the rank-and-file threats – they quickly die in a shower of gore when you apply constant attacks – but Sekiro continuously throws a variety of unique and challenging enemies at you that reliably ratchet up the pressure and complexity. Whether it’s a corrupted monk with a massive halberd, a twisted quadrupedal monster with Wolverine claws for hands, expert swordsmen, one-armed ninjas, gun-toting hill people, or supernatural threats from the other side, taking down each enemy means different tactics, and there’s rarely much overlap. Learning their moves and abilities becomes a tricky dance of flexibility, and while there are less than a dozen Bosses – those with a capital B – the world is positively lousy with high-health, highly capable minibosses that serve as skill-checks to keep you on your toes and your reflexes sharp.
Tools of the Trade
Relative to its predecessors, Sekiro’s character progression is admirably streamlined. There are no attributes or numbers to build up by grinding Souls or Blood. You don’t increase your Strength to do more damage – there’s no Strength. Instead, your Vitality (health) and Attack Power (damage) only increase as you receive and spend key items you earn by taking down bosses and difficult enemies (of which there are a finite amount, though ways to further inflate toward the end do exist). There are no real weapons to find, or armor to acquire. Outside of – outside of one or two others that serve a purpose in the story, you’ll use the same trusty katana from the start of this 50-hour adventure to the finish.Loading
Sekiro places emphasis on getting better with what you can do rather than looking for another weapon or piece of armor.
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In this way, you already have the foundation to succeed in Sekiro, which places emphasis on getting better with what you can do rather than looking for another weapon or piece of armor to complete some gear-check gimmicky encounter. What fun and varied functionality new weapons and armor would add to the gameplay is mirrored in the inventive prosthetic tools, so the experience of finding new mechanical advantages throughout the adventure isn’t lost entirely.
Instead of buying attribute points, the experience you earn is cashed into Skill Points which you spend on a robust, tiered, multi-page skill tree that allows you to unlock passive skills like a more potent stealth for easier assassinations. You might buy the ability to recover health when performing a deathblow (which is hands-down one of the most valuable passive skills I’ve gotten in Sekiro) or increase the max number of Spirit Emblems you can hold, which allows you to make more frequent use of your prosthetic tools.
For active skills, there are a wealth of combat maneuvers like devastating posture-pounding strikes, lightning-fast flurries of slashes, secret sword techniques that kill in the blink of an eye, and so many more. There are, in fact, a staggering number of abilities, skills, and combat techniques to unlock and, incredibly, each one I used felt unique and useful, even if only in specific situations. LoadingSimilarly, the prosthetic limb can be outfitted with a number of different gadgets that must first be found in the world and then upgraded with precious materials. These tools really open up your options as you go, and like the aforementioned combat skills, many serve a distinct purpose. The Firecrackers, for example, can startle beasts, which is helpful when you’re attacked by a pack of wolves, face an enemy mounted on a horse, or come face to face with a flaming bull on a rampage. Alternatively, the Loaded Spear is great for pulling weaker enemies toward you to keep them in range, and can also strip loose-fitting armor off of foes – though this never really seemed to be much of an occurrence. The Flamethrower says what it is and does what it says, but it’s more than a straightforward damage-over-time device because certain rage-prone foes fear only fire, so blowing a pipe full of flames in their face leaves them open to follow up attacks.
Firecrackers, for example, can startle beasts, which is helpful when you’re attacked by a pack of wolves.
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Some of these tools seem more universal than others: the always-handy Shuriken is essential for consistent long-range damage, and the Mist Raven Feather that lets you phase through enemy attacks and reappear next to, behind, or above them for some life-saving distance and an unprotected vantage point got me out of countless jams. Others, like the Loaded Umbrella that blocks incoming projectiles or the Loaded Axe that smashes shields to splinters, are supremely useful, vital even, in their narrow, intended purpose, and rarely outside of that.
These tools also come with their own excellent upgrade trees that require precious resources to build into but produce better and better versions of themselves. That Loaded Umbrella is still useful by default, but when you upgrade it to negate all damage from apparitions – which cause the Terror status that will instantly kill you if you take too much – it’s a game-changer. Though expensive, when you finally build some of these up to tier two, three, or four tools and combine them with unlockable skills, they’re absolutely devastating in a way that’s not only flexible but regularly fun in seeing what lethal synergies between tools, skills, and abilities you can come up with.
World at War
While there’s no shortage of rich Japanese atmosphere in the background, Sekiro’s story is where I connected with it the least. On the one hand, it’s a much more straightforward tale than FromSoftware usually deals in, as your undying, one-armed Shinobi dutifully serves, protects, and endlessly murders at the behest of your master, a child Divine Heir blessed with immortality. On the other, because Sekiro is much more linear in its tasks, because the characters actually speak to you in coherent sentences and give you direction, and because there are ample clues and hints throughout the world that let you draw correct conclusions, it’s easy to blow through the journey without ever needing to stop and ponder, as I’ve come to expect in a FromSoftware game.Loading
While Sekiro starts out like a work of historical fiction it quickly takes a hard turn into the mystical and supernatural.
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That’s not something that’s inherently bad – far from it – but I realized that through the majority of the time I was playing Sekiro I was just doing what other people told me to do. I wasn’t discovering or uncovering or deciding what needed to be done, I was given orders and I’d follow them to the letter until the next set of orders, and so on, as though they’d accompanied each demand with a “Would you kindly?” Until I finally got to the point about X way through the campaign where I started making key decisions that changed the course of the story and determined which of the possible endings I’d see, I was feeling a bit powerless over my fate.
And while Sekiro starts out like a work of historical fiction in a bloody but atmospheric period of Japanese history, in typical FromSoftware fashion it quickly takes a hard turn into the mystical and supernatural. Granted, it has to, since resurrection is a core feature and all existing scientific data points suggests that 15th-century Japanese people couldn’t actually do that, but it’s done so in a way that’s both relatively grounded in reality and rooted in actual mythology, which I genuinely appreciate. These incredible environments ripped straight from myth and legend regularly overshadow the actual story in a welcome, compensatory way. Moments of traipsing through divine gardens, reliving memories from the past, and tangling with fantastical beasts all deliver a unified vision of a world that straddles this plane and the next, and I loved it. The vibrant, colorful sights and moody, atmospheric sounds create a varied world, set to a period-appropriate soundtrack that’s equal parts calming and haunting.
Though Sekiro is overall a less obtuse FromSoftware experience and things are more straightforward, the world still retains much of that mystery that makes these games so engaging. You’ll find an item with seemingly no purpose or hear a rumor of a sword that can open a portal to the afterlife, or maybe just see a building on a cliff that doesn’t seem reachable. When I solved some of these riddles, I was bound to Sekiro in the same excellent way as I was bound to Bloodborne when I finally saw the unseeable, or helped Solaire become so grossly incandescent in Dark Souls. And perhaps as importantly, the nagging clues I’ve uncovered and yet to solve will stoke the fires of my run into the New Game+.
Sekiro evolves From Software’s formula into a stylish stealth-action adventure that, naturally, emphasizes precision and skill in its combat. It walks the line between deliberate and patient stealth and breakneck melee combat against threats both earthly and otherworldly. Its imaginative and flexible tools support a more focused experience that shaves down some of From Software’s overly cryptic sensibilities without losing its air of mystery. Sekiro is an amazing new twist on a familiar set of ideas that can stand on its own alongside its predecessors.
Sekiro review — Polygon
I jump from my perch on a roof, diving down to my target. In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I am a bird of prey, and my sword is my talon.
I land on an enemy grunt, piercing him with my sword and rolling out of my attack in a seamless and deadly ballet. He never had a chance.
I turn to confront his terrified friend. I swing, but he blocks my attack with his rifle. His strength fails him after my second attack. He stands exhausted and defenseless. My next move is a one-hit-kill Deathblow. His neck sprays blood like a pierced garden hose as he falls to his knees. I feel like a shinobi god as I collect my loot and move on.
Past a large door, there’s another enemy. My adrenaline surges as I see the next few seconds of my life with absolute clarity. I sneak up behind him, run him through, and he’s gone. I am a shinobi god.
In the distance, maybe 20 yards away, two more enemies chat near a small wooden building. They can’t see me. This is going to be easy. I crouch and approach.
A bull the size of a school bus shreds the structure into a hundred shards before I can reach them. He roars and stomps and headbutts everything around him in rage. Fences and enemies fall. The music surges. He turns to me and, as he charges, I notice the flaming tubes of hay where his horns should be. I panic and turn away, running toward what I hope will be safety.
I’m dead within 10 seconds.
This is the joy and agony of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, developer FromSoftware’s new game. It’s a company known for making notoriously difficult games like the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne, and Sekiro shares that lineage. It’s full of masochistic challenges, but it’s also definitely not a Soulsborne game. It’s something new, something intriguing — and a brutal and definitive statement refuting the idea that FromSoftware is a one-trick pony.
[Ed. note: This review is based on our first 50-plus hours of Sekiro (and twice as much between us). We suspect that there may be as much ahead of us as there is in our wake. We’ll continue playing, and will update this review as we complete the game.]
Image: Polygon
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I play as Wolf, a shinobi bodyguard to a royal child. I’m skilled and capable. I have a past and a place in the world.
This is a departure from what I expected based on FromSoftware’s last decade of development — games in which the stories and characters were often obscure and required deep dives into the lore to understand. The story in Sekiro is grounded in relatable details, and I know from the start how I’m connected to it: I’m trying to right a wrong from years ago and fulfill my vow as a bodyguard. The clear focus of the narrative gives me something — and someone — to care about.
There are also bad guys, monsters, and characters who all tell you, through their actions and words, what and why they are. Sekiro is immensely more narratively accessible than its Soulsborne predecessors. It’s a welcome change.
Sekiro is immensely more narratively accessible than its Soulsborne predecessors
That’s not to say that Sekiro is easy or forgiving. There are bosses, and some other enemies, that kill me with one hit, even dozens of hours into the game. But there’s also a character named Hanbei the Undying who helps me hone my offensive and defensive skills. I return to him whenever I become stuck or confused, and I become a better fighter through his teaching. I usually know what to do next, although I can sometimes become confused and frustrated about how to get there.
There is no map or compass. There are no waypoints or markers. I get general directions, but I’m left to figure out how to navigate Sekiro’s branching paths and locations on my own. Sekiro lets me make mistakes, and I make a lot of mistakes. I rush blindly into an area I should move through slowly and stealthily. I wander into boss fights well before I’m prepared to handle them. I learn.
Sekiro rewards considered play. It’s not just that there’s no defined path through most areas — it’s that there are many paths, and I feel a calling to explore them all. I can run down a main street, where I’ll get stabbed by half a dozen guards, or I can head to the left, where I’ll encounter a guard dog that will alert the guards to my presence … and then I’ll get bitten and stabbed.
Or, I discover, I can use my grappling hook and take to the rooftops, where I can pick off the guards one by one until my path is clear. In the next area, when I try to repeat my rooftop trick, I meet a new type of enemy who shrugs off my attacks and stabs me to death. Sekiro forces me to find yet another way forward.
FromSoftware/Activision
Combat is a complicated but understandable mixture of defense, dodging, and careful but relentless attacking. It’s not rhythm-based, but it punishes button mashing. Heavy defense might get me through one fight, then cost me my life in the next. Attacking aggressively lets me cut through one enemy, although the next is able to catch me off balance and destroy me. Finding the appropriate combination of thoughtfulness and brutality for each enemy and situation is essential to move ahead.
Gameplay isn’t as dire as the “Prepare to Die” promised on the first Dark Souls’ box, but that rhythm of struggling, dying, learning, and repeating is a huge part of Sekiro. It’s built into the game’s systems: I have the option of resurrection when I fall in battle. And it’s so satisfying to get trounced by someone, wait for them to turn around, and then spring back to life to stab them from behind.
The resurrection option is limited, both mechanically — I have to wait a set amount of time between uses — and through the story. A disease spreads across the world as I continually die and resurrect myself. The characters I talk to — the reformed thief turned vendor, the doctor, the grieving pilgrim — begin coughing and wheezing. And they’ll keep getting worse, unless I fix it.
Suddenly, my get-out-of-jail-free card has consequences, and I find myself questioning my use of it. Is my journey worth hurting someone else to continue, or should I accept defeat and try again with a better and more considered approach? I could save more people if I just died, but then I’d lose half of my loot and experience points.
FromSoftware/Activision via Polygon
Each death is an excuse for contemplation, and I often have to take a step back to find the logic and progress that stem from my failures. They’re almost always my fault, which is how FromSoftware gets away with making absurdly punishing games. My lack of progress is a puzzle. Almost every time I fail or get stuck, I conclude that I have everything I need to solve it. I just have to think about what I’m doing or get better at executing my plans. And also I need to calm down, because all of this screaming is scaring the dog.
Sekiro isn’t difficult for difficult’s sake
Rarely do my insights or incremental improvements give me anything close to an easy win, but Sekiro isn’t difficult for difficult’s sake. It gives me hints, but no roadmap. It implies. It finds ways to reward me when I read between the lines. It hands me my ass when I try something a little too clever or panicked or cheap, but it gives me victories when I act with care and react with considered split-second decisions. This is the skill that Sekiro challenges me to accumulate, and it never lets me forget that.
Even though it can take hours of controller-throwing frustration to defeat seemingly insurmountable odds, perseverance begets pleasure. I won that battle because it could be done. I solved the puzzle. I am a shinobi god.
I have to put in a lot of work and effort to meet Sekiro on its own terms, but what might feel ponderous in a lesser game becomes rewarding in one created with this much care. Sekiro meets me with just as much effort and enthusiasm as I’ve put into it. It lets me know I’m capable and skilled, and that I can figure it out.
And then it hands me my ass again.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be released March 22 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed using final “retail” PS4 download codes provided by Activision. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
Why you shouldn’t hesitate in this game — Mishootka Gamer on DTF
What Hidetaka Miyazaki’s most controversial creation really is
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Sekiro is the song of swords. Even their ringing in the game seems to have been given considerable importance!
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a very controversial milestone in the history of the Japanese studio From Software. The game of the year according to The Game Awards 2019, which is also criticized by many for being «too complicated». We also criticized her for some problems. But the time has come to evaluate Sekiro as a whole — with all its «diseases» and merits. And tell what it really is.
What did Hidetaka Miyazaki want to tell her? And everything is very simple.
Japanese fantasy
The setting of Sekiro is something worth talking about separately. On the one hand, the presentation is understandable — this is such a Dark Souls or Bloodborne, only in the entourage of medieval Japan. The same cursed blood motif, the same idea that saving the world has a heavy price to pay. In this case, it is the curse of immortality, which bestows the blood of the Divine Heir. Mr. Kuro, whom we will serve until the very end (or not).
In other words, the action takes place as if in real Japan, but the curse gradually affects everything around. Genichiro is actively experimenting with the Waters of Youth (artificial substitute for «divine» blood), and this creates monsters. One of them eventually becomes Genichiro himself.
Almost every character in Sekiro is bright and memorable. The head of the Ashina clan is the dying Isshin, who still has the strength to catch enemy spies. A carver, overwhelmed by the rage that burns him from the inside. An owl who, despite his betrayal of Kuro, has not completely lost his humanity. “Am I defeated by my own son? It’s not so bad…” he says at the second meeting with him in the Hirata estate.
Isshin’s death is the culmination of the whole story of Sekiro
And this is another important difference between Sekiro. It’s not just that there are no categories of «good» and «evil», as in Dark Souls and Bloodborne (for example, it’s hard to feel anger towards the unfortunate Herman). Here, every boss is ready to admit Sekiro’s combat superiority — if, of course, it can be proved. «Well done!» — Issin, resurrected by the Waters of Youth, tells us. Before we strike the final blow. And you feel that hearing such words from him is really worth a lot. And respect this worthy adversary. And it resonates perfectly with the very idea of the game and the lore.
Sekiro is also a story-driven story with four endings, each of which gives this adventure a very special sound. Yes, speedrunners do not like this game for the fact that in order to progress through the plot you have to skip a bunch of dialogues and eavesdrop on cues. But games are still not made for speedrunners. And those who are trying to get into Sekiro will find in this story a special emotional experience, no worse than in Dark Souls.
The stealth we deserve
It is with him that our gameplay begins — we need to sneak past the guards invisible. And pretty quickly you realize that something is not right. Enemies can’t see you even if you’re already breathing down their neck or killing someone two meters away. They quickly forget about your existence, as soon as you just sit down in some nook. In 2019, such stealth could be called a real shame.
If not for one BUT — in the gameplay of Sekiro, such poor stealth is perceived quite normally. If the enemies were seven spans in the forehead, then we would spend a lot of time and effort on the passage of each location according to the “invisibility”. Which is completely redundant in a game with a focus on combat. So in the end, stealth here is perceived simply as a simple mini-game that does not let us get bored during the next passage.
Variety not delivered
Here a logical question should arise: why, in fact, should we get bored? In Dark Souls, there was no stealth, and this did not make it boring. And here we get to the design of the «axe» locations.
In Sekiro, Hidetaka Miyazaki tried to take a completely new approach to game design. There is no trace of the former diversity. Since there is only one weapon in the game, you don’t need a bunch of items to upgrade it. Only prostheses remain, for the pumping of which craft materials drop out.
Because of this, finding items, which was an important part of Dark Souls, often does not justify itself here. You can perform the wonders of parkour in order to eventually find a clay shard. Of course, exploring the world in Sekiro is also an important element. You also need to get the prostheses themselves, and beads for pumping health and concentration, as well as important consumables — for example, rare Divine confetti, without which it is very difficult to kill ghostly opponents.
Plus, Miyazaki added verticality to this, which greatly diversified the gameplay, allowing you to get to the right place in different ways.
But in general, in terms of variety, the passage of locations in Sekiro is not even close to being comparable to Dark Souls. Already on NG+, you understand that you cleared everything and got everything, so “locks” become nothing more than an interval between one boss and another, which in itself has no value. And yes, this is a minus of the game. Apparently, this is why the developers have added the Meditation on Power mode to it, thanks to which you can at any time fight the boss that you have already defeated before. And save yourself from cleaning up already fed up locations.
Devices for prosthesis
It is impossible not to say a few words about lotions for the prosthesis. There are quite a few of them, and they really add variety to the gameplay. But not because you first ran with one device, and then with another — it won’t work that way. But because one device is used in one situation, and the other in another.
Prosthesis gadgets in Sekiro are situational. The spear allows you to quickly kill the Guardian Monkey in the second phase, the golden umbrella — to hide from the procast of the Demon of Hatred, and the shurikens — to knock down Lady Butterfly
For example, you will only need the Golden Umbrella on the Demon of Hate boss, and the spear will be needed mainly on the second phase of the Guardian Monkey boss. Understand correctly — no one forbids you to bludgeon with this spear (or any other prosthesis) every enemy you meet. But, firstly, they are killed anyway, and, secondly, their use consumes spirit emblems, which tend to end. So it turns out that almost all prosthesis devices are very situational, and you won’t be able to use them all the time. From the universal, perhaps, only firecrackers and shurikens can be named — you use them really often.
And most importantly — none of these devices will help you kill the boss. Let’s just say — with him you will kill him a little faster. Or you won’t die right away. But you can win only if you thoroughly understand your opponent’s moveset. And from this it follows that you will really experience the prosthesis closer to NG+ when you better master the key mechanics of the game.
Bosses
However, only one thing could make Sekiro truly replayable: the bosses. So the “Froms” focused especially on them this time. And they are very different from Souls.
When you fight a boss in Dark Souls, after the first defeat, you already understand approximately what and how to do. When you first meet Sekiro bosses like Genichiro or Owl, you don’t understand anything at all. They just roll over you like a skating rink and it seems that it is impossible to defeat them. In fact, these bosses are even simpler in a sense than the Souls ones. I’ll try to explain why.
A typical Sekiro boss is simply a set of actions that the antagonist can perform in different ways. Each action must be responded to appropriately. On a lunge — counter-attack with a mikiri. On a series of quick blows — their exact reflection. On a strong swing in front of you — a jump and a blow to the nose. Yes, the bosses are lightning fast and it’s not that easy to do it all.
But this is a matter of technique — if you understand how this boss works, then you will kill him. Even if you quit the game for a year, and then turn it back on to fight Owl again. He’s already doomed. Because you know what to do and how to do it.
And even the Demon of Hatred, which is clearly intended as a Dark Souls boss, is actually quite predictable too. Unlike some of the DS bosses that just stomp on attacks for half a map. In this way, by the way, he looks like the dragon Midir from Dark Souls 3, like the Guardian Monkey. These bosses seem difficult until you just understand how they work. And after that they are killed from the first or second time.
«To hesitate is to lose!»
This phrase is spoken to us in different variations by different characters throughout the game. But the meaning is the same, and it is very clearly articulated: if you are afraid of the enemy, if you don’t understand exactly what to do… then you won’t kill the boss.
This is the fundamental difference between Sekiro and other From games. In Dark Souls, you could constantly roll and hope that this time you were lucky. You could forget half of the boss’s moves and still defeat him with a boost or magic. After all, you could summon phantoms and bombard the enemy with a bunch of bodies.
Father Owl is considered one of the most difficult bosses in the game, but he is just a set of actions that are quite realistic to remember
In Sekiro you are one on one with the boss. And the combat itself of the game is such that it simply won’t work on defense. You can jump from grandfather Issin even to infinity. But what’s the use if you can’t deal damage?
You can try to damage him. But often this will not work, and by trying to bring down the enemy’s HP bar, you will most likely lose yours faster.
So what? Learn the opponent’s moveset. Press him, confidently filling the strip of concentration. Yes, the first time will not work — maybe the first dozen times. But then you will realize how simple everything is and the duel with each Sekiro boss will turn into a pleasure to which you will return again and again.
And this is the main achievement of Hidetaka Miyazaki, the reason why he made this game. In Sekiro, he implemented a concise and in his own way ideal combat system. There is nothing superfluous here — only the sound of blades and the strength of your character.
The phrase “to hesitate is to lose” perfectly describes the essence of Sekiro combat. It’s not just about being fast like in Bloodborne. Here you need to be aggressive and self-confident. And such a unity of the lore of the game and the game system is a truly amazing level of game design. For which you forgive Sekiro all her problems.
Original material — on my channel in «Zen»:
Shadow Die Twice / Computer and mobile games / iXBT Live
A year and a half later, we finally got our hands on the game that won at The Game Awards 2019the title of «Game of the Year». How can this project surprise and what difficulties can even a hardcore gamer experience?
Dark Soul Veterans’ Worst Dream
Although Sekiro is nominally a soul lick, the differences between the classic soul lick and what Sekiro is is enough to call it more of a spin-off of the genre than its full representative. The main difference is primarily the combat system. People who are experienced in this genre when playing Sekiro for the first time often experience considerable difficulty trying to play the game the way they played Dark Souls or Bloodborne.
Unlike the usual «soulsborns», sharpened mainly by dodges (rolls) and blocks, Sekiro’s combat system concentrates on parrying and sometimes requires an aggressive and attacking approach. The situation is also aggravated by the first, after the prologue, location, the opponents in which are extremely poorly suited to the usual «soulsborn» battle tactics. The complexity of this is added by the extremely weak «form» of the protagonist at the beginning of the game. The player just needs to get used to it, and by the time they meet the first full-fledged boss (although there are several mini-bosses along the way), the game opens up and appears before the player in the best light.
A Tale of Immortality
The second important difference from the classic «soulsborne» is the presence in Sekiro of a very adequate (albeit far from brilliant) plot. The main story revolves around Kuro, the last heir of an ancient clan, in whose veins flows a special blood that can bestow immortality. The player controlling the main character, at the suggestion of Kuro, acquires the ability to resurrect, which after passing the prologue becomes one of the key game mechanics. But do not be deceived — the possibility of resurrection after a defeat does not make the passage of the game easier. On the contrary, for some players, the realization of such an opportunity is more of a factor that only complicates (at least at the beginning) the game rather than makes it easier.
Bosses and mini-bosses
In Sekiro, the player will face many challenges, the main ones being mini-bosses and bosses. In total, there are an incredible number of them in the game. In general, almost all of them are executed perfectly and are definitely the best part of the whole game. Most of these opponents force the player to give all the best, testing his abilities. Fights with them not only temper the player’s skills, as in other soulsborns, but also often deliver no small amount of purely aesthetic pleasure. While not Ghost of Tsushima, which is admittedly the aforementioned aesthetic, many of the enemies in Sekiro do the job just as well, backed up by a fairly high level of difficulty.
The Illusion of Diversity
It should be noted that, despite the number of bosses and mini-bosses, the problem is that most of them occur more than once, even though they are optional. Some of them are found four times per passage and differ only in name. The drunkard becomes a glutton and Shirahagi becomes Shirafuji. The same can be said about some bosses.
Ashina Road Dust
Some locations in the game are also repeated, and one of them will have to be completed three times, even if it will be very different in content. In general, the game world is built according to the principles familiar to From Software. At certain stages of the game, some locations change significantly, providing the player with a different experience from repeatedly replaying the same location, which at first glance seems wild. The change of game stages occurs by defeating certain bosses. This approach also provides the player with some non-linearity, allowing him to go through certain locations in the order in which he is more comfortable.
Get stronger!
However, it should be noted that such a nonlinearity has an interesting feature. The thing is that pumping in the game is different from the usual soulsbourne. There are no characteristics familiar to the RPG genre. The experience accumulated by the player is converted into points, by distributing which the player learns only combat skills, expanding his arsenal but not strengthening his character, the attack power and health of which are determined by the items received by the player after killing mini-bosses (health improvement) and bosses (improvement attacks). And here we return to the aforementioned feature. Sometimes a situation can occur in which the player, having passed along one path, can bury himself in a boss that he cannot defeat, while the boss at the end of the other path is not so difficult. This is slightly off balance.
Shinobi’s left arm
Another feature is the protagonist’s prosthetic arm. After passing the prologue, the player gets at his disposal some new features contained in the left hand. Passing the game, you get more and more new tools, which are sometimes simply irreplaceable in battle. Each tool also contains several varieties obtained by leveling. Some tools are useful against simple opponents, some against bosses. Another plus for the combat system. Also, the prosthesis adds verticality to the world, creating an additional opportunity for exploring the world.
Grind
And now, again, all the traditions of From Software, the game is full of albeit optional, but grind. Let here, as in other soulsborns, you don’t have to grind experience to the limit, but it is by studying all the combat skills that the game opens up completely, adding more freedom to the player in choosing combat tactics, albeit not globally. This is precisely the main thorn in the heel of trophy hunters.
