Thread by @EpicNameBro

Why Sekiro is my Favorite Game: A Thread.

This is how I feel about it and nothing more. I'm personally already burnt-out on this "discussion," and I'm only posting this because people keep asking for it. If I go over the thread limit oh well.

With regards to gameplay, I like Sekiro far more than anything Fromsoft has done to this point. The majority of Souls gameplay revolves around dodging through an enemy attack and then hitting them, usually with a normal attack of your own. For all of the different weapon skins

and stats, the basics of combat are very static; you dodge, you hit, you dodge, you hit. Sometimes you hit with a sword, sometimes with a mace, sometimes with a Soul Spear, but the basics don't change much and aren't very executionally demanding. Blocking is also a tactic, but it

doesn't appeal to me, either, because it's also a very static game of attacking and then waiting your turn to attack again.

In Sekiro, you defend yourself in three main ways: dodging, deflecting, and jumping. You constantly need to react to enemy attacks with these techniques

while also maintaining your own offense. It's far less passive than Souls gameplay... it's a constant dance. But the best part is there are usually 2 ways to win a fight: either by depleting the enemy's health, or by breaking their posture.

Breaking the enemy's posture requires

more skill and execution. You have to time your deflects properly and stay in the enemy's face while being careful not to let your OWN posture break. It's fun and exciting, especially with the HUD turned off. This sort of organic difficulty selection where you can choose between

a drawn-out battle of attrition or just overwhelm the enemy with skill and execution feels very rewarding compared to their previous combat systems. I've done around 40 some odd NG+ cycles of the Infinite Mod for Dark Souls, and it was never as fun and engaging as Sekiro.

There's no stamina or equipment burden to slow you down— just your own lack of skill.

The stealth is a blast too. Is it realistic? No. Are the enemies smart? No. Does it feel sweet to swing around, grab a ledge, yank an enemy off into the abyss with your sword? Hell yes it's fun

With regards to lore— it's awesome. Fromsoft finally reached a balance of explaining the basics of what's happening in the world while still having tons of mysteries for players to speculate over. Rather than getting all of the lore from item descriptions, now you can eavesdrop

on private conversations or even get folks drunk enough on sake that their lips loosen up. It's also a lot easier to actually CARE about the characters because they actually care about each other, though sometimes in odd ways. Piecing together their relationships is extremely

rewarding, especially when one of them gets drunk on sake and starts talking about the good ole days with one of the main antagonists. And for the people who are worried that the lore is TOO straightforward... trust me, it isn't. The supernatural elements of the world are still

vague enough that there's plenty of room for crazy theories.

Music. I prefer Sekiro's less intrusive tunes to the bombastic themes of DkS/BB. DeS is still my fave, but I don't end up muting the music in this, which I usually do in DkS/BB because the boss themes are overbearing.

As for the lack of multiplayer, it doesn't matter to me. Souls multiplayer was creative with Demon's Souls and even Dark Souls, but it has never been particularly good. Between the lag stabs and the cheaters, it's always been full of problems at a technical level, and beyond that

I really feel like PVP considerations hampered their single player design a lot, and the enemy AIs frankly just don't handle multiple players well in coop.

A lot of people miss the RPG elements because they "give replay value." Frankly, the RPG elements were just an unneeded

grind to me. I don't need a strength greatsword and a dex greatsword and a greatsword powered by int. Tight gameplay balancing is better for me, and that's what Sekiro has. As for replay value... well, I've played over 150 hours so far with four full clears from scratch, and it's

just whet my appetite for more. If I don't get thousands of hours out of it, I won't care— I enjoyed those first four playthroughs more than anything else in Souls to this point. Some people seem to be under the impression that anything less than 1000 hours somehow isn't enough

replay value, but honestly I'd rather something I love for 200 hours than something I "can keep playing" for 1000. Beyond that, I like the basic gameplay so much that I don't see myself getting tired of it anytime soon, so that's all moot to me.

Level design. The vertical aspects of this game take it to a new level, literally. Being able to just leap down from the top of a castle and swoop by areas that took you an hour to get through in a matter of SECONDS is AWESOME. The fixed grappling points keep the exploration

focused, too. One downside to the lack of RPG elements, though, is that it does hurt the rewards from exploration. This is offset by the beads and the sake system, but I think it would have been better if all of the tool upgrades were found through exploration instead (and had

lore on them, of course). Small downside to me that I'll accept for tight gameplay.

Setting. This one is tough for me. The Nexus from Demon's Souls and the Undead Burg of Dark Souls are sacred spaces for me. Nothing in this game really beats those. That said, the overall setting

does MATCH those games for me, and I really appreciate experiencing the areas at different times of day. The details in the architecture are wonderful, and given that I like the characters in this a lot more, that helps the setting out as well.

With regards to the setting, though, it's important to note that I understand Japanese for the most part. I'm not a super huge fan of this title's localization. I'm also not super down on it; this was a tough game to localize. Fromsoft actually communicates a lot of detail in

nuanced ways, and I feel like some of it was lost in translation. I don't want to give examples here because of spoilers, but there are definitely some parts I'm not so high on. And I don't mean Gyoubu... he's hilarious.

In terms of difficulty, I would have been fine with some

harder optional bosses that are needed to access more content. Content, such as areas, lore, skills, etc., is the greatest reward, and it would be awesome if there was more to earn. Really that's my biggest gripe: I want more. The game's not light on content by any means, but

it's pretty quick since they trimmed all the RPG fat. I just enjoy it so much that I want more. Hopefully we'll see some expansion-level DLC, at least.

Finally, my gripes. Too many reused bosses. Annoying upgrade tree. Headless aren't really fun or interesting. Some skills are

poorly balanced. Performance issues on PS4 (but that really just shows the PS4's limitations at this point). Most of these complaints are pretty minor.

Shoutouts to Fromsoft and Activision for actually delivering a good PC port and a simultaneous worldwide release, though! How far we've come!

So that's it. It's all just my opinion, and I'm only posting this because people won't stop asking. I'm not really interested in discussing it any more than this. If folks don't like the game, cool, I get it. I personally love it. I'm sure there's a lot more that I COULD say, but

I'm done

Ok, one final comment: I don't fucking HATE Dark Souls or anything, y'all. People are gonna take the negatives out of context. I'm just talking about how Sekiro is an evolution that I dig. And a nice palette cleanser. If they make a BB2 or something, I'll probably like it, too.