Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
The new From Software game, the studio behind Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Sekiro is a nice change from their previous games, but it is a very decent game overall. Sekiro takes place in Sengoku era Japan and you play as a shinobi trying to save his master who is a young boy name Kuro. The world is full of culture and some fantasy! There's no character creation or online features. The game is pretty difficult so you will feel frustrated, but like the other games overcoming the difficult enemies is really satisfying. But of course you can always watch someone else play it because the story and the world is interesting so I feel its worth taking a look.
The enemies in this game, for a lack of a better word, are complete assholes. There's quite a bit of bull shit that you have to go through in this game. So you do have the option to use stealth and sneak pass enemies or sneak attack them. The character also has a prosthetic arm which you can equip tools to make some enemies easier to fight against. Also not only is there a health bar, there's also a posture bar. Posture is another bar that you can fill up to stagger enemies and deal a deathblow. Some enemies its faster to kill them through the posture bar than the health bar. Combat is fast paced and clashing swords is the main way to fight. Other than attacking, you can deflect attacks which is like parrying in Dark Souls. Deflecting deals posture damage so its as important as attacking. Thankfully for the first part of the game it will pop up tutorials on how to play the game so you will get the feel and idea for it. So I recommend reading them when they pop up! There's also a character that you can practice on and teach you a few more things on combat. But still, the game is brutal and may find it not fun. You don't have to fight every enemy though so you can run past the annoying ones to get to the idols to rest.
The level design in interesting in this game. There's a lot of branching paths you can take, and its possible you may have missed or forgotten other paths. So definitely keep your eyes open and look around! Like with the other games, you could find a path over a ledge or at some corner that would lead you to items or bosses. With your prosthetic are you can grapple onto trees so that's also something to look out for. The world and the view is very beautiful. Since this is Japan and not a fantasy world it is set in a time period where they can have creative freedom with buildings and landscape are familiar. For one the Ashina clan was a real clan, but the Ashina characters in this game aren't real. So lore seems to be done differently as its more character lore than world lore. World lore is mostly done through the main story of the game otherwise its mostly religion and japanese folklore and horror stories. If you don't know much about Japanese history, Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, or Japanese folklore I suggest looking it up so the enemies and world may make some sense. It may seem weird, confusing, or even not appealing to westerners. Japanese or even asian folklore in general isn't as widely well known. In the game there are sake that you can get and you give these to certain characters who will tell you some backstory. Like with the other games, there are several endings.
The English dub isn't too bad, but since it is set in Japan the Japanese voices would obviously be more fitting. I do find the Japanese voices are better in terms of acting and have more character to their voice. The music is also great! It really gets your into the game and combat. Though sadly there isn't a song that really sticks out to me to want to listen to again and again. The sound effects are also great. Sure the swords clashing and deathblow sounds are loud and wonder how the other enemies don't even hear it, it does give such a great impact feeling in the combat. Its also a good way to hear if your doing things right. Sounds are different depending on the move so attacking, deflecting, and blocking have different sounds. It definitely helps me a lot.
Overall, I think this game is pretty good and worth checking out. Its quite different from the other From Software games which is nice. The game itself is great and don't think it needs a sequel. At the moment there isn't any DLC, but would be neat as to see what else they could add if there was.
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