Took a long break from the game at the start. I left at the middle point of the game, where the guardian ape just made me mad. this month I decided to come back to it.

that was a good choice, since everything started clicking for me. I breezed through the game full of joy, playing over 20 hours in 2 weeks. the combat has to be one of the best combat systems i've ever played, and with the amazing atmosphere and intriguing dialogue, this easily becomes one of my favorite games from fromsoftware so far.

Was für eine epische Reise durch verdammt schwere, aber gleichermaßen schöne Japan-Landschaften!

Hierbei handelt es sich zwar um ein echtes Soulsborne-Spiel, aber es gibt ausnahmsweise keine Ausweichrolle. Stattdessen fokussiert sich das Gameplay beinahe vollständig auf die neue Haltungsleiste, die sogar wichtiger als die Lebensanzeige des Gegners ist; wenn man durch gezieltes Blocken Angriffe pariert, füllt sich die gegnerische Haltungsleiste. Sobald sie im dunkelroten Bereich ist, kann man einen Todesstoß ausführen, welcher die verbleibende Lebenskraft ignoriert. Die meisten Bosse halten jedoch mehr als einen „Tod“ aus, was an roten Punkten erkennbar ist.

Wer nun aber auf die Idee kommt, einfach alles zu blocken, wird schnell den eigenen Tod erleben – man selber hat schließlich auch eine Haltungsleiste, deren Füllung zum Glück nur eine temporäre Paralyse zur Folge hat. In beliebige Richtungen ausweichen kann man zwar auch, Unbesiegbarkeits-Frames gibt es bei Sekiro aber überhaupt nicht. Insgesamt fühlt sich jede Bewegung und Animation äußerst flüssig an, was ich von einem FromSoftware-Titel auch erwartet habe.

Gestaltet sind die abwechslungsreichen Gebiete der japanischen Samurai-Welt in Form einer mit dem Spielfortschritt wachsenden Open World. Zwar sind die Gegenden immer noch sehr klein im Vergleich zu Elden Ring, aber das kam ja auch Jahre später heraus und hat einen anderen Gameplay-Fokus. Sehr gut haben mir die sich mit der Geschichte verändernden Teile der Karte gefallen, wenn zum Beispiel eine Festung angegriffen wird und plötzlich die vorher besuchten Orte in Flammen stehen. Das wirkt extra betörend auf die Augen, wenn man mit HDR und Ultrawide-Auflösung spielt!

Ein Wermutstropfen war der absurd schwere Endbosskampf, der in keinem Verhältnis zu allen anderen Gegnern steht. Zu dem Zeitpunkt hatte ich schon alle bis auf 3 optionale Bosse erlegt, war den heftigen Kombos aber trotzdem nicht gewachsen. Problematisch war während des gesamten Spiels auch die Knopfbelegung auf dem Controller, denn wie schon bei Elden Ring funktionieren meine Xbox-Elite-Schultertasten für Angriff/Kontern/Blocken manchmal erst nach mehrmaligem Drücken. Nein, das ist keine Ausrede für fehlenden Skill, und geworfen habe ich den Controller auch nicht, auch wenn manchmal der Wunsch dazu aufkam.

Immerhin ist es jedes Mal ein richtig meddlgeiles Gefühl gewesen, einen bockschweren Boss endlich besiegt zu haben!

Achievements: 70 %

I've been a big fan of the Souls games since Demon's and I think this may be my absolute favorite.

I appreciated how different Sekiro was from its brothers. By Dark Souls 3 I felt that Dark Souls was still a fun franchise but one that was bereft of innovation or surprises. Dark Souls 3 seemed especially cynical with its reliance on callbacks to the original and its increased focus on difficulty in the wrong way (I felt there were too many "gotcha" moments in the level design, turning everything into a gauntlet of ambushes and cheap enemies). Sekiro feels like it takes a lot of inspiration from Bloodborne while trimming some of the fat and integrating some elements to make the game play smoother (thank god this game uses Estus like healing).

The first thing that strikes you is the stealth elements and level design. The levels are very vertical thanks to the grappling hook. Even though it's a secondary mechanic stealth is actually really integrated well into this game. The ability to sneak past groups of enemies makes backtracking and exploring easier. Being able to thin out a huge group of enemies is extremely valuable as multi man combat in this game can be incredibly difficult as most of your offensive options are 1 v 1. The stealthy path often leads to treasure or a deathblow against a miniboss. The stealth itself reminds me a lot of Tenchu - it's extremely generous especially once you upgrade your stealth skills to max. I could see the game being made three times as frustrating if the enemies were more aware, and I appreciate that they didn't take that path.

The combat in this game is stellar. The posture system is awesome and deflecting attacks feels good. This could be one criticism against this game: there is simply no way to play it without learning to deflect. I couldn't imagine trying to play this any other way. This game does have a reputation for being the most difficult, but honestly if you engage (read smash your head against) the deflect system and learn it then it's not too difficult (hardest game still goes to Bloodborne to me, which I quit out of frustration). The game feels pretty generous with it's deflection timing and it requires more knowing enemy patterns instead of frame level precision. The game seems to understand this and I found that outside of every major boss fight there was a resurrection point right outside it to make it easy to retry bosses over and over.

Even though your options are limited it's good that the option you have is a hell of a lot of fun. Deflecting just feels so good. It feels amazing to get washed by Genichiro 300 times and then on 301st, everything just clicks and suddenly you clean the boss without even taking a hit. It's extremely thrilling and rewarding to use.

I enjoyed the music and story enough. Outside of a few themes I've never been huge into the Souls soundtracks, but I found this one competent. I've seen some criticism of the story but I've never been a person who cries reading item descriptions for boots and rings so take with that what you will.

I didn't have any issues with the dragonrot system. Maybe I just got lucky, but even though I died literally hundreds of times (that Genichiro story is real) it never impeded anything going on with my game. Eventually you will find merchants who sell dragonblood droplets that can cure it and I always seemed to have some in stock whenever it spread. Even if characters had died I never noticed it infecting anyone who seemed important, and the game has a place where you can purchase "lost" items from merchants.

This game is simply amazing and so much fun to play and get good at. The boss fights were all amazing and I really appreciated how distinct it feels from the rest of the Souls games.

My personal favourite from the FROMSOFTWARE catalogue so far. It's a divisive title definitely, and that stems mostly from how incredibly INCREDIBLY unforgiving this game is.

With how Souls games are usually gauged on difficulty, there's a certain leeway in how you can approach something, maybe you can use a different weapon, level up to get better stats, or even call friends to make it an easy fight. Not in this game.

I think this is the only game where the attage of 'getting good' truly has to be ingrained if you want to progress. There is no other way to finish, master, and enjoy this game unless you spend hours and hours of your time playing frustrated and angry with how much you are not good enough yet.

But over that horizon of disappointment lies true enjoyment. I must admit that with how unrelenting this game WANTS you to play how it wants you to play it, it can seem too linear and stubborn.

That type of game isnt always for everyone, and that's fine.

But this is the only game after Super Hexagon that have given me that feeling of sereneness.

I still have yet to finish FROMSOFT's mainstream catalogue of souls games (and coming up Armored Core VI), but I think this game is going to be hard to dethrone in my eyes.

Holy shit i finally beat it....

I first bought this game a little less than a year ago because i thought it looked so cool and loved samurai things and dark souls so this is actually the only game i bought at like full price 60$ because it just wouldn't go on sale when i wanted it so when i finally got it i think actually with my first or second paycheck i was so excited and just couldn't stop playing it and put like 20 hours into it then i got to the guardian ape.... and people that played this game know how much of a bitch this boss is because i probably spent like 10 hours on this boss and still couldn't beat it and kinda lost interested in the game now cut to a couple of months later when i started gaining interest in this game again, so i booted it up and realised that i forgot almost everything so i did what any sane person would do and restarted the game and i kinda blasted through it then mid way through i kinda lost interest again and stopped then a week ago i saw a close friend of mine play it and realised: damn i should probably finish it so i continued it, got to the guardian ape boss fight and it probably took like 5 hours but i finally beat it then i ofcourse had a lot of trouble with some other bosses but never really at that level then yesterday i finally got to the final boss and it took me from what i calculated almost 8 hours to beat that was like half an hour ago and holy shit im still kinda shaking, i finally beat it. I don't really know how to rate or review games because they are so complicated they are not as easy to rate as lets say films which are much more focused experiences and have much easier criteria for me and i just review films more then games (you can find my reviews on my letterboxd on my profile) so yeah i love this game but also had problems with it but at the end of the day when i look back on it i loved it and think it's one of the greatest games of all time.

Eu realmente gostei MUITO desse jogo, tudo nele foi incrível, a história, o gráfico, a ambientação, a trilha sonora e etc foram brabos demais

Foi o meu segundo souls like zerado e um dos melhores jogos com esse tema.

O combate é o meu favorito da from software, BRABO DEMAIS!