Death of a Shadow
There are two fights in this game, both against the same enemy, that I believe perfectly encapsulate the things I find myself loving with a burning passion and the worst parts of the entire experience respectively; one is a frenetic ‘’you die if you stay still’’ challenge that acts as the perfect exam for jumping and dodging, a movement test if you will, and it does that while creating an incredibly fun encounter that makes your heart race in a pretty simple but appropriate arena, and just when you think it’s over, it surprises you with a brand new set of moves that dive you the perfect chance to make your parry and guard skills shine as well as use what you may have learned about spacing in the last phase. It’s an unexpected yet perfect fight which the game had been quietly building up through its mechanics and the area that you traversed to get to it… And then the second time around you randomly encounter in a much more cramped, less interesting arena where the camera really likes to go to the great beyond —more than usual I mean — and I has NO new moves and it doesn’t get interesting in any way, in fact it’s second phase is fighting another enemy with the moves that it had at first at the same time.
It may sound like it has the potential to be a cool fight, and maybe it does.
In practice it just isn’t.
Some of the faults of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice come from the fact, despite playing and functioning in entirely different ways, it never breaks is ties with the Souls series. The enemy AI behavior and camera are essentially the same, and if the latter was already a point of contention in the best of cases and the reason many stopped playing in previous games, in here shit is fucked up. This is not a camera that was designed for encounters this hectic nor for a combat so fast paced, and even if most of time works, when it doesn’t it feels like an entire enemy of its own; it’s not weird to get backed into a corner when fighting some bosses or losing sight of a really big one in the open field, and if that happens then prepare to pray to every singular member of the FromSoft team, ‘cause the chance of you getting out of that situation without a giant slash across your entire body is pretty damn low. It is not a constant, but it happens way to many times for it to not be a pretty big issue, and the amount of times I’ve NEARLY lost entire fights because of it is a horror story in itself. Basically what I’m trying to say is, if you see a mini-boss in a rectangular arena,RUN.
Regarding the AI tho… maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but I want to make clear that when it comes to one-to-one combat, this game excels in so many ways that if I tried to explain it this review would be way longer than it probably is going to be already. It’s an exciting and terrifying dance where the enemy may decide the beat, but you are the one taking steps, and fights flow like water down the stream… but Sekiro isn’t entirely a combat focused game. Stealth makes up a huge portion of the game and there is no limit to the amount of options, paths and strategies you can take, and it’s pretty fun!.. except that it really doesn’t feel like it flows as well. The AI is extremely rudimentary, and enemies can be in three different states: clueless, on alert and on battle; they are predictable as they are completely impossible to understand, they always act and reset to their original position even if you killed half of the camp you are in, which kills a bit of the tension when you are always more mobile than any of them, so going away and returning is a constant safe option that never really punishes you aside of enemies getting their health back (which doesn’t really matter for non-bosses since enemies die in one hit if you mortal-strike them) and it sometimes feels like getting spotted is a total gamble that depends on some weird-ass enemy placement or just plain inconsistency. It feels oddly clunky, and granted, it only feels like that when you do something wrong, but I also really think that a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle more complex AI and things like more traps and more persistent enemies would have made it far more punishing but satisfying. One thing it does help is that because enemies act INCREDIBLY aggressive, fighting more than one rando at a time feels like actual hell, so going in sword blazing is never a feasible option, and that is a smart way to encourage getting rid of enemies individually… except that sometimes the game does force you to fight groups of enemies directly and it’s the sloppiest most unfun thing ever but you know what I think I’m gonna shut up now…
The artificiality is only reinforced by how the actual characters themselves act in big moments, you may be in the middle of a fight or an entire castle is being conquered right as you speak, doesn’t matter, even characters withing the building won’ say a word about… odd is the word I can really think of for it, it’s just too odd…
It really doesn’t help that quite a few of the optional content feels more like a chore. Getting exp and money for the items can be a really big time consuming process near the end, but I guess that comes in the package with it having RPG elements, and said elements are indeed pretty good so I can look past that. But fighting the Headless, doing some of the more impossibly obtuse quests and getting all of the prosthetics upgrades however, that’s a bit harder to ignore… they are amazing parts of the game contextually, but actually getting them is a huge investment that can be the most mind-numbing thing ever, even if the reward itself is more often than not worth it.
And funny that I mention the obtusity of the quests, ‘cause that reminds me of the narrative… oh, the narrative…
Seems you’ve grown… if just a little
I can’t recall being so torn about a story as I am on Sekiro’s, in big part because I actually fucking love it so much. The land of Ashina, its darkest of catacombs and its highest of peaks, is is a world that made me wish to be able to learn more about it even after spending nearly 30 hours on it. Is a deeply rich, highly folklore inspired tale of mysteries and tragedies, of smallest victories and massive losses, and its cast makes a huge part of that. Meeting the Sculptor and seeing the clear but deeply hidden sadness it hides made me immediately invested, and from them it never stopped the pace. The weird-ass merchants you meet along the way, the impossible to not love allies—like Emma, Kotaro or the Divine Child — and every single one of the major foes you fight. Some don’t even need to say a word, their design and animations already tell a story on its own, confirmed by some of the items you can fins, but generally, it speaks and if you can drink sake with them, it’s a character worth meeting… but at the center of it all, there’s a Shinobi.
The protagonist isn’t a mere unnamed assassin, nor is it a representation of us as players. The main character of this story is Wolf. It is Sekiro… one problem tho: most of the time he isn’t really a character.
By that I don’t mean that ‘’Oh he doesn’t speak much so he’s barebones xdddddd’’ no, that’s actually an endearing trait of his that I loved each time a character pointed out, it humanizes him and levels him down from what otherwise would be an unstoppable killing machine, but aside from that, the only thing I can say for sure about Wolf is that… he’s…. loyal to Kuro, I guess?... oh wait no, nevermind, there’s an ending where you can betray everyone including him HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH?????!
Wolf gets completely screwed over by the fact he’s the main character of game with a couple different options and that lets you kills some NPCs, so we get this conflict where we get a clear version of the character in a scattered cinematics and the intro, but it never gets explored meaningfully and it can all feel screwed if you just acted a bit whacky and decided to sometimes be the purest angel imaginable or a complete psychopath at the flip of a switch. Which it may not be as big of a deal as making it out to be, Sekiro isn’t an expansive, dialogue reach RPG in the first place, but there are times where the game does really try do some cool-ass stuff. I made fun of it before for the sake of a joke, but the decision you can make of either defining your father, the Owl, or joining him is incredibly compelling both ways, one that makes perfect sense depending on how you view Sekiro and a surpringly super meaningful choice, but in contrast to that we get thing like fighting the Owl two times, both fights amazing and some of my favorites in the entire game mind you, but never achieve an ounce of the impact they could have simply because Wolf is one stoic bastard and we had only really seen the Owl like… one time before the fight.
Characters like Isshin, Emma and the Sculptor seem to bounce well of Wolf, but a ton of the more interesting moments are ones you have to go out of your way to reach, and they don’t feel really that personal; it’s just feels like the gang telling you stuff that it’s REALLY interesting, but it gets speed up or brushed aside, and sometimes just an excuse for a fight that you don’t even begin to comprehend it until it’s over (they really did my guy the Sculptor dirty, man…) so the only really meaningful collection between characters we have is the duo of Wolf and Master Kuro… which to be fair is my favorite of the game.
Kuro is a super curious spin on a immortal character, especially coming from FromSoftware’s previous work, and his showings of Kindness for Wolf like cooking rice balls and Wolf’s diligence to protect him felt like a curious Father-Son bonding moments I wasn’t expecting to see, and felt worth hunting for and seeing. I’m glad that bond that gets stronger as the game goes is the one that moves the game, because I feel it’s a genuine moment of true direct narrative being perfectly showcased and not just another wall of text you read after killing a boss. I just wish that for once we got the full narrative and more character driven-moments, but at least what is there, what it’s for us to see and play, it’s excellent…
…huh…
... it’s funny… that’s a statement that goes for the rest of the game too…
Hesitation is Defeat
Three words from the mouth of an old legend.
I didn’t know it when I first heard them, but those three words were going to echo in my mind from then and onwards, and even before… I just didn’t understand them yet.
The highs of Sekiro are so high I could swear they broke my goddamn roof. This is not a game about ‘’getting it’’, it’s about understanding it. It takes a while for sure, there’s a reason the game makes a fight for you to lose and one of the major mechanics is having more than one life. Experimentation and learning is the backbone of the game, both in the long term and in the moment while a fight to the death, but it’s not only through battling that you’ll gain experience.
You are made for this world, even if it’s hellbent to screw you; Wolf’s mobility and arsenal is simple, but the amount of possibilities opened up by the zones and how the enemies act doesn’t make it binary, in fact quite the opposite; your mind and reflexes are constantly tested, you need to think on your toes while you approach it slowly, and then you’ll maybe be able to gain an advantage and a better view of the area or a perspective on a fight. Whichever the case, it feels like silk, Wolf has always a bit of delay when starting its actions (except for blocking, that’s instant no matter what) but it’s constantly delayed, and when you start blasting or jumping or grappling-hooking, the only think that’ll be able to stop you will be a sneaky enemy or a mistake of your on. Few things feel as satisfactory as breaking an enemy’s posture or getting the drop on a mini-boss, fin fact, no… none really compares, nor that I can think of at least.
When everything is going right, the combat of Sekiro is king of the accursed universe. I described it before as a dance, but that does for every little action, every decision like taking an item or using a prothesis in the right time is just another brand-new way to go around this deadly waltz, avoiding fear and poison, sometimes going even underwater, it doesn’t matter, it always feels satisfying, you are always in control, you just have to not let them take it away from you.
I complimented Ashina before, but aside from looking astonishing, the lay out of every single zone that encompasses the kingdom is jaw dropping. Not that it’s just ‘’well designed’’, it’s that I cannot think of a single room that feels out of place or badly put together, let alone an area. It never feels unnatural, and in the best of cases I wished I could be transported right into them, the build up in each of them and the surprises they hold a treat to be experience. The Divine Kingdom, Ashina Castle and Senpo Temple are not just my favorite areas in the game, they are some of my favorite areas in ANY game, FromSoft even managed to pull off a Fores Fog and Poison Swamp and make them amazing! The bastards actually did it!
They are only enriched by the small or most impressive moments: a knight from a far away land walking out of a corner, a soothing melody hiding the dark truth of an old village, a small hill full of pinwheels that act as a reminder of a dark truth yet to be known… or just a dude falling at full speed onto you while screaming his lungs out.
I wanted to make special mention to the Great Shinobi Owl fight, I mentioned before it was great, but the reason why I think that is that it grounds this world even more; a boss that uses cheap unexpected tricks unpredictable in every way and that even uses your tactics against you… it’s like fighting a mirror, which not only tells a bit of the relationship both characters have more than any dialogue, it feels so satisfying to, after facing warriors of thunder and mist, after looking into the eyes of beast and hiding from giant gods, have a fight where everything you know about yourself and the enemies you have battled till now is tested… a fight where you cannot hesitate.
This review could have been all about talking about the boss encounters, and you know, maybe that’s a write-up for another time, but for now I can only state the obvious. Sekiro’s combat is joy, it’s stress, it’s a learning process, from beginning to the very last sword slash, even at it’s worst, 90% of my deaths were because I doubted, because I didn’t do a Mikiri counter or broke my guard, those were deaths that I felt responsible for… but with abilities to use and tricks to employ, you’ll always have at least another chance…
Also, the other 10% was at Demon of Hatred seriously FUCK that boss, it isn’t even the one I died the most to (I think) and I still despise it, get back your annoying ass to Devil May Cry 2!
Return
I tried Sekiro for the first time back in 2020. You can imagine it didn’t go so well.
4 years later I still see the problems that I could feel back then, and the fact most of that not-so-good content is optional doesn’t really make it more justified, and things like the camera are just undefendable… but, and this may seem rich coming from the guy spent the entire first 1000 words talking about everything wrong with the game… I still adore Sekiro. It’s flaws do get in the way of me loving it like so many others di, but after 4 years, being rapped by its world and visuals, fascinated by it’s combat and celebrating each victory like no other, excited to discover and learn even more… and to end up victorious in the end, that’s a feeling I don’t think a game will make me feel again, at least not for a long time.
The last of Ashina are unique, special, and so are the challenges it holds… challenges I surpassed, even when I really didn’t think I do, ‘cause for every 20 deaths at some random Mini Boss in the early game, there’s a Genichiro defeat at the fourth try. Falling again and again, and the in the end to not hesitate… that’s what Sekiro is about.
And when it teaches it well, it’s wonderful.
There are two fights in this game, both against the same enemy, that I believe perfectly encapsulate the things I find myself loving with a burning passion and the worst parts of the entire experience respectively; one is a frenetic ‘’you die if you stay still’’ challenge that acts as the perfect exam for jumping and dodging, a movement test if you will, and it does that while creating an incredibly fun encounter that makes your heart race in a pretty simple but appropriate arena, and just when you think it’s over, it surprises you with a brand new set of moves that dive you the perfect chance to make your parry and guard skills shine as well as use what you may have learned about spacing in the last phase. It’s an unexpected yet perfect fight which the game had been quietly building up through its mechanics and the area that you traversed to get to it… And then the second time around you randomly encounter in a much more cramped, less interesting arena where the camera really likes to go to the great beyond —more than usual I mean — and I has NO new moves and it doesn’t get interesting in any way, in fact it’s second phase is fighting another enemy with the moves that it had at first at the same time.
It may sound like it has the potential to be a cool fight, and maybe it does.
In practice it just isn’t.
Some of the faults of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice come from the fact, despite playing and functioning in entirely different ways, it never breaks is ties with the Souls series. The enemy AI behavior and camera are essentially the same, and if the latter was already a point of contention in the best of cases and the reason many stopped playing in previous games, in here shit is fucked up. This is not a camera that was designed for encounters this hectic nor for a combat so fast paced, and even if most of time works, when it doesn’t it feels like an entire enemy of its own; it’s not weird to get backed into a corner when fighting some bosses or losing sight of a really big one in the open field, and if that happens then prepare to pray to every singular member of the FromSoft team, ‘cause the chance of you getting out of that situation without a giant slash across your entire body is pretty damn low. It is not a constant, but it happens way to many times for it to not be a pretty big issue, and the amount of times I’ve NEARLY lost entire fights because of it is a horror story in itself. Basically what I’m trying to say is, if you see a mini-boss in a rectangular arena,RUN.
Regarding the AI tho… maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, but I want to make clear that when it comes to one-to-one combat, this game excels in so many ways that if I tried to explain it this review would be way longer than it probably is going to be already. It’s an exciting and terrifying dance where the enemy may decide the beat, but you are the one taking steps, and fights flow like water down the stream… but Sekiro isn’t entirely a combat focused game. Stealth makes up a huge portion of the game and there is no limit to the amount of options, paths and strategies you can take, and it’s pretty fun!.. except that it really doesn’t feel like it flows as well. The AI is extremely rudimentary, and enemies can be in three different states: clueless, on alert and on battle; they are predictable as they are completely impossible to understand, they always act and reset to their original position even if you killed half of the camp you are in, which kills a bit of the tension when you are always more mobile than any of them, so going away and returning is a constant safe option that never really punishes you aside of enemies getting their health back (which doesn’t really matter for non-bosses since enemies die in one hit if you mortal-strike them) and it sometimes feels like getting spotted is a total gamble that depends on some weird-ass enemy placement or just plain inconsistency. It feels oddly clunky, and granted, it only feels like that when you do something wrong, but I also really think that a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle more complex AI and things like more traps and more persistent enemies would have made it far more punishing but satisfying. One thing it does help is that because enemies act INCREDIBLY aggressive, fighting more than one rando at a time feels like actual hell, so going in sword blazing is never a feasible option, and that is a smart way to encourage getting rid of enemies individually… except that sometimes the game does force you to fight groups of enemies directly and it’s the sloppiest most unfun thing ever but you know what I think I’m gonna shut up now…
The artificiality is only reinforced by how the actual characters themselves act in big moments, you may be in the middle of a fight or an entire castle is being conquered right as you speak, doesn’t matter, even characters withing the building won’ say a word about… odd is the word I can really think of for it, it’s just too odd…
It really doesn’t help that quite a few of the optional content feels more like a chore. Getting exp and money for the items can be a really big time consuming process near the end, but I guess that comes in the package with it having RPG elements, and said elements are indeed pretty good so I can look past that. But fighting the Headless, doing some of the more impossibly obtuse quests and getting all of the prosthetics upgrades however, that’s a bit harder to ignore… they are amazing parts of the game contextually, but actually getting them is a huge investment that can be the most mind-numbing thing ever, even if the reward itself is more often than not worth it.
And funny that I mention the obtusity of the quests, ‘cause that reminds me of the narrative… oh, the narrative…
Seems you’ve grown… if just a little
I can’t recall being so torn about a story as I am on Sekiro’s, in big part because I actually fucking love it so much. The land of Ashina, its darkest of catacombs and its highest of peaks, is is a world that made me wish to be able to learn more about it even after spending nearly 30 hours on it. Is a deeply rich, highly folklore inspired tale of mysteries and tragedies, of smallest victories and massive losses, and its cast makes a huge part of that. Meeting the Sculptor and seeing the clear but deeply hidden sadness it hides made me immediately invested, and from them it never stopped the pace. The weird-ass merchants you meet along the way, the impossible to not love allies—like Emma, Kotaro or the Divine Child — and every single one of the major foes you fight. Some don’t even need to say a word, their design and animations already tell a story on its own, confirmed by some of the items you can fins, but generally, it speaks and if you can drink sake with them, it’s a character worth meeting… but at the center of it all, there’s a Shinobi.
The protagonist isn’t a mere unnamed assassin, nor is it a representation of us as players. The main character of this story is Wolf. It is Sekiro… one problem tho: most of the time he isn’t really a character.
By that I don’t mean that ‘’Oh he doesn’t speak much so he’s barebones xdddddd’’ no, that’s actually an endearing trait of his that I loved each time a character pointed out, it humanizes him and levels him down from what otherwise would be an unstoppable killing machine, but aside from that, the only thing I can say for sure about Wolf is that… he’s…. loyal to Kuro, I guess?... oh wait no, nevermind, there’s an ending where you can betray everyone including him HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH?????!
Wolf gets completely screwed over by the fact he’s the main character of game with a couple different options and that lets you kills some NPCs, so we get this conflict where we get a clear version of the character in a scattered cinematics and the intro, but it never gets explored meaningfully and it can all feel screwed if you just acted a bit whacky and decided to sometimes be the purest angel imaginable or a complete psychopath at the flip of a switch. Which it may not be as big of a deal as making it out to be, Sekiro isn’t an expansive, dialogue reach RPG in the first place, but there are times where the game does really try do some cool-ass stuff. I made fun of it before for the sake of a joke, but the decision you can make of either defining your father, the Owl, or joining him is incredibly compelling both ways, one that makes perfect sense depending on how you view Sekiro and a surpringly super meaningful choice, but in contrast to that we get thing like fighting the Owl two times, both fights amazing and some of my favorites in the entire game mind you, but never achieve an ounce of the impact they could have simply because Wolf is one stoic bastard and we had only really seen the Owl like… one time before the fight.
Characters like Isshin, Emma and the Sculptor seem to bounce well of Wolf, but a ton of the more interesting moments are ones you have to go out of your way to reach, and they don’t feel really that personal; it’s just feels like the gang telling you stuff that it’s REALLY interesting, but it gets speed up or brushed aside, and sometimes just an excuse for a fight that you don’t even begin to comprehend it until it’s over (they really did my guy the Sculptor dirty, man…) so the only really meaningful collection between characters we have is the duo of Wolf and Master Kuro… which to be fair is my favorite of the game.
Kuro is a super curious spin on a immortal character, especially coming from FromSoftware’s previous work, and his showings of Kindness for Wolf like cooking rice balls and Wolf’s diligence to protect him felt like a curious Father-Son bonding moments I wasn’t expecting to see, and felt worth hunting for and seeing. I’m glad that bond that gets stronger as the game goes is the one that moves the game, because I feel it’s a genuine moment of true direct narrative being perfectly showcased and not just another wall of text you read after killing a boss. I just wish that for once we got the full narrative and more character driven-moments, but at least what is there, what it’s for us to see and play, it’s excellent…
…huh…
... it’s funny… that’s a statement that goes for the rest of the game too…
Hesitation is Defeat
Three words from the mouth of an old legend.
I didn’t know it when I first heard them, but those three words were going to echo in my mind from then and onwards, and even before… I just didn’t understand them yet.
The highs of Sekiro are so high I could swear they broke my goddamn roof. This is not a game about ‘’getting it’’, it’s about understanding it. It takes a while for sure, there’s a reason the game makes a fight for you to lose and one of the major mechanics is having more than one life. Experimentation and learning is the backbone of the game, both in the long term and in the moment while a fight to the death, but it’s not only through battling that you’ll gain experience.
You are made for this world, even if it’s hellbent to screw you; Wolf’s mobility and arsenal is simple, but the amount of possibilities opened up by the zones and how the enemies act doesn’t make it binary, in fact quite the opposite; your mind and reflexes are constantly tested, you need to think on your toes while you approach it slowly, and then you’ll maybe be able to gain an advantage and a better view of the area or a perspective on a fight. Whichever the case, it feels like silk, Wolf has always a bit of delay when starting its actions (except for blocking, that’s instant no matter what) but it’s constantly delayed, and when you start blasting or jumping or grappling-hooking, the only think that’ll be able to stop you will be a sneaky enemy or a mistake of your on. Few things feel as satisfactory as breaking an enemy’s posture or getting the drop on a mini-boss, fin fact, no… none really compares, nor that I can think of at least.
When everything is going right, the combat of Sekiro is king of the accursed universe. I described it before as a dance, but that does for every little action, every decision like taking an item or using a prothesis in the right time is just another brand-new way to go around this deadly waltz, avoiding fear and poison, sometimes going even underwater, it doesn’t matter, it always feels satisfying, you are always in control, you just have to not let them take it away from you.
I complimented Ashina before, but aside from looking astonishing, the lay out of every single zone that encompasses the kingdom is jaw dropping. Not that it’s just ‘’well designed’’, it’s that I cannot think of a single room that feels out of place or badly put together, let alone an area. It never feels unnatural, and in the best of cases I wished I could be transported right into them, the build up in each of them and the surprises they hold a treat to be experience. The Divine Kingdom, Ashina Castle and Senpo Temple are not just my favorite areas in the game, they are some of my favorite areas in ANY game, FromSoft even managed to pull off a Fores Fog and Poison Swamp and make them amazing! The bastards actually did it!
They are only enriched by the small or most impressive moments: a knight from a far away land walking out of a corner, a soothing melody hiding the dark truth of an old village, a small hill full of pinwheels that act as a reminder of a dark truth yet to be known… or just a dude falling at full speed onto you while screaming his lungs out.
I wanted to make special mention to the Great Shinobi Owl fight, I mentioned before it was great, but the reason why I think that is that it grounds this world even more; a boss that uses cheap unexpected tricks unpredictable in every way and that even uses your tactics against you… it’s like fighting a mirror, which not only tells a bit of the relationship both characters have more than any dialogue, it feels so satisfying to, after facing warriors of thunder and mist, after looking into the eyes of beast and hiding from giant gods, have a fight where everything you know about yourself and the enemies you have battled till now is tested… a fight where you cannot hesitate.
This review could have been all about talking about the boss encounters, and you know, maybe that’s a write-up for another time, but for now I can only state the obvious. Sekiro’s combat is joy, it’s stress, it’s a learning process, from beginning to the very last sword slash, even at it’s worst, 90% of my deaths were because I doubted, because I didn’t do a Mikiri counter or broke my guard, those were deaths that I felt responsible for… but with abilities to use and tricks to employ, you’ll always have at least another chance…
Also, the other 10% was at Demon of Hatred seriously FUCK that boss, it isn’t even the one I died the most to (I think) and I still despise it, get back your annoying ass to Devil May Cry 2!
Return
I tried Sekiro for the first time back in 2020. You can imagine it didn’t go so well.
4 years later I still see the problems that I could feel back then, and the fact most of that not-so-good content is optional doesn’t really make it more justified, and things like the camera are just undefendable… but, and this may seem rich coming from the guy spent the entire first 1000 words talking about everything wrong with the game… I still adore Sekiro. It’s flaws do get in the way of me loving it like so many others di, but after 4 years, being rapped by its world and visuals, fascinated by it’s combat and celebrating each victory like no other, excited to discover and learn even more… and to end up victorious in the end, that’s a feeling I don’t think a game will make me feel again, at least not for a long time.
The last of Ashina are unique, special, and so are the challenges it holds… challenges I surpassed, even when I really didn’t think I do, ‘cause for every 20 deaths at some random Mini Boss in the early game, there’s a Genichiro defeat at the fourth try. Falling again and again, and the in the end to not hesitate… that’s what Sekiro is about.
And when it teaches it well, it’s wonderful.