Man, I really wanted to like this game more than I did.

The game just felt monotonous and unsatisfying to me. I started off with a lot of good will towards the game, but my mood quickly soured in my second or third play session when the penny dropped about the gameplay loop: it's three dungeons of four three-phase enemy gauntlets that unlock a big gauntlet to a mediocre boss with set patterns. I never want to see another enemy gauntlet in my life after playing this game.

Aside from an NPC that upgrades your damage, dexterity etc., there is no visible sense of progression or growth in this game. Despite finding most collectibles in this run, I only found one quarter of one health upgrade and three quarters of a magic upgrade. Yeah you get two new magic weapons, but you still have to aim them and they all have the same wind-up time, so you just end up seeing different colour magic on the screen. No visible or tangible feelings of progress, combined with the entire game following the same gameplay loop, just felt so damn unsatisfying.

I keep hovering between 2.5 and 3/5, but I've decided on 2.5 for the simple fact that the deliberate choices made in the creation of this game have made me not want to play another game made by the creators. Cycling through the indie games I've played recently, I want to play more from the Pseudoregalia dev, I want to play more from the FAITH dev, I want to play more from the DREDGE devs, I don't want to play more from the devs of this game.

At least it looks cute and the music is great.

You ever look at something and think 'No this is fine, I'M the problem'? For years, this was me with Sekiro.

I'm trying not to get into 'my life story in a recipe' territory, but I dropped this game three times before this successful fourth attempt. My puny dex brain struggled with sweeps punishing my dodges, I struggled to work the vertical axis into my gameplay, and I suck at parrying and am the biggest choke artist you'll ever meet. I couldn't even get past minibosses.

After playing Elden Ring, a part of me wondered if I would be better at the vertical aspect of the game. I'm so thankful for this little theory because this fourth attempt was now way more successful. I still sucked at parrying, but Rome wasn't built in a day.

I went way off the beaten path before returning to the main objectives and had a blast. I know there's a certain boss people say will teach you parrying, but I spent a day or two learning how to parry from an optional sideboss. I think I much preferred doing this as I felt less pressure knowing how bad I sucked wasn't keeping me from progressing the game, I was choosing to do this.

I would go as far as to say that Sekiro has made me a better and more confident gamer. I've beaten some hard ass bosses and super bosses in games, but I think the knowledge, confidence and composure you need to get far in Sekiro is one of a kind. This game made me feel good because the game was communicating to me that I was good.

I have some minor gripes with the game but I think they're far too subjective to detract from the quality of it. For example, I personally hated a series of bosses because I felt it was a dumb tonal shift from the shinobi fantasy I was enjoying, but I've heard I'm in the minority here so I'll take that L. I'm also sad that we didn't get more content for at least two characters because they sounded so damn cool, but I'd feel like a rat reducing the score because their writing was too good. Plus part of me wonders how influential Daddy Activision was in that decision.

I think the funniest compliment I can give this game is that I simply didn't approach it the way I usually approach Fromsoft games. I'm not afraid to read guides, find important items, make sure I have the good shit etc. I ended up missing a bunch of stuff (like the umbrella) simply because I didn't want to pause the game and read, I just wanted to keep playing. Another playthrough maybe!

Fromsoft cooked, holy shit. I'm so glad I could get over my dumb brain worms.