This review contains spoilers
Sekiro was not as similar to the average souls-like experience from From Software as I initially expected but I still had a lot of fun with it.
First of all, I want to say that the game is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was even more striking to me since I recently went through Dark Souls III and even if it's a beautiful game in its own right, it was a bit lacking in colour. So coming from this game to Sekiro was a real shock. The game is full of pretty and vivid colours and, as always with From Software, the environments were really well designed and had some breath-taking views. My favorite zone, in term of visuals, was Fountainhead Palace with its beautiful sakura trees and huge waterfalls all around the map. From Software never fails to deliver huge and gorgeous environment and it's especially true with this game.
Even though the game is beautiful, the real meat of the game comes from its gameplay. It took me a little while to get used to parrying instead of dodging like I usually do in Souls games, but after that it became really satisfying deflecting enemy attacks with almost perfect timing. Our main character has a moveset that I found just fast enough for me and more varied than I anticipated with all the prosthetic arm upgrades and combat arts you can unlock. Altough, I have to say that, since I missed one or two prosthetic arm during my playthrough, I was locked out of almost all of the upgrades in the prosthetic arm upgrade tree, which I found really annoying since I did not get to fully interact with the system. Other than that, gameplay was really solid and fun for the most part.
In terms of Bosses, the game has a pretty solid cast of main bosses, and a lot of mini bosses, with some of the latter being more annoying to fight than most. The last boss, Isshin, is easily the highlight of the game with how good and especially how difficult it is for the average player like me. Having to beat another boss right before him was really annoying for me though, because I was trying to learn Isshin's pattern and it felt like I was taken out of it when I had to fight Ganechiro before him every time. Ganechiro by himself and Owl were also some really fun and pretty challenging bosses that I enjoyed fighting. One boss that I ended up skipping was the Demon of hatred, even if I liked how it reminded me of Dark Souls, fighting him was a pain, he had way too much HP for my liking and he had 3 whole phases, thankfully he was optional. Almost every boss fight felt really fair and I really liked how it played a bit like a "dance" or even a rhythm game.
Story-wise, I was surprised by the fact that I could understand, at least a little, what was going on, unlike my average experience with Elden Ring and DS3. Story felt like it was a bit more at the forefront in this game and I quite liked it, the little pieces of lore I found were interesting and I enjoyed going through the main story.
Overall, Sekiro was a great experience and I'm glad I played through it.
First of all, I want to say that the game is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was even more striking to me since I recently went through Dark Souls III and even if it's a beautiful game in its own right, it was a bit lacking in colour. So coming from this game to Sekiro was a real shock. The game is full of pretty and vivid colours and, as always with From Software, the environments were really well designed and had some breath-taking views. My favorite zone, in term of visuals, was Fountainhead Palace with its beautiful sakura trees and huge waterfalls all around the map. From Software never fails to deliver huge and gorgeous environment and it's especially true with this game.
Even though the game is beautiful, the real meat of the game comes from its gameplay. It took me a little while to get used to parrying instead of dodging like I usually do in Souls games, but after that it became really satisfying deflecting enemy attacks with almost perfect timing. Our main character has a moveset that I found just fast enough for me and more varied than I anticipated with all the prosthetic arm upgrades and combat arts you can unlock. Altough, I have to say that, since I missed one or two prosthetic arm during my playthrough, I was locked out of almost all of the upgrades in the prosthetic arm upgrade tree, which I found really annoying since I did not get to fully interact with the system. Other than that, gameplay was really solid and fun for the most part.
In terms of Bosses, the game has a pretty solid cast of main bosses, and a lot of mini bosses, with some of the latter being more annoying to fight than most. The last boss, Isshin, is easily the highlight of the game with how good and especially how difficult it is for the average player like me. Having to beat another boss right before him was really annoying for me though, because I was trying to learn Isshin's pattern and it felt like I was taken out of it when I had to fight Ganechiro before him every time. Ganechiro by himself and Owl were also some really fun and pretty challenging bosses that I enjoyed fighting. One boss that I ended up skipping was the Demon of hatred, even if I liked how it reminded me of Dark Souls, fighting him was a pain, he had way too much HP for my liking and he had 3 whole phases, thankfully he was optional. Almost every boss fight felt really fair and I really liked how it played a bit like a "dance" or even a rhythm game.
Story-wise, I was surprised by the fact that I could understand, at least a little, what was going on, unlike my average experience with Elden Ring and DS3. Story felt like it was a bit more at the forefront in this game and I quite liked it, the little pieces of lore I found were interesting and I enjoyed going through the main story.
Overall, Sekiro was a great experience and I'm glad I played through it.