FromSoftware's games are know for their difficulty and Sekiro is taken by most as the hardest. Difficulty is something really subjective and there are games you can say are unfair. Maybe they give you an objective and not enough resources, they may ask for precision in your gameplay but not the best tools for that.

When I played this game for the first time, sometimes I thought things like "I will never get past this". When this happened in other games I would try to find a way to cheese the fight or drop the game altogether. It's a skill issue but most of those times I could not figure out the answer. Maybe my build is bad, maybe I'm underleveled or I just don't know how to respond to something.

But in Sekiro I always knew what I was doing wrong. I never could put the blame on the game so I had to look inwards. Grind for exp can only help for some extent, the game doesn’t have different builds and only one weapon so the only answer is to get good.

“Git gud” is something the soulslike players usually say when they want to troll or they don’t have a answer to your problem, just keep banging your head in the wall until it works. But Sekiro takes this to the purest form, there’s no magic answer, you can exploit some tools but you won’t win using only that. You have your sword and your parry, learn how to use it.

It’s like a drug, the first time you fight a boss it’s a thrill to learn the patterns, figure the timing and even if you have everything memorized, it still feels good. Few games I got the urge to be good at it and really pursuit it. Beating the final boss on NG+3 charmless and with the demon bell was something I will never forget. I beat that same boss 2 times before, but I was sloppy, I stumbled my way through victory. Now one error and I was dead, I had to be perfect.

“Hesitation is defeat” is a mantra that encapsules everything Sekiro is. The game is hard but they gave you the tools and the answer, if you strive to understand your errors and keep pushing forward you can do anything.

It took me a long time to finish this game and it has been more than a week since I finished it. What kept me from writing this review is having a clear image of what I want to write. But I feel like "I need to" so here we are.

Is it the best game in the franchise so far? Probably so. The puzzles are a lot more fun and "easy" than the previous games. More logic based and less math bs and goofy ahh moving blocks. The story is also a lot more interesting than ever and the first minutes really pulls you in.

Almost everything here feels like a upgrade from previous entries and I see why this is a fan favorite. But I feel like I had more fun in the older ones, I had a fire that made me want to solve puzzles every free time I had and I couldn't stop thinking about them even when I was working.

I realized I was getting burnout when I was through 1/3 of the game and slowed my pace, but still forced a little to play every now and then and picked up the pace at the end. I think that I expected too much about this game and while it's really good, it wasn't as good as I expected.

The game feels longer than it should be and more dragged on. The previous one when we hadn't a clear plot and were there just for the adventure it was easier to feel the moment. But here you want to know what happens next, you really want to know the mysteries and when this is being blocked by a lot of walking, talking and puzzles, that should be the most fun part of the game, it gave me a weird feeling.

I think it's the first time that a better plot had a worse effect on me? I don't know how to put this into words.

And while the story is good, the plot twist is dumb, really really dumb. Every Layton game must have a plot twist or the game collapses in itself, I think. Curious Village had a hard to believe twist because the technoloy feels out of place but you can accept it. Diabolical Box pushed the boundary of what is acceptacle by a lot but I still could forgive it. In Unwound Future I really couldn't, I had to throw every logic out of the window in a game where it's kinda the main thing.

I didn't talk about the minigames in previous reviews because almost every one of them are dumb and not fun. But I really love the Toy Car one, it's so good and made me happy to complete it without looking anything up. The same can't be said about the bird minigame. God how I hate parabolas.

Maybe it feels weird that I gave such a high rating on a game that I'm mostly bashing but I still feels it deserves it. Most of my impression is probably because of the burnout and my job taking a lot of my energy recently. But the reason I can end it in a high note is the ending.

Emotional trauma does wonders for someone's perspective. Seeing the stoic Hershel Layton breaking down at the end feels almost out of character but is so good, I feel like I can finally see him as human being and not a robot programmed to solve puzzles and being a gentleman. Luke going to the USA at the end also made me feel things.

But the thing that hits me the most is seeing the trailer for the recently announced New World of Steam. Where it pickups where Unwound Future left off when Luke promised us a great adventure. I'm not a old fan of the series but I can imagine what Layton fans felt. After 15 years finally the series is going forward. In a game about time travel it almost feels ironic.

Maybe I can feel something close to that when Capcom remember the Ace Attorney series was left in a cliffhanger. It has been 7 years, maybe I still have to wait double that.

My next move should be playing the prequel triology but I will give some time to that. I need to find that fire again. For now I will put my top hat down and await what the futures hold for me.

What has four legs in the morning and two legs in the afternoon?

That's right! It's the Layton games! The Curious Village crawled so that the Diabolical Box could run.

Almost every aspect of the prequel is improved on. The primary for me was the puzzles being more intertwined with the game progression and the mystery. It's less "this reminds me of a puzzle" or "prove me you are the real Layton" and more like you are solving problems to discover something or find a new lead. It's hard to explain but in the last game it almost feels like you are watching a movie but every 5 minutes a sudoku appears in the screen and you must solve it if you wanna keep watching.

It's a minor thing but I also like that the sprites aren't looking directly at my soul and face each other like they would in a conversation. The scenario are also a upgrade because you explore more scenarios than just a village. The Molentary Express is really elegant and gives me more of the London atmosphere, Dropstone is a charming bucolic village but where you spend the most time and is the most interesting location is the town of Folsense. The lights and the sense of decadence really sells it for me.

The mystery of the Elysian Box is also more intriguing than the Golden Apple and the narrative flows better. I still can't decide if I like or not the resolution but it works in the theme and the message. The Diabolical Box is a lot about greed, decadence and letting the past go.

The puzzles I feel that are also more fun this time, maybe because it seems to have less math and sliding boxes. For the chess puzzle, The Knight's Tour was a lot harder and more unfun than Too Many Queens and I couldn't solve Disappearing Act 6 by myself, but it was still nice.

I also want to talk a bit about Layton and Luke. They have a dinamic like Sherlock and Watson in a sense. Layton always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone but keep it to himself and it's almost like a hero in old stories, where he is a perfect being able to do everything. Luke is more naive and sometimes is almost like the voice of reason not buying some bs or being like "it's really the time for a puzzle now?". They are really good at being those archetypes but I wonder if there are more to them than this. In two games they have basically no character development and we don't see that many facets other than the regular one. I'm not saying that this is bad and it must change, it's just something that I would like to see being worked on in a interesting way.

I have high hopes for the next game because it seems to be a fan favourite and is the last main series game chronogically. Trials and Tribulation is the game that elevates Ace Attorney to a masterpiece level and it would be nice if the Unwound Future does the same for this franchise.