Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - The Bear and Badger

acemuzzy

I'm struggling to decide where to go. Not making much headache against the bosses I tried. Hmm.

Spoiler:

hylian_elf

Explore. Take on Snake Eyes maybe. Or go where holy woman talks about at castle entrance.

acemuzzy

Hmmm

Dinostar77

There are a few different methods to "cheese" LB muzzy if your interested. Just do a Google. I watched two different methods today, but I dont have the required upgrade for either.

Curtis

I killed LB with my own cheese on the 3rd attempt. Fuck Google and Youtube. The games mechanics are clearly designed to be manipulated. Thats Miyazaki.

acemuzzy

Yeah I've not tried enough yet to start googling!

JonB

Use whatever you need. YT has been a big help for me on a few occasions with this. I don't understand how people figure out these bosses so quickly. I'm usually just about getting to grips with their basic attacks after about 10 attempts, let alone working out exploits or when to use which tools.

Muzzy, I'd probably just get on and do LB at this stage. The power upgrade will help with everything further on.

acemuzzy

Yeah that's kinda my plan. Still not sure how hard she is, but I'm starting to get her number. Deflect deflect deflect.

JonB

I've decided I do need a break from this, especially now another game has arrived. I actually have difficulty switching off from these From games, which is testament to how interesting they are but also kind of stressful, so it's really a good idea anyway.

acemuzzy

Which other games you got, out of interest? Your elf parcel?

hylian_elf

acemuzzy wrote:

Yeah I've not tried enough yet to start googling!

Do that and you’ll never hear the end of it from me.

JonB

acemuzzy wrote:

Which other games you got, out of interest? Your elf parcel?

Something new to review. A sort of quest in a world of steam.

hylian_elf

Hmmmm. Steamland Adventure? Gasworld Mission? Dunno. Give up.

JonB

Gasworld: Emission.

Mikemsp

Vapour universe: eruption

Kow

That shadow lunge skill is a monster. I've spammed a few mini bosses to death with it.

Dinostar77

Stuck on horse boss. Combat in this at times is dogturd. As is the posture bar. Love the exploring stuff and regular enemies are fine. Bosses are just annoying. Different game I know but I miss the combat abilities of nioh and bloodborne

acemuzzy

I've not used any combat skills yet

I'm starting to think I may be doing this wrong

Tempy

Dinostar77 wrote:

Stuck on horse boss. Combat in this at times is dogturd. As is the posture bar. Love the exploring stuff and regular enemies are fine. Bosses are just annoying. Different game I know but I miss the combat abilities of nioh and bloodborne

If you deflect their attacks your posture can’t break. Even if it’s at 100%, you can’t be punished as long as you deflect the attack. The combat is the exact opposite of dogturd, there’s no ambiguity whatsoever. If you can deflect you are immovable, with the added benefit of you draining their posture at the same time.

Gyobou attacks so slowly there shouldn’t be any real issue deflecting. You can basically beat him by standing still and deflecting his swings and jumping his sweep as he rides past. He breaks his posture on you, which is the entire point of the combat really - you exhaust enemies with a combination of deflevtions and flurries of attacks, then punish them.

The game is trying to teach you here - by having a boss with slow, telegraphed attacks that cause him huge posture damage - to value your ability to deal posture damage and block in the gap between attacks to recover it.

Tempy

There are lots of good combat arts but the best is Ichimonji - massive posture damage and you get to regain posture? It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

JonB

Tempy wrote:

Dinostar77 wrote:

Stuck on horse boss. Combat in this at times is dogturd. As is the posture bar. Love the exploring stuff and regular enemies are fine. Bosses are just annoying. Different game I know but I miss the combat abilities of nioh and bloodborne

If you deflect their attacks your posture can’t break. Even if it’s at 100%, you can’t be punished as long as you deflect the attack. The combat is the exact opposite of dogturd, there’s no ambiguity whatsoever. If you can deflect you are immovable, with the added benefit of you draining their posture at the same time. Gyobou attacks so slowly there shouldn’t be any real issue deflecting. You can basically beat him by standing still and defecting his swings and jumping his sweep as he rides past. He breaks his posture on you, which is the entire point of the combat really - you exhaust enemies with a combination of deflevtions and flurries of attacks, then punish them.

Whenever I read something like that about this game I'm left wondering if I'm just an old differ with shit reactions. There's absolutely no way I could beat him by standing still and deflecting his attacks. I'd get destroyed.

I'm also starting to wonder if playing on a base PS4 is an issue at all. I'm not usually one to give a shit about frame rates, but maybe it makes a difference here? Even having played most of the game I still find I have to anticipate attacks rather than react to them. The timing for deflections always seems just slightly earlier than feels natural, so I have to learn the timings of boss attacks.

Either way, it's fucking difficult.

Tempy

Maybe reaction times are part of it, sure. I don’t think mine are great. I struggle with FPS games and fighting games a great deal because of my reaction speeds. I’ve found Sekiro very forgiving - you can pretty much spam deflect for great success despite what the tutorial tips say, and the mikiri counter is generally incredibly lenient for how much damage it does.

Console performance may well be a factor, I had the game at 60fps basically 99.9% of the time. The 30fps factor was a huge issue in Bloodborne for example. I just don’t think calling what is clearly an exquisitely detailed and robust combat system with a really smart posture/vitality system that has taken thousands of hours to craft and refine “dogturd” is fair or constructive.

I don’t for a second think i’d have managed to finish it on NG+2 if it wasn’t as rigorously crafted as it is. I’ve never even managed a Souls game on NG+1, but this is a different beast. Lots of talk about cheesing bosses or even that PC gamer article about modding the game to 50% speed so the author could beat the final boss and get paid to spend 2000 words justifying why that was necessary and how bullshit the final boss is - which dropped seconds after I beat him on my last run through. I guess I just feel like an outlier here.

I’ve read and watched lots of fawning articles about how the Souls games teach you things that ignore the simple fact that Stamina is such an importantly and deadly factor in the combat, and simply being 1 point over what the game expects for an attack or combo will cause you to die in many situations, versus the binary safe/not safe of Sekiro’s posture system makes me wonder if I am just on the wrong side of history thinking this game is fairer and less oblique than the prior 4 titles. It’s still a stiff challenge, but it’s not like they ever chuck a Capra Demon style fight at you.

JonB

There seems to have been 3 different reactions to this. Some people can't get on with it at all, some are struggling but having some success (me), and some have really clicked with it.

So there's certainly nothing wrong with it as such (barring the camera issues). It's expertly designed. But for whatever reason it's beyond a lot of players and can be a horribly frustrating experience.

I struggled with some of the later bosses in BB and really struggled with DS3, so maybe it is just a bit much for me. The original Dark Souls plays at a much slower pace and bosses only have a small repertoire of moves to learn.

Edit: It's funny you mention Capra. I can't remember where it was now, but there was a mini-boss fight in Sekiro I was doing the other day and thinking, this is pretty much like that Capra fight.

Kow

CM is causing me problems.

Tempy

I think my issue with the Souls games is death is often inexplicable due to the nature of gear, stats, stamina, invulnerability frames and so on. In Sekiro, it's very nearly always explicable - there are a handful of moves in the game that deal damage through your block, and they are generally elemental, or require a prefect deflect. There are very few one hit kills (if any?) and maybe two total AoE moves that will hurt you if you don't back away.

Unlike the Souls series, enemies are nearly always human, and as such their movements are again more explicable than the weird menagerie of beasts and ghost and demons in the Souls games that have a weird range of unpredictable movements and body shapes that making reading them a crap shoot - I'm thinking of you, Ludwig.

Finally, there are only two fights in the whole game that you cannot control whether you fight them with or without extra shitheels attacking you from behind, and one of those is optional, the other only required if you do a certain story path.

It just seems designed to remove the frustration that piled high in the rest of From's games, there is the genuine possibility of mastery without ever needing to concern yourself about the mercurial nature of the stamina bar.

Tempy

Kow wrote:

CM is causing me problems.

Just keep your cool and learn the deflect timings on the swings, they’re quite deceptive. You wanna learn the sweep and thrusts it does too, as the later especially is a good punish opportunity. If you need to deal some vitality damage to help keep its posture up, firecrackers will always interrupt attacks and let you get one or two hits in. When you feel comfortable punishing, Ichimonji is a good skill because it replenishes your posture too.

Kow

Ok, cheers.

Tempy

Also consumables are good - divine confetti and... Ako’s Sugar I think?

Bosses can’t regen health so if you open with a massive chunk of damage off the back of a firecracker, you make it harder for them to recover posture. I think when you take someone’s vitality to 75% the recovery bar changes colour slightly, that means the speed it goes down is reduced which is good to know.

Kow

CM seems to take only a little damage from hits. Confetti helps?

Tempy

It does, yep. Very tanky boss though, which is why posture is important for you’ll take forever chipping away.

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