Fair.

I haven't read the longer post yet cos I'm in the park with the kids now, but will try to over lunch.

PS if my kids fall and hurt themselves it's all your fault

I think there's a distinction between cheating, exploiting glitches, and using designed but non-core mechanics. I'd agree with you on the left of that spectrum, I reckon most of what people have been taking about here is more to the right.

For me it's that this is a wonderful game in so many ways and I've loved playing large chunks of it. But there are these two major issues I've had with it - camera/visibility and bosses that go on too long.

I actually quite like the bosses - they're tough but fair (except when the camera goes wrong) and can be learned with enough application. It's the number of phases some of them have and how long it takes to learn them, repeating the first phase every time as you do. It feels like a big waste of time, and I don't get the feeling of accomplishment when they're done because by then I'm sick of them.

I've had a bit of a go at the final boss now, and was slowly making progress as you'd expect. I got to the 3rd part a few times and was starting to get the hang of that, but by then I'd just got bored of the first part. What's the point in it? I even know a way to do it safely, but it takes ages so I'd rather not. If there was a quick way to skip it or cheese it I'd go for it every time without regret. It's what the game deserves.

Even if there was a way of practicing later phases before giving it a proper try I'd be happy. Anything to avoid that pointless repetition.

I can see why people might get frustrated with the bosses but I personally never did. I love a good boss fight, and I never felt they outstayed their welcome here. 

I guess the reduction of "what's the point of doing the first phase every time?" is "why do anything once i've proven I can do it?" 

Every time you have to do the boss run in a Souls game with enemies in our way, you're having to redo something you have proven you can do. Isn't that performance the whole point? With the final boss you eventually get to a point where you can tear through the first two phases with very little trouble - it's a testament to your ability and how far you'ce come . The whole fight in the end takes around 4-6 minutes, and there are plenty of interesting applications of prosthetics you can use too (including one I only discovered when a friend showed me). 

I don't know why the disconnect happens for some with the phase stuff, part of the root appeal of the FromSoft approach is surely in that sense of achievement, not that you can do 2 or 3 individual phases at at time, but that you can do them all in one go. Like chaining together a set of jumps in Celeste, the challenge and achievment is in doing it all in one go, not skipping the first 5 because you've done them 20 times prior.

Celeste is a weird example there since it has very generous checkpointing to specifically ensure you never have to do very much in one go. You're always a handful of jumps and grabs away from progress. It doesn't suddenly demand that you do a whole level without dying to carry on, and it would be terrible if it did.

It's simply a question of how much you're asking the player to do at a time and how long it takes to learn it. These are actually very complicated bosses in terms of the number of different moves and combos they can do, so even one phase is more to learn than a boss in most other games. Some of the runs back to bosses in Dark Souls were a pain, and it's good that Sekiro has ditched those, but the actual fights were easier to learn and were quite happy to let you go on once you'd demonstrated some proficiency.

There's a tipping point. Sekiro has pushed too far for me and it's turned into a major blight on an otherwise wonderful game. If they limited all bosses to maximum 2 phases, or let you skip a phase once you'd done it, or let you practice later phases once you'd reached them, it'd be almost perfect.

Tempy wrote:

The deflect and posture mechanic is literally the core of the whole game, playing without it is like playing Mario without jumping.

I found something else sang to me which meant the boss fights were really annoying. I really liked the feeling of being a guy who jumps in batters some people and fucks off into bushes while people are distracted. yeah the combat mechanic existed within this but really it was a facility to prevent spamming (imo). The bosses sort of reverse this feeling - especially as they regain health if you disappear from long enough. This disconnect and the fact you need to concentrate and be in fights sort of created distinct games for me.

I imagine it’s the same kind of annoyance that occurred to a lot of players of deus ex human revolution. The game as a whole facilitates varieties of styles of play but contrives roadblocks that are impassable if you only engage with the wrong one. The solution to this is time investment, obviously, but this is less power fantasy and more basically analogous to learning the designers baddie placement pattern a la Uncharted or some other derided crap like that.

I wonder if you get to a certain level the mobs are so trivial that actually the thing I liked really melts away into essentially background stuff (and not engaging in the way I describe) but then really the game has transformed at that point. I guess in the end you need to allow yourself to and be able to, almost, breezily transition between the stages of what the game is and that’s when it’s good.

Is that Have you done

I just thought it got a little easier after doing that other route because you can get an easy boss memory there and power up a bit.

The second phase of Guape was fine once someone told me what to do:

I think running instead of jumping is quicker, the tell and wind up is huge so just keep an eye on him

I’m stuck on GA2 as well.

I’ve just beaten CM

Just got to corrupted monk. Doesnt seem too tough. 1st go got his health bar down to half. Will pop a attack boost sweet at some point and smash him up when I revisit him.

So, I'm officially giving up on the last boss. It's just too hard. I've even tried following a guide to do it an easy way and can't get it to work reliably. It's not worth the time.

I've already got another game started which I may take to a different ending, but for all I know that's just as difficult. Otherwise though, I'm done.

It's not a particular bit, it's the whole thing together. There's too much to learn, too much to get right. And it's not enjoyable or exciting.