Parry Aggressively or Die - Sekiro

In typical FromSoft fashion, Sekiro is a hardcore game of Simon Says, where one mistake can lead to death. Don't get me wrong, I love the challenge, though like the Souls games, the difficulty is largely based on brute forcing attempts until you memorize everything Simon is going to say.

Parrying, being parried, and more parrying. This seems incredibly difficult at first, and it is, but as you get used to it, or get incredibly angry, you will learn to be aggressive. This makes the fights a lot easier, and more satisfying as you play.

There is a good amount of unique skills and "prosthetics" (extra weapons+abilities) that you can grind for or find throughout the game, encouraging exploration and finding hidden areas, which is always something I like in games. Gives it that rpg progress feel, especially since you can collect beads, that in stacks of four, grant bonuses to damage, etc. Making the fights a bit easier to get through, if you feel like grinding out the skill tree for empowerments and new abilities, to help you tackle challenging fights.

You can also just go straight through without doing extra grinding and still win the fights, but its going to be a bit more of a challenge and less forgiving on mistakes (missed parry, broken posture, lower health pool etc.) and well, its pretty fun learning to master the different moves and prosthetics you pick up, but mostly its parry, slash, parry, dodge parry parry dodge slash slash etc. Emphasis on the PARRY.

The mechanics are satisfying, and not too terrible to get used to, the skill cap is not hidden, you know what you need to improve, for the most part.

Movement (grappling hook) and stealth kills are fun, with some added bonuses of ninjutsu's that give you the option to pull some wicked moves while stealth killing enemies, and the maps are not soo sprawling that you are just stuck fighting through foot soldiers for 90% of it, you get to boss fights fairly quickly, then the real trouble begins. Don't get me wrong though, the grunts are mini-bosses in their own right, with much lower health pools. They will still smoke you in a couple of attacks.

If you are stubborn like me, and hate(d) parrying, you can get through to about the second major boss with some difficulty... Then you fight Genichiro, and will start to think hes the final boss and you've made a mistake somewhere. Genichiro has varied and intense attack patterns, I probably fought him several dozen times before learning to parry his every move, and by the end of it, I felt like a master of the game. At that point it went from pure despair and frustration, to eagerness to test my new skill out on the rest of the game. You have to push through some suffering to learn the game well enough to really start to enjoy it, but for me, it was worth it.

I haven't yet completed it, but I am working on that currently, pretty far along (I think) and I'm even tempted to play through it a second time just to use all the moves and prosthetics I havent utilized much in my first play-through (I typically dont ever play a game i've beat, twice, so we will see).

The graphics are good, the maps are nice, and have plenty to explore, so you will want to run through them forward and back, side to side, up and down etc, to make sure you don't miss important content. There is story, and it's just enough to give you some focus, and NPCs littered throughout with triggered events or uses that you may miss, so make sure you exhaust dialogue and pay attention, and seek them out by revisting maps, and thoroughly exploring. Most of the main NPCS involved in the story telling will enjoy some sake, but seems like there is a limited amount to go around, so choosing who to get drunk yields some extra flavor to the story.

Overall it's a wonderful game, if you are a bit of a masochist who enjoy's challenges and really mastering a games mechanics. If you cant handle ragequitting and turning the game right back on several times a day, it might not be your cup of tea. Remember though, the game DOES get more enjoyable, but you have to work for it. So persevere, and be AGGRESSIVE, you are the boss, don't forget it. Recommend for people looking for a challenge, not people looking for a smooth ride, or choose your own difficulty type of game.