Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (Review/Analysis)

Developer & Publisher: FromSoftware & Activision

Release Date: March 2019

Shadows die twice? More like - you’ll die as many times as you have to until you learn and adapt.
Ah FromSoftware, a modern pioneer and prodigy of the game industry. There’s just nothing like jumping into one of their new titles for the first time. What awaits you is a rich, living, breathing, interconnected world for you to explore every nook and cranny of, using your reflexes, timing and pattern recognition skills to stay alive and outsmart the countless horrific and dangerous enemies lying in wait for you. While Sekiro doesn’t quite have the same level of horror elements and gruesome enemy/boss design as its predecessors, it still packs a punch with its tight gameplay, large learning curve that feels oh so satisfying once it finally “clicks” with you and an arguably more focused and refined theme with a less ambiguous story for you to piece together. 
I think the game was noteworthy for its further improvement on action-rpg combat, it is now almost blending rhythm game elements into the combat to create this feeling of “a clashing of swords” which the director of the game describes it. Combat now takes even more concentration and perfect reflexes than its predecessors (Dark Souls/Bloodborne). Now you are required to not only be very aggressive and choose your moments to strike but there is now a huge emphasis on parrying, in which you will nee d to press a button at a precise time when the enemy goes to strike at you in order to wear down their “posture” meter. This mechanic is now ESSENTIAL to doing well in this game, where in previous games from FromSoftware, parrying was just a side mechanic that you could choose to ignore if you really didn’t want to learn it. Now in Sekiro, it is an absolute must that you get used to parrying EVERY enemy you encounter, especially bosses.

This leads me to my next topic of discussion - the difficulty debate. If you weren’t following the game when it came out, essentially there was a massive uproar from gamers and journalists about the game being considered “too hard” or “inaccessible”. It started this huge debate around should games always have an “easy mode” included for people who want to breeze through the game. I am of the firm belief that this is utterly ridiculous and that people need to just assess whether or not the game is right for them or not. I don’t think games need to be catered to anyone, games should be pure creative expressions of the people and teams who go to the effort to make them and if the intention was to make the game challenging in order to create a satisfying pay off when the mechanics finally “click” with you, then I think it’s worth the sacrifice of the game not being for “everyone”. I think a lot of people misunderstand the difficulty as being there just to create this group of “I’m so much better at games than you” people, when in reality it’s there to fit the game aesthetic and to create a large pay off once a difficult obstacle is overcome. FromSoftware games really embody the saying of “nothing worth having comes easy” and I think a lot of people miss this, which is a shame.
To go over the main mechanics, you have your standard movement in all directions, jump/double jump off walls, climbing ledges and grappling points for your traversal mechanics. There are some light stealth mechanics like crouching to hide your presence, hiding in tall grass or behind walls for extra stealth and these culminate in the main mechanic “death blows” which can be executed on an enemy instantly if you sneak up on them without being detected. You have a health bar, posture bar and the ability to revive yourself after death, represented by red circles near your health bar. Health determines how many hits you can take before you die, posture represents how many hits you can “poorly” block with your sword before your posture is broken and you are left open to attacks or even a death blow and your revive circles can be used any time you die if they are available (not crossed out) on your HUD. Revives can always be used once per life after death but can also be used another time if you kill enough enemies after your first revive or use certain items to recharge them. You also have the ability to buy “skills” which essentially give you more ways/moves to kill enemies with or simply boost your current skills in some way. There are also items that increase your maximum health, posture and attack strength.  Another main mechanic around combat is that your character has a prosthetic limb that he can customise to add different abilities or play-styles to your arsenal, things like an axe that shatters enemy shields and a vent that spews fire or a shuriken dispenser that you can plug away at enemies from a distance or interrupt their attacks with. There are “idols” that you can rest at scattered throughout the game that act as checkpoints and will refill your health, healing uses, revives and revive enemies. You will re-spawn at the last idol you rested at after death and can also fast travel between idols. It is also worth mentioning that enemies and bosses also have health bars and posture meters which can be worn down with attacks and deflects. Mini Bosses and normal Bosses also have multiple health bars which are represented by red circles near there health bar and usually will require you to initiate a death blow on them multiple times by wearing down their posture meter all the way, leaving them open to one. Most Bosses take 3 death blows to defeat but some take up to 5.
As with most FromSoftware games, there is a strong speedrun community surrounding the game that has a world record of beating the game in about twenty minutes.
One thing that I will say was a bit of a disappointment was that enemies did feel like they got a bit repetitive after a while and the levels I felt could have benefited from more deviation from the mountainside cliff settings the whole game is littered with. You can only fight the same Samurai guy in a different skin so many times before it loses its coolness. I think a huge missed opportunity was the lack of demonic/yokai type enemies in the game. Only 2 enemies in the game come under this category, Headless - a Headless ghost like enemy wielding a katana and the Shichimen Warrior - a ghostly shaman type enemy. Both these enemies come under the umbrella of “Apparitions”, basically ghost like enemies that inflict the negative status effect “Terror” which is a meter that will gradually fill up as you fight with them and if it fills up all the way, 9/10 times results in an instant kill. Early game these enemies seem absolutely un-killable but around mid-game you can obtain some items that turn them into a cakewalk. While the Headless enemies were genuinely quite horrific and threatening, the lack of variety in these “Apparition” type enemies definitely left me disappointed and wanting more.

Overall I think the game is a great addition to the FromSoftware catalog and mechanically is possibly their most refined and challenging to date. The story was a bit flat compared to their previous games but the gameplay has basically set the new standard for future action-rpgs to come.