Elden Ring / Sekiro / Souls / Bloodborne / Souls-likes

I have some thoughts on this but need time to put them together. So for now, a quick sidebar:

Whenever I see references to the 2004 Ninja Gaiden game, it's always to Ninja Gaiden Black. Never the original release, nor the PS3 remaster Ninja Gaiden Sigma (which is unquestionably the best version of the game). 

Why? 

I mean no doubt Black is better than the original version, but is it just that most people didn't play or don't know about Sigma? You'd think the original name of the game was Ninja Gaiden Black, but that's just a remaster.

Lady Butterfly is harder than Orphan of Kos and she's the second boss of the game. This is fucking insane

Inspired by Invisible Goat I am downloading Sekiro from Steam as I type this

Good luck!

I beat two more mini-bosses after my Lady Butterfly ordeal and was feeling pretty good about myself but have since run into another brick wall (the Seven Ashina Spears guy).

I got the deathblow marker to pop up on Seven Ashina Spears and FUCKING MISSED IT. And it was all due to posture build-up, he still had plenty of health, so as soon as I missed my opportunity he recovered and kicked my ass.

Luckily it only took another 5 or 6 tries to kill him properly, otherwise I might have to walk away for a while. I really didn't think he was that tough, the firecracker prosthetic seems to be way overpowered. I'm not complaining though.

EDIT: Holy shit, I also just pretty much accidentally beat the Lone Shadow Longswordsman on my second try. Maybe I'm getting the hang of it.

I stealthed him and then randomly decided to try the axe on him and it broke his posture in 3 or 4 hits. Really easy. I fell onto his head completely by accident the first time and thought he was friendly because you could talk to him, but then hearing what he actually had to say was a pretty cool moment. I tried to run away at first but he wasn't having it.

And yeah, I love how many routes appear to be open. I think I'm gonna go across the rooftops next. Feeling more confident obviously but still kind of apprehensive since I've only beaten 2 "proper" bosses still.

Talking about this game yesterday made me want to boot it up again, so I started a new game last night and played for a little under 3 hours. I did everything I normally do and got up to just past the 3rd boss. No deaths. I figured I'd be way out of practice, but other than an atrociously slow (and scary close) Lady Butterfly fight, everything was clean. Didn't even get knocked out by the chained ogre. Spear Guy gave me a crazy good pattern, and I didn't even have to mikiri. Just dodge-slice-dodge-slice-dodge-slice-dead.

Totally.

I got into a habit of never using consumables in Souls games ever for pretty much that reason. I suffer crippling "Too Awesome to Use" syndrome in any game I play. If it's excellent and exhaustible, I won't use it. Which is probably part of why I hate weapon degradation systems so much. Whenever I'd get a really awesome new weapon in Breath of the Wild, like something twice as powerful as anything I'd seen before, I would refuse to use it. Everything would feel like a waste.

I use sugars exactly three times in my route through Sekiro. Twice to make certain bosses, well, not so much easier, but faster. And once to make a very late game multi-enemy encounter more manageable.

My recommendation for the Schichimen Warriors is to either come back WAY later or just never fight them at all. They're really frustrating and expensive to fight, and their rewards are lame (IMO). Sorry if the plural is a spoiler. There's, I think, three of them throughout the game. All optional, all annoying. For 100% runs only. (Same with the Headless if you've encountered one of those.)

Much later in the game you can buy unlimited Divine Confetti, but it ain't cheap.

*Thinks to self*: "Have I ever actually used a megalixir?"

I've tried a couple times to write about Sekiro vs. Ninja Gaiden Black, but it keeps coming out long-winded and self-indulgent (unlike all my other posts in this thread, which I think we would all agree are Hemingway-esque.) So here it is as fast as possible:

I think that for all its differences, Sekiro is still much more of a Souls game than it is a character action game like Ninja Gaiden Black. In terms of movement, Sekiro nudges closer to traditional character action, especially with the addition of the jump button. But in the hands it's still Souls all the way.  Move set is the main differentiator. Character action games like Ninja Gaiden, DMC, God of War, and others give players lengthy rosters of combos to memorize and mash out. They are focused almost entirely on offense. 

On the other hand, Sekiro's combat is very simple and not combo-based really at all, unless you count R1+R1+R1+R1+R1+etc a combo. Like its spiritual predecessors in the Souls series, the nuance, challenge and fun of Sekiro's combat is in the timing. In committing to decisions and being punished when those decisions are wrong. The deflection mechanic makes this more explicit than ever - timing has never been more essential, and it is hard to get used to - but at its core it's still just Souls: light attack, strong attack (tools, in this case) and block. That's it.

(If anything, with its lack of a useful shield and hyper-focus on aggression, Bloodborne hews closer to Ninja Gaiden than Sekiro in terms of how they feel to play.)

Pat was absolutely right, however, that Sekiro can't be called an RPG. Too many of those specific trappings have been shed. But there remains so much Souls DNA here that you don't get from traditional character action titles like Ninja Gaiden. Most important among them is the persistent world design, a series staple since the first Dark Souls. This feels obvious to say, but Ninja Gaiden has levels, and Sekiro doesn't. That matters a lot in how it feels to progress through the world. Sekiro's world is one large place, some of it closed off by keys or story triggers, that you get to explore and peel back one layer at a time. By contrast, Ninja Gaiden and others like it are usually a dash from Point A to Point B. Beginning of level to end of level, with little exploration along the way.

Maybe I just focus on this, because the persistent, Zelda-esque world design is something I like very much about Souls games.

Other Souls elements that keep Sekiro squarely in the franchise are the obvious ones: "bonfires", respawning enemies, an exhaustible health item, a punishing death mechanic, experience points that are spent on items and/or character progression and which are (partially) lost on death, lots of optional bosses or content.

I think Sekiro is their biggest departure yet from Dark Souls, but it's still a Souls game. I can't see it as anything else.

Sekiro (2019)

you'd better get wrapped up quick in time for nioh 2, the game you promised to play next