How Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Properly Jumps Off from its Predecessors
Feel free to call me biased, because I've been playing From Software games for a long time. I couldn't muster completion of the first Dark Souls, but Dark Souls II and onward have fallen to my sword (in varying increments of time and blood pressure). Each time I picked up a new From Soft game, I always knew what I was in for; dodge rolls, smacking the butts of enemy creatures, backstabs, stamina management, stat grinding, extensively reading all the flavor text and scouring a level from top to bottom to get all the lore bits that I can get my hands on. They've all been pretty similar if you look at them from a macro level, even when there are fundamental design changes (Bloodborne, for example).
Then the trailer for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice appeared in my YouTube feed, and everything changed.
How about we get what's similar out of the way first, yeah? Sekiro is, by default, still a From Soft game, which means expansive maps with secret doors and passageways everywhere. It also keeps the delightful tradition of giving you no map or any kind of direction indicator, meaning you can spend hours canvassing an area and searching every nook and cranny for the way forward, yet it exists behind a bamboo wall that you previously thought was indestructible or a small hole in a wall that inexplicably leads you to an entirely different biome, and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't like when games hold my hand and walk me through every little thing like I'm some baby who can't finish a game himself, and I especially hate quicktime events. Sekiro, following the tradition of the games that came before it, keeps what works and didn't add anything superfluous, making it as streamlined as possible.
It wouldn't be a From Soft game without a hidden backstory so intense that you can have multiple YouTube channels dedicated to picking through the lore in an effort to piece together a coherent timeline (see Vaatividya if you're curious), and Sekiro is no exception. Now that this game takes place in a (seemingly) new universe, there's a whole plethora of new storylines and backstories to comb through, and it is very well scripted. Even though there might be gaps here and there (which I assume is to keep an air of mystery surrounding certain topics) almost everything else seems thought out and airtight, which I come to expect from From Soft games.
The range of items you can use outside of your katana is still pretty extensive, and while yes there are still things that you end up never using (like the fistful of ash was to the shiny coins in Bloodborne or the shining stones in Dark Souls III), most items have a place in the story. The snap seeds and divine confetti come to mind, seeing as there are plenty of ghostly creatures mixed in with the human ones, as well as the different candies that provide different buffs. Along with your standard suite of status effect cures and other things of that nature, the items still play as important a role as you want them to be. Some friends of mine NEVER use items, whereas I'll use them all the time to gain whatever edge I can get, and Sekiro still gives you that freedom.
Alright, now to talk about what's new, and fair warning, I'll probably ramble. Strap in.
The combat has been massively overhauled. You still have a dash function, but if you're a seasoned Souls player, I'm going to tell you now to not get too comfortable with it. Unlike the games that came before it, Sekiro now focuses on combat in its truest form.
What do I mean? Well, in the previous games, unless you were a parry god and parried every hit that came your way, you were sidestepping around your opponent and hitting wherever there was an opening and dodging whenever they made a move, and that was the extent of player/enemy interaction. Get some hits in, dodge the AOE attack, rinse and repeat. If you were having trouble, it was probably a matter of your stats not being high enough, which means you need to get finished pouting and go grind up some souls and git gud. Buff up your damage or your health or your stamina and come back, that'll probably work.
That is definitely not the case in Sekiro. Instead of having your attack and dodge roll, you have three ways to engage your enemy now; dodge step, jump, and deflect. How does this change anything? This means that every sword strike that comes your way doesn't need to be dodged, you can deflect it. If an enemy tries to get you in a grab, sidestep and hit him a couple times. What about an unblockable sweeping attack? Jump right over it, simple enough. I've played this game to completion, and I can tell you that it really doesn't take that long to master the mechanics of Sekiro; in fact, it's almost like a rhythm game with its call-and-response style of gameplay, and once you know the rhythm of Sekiro the game falls nicely into place.
I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Sekiro, and even though I've played it through to one hundred percent completion, I still go back and replay it constantly. Not many games can hold my attention like that in this day in age, where trends move by so quickly that studying them is a near impossible feat.
Cheers,
-Tony
