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goblin week posted:Drop games you don't like asap. Life is too short
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Jan 30, 2024 10:17
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| # ? May 4, 2024 22:18 |
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fighting the big ape and part way through his second phase remembering that status cure consumables exist and I have like 40 of each. Big ape down. His first phase status attacks made me laugh.
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Jan 30, 2024 19:47
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Laugh...then cry. I could take or leave phase 1, but I loved phase 2
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Jan 31, 2024 01:40
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I DID IT! All bosses defeated!  I've told this story before in other From threads, but I'd always dismissed their games from the hype about how difficult they are, and I honestly thought that my gaming skills were starting to decline. I finally gave Bloodborne a try in 2018 and devoured it, though not without a lot of struggle, so I figured I'd leave it at that even though I got the platinum trophy. Then when the Demon's Souls remake hit PS5, I beat that wanted more, so I kept going through the Dark Souls trilogy. I called 2021 my "year of git gud," as I beat all four Souls games that year before moving on to Elden Ring when that came out. At that point, even though I'd beaten six From games, Sekiro was still just impossible in my head. It was on sale for $30 in October or so and I gave in, figuring it was the final boss. Wow, what a game! The combat really is almost perfect in every way, and the game made me feel like the boss several times, like when I had the Guardian Apes trying to get the gently caress away from me.  I'd say Demon of Hatred was the hardest boss for me just from frustration at chipping away at that stupidly large health pool, and he felt like a Bloodborne boss without that game's quickstep iframes or rally healing. My favorite was probably the final boss, as it really felt like a final exam, asking if I'd been paying attention to what the game had been teaching me. Veeg, would it be too much to ask to get the BloodSoulsSeksMagic gang tag? I feel like I finally have earned the right to wear it. 
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Feb 15, 2024 18:27
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Here's the trick with Sekiro: play through it again now. You will really get that "I can't believe I used to think this game was hard" feeling so much stronger than any other Fromsoft title. The way the game has a way of just burning all the skills required to beat it directly into your brain is fascinating.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:12
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Sekiro NG+ is the most satisfying victory lap in gaming, you really do just rip through everything and realize the whole game is designed to facilitate you doing so. Once you've got the flow of combat down, all the posture and health in the world isn't going to help your hapless victims, and that's all they get. Meanwhile you're coming in as a fully equipped and maxed or near-max health and damage Shinobi. After Owl Father and Isshin, it's awhile before you experience a real challenge, but the good news is that "awhile" on a NG+ cycle in that game is like, 90 minutes The downside of course is that it means it has a lot less replayability than other From games unless you're into challenge runs. Elden Ring is my Forever Game that I'm just always playing at some degree of intensity, Sekiro is like a trip to the finest restaurant in town, where long stretches between visits really do enhance the experience.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:30
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Epic High Five posted:Sekiro NG+ is the most satisfying victory lap in gaming, you really do just rip through everything and realize the whole game is designed to facilitate you doing so. Once you've got the flow of combat down, all the posture and health in the world isn't going to help your hapless victims, and that's all they get. Meanwhile you're coming in as a fully equipped and maxed or near-max health and damage Shinobi. After Owl Father and Isshin, it's awhile before you experience a real challenge, but the good news is that "awhile" on a NG+ cycle in that game is like, 90 minutes I started a second playthrough again after not playing since I beat it at release. Pretty astonishing how fast you pick it back up, I beat Gyoubu on first try. But after Gyoubu and Madame Butterfly, I decided to run through zones as far as I could before taking on another boss; I got all the way to Mibu Village and decided I'd try to beat Corrupted Monk next and hit a wall. The health pool compared to how much damage I can do with minimal upgrades is just too large for me. I'm decent at deflecting/blocking the Monk's attacks but it seems like I'd have to slog through for 30 minutes in a fairly boring fight to defeat it (without using ash/snap peas etc). At what point are you supposed to actually be trying to beat this boss without it taking forever?
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Feb 15, 2024 19:43
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Listerine posted:I started a second playthrough again after not playing since I beat it at release. Pretty astonishing how fast you pick it back up, I beat Gyoubu on first try. But after Gyoubu and Madame Butterfly, I decided to run through zones as far as I could before taking on another boss; I got all the way to Mibu Village and decided I'd try to beat Corrupted Monk next and hit a wall. I think the "intended" order is Genichiro -> Senpou -> Sunken Valley -> Depths (just based on the order they appear in the teleport menu and the general difficulty of each area), so last, basically. Although it is odd that the corrupted monk is the only "branch" boss you can fight before Genichiro. I don't think you are really intended to be able to beat them first without at the very least using snap seeds to knock off a big chunk of their health though.
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Feb 15, 2024 20:04
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I only did the victory lap up to the first fight with Genichiro. The cutscene for finally winning that was a neat bonus.
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Feb 15, 2024 20:32
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Here's the trick with Sekiro: play through it again now. You will really get that "I can't believe I used to think this game was hard" feeling so much stronger than any other Fromsoft title. The way the game has a way of just burning all the skills required to beat it directly into your brain is fascinating. I may actually do this! I rarely replay a game unless it's years later, but this one was just special. Arbite posted:I only did the victory lap up to the first fight with Genichiro. The cutscene for finally winning that was a neat bonus. Oh, I hadn't thought about this...
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Feb 15, 2024 20:35
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i actually think Sekiro is more replayable than mainline Dark Souls; Souls NG+1 is a victory lap. Sekiro NG+ has a really smooth difficulty curve, especially if you gradually introduce demon bell + charmless as you go into later cycles, and the way combat works in Sekiro means the game is far less prone to devolving into "every enemy is a slab of infinite meat who one-shots you" at higher cycles
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Feb 15, 2024 20:37
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I found it funny when I compared how careful, slow, and sneaky I started with how I just blew through entire areas without so much as hitting a speed bump when I started up NG+. Gtfo clowns, I don't see "Sword Saint" in your name. Like the difference between an hour plus the first time and 3-4 minutes the next.
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Feb 16, 2024 04:48
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Luceo posted:Veeg, would it be too much to ask to get the BloodSoulsSeksMagic gang tag? I feel like I finally have earned the right to wear it. You absolutely got it :yes:
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Feb 16, 2024 14:28
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VideoGames posted:You absolutely got it :yes: Thank you so much! 
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Feb 16, 2024 16:28
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I think this happens to a lot of people; they get the bell, think "oh I'm supposed to go do this now" and the fact that they get annihilated by the boss doesn't phase them because they just think "wow people weren't kidding when they said Sekiro was hard". I did this the first time I played the game and it was rough. Never actually finished Sekiro, got distracted by other stuff after owl2. Started a fresh save years later and absolutely clowning most stuff, I got better at these sorta games, oneshot Gyobou and Butterfly so far, seven spear was harder than either by a margin.
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Feb 19, 2024 23:45
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Moonview tower seven spears is the grim loving reaper of first playthroughs
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Feb 19, 2024 23:59
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Epic High Five posted:Moonview tower seven spears is the grim loving reaper of first playthroughs He took me a few tries and then I two shot Genichiro wtf. I think its the lovely area you have to fight spear bastard in that really doesn't help
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Feb 21, 2024 19:42
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I have some sort of mental block preventing me from beating the Shura ending bosses. Coming itt so I can one shot it next attempt as is tradition. Apparently this is one of the easier endings?
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Feb 21, 2024 20:03
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Easier doesn't mean easy. There are a few tricks that might help though. You can interrupt his big fire explosion with firecrackers/mortal draw/ichimonji, and when he does his own ichimonji you can literally just strafe around him to the right and he'll miss with that and it's follow-up.
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Feb 21, 2024 20:12
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Spuckuk posted:He took me a few tries and then I two shot Genichiro wtf. Yeah the areas you fight some minibosses in can make them a lot more difficult than they would be in a flat, open arena. The moonview tower area has a ton of obstacles around and a big hill which can mess up the mikiri counter registering, and you get pushed around so much by the seven-spears attacks that it's hard to keep him in a spot that's "nice". The shadow-hand you fight in the serpent shrine area is also a pain because your options are either fighting him inside the house which is tiny and you'll get all sorts of camera issues, or pulling him outside and putting him on a hill which can create awkward hitbox issues and mess up the timing on deflects/jumps/mikiris. voiceless anal fricative posted:Easier doesn't mean easy. There are a few tricks that might help though. You can interrupt his big fire explosion with firecrackers/mortal draw/ichimonji, and when he does his own ichimonji you can literally just strafe around him to the right and he'll miss with that and it's follow-up. Yeah the thing about Shura ending Isshin is he's "easier" than SSI but not "easy". The main thing is that his phase 1 moveset is just a simplified version of SSI's phase 1 moveset, so he only really has one "hard" phase, but it's got a lot of annoying new moves you have to learn how to deal with. One thing to watch out for is when he steps back and just sort of holds there for a while or circles around a bit, he can dodge your attacks and instantly follow up with a counter-attack. You can deflect the counter like anything else but it's easy to get caught off guard by it if you're used to the deflection sound being your cue to defend since the dodge doesn't make any sound and you might think you're safe to keep attacking. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 20:28
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah the areas you fight some minibosses in can make them a lot more difficult than they would be in a flat, open arena. The moonview tower area has a ton of obstacles around and a big hill which can mess up the mikiri counter registering, and you get pushed around so much by the seven-spears attacks that it's hard to keep him in a spot that's "nice". The other issue I had is that it takes some time to clear out the nearby enemies, so I'd often run past them to get to the spear guy, but half the time he'd push me down the hill and I'd get aggro from the little dudes there and it would end up being a wipe. The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah the thing about Shura ending Isshin is he's "easier" than SSI but not "easy". The main thing is that his phase 1 moveset is just a simplified version of SSI's phase 1 moveset, so he only really has one "hard" phase, but it's got a lot of annoying new moves you have to learn how to deal with. If this was the fight that starts with Emma, that one took me significantly more attempts than the Sword Saint fight, like an extra 30 attempts or so. I think it was my hardest fight of the game.
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Feb 22, 2024 23:14
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Mr.Acula posted:I have some sort of mental block preventing me from beating the Shura ending bosses. Coming itt so I can one shot it next attempt as is tradition. Apparently this is one of the easier endings? The first time I played Sekiro I did the sword saint ending, then did NG+ aiming at the Shura ending, and got all the way to the end but had to take Kuro's charm back to actually beat the final boss (in time to finish Sekiro so I could start playing some other game that was about to come out, I forget what). Coming back after Elden's Ring release I found old man Isshin a lot easier for some reason, and actually ended up finding him the most fun final boss to take on. Once you get over a mental hump he feels really chill rather than frantic to fight, and I get a kick out of it every time he just hooks his thumb into his belt and paces slowly around me in a half-circle before deciding to actually start attacking me again. One handy tip is that Mortal Draw will reliably stagger him out of any animation, so if you can't deal with his insane multi-stage AoE flurry you can just ready Mortal Draw and deploy it every time you see him start charging up his ki.
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Feb 22, 2024 23:48
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Another approach: just deflect the big flurry. It's a lot easier than you'd think it should be and very satisfying to just "nope" to that whole thing.
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Feb 23, 2024 00:59
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I've never played any fromsoft games before but Sekiro was on sale a while back. Wasn't sure because I'm usually terrible at these type of games. Holy poo poo this game is amazing. It forces you to actually master seemingly impossible mechanics. I spent like 6 or so hours just getting stomped by every mini-boss in the early game. I decided to just practice fighting bandits, I would run through Hirata estate trying to copy the exact same sequence over and over until suddenly it clicked and then in two hours I killed the first two generals, the chained ogre, the spear guy, drunk guy, and the horse guy. Now I'm stuck on the Flaming Bull and Lady Butterfly, which are kicking my rear end but it's nothing like when I first started playing, while I make mistakes every once in a while I manged to perfect parry a sequence of attacks, and it's just a matter of consistency to make that repeatable. Really amazing game because it lets you cheese only just the right amount.
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Mar 19, 2024 05:47
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Flaming bull kind of sucks as a fight because the strategy of Always Be Parrying is not a great way to fight it. Even fighting perfectly you'll take a bunch of chip damage from the flames and you'll beat it slower than if you just run around and get it to run into the wall.
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Mar 19, 2024 06:05
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Yeah flaming bull is kind of a weird boss. I think he is meant to teach you that you don't have to stand there and parry everything, but it's kind of weird for that lesson to come so early since it doesn't really apply until some very late game bosses. Plus the safest way to beat him just feels wrong; running around after him and abusing his terrible turning radius to keep stabbing him in the butt until he dies.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:35
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Once the combat truly clicks and you unlock some of the basic stuff like mikiri, there's nothing quite like it. It's equal measures incredibly generous and incredibly brutal, they struck a really good balance there and it feels sooo good. I had assumed this would be the Fromsoft game that filtered me (myself coming from playing DS1-3 and tons of ER), but once the knowledge of how to play left my brain and entered my muscles it felt so natural. Fantastic bosses too naturally, two of them are on my top 3 all timers for From
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Mar 19, 2024 07:38
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I think an interesting thing about Sekiro is that it's developed a reputation of being "hard, even by Fromsoft game standards", but I don't think it is, really. I mean it's certainly still a very hard game and you are expected to make a lot of repeated attempts on bosses or particularly troublesome areas, but in many ways it's a lot more forgiving than other Soulslikes or even other From games. The deflection window is the same as the iframes you get on a roll in Dark Souls, but there's no recovery time, and you can even cancel an attack into a deflection in the early part of the attack animation. Guarding itself has no penalty by default so missing the timing, so long as you're early instead of late, isn't that big a deal. Having your guard broken only staggers you for a very short time, which is bad if it's in the middle of a combo but if it's right at the end of one, you'll typically recover before the enemy follows up with another attack. There's also no stamina management to worry about so you can attack spam or sprint as much as you want without it worrying about cutting into your defensive resources. Plus there's the whole "you can just get back up after dying" thing. I think the main source of difficulty in the game really just comes down to getting into the mindset for how to approach it. A common problem people have is not being aggressive enough and watching all their progress on a boss slowly disappear because they aren't keeping the pressure up. You can still win that way because of the reduced posture recovery as you chip away at their health, but it takes a lot longer, which means you have more chances to screw up. It's why so many people have that moment where the game just clicks for them - once you get the back and forth nature of the combat and the fact that you need to stay on the offensive and take the initiative against the bosses, they genuinely do become easier because the fights are so much shorter and you don't have to stay focused for nearly as long. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 07:51
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Flaming bull is not a good boss but it's a bad boss in a game with the best bosses in video games. It's literally just flaming bull, ogre and DoH that I dislike fighting. Everything else is S+. I would dislike DoH less if the fucker would stand still and face me instead of jumping away. WaltherFeng fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 08:01
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People talk about DoH being a Souls boss that escaped to Sekiro but imo Flaming Bull is just as much of a one, if not more. Especially because the way to beat him is the old Souls formula of "get up in that rear end"
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Mar 19, 2024 08:07
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Heck, they reused its rig in Elden Ring for the fallingstar beasts.
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Mar 19, 2024 08:17
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lol I never clocked that despite dying to them a lot
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Mar 19, 2024 09:13
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I think an interesting thing about Sekiro is that it's developed a reputation of being "hard, even by Fromsoft game standards", but I don't think it is, really. I mean it's certainly still a very hard game and you are expected to make a lot of repeated attempts on bosses or particularly troublesome areas, but in many ways it's a lot more forgiving than other Soulslikes or even other From games. The deflection window is the same as the iframes you get on a roll in Dark Souls, but there's no recovery time, and you can even cancel an attack into a deflection in the early part of the attack animation. Guarding itself has no penalty by default so missing the timing, so long as you're early instead of late, isn't that big a deal. Having your guard broken only staggers you for a very short time, which is bad if it's in the middle of a combo but if it's right at the end of one, you'll typically recover before the enemy follows up with another attack. There's also no stamina management to worry about so you can attack spam or sprint as much as you want without it worrying about cutting into your defensive resources. Plus there's the whole "you can just get back up after dying" thing. Tbh I think I’d definitely call Sekiro the hardest From game, even agreeing with most of what you said, just because it’s the most linear and inflexible with character progression. Elden Ring is an entirely different beast, but even in Dark Souls III if you don’t feel like engaging with a given enemy’s wombo combos you can just throw fire, or summon. The former can’t get you through every boss but you don’t even need online for the Lion’s share of roadblock bosses because they left the player NPC bosses for that. In Sekiro you have to just git gud. Getting good is more about understanding the game’s language than becoming this paragon of gaming like you said, but still. It’s a great feeling since I usually run mage builds for aesthetic/vibe purposes, but if you lack any shame about taking a win any way you can get it I’d say there’s a world of difference in design between the other From stuff and Sekiro.
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Mar 19, 2024 09:50
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I think an interesting thing about Sekiro is that it's developed a reputation of being "hard, even by Fromsoft game standards", but I don't think it is, really. it's 100% because you can't grind to get past whatever's walling you, which is the best thing about Sekiro and the reason its bosses don't actually need to be completely bullshit hard. Sekiro is a million times easier than Elden Ring would be if you actually had to git gud, and only a little harder than DS3 e:fb
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Mar 19, 2024 12:39
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The opening of Sekiro is punishingly hard imo, I'm a never summon/no cheese player in Souls games and I've never had such a hard time with one as I did with the first third of Sekiro
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Mar 19, 2024 12:49
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I do think Sekiro is a lot more doable than Elden Ring due to its parry system. That is to say, I dont think I can ever beat Malenia without summons.
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Mar 19, 2024 13:02
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No Dignity posted:The opening of Sekiro is punishingly hard imo, I'm a never summon/no cheese player in Souls games and I've never had such a hard time with one as I did with the first third of Sekiro I had the opposite experience where I got super bored with the non boss sections because I was trying to stealth them. Then died an embarassing amount of times to the drunk fat man.
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Mar 19, 2024 13:08
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DeafNote posted:I do think Sekiro is a lot more doable than Elden Ring due to its parry system. Malenia is an escaped Sekiro boss. Imagine if you had Sekiro's deflection to counter Waterfowl Dance!
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Mar 19, 2024 16:43
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Most of the difficulty in Sekiro is from having to learn the game systems with so little health and healing.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:44
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Sekiro definitely has the steepest learning curve and also lacks the in-built difficulty slider that other From games have in the form of degrees of optimisation in your build. But having learned Sekiro I can beat pretty much every boss first time, which isn't something I can say of other From games.
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Mar 19, 2024 20:30
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