Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I killed the Hatred Demon and upgraded 2 Luzi-required prosthetics on my first pass, so I think I'm good to go on that front...

you need NG+ to get enough Lapus Lazuli to fully upgrade your prosthetics...
 
Genichiro is hard on NG+ I don't think I died till I got there then died a few times. I might play bloodborne again after this try and Platinum that too.
 
So far my toughest challenge on NG+ has been the double Ape encounter. The camera is wonky as hell in that fight and it's unforgiving with the amount of damage you take. I got killed fighting them twice. With Genichiro I think the amount of times you have to fight him really helps. Phase 3 is the only really oddball since the lightning hurts so much if you screw up.

Those guys that keep spinning around with the straw hats are harder than some mini-bosses. Those dudes do crazy damage/posture and it's tough to hit them cleanly.
 
Those guys that keep spinning around with the straw hats are harder than some mini-bosses. Those dudes do crazy damage/posture and it's tough to hit them cleanly.

in NG+ and beyond you have that Puppeteer Ninjutsu skill right from the beginning so it makes a lot of those fights against multiple enemies fairly easy...just sneak up behind one of them and backstab/puppeteer them...I found those white monkeys the toughest non-boss in the game (not the regular brown monkeys but the special white ones)
 
I haven't gotten far in this, but have decided I/m just going to crush it this weekend, using the ultrawide hack but screw it, I have an ultrawide and am going to use it
 
in NG+ and beyond you have that Puppeteer Ninjutsu skill right from the beginning so it makes a lot of those fights against multiple enemies fairly easy...just sneak up behind one of them and backstab/puppeteer them...I found those white monkeys the toughest non-boss in the game (not the regular brown monkeys but the special white ones)

Yeah, the ones down in poison pit area of the Ashina depths. Those guys break your posture really quickly. In NG+ I'm finding that some of the fights that require tons of deflects are tougher thanks to enemies breaking you down faster. Especially if the CPU starts spamming long combo sequences without giving you a chance to recover.

I cleared out the Mibu Village last night, so I'm getting pretty close to the last 1/4 of the game. I still have yet to see a Fulminated Mercury drop for the entire game, so I feel like that damn demon bell has been a waste of time. I have hundreds of most other materials and more than 100K in coin bags.
 
I cleared out the Mibu Village last night, so I'm getting pretty close to the last 1/4 of the game. I still have yet to see a Fulminated Mercury drop for the entire game, so I feel like that damn demon bell has been a waste of time. I have hundreds of most other materials and more than 100K in coin bags.

this is the easiest way to farm for Fulminated Mercury (end game)...only took me a few runs to get enough to fully upgrade my prosthetic tools...

 
Much like in Dark Souls, I feel like I just ran into a brick wall in NG+ after easily cruising for the first 2/3 of the game. Right around the Ashina Depths seems to be right around the point where enemies are able to break your posture and wreck your day in one sequence. Especially if the AI gets spammy with certain sequences and doesn't give you a retaliation opportunity.
While probably no harder than my first pass through the game, it feels somewhat abrupt after only dying a handful of times up to this point. Doujun and Kumano were beastly and even O-Ren was a pain when she refused to do her unblockable.
 
Owl was surprisingly not too bad on NG+. Got him on the 2nd try. I think that's mainly because I don't really ever try to block/deflect/parry him. The evasion fights aren't really affected by lower stamina and you have more healing items.

Owl version 2 is a bit rougher, but it's still an evasion fight. Unfortunately it takes forever. Thus far I'm 0-2, but got close both times. Down to 1/3 of his life on bar #2. The knock on that fight is that it's very dependent on the AI moveset. You only have a limited number of chances to hit him and if he isn't doing those punishable moves, you're basically just wasting time until he does. Fights like that are annoying.

EDIT: Got him. It's a fight where the camera can screw you over thanks to having to run around a lot. When he does his shadowrush type move after the flaming owl, I swear sometimes your Makiri counter doesn't work. I eventually just started running away rather than risking it. His fireworks can also be annoying if you're near a wall. Half that battle is keeping everything situated in the middle of the arena.

I still have yet to die on a bull. The fact that they weakened them puzzles me. Of all the enemies to weaken, that might be the easiest boss/miniboss in the whole game.

Managed to kill off the Sword Saint on the first try this time. I think it's just because I took so many tried on my last pass that I still have the muscle memory down for how to deal with him. Got the final ending this time around. I have all of the normal abilities, but none of the final ones. With those all taking 4-5 (and at least one taking freakin' NINE), I'd imagine you'd have to do a lot of grinding or complete the game at least one more time with minimal deaths to get those.
 
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After finally maxing out all of the prosthetics, I generally found the "most powerful" versions to be pretty lackluster. The normal 'ol firecrackers and flame axe were what I used most. The flame spear is pretty solid, but you don't get that until pretty close to the end of your first pass. The umbrella is apparently good for cheesing some enemies, but I never really used it like that. The others felt very situational, which is kinda lame IMO.

I think when it's all said and done, Sekiro is mostly about fighting your urge to dodge and attempting to parry (or at least block) 90% of attacks. I think I finally got used to that near the very end of my first pass. With NG+ there are more enemies that will eventually break your posture, but they don't show up until you're about 70% done.
 
so.... phase 3 and 4 of isshin... how do you guys cheese him? I know the general idea is to bait his jump slam attacks but I always get nailed or never get back in time and get nailed when I do get back.
my reflexes just suck. this rapid fire shit no longer works for me. KB/M people especially what are the actual moves you use to respond to the attack? is it he jumps, holding shift, right then forward? or what?
 
so.... phase 3 and 4 of isshin... how do you guys cheese him? I know the general idea is to bait his jump slam attacks but I always get nailed or never get back in time and get nailed when I do get back.
my reflexes just suck. this rapid fire shit no longer works for me. KB/M people especially what are the actual moves you use to respond to the attack? is it he jumps, holding shift, right then forward? or what?

he's honestly not too difficult once you get used to his moves...he pretty much does the same moves over and over...his combos have huge range but you don't need to cheese him...just deflect and bait his thrust move so you can Mikiri Counter it...run away when you see your posture meter filling up...the final phase with lightning is the easiest because it's easy to do that Lightning Reversal move and he does that move a lot
 
I'm @ shura second playthrough. I died for like an hour today. First boss is easy second... Not so much
 
so.... phase 3 and 4 of isshin... how do you guys cheese him? I know the general idea is to bait his jump slam attacks but I always get nailed or never get back in time and get nailed when I do get back.
my reflexes just suck. this rapid fire shit no longer works for me. KB/M people especially what are the actual moves you use to respond to the attack? is it he jumps, holding shift, right then forward? or what?

Not sure about KB/M, but I run around the arena in a clockwise pattern. He'll follow you, but slowly lose ground. When you get a little distance on him, you can turn slightly toward him and run at him. I aim for the side he's carrying his spear. He'll typically do his jump attack, which you can dodge under. You want to go directly under and slightly to the right. From there I use both hits of Mortal Draw and am ready to parry his follow up slash. Just mash parry like mad if you want. Sometimes he'll do 2-3 swipes to follow, which is dandy too. I'll parry those and back off. If you're at a distance, his low swipe unblockable won't reach you and you can Makiri the other one. If he does neither, just start running again. I like to keep this fight moving around so I don't have to guess which unblockable he's going to use and Mortal Draw does pretty heavy damage to his life and posture. I've won it both ways. When I was struggling with it, my goal was to have at least 6 healing items for the last phases. When you include rice, rice balls, divine grass, and fine snow...you can actually have more than you might think. Combined with your pellets and gourd, you can start with 15'ish plus your pellets. I'd also typically pop Ako's Sugar at the beginning of each phase. I used to run away a lot in phase 2, but you can actually play pretty aggressive in that one.
 
wow, finally got past him, for 3 endings. awesome game but damn that fight was just insane. I think I had much easier times with manus/4 kings/artorius NG+7 @ SL1

Update: I especially liked the immortal severance ending and how it tied into things
 
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for me the hardest boss in any Souls/Bloodborne game still goes to Sister Friede...her 3rd stage is where the real difficulty is...so fast, strong and she uses magic plus physical attacks...no other boss is this difficult
 
eh, I did a summon for that :) . overall I did not like the DS3 DLC. I thought the DLC in DS2 was far superior, "meaty" and cleverly done.
 
I found most of the DS3 DLC bosses to be hellish. Sister Friede, Midir, and Gael were all really, really tough. Depending on whether he was controlled by another player or not, Halflight could also be a major problem. They're actually one reason I don't want a Dark Souls 4. At least not for a long time. That's going to be tough to top and they made for a fitting conclusion based on the current style of the series.
A few of the DS2 DLC bosses (mainly Lud and Zallen) were also insanely tough.
I don't think anything in Bloodborne was even close to those bosses. The sharks were probably the toughest enemies, IMO.
I still feel like Sekiro's challenge mostly comes from people being too used to Dark Souls.
 
Rumors are that the next FROM game (a DS successor) will be an open world collaboration with GRRM. Will be interesting to see what actually happens.
 
I still feel like Sekiro's challenge mostly comes from people being too used to Dark Souls.

I think Sekiro's challenge comes from the early release hype when people didn't know how to defeat the enemies...once you learn the mechanics I honestly think it's the easiest From Software game...I replayed the game using a completely new game and also NG+ and NG+2 and they were both fairly easy...you can also finish the game really quickly once you know where to go

I still love the game though...the level design, enemy design, combat and world are top notch...and one thing that From Software doesn't get enough credit for- their games are literally bug free...no major bugs...the only things that needs patching are balance issues
 
I still love the game though...the level design, enemy design, combat and world are top notch...and one thing that From Software doesn't get enough credit for- their games are literally bug free...no major bugs...the only things that needs patching are balance issues

its a great game and all that, but realistically people with slow reflexes (like myself) are going to stuggle with it. DS series is much much more forgiving than sekiro. even sekiro cheese strategies really need a lot of great execution. Most of the cheese I have seen consisted of "do something to make enemy have a limited number of attacks which you then react to".
 
its a great game and all that, but realistically people with slow reflexes (like myself) are going to stuggle with it. DS series is much much more forgiving than sekiro. even sekiro cheese strategies really need a lot of great execution. Most of the cheese I have seen consisted of "do something to make enemy have a limited number of attacks which you then react to".

I can see that...but I also thought that Bloodborne was a faster paced game...I guess with Souls you have more options- magic, pyromancy, turtling enemies with your shield...plus you have all the summoning help...with Sekiro there's really only one way to play (unless you master those cheese strategies)...just for fun I tried the cheese strategy with the final Isshin boss and I thought it was actually harder...constantly running around the arena and waiting for him to do the jump move...I found that running up to him after he did the jump move was hard because he would immediately swing again with his wide sweeping attacks...so for me beating him the normal way was much easier
 
I found the timing for invincible rolling from Dark Souls to be less forgiving than Sekiro's "mash L1 like mad to parry" approach. You can spam button presses in Sekiro and there's basically no penalty for just hammering the parry button. The absolutely worst thing you get is a block, which works on all but a couple attacks. If an enemy keeps attacking, you can still parry the 2nd and 3rd moves after blocking the first one, too. They they really wanted to make Sekiro insanely hard (probably too hard), they could have made parry and block different buttons like in Dark Souls.
 
its a great game and all that, but realistically people with slow reflexes (like myself) are going to stuggle with it. DS series is much much more forgiving than sekiro. even sekiro cheese strategies really need a lot of great execution. Most of the cheese I have seen consisted of "do something to make enemy have a limited number of attacks which you then react to".

if you made it to the final boss (Isshin) then it doesn't seem like you have slow reflexes...you already beat Lady Butterfly, Genichiro, Great Shinobi Owl etc so the final boss moves aren't really any different as far as reflexes
 
if you made it to the final boss (Isshin) then it doesn't seem like you have slow reflexes...you already beat Lady Butterfly, Genichiro, Great Shinobi Owl etc so the final boss moves aren't really any different as far as reflexes

thats a good theory, though my problem is that I can never read critical attacks in time to react to them. some always do thrusts, those are ok, the ones that mix sweeps and thrusts I have huge problems with. :) Other enemies that do a barrage of different attacks are worse. but as they say, even a blind squirrel sometimes finds nuts.
 
Isshin is more intimidating than most foes just because there are so many phases to that fight. Even if you play it well, it's both time consuming and nerve racking. If you screw up, you can die really quickly. There are also times when the CPU just doesn't cooperate. It's really easy to watch a video and see someone abuse a certain move...but sometimes the AI just doesn't feel like doing that move. Other times the subsequent patches seem to have removed certain exploits or AI tendencies. It's a rough fight even if you do know it well. It's why I like to go into the last two phases of that battle with as many health items as possible. If you have 18-20 in health, you can usually survive most screw ups in order to run like hell and heal. You also get your resurrection ability back after completing one of his phases. Use the rice, divine grass, pellets, fine snow, etc. You can also go with a bite down/hidden tooth to try and manipulate your ability to resurrect.
 
Did anyone else notice that this game is hard? Holy fuck is it hard! Finally beat that bitch Lady Butterfly, I had to seriously cheese it to manage though....god help me if the bosses get harder than her.
 
I cheated after I beat Lady Butterfly my problem with the game no CO-OP and you can't power level like other souls games. I heard one guy say Lady Butterfly is easy compared to other bosses like Snake Eyes.
 
I heard one guy say Lady Butterfly is easy compared to other bosses like Snake Eyes.


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This guy is hard if you don't deflect which I didn't know about till mid game you press your guard on your button just spam it and it blocks the attacks.
 
you can't power level like other souls games...

you can somewhat over-level yourself by increasing your attack power but you need to obtain all 3 parts of the Dragon Mask...this then allows you to exchange 5 skill points for a 1 point increase in attack power...not really worth it in my opinion but if you're really having difficulty with certain bosses then that's the way to do it

I really would like some DLC but it looks like From Software moved all their resources over to Elden Ring...I actually got 100% of the Achievements for Sekiro...the only other game I did 100% was Bloodborne (PS4)...for most games I don't care about achievements because it involves too much grinding but with From Software games I enjoy the grind
 
you can somewhat over-level yourself by increasing your attack power but you need to obtain all 3 parts of the Dragon Mask...this then allows you to exchange 5 skill points for a 1 point increase in attack power...not really worth it in my opinion but if you're really having difficulty with certain bosses then that's the way to do it

I really would like some DLC but it looks like From Software moved all their resources over to Elden Ring...I actually got 100% of the Achievements for Sekiro...the only other game I did 100% was Bloodborne (PS4)...for most games I don't care about achievements because it involves too much grinding but with From Software games I enjoy the grind

you can't really do that, I mean in about all cases it is going to be a bad idea. Early on some of the combat skills will be much more valuable than the slight buff from a 5 point investment, and late game, you are looking 85K+ per point... so to platinum the game you have a ton of extra grinding. sekiro is a fantastic game, but reflex challenged people are just going to struggle with it.
 
you can't really do that, I mean in about all cases it is going to be a bad idea. Early on some of the combat skills will be much more valuable than the slight buff from a 5 point investment, and late game, you are looking 85K+ per point... so to platinum the game you have a ton of extra grinding. sekiro is a fantastic game, but reflex challenged people are just going to struggle with it.

yes I stated in my post that it wasn't worth it but I was responding to the post where he said that you couldn't over-level up...you can technically do that in Sekiro...I think around mid-game after getting most of the major combat skills you can put a few extra points into Attack Power and it won't really hurt you as far as allocating your skill points
 
Did anyone else notice that this game is hard? Holy fuck is it hard! Finally beat that bitch Lady Butterfly, I had to seriously cheese it to manage though....god help me if the bosses get harder than her.

I gave up as this game is painfully hard to the point it's not a joy to play.
 
I gave up as this game is painfully hard to the point it's not a joy to play.
I'd wager less than 10% of the people who bought the game completed it. It's a 'reaction time' and 'rythm' game in a Souls skin. Fans of the Soulsborne games love to speak the phrase "git gud" to new players having trouble, and it usually makes sense. However with Sekiro it doesn't make sense, as things like reaction time and rythm for most people are inherent and not things they can improve by a noticeable margin.
 
You don't need to guess, the information is readily available. 13.6% did the shura ending and 12.5% did the purification ending and 9.2% did man without equal which requires 2 playthroughs.

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You don't need to guess
We still kinda do because those achievements overlap each other like a venn diagram, and they include the players who used the god-mode cheats (which were a very popular request for this title) Any one single player who completes both Shura/Purification will contribute to the percentages of both, especially on PC where many players backup their saves before the branching storyline to re-load/re-use.

Based on that image I'd say about 15% completed might be a good guess, including the god mode trainers. I wish the game went in the direction of Bloodborne for difficulty scaling, and not reliance of reaction time/rhythm the way it did. Felt like Guitar Hero on Expert mode.
 
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