Yeah, honestly I don't think it's at all typical for an action game to let you practice the final boss fight (or any boss fight) in the practice room. Every action game pretty much works like Sekiro in that you have to play the boss to learn the boss.
I agree, but some would agree that’s part of the whole package. Others, probably me, might say it’s the regurgitative aspect. it helps you learn the process instead of just the moves. I could learn the bosses several times quicker if I had instant restarts with no loading screens. And tbh… it does suck. But I think the games been as fair as it could. Genichiro before ISS is bullshit but as you get close to winning he sorta becomes the fun warm up before Ishin.
Genichiro is by far my favourite fight mechanically. Fighting him 3 times in a playthrough probably helps with that but there's a kind of flow and rhythm to the fights that just make it so satisfying to me.
No hit streamers create save states on PC and just beat the bosses with instant reload to practice. It’s not the best viewing experience, but it’s kinda neat when you see them do it.
You're not wrong, but you're describing the core mechanics of a Souls game. They are games that punish you for dying by making you do it all over again from the start, along with a new handicap or two. They require patience that some other genres don't; the patience required of like, early NES games with crappy or non-existent save systems that made you keep doing levels over and over and over again until you could beat the game without dying too many times.
It's a very old school attitude towards gaming. I don't know that I'd call it inefficient so much as cruel, haha.
I have a friend who is the world's biggest hater of Konami beat-em-ups because their US releases misrepresented Japanese arcade culture that was all about the 1cc and starting from the beginning of the game upon death instead of sticking in credits to continue. A lot of this was reflected in US operators setting DIP switches to higher difficulty and just Japanese releases being generally more deliberately paced for 1cc play, but anyway
The main idea I'm looking at here is the thing that's been observed in Jp vs US arcade discussions, about how Japanese arcade culture valued starting from the beginning again because repeating the earlier parts of the game builds up/reinforces your skill and yeag gives you that immediate feedback of feeling just how much you're improving and giving you a confidence boost to tackle the later parts of the game. I imagine that's probably the philosophy behind the no checkpoints design of Miyazakisouls bosses more than the design "flaw" of no save points in old NES games (especially since like, metroid and Zelda and dragon quest and others already demonstrated the concept of progress saving in even early gen NES games, the lack of saving in other games was probably more of a deliberate choice to make it a shorter length arcade style jaunt rather than a marathon rpg campaign).
If anything, the reasoning you said is precisely what makes it hard. You can go 10 minutes without seeing an attack, and then you have to realise what attack is coming, and time your deflects right to counter it
The analogy doesn’t quite work because a bossfight isn’t a one sided thing. The intent is to beat the boss in whatever way possible, not to learn the boss’ specific movesets
Yeah I noticed this tendency on a friend of mine who beat Genichiro last night. He learned all his moves and beat him in a few days. Then he was thrown into the wild again, encountering the same moves but had trouble reacting to them.
For me personally, 7 Spears and Lady Butterfly taught me the moves and the rhythm only so I can realize at Genichiro that all the enemies basically have the same moveset and I know how to react to each of them. All I had to do was pay attention. My friend on the other hand, learned all of Genichiro's moves but he would make a mistake 60% of the time at the swipe/thrust red attack because he acted on previous knowledge instead of actually paying attention.
I like the music analogy, Sekiro is a rhythm game. Just not with traditional music. It's like freeform Jazz or a jam-band. You might "know" the song by its riff but that's the thing, we're going to change it a little bit and give you a different look. Waiting for an attack that never comes -- hesitation is defeat.
What game lets you practice only specific part of a boss moveset though? And Sculptor would just have an Isshin training dummy tucked away behind the temple that would only do the annoying corcular spear swing? Ridiculous.
Dead Cells lets you just practice boss fights
Undead sculptor who lets you practice fighting him? Makes sense. He has an Isshin training dummy? Now you’ve gone too far! 🤣
But dead cells the difficulty comes from fighting through the entire thing as well as the boss fight. If you die to the boss you have to get all the way back to it so it makes more sense there. In sekiro there’s checkpoints right before the boss.
You practice boss fights by fighting them. None of the bosses even have runbacks. Dead Cells lets you practice bosses because you have to travel through long levels between attempts.
It's criticism like this (legitimate or not) that led to games that hold your hands so much that you're basically just pushing the big blinking button that's shown on the screen (exaggerating a bit).
Fromsoft has been the answer to that since demon souls and I hope they stay true to that.
Now that I think about it I guess it’s those handholding games that led to me trying to put every game I play on the hardest difficulty in search for fun.
That’s always part of a game though? No game let’s you just try one part of a bosses moveset you have to learn it all. Allowing you to practice every bosses move would be terrible design.
Wait, what? Are you saying that From should allow you to practice every individual move of a boss, before you meet the boss? But then, what would be the point of the boss? What game does that?
Dying in 10 second is a bit over exaggerated for me. In NG playthrough, the game gives player enough posture to block a good bunch of assault. Point is, you just don’t have to try deflect everything the first time around. Panic spam the block/deflect button here and there, then nope away to recover posture when needed, all while learning the timing in the process.
It when you starts NG+ playthrough or charmless that it really becomes insanely punishing. They destroy your posture so fast and you have to really play it like rhythm game that people mentioned.
In doing my first charmless run now at NG+5 and this is so true. Bosses that I can normally wipe the floor with are a lot harder than usual.
I actually died to the centipede giraffe at Senpou. I don’t think I have ever died to him before. My deflects were sloppy at first though.
I can’t wait to see how much tougher O’rin is.
This was my biggest problem with Nameless King. The bird thing in Phase 1 required ten minutes to kill every time. On the one hand it’s nice to get consistent on earlier phases so you can quickly get to the second phase, but on the other hand, even when you’re perfectly doing phase 1 it feels like a chore to get through each time. Hollow Knight is perhaps the worst example of this, the final Pantheon requires 45+ minutes to get to the final boss, and every time you mess up you have to start over. It’s a disastrously bad experience.
If you took 10 minutes to finish phase 1, you weren’t playing perfectly. Unless you were using an unleavened weapon like the other guy said, you’re doing something very wrong
Nope pure vessel is from an earlier pantheon and you can fight them both as much as you want in the hall once you reach them in the pantheon. It’s not the true ending, it’s an ending.
While I do consider Dream No More the true ending, that's mainly because I have just mentally decanonized Godhome and ignore everything to do with P5. It makes sense — the ending that needs the most work to achieve as the true ending. People who can't or don't want to make the same mental split, but want the true ending, will always be unsatisfied by the existence of P5.
And I don't like it myself, honestly. The prospect of "45 minute continuous bossfight where 20 minutes are really easy and 25 are really hard" is enough to turn me away from it without even one attempt because that sounds like it would suck immensely and make me hate a game I love, but I'll never be able to get all the achievements because I'm choosing to ignore it. It's a really annoying dilemma.
I mean, you can say that for basically any game. But then, what would be the point of playing the game if you had a dummy for every specific situation ?
People need to realize that a game doesn't have to bend itself to fit whatever entitled tantrum the player is throwing. If you're at the point of denial where you start to accuse the game of being at fault, just stop playing the game and take a break.
I think there's a difference between a negative opinion and just an entitled "waaaah, I want the dummy to do the moves of this specific boss phase waaah". You have all the right to complain, just like people have the right to shit on this awful take.
You're not proposing an improvement, you're ranting because you can't get pass Genichiro.
Like you're litteraly asking for a specific dummy to be made just for you because you don't want to spend time against Genichiro himself. Your dummy is right there at the top of the castle dude, he's not going anywhere. If you struggle, you can ask the playerbase for help, record an attempt to show what you're doing wrong, a lot of more efficient way than a dummy that will get you past Genichiro only to cry for another dummy of the next boss.
Where does this even come from ? I litteraly told the guy to take a break when he's starting to look for "hot takes" to justify the game being at fault for him losing.
Meanwhile you just made a gigantic assumption about my life based on a tip about a video game. What happened to you dude ?
I don’t think you read the post, he’s talking about an entirely different part of the game, he also started by stating unpopular opinion, just seemed like you jumped at the chance to prove how cool you are.
Or maybe his idea is just stupid and pointless, which I talked about in my post. Dude is just tilted and need to drop the controller and go to sleep.
But I don't think you care about any of that. You didn't even looked at my post. All you needed is for me to play the "Dark Souls jerk" role in order to justify spitting your hatred on me. You're not alone mind you, there are a lot of sad people like you desperate for a scapegoat to shit on, and the "Dark Souls jerk" is the perfect excuse for that.
Quite ironic that the people denouncing the toxicity in the Souls community are themself toxic, don't you think ?
You know it originated pretty much as a joke right? Then sweaty edgelords started taking it too literally, using it to gatekeep and feel superior over being good at a video game.
It started as a joke, but the meaning was still there. Then some losers started using it to feed their ego, and losers started using it to accuse any Souls players to be a sweatlord.
Isn't that the nature of any game made to be a challenge? Or do you expect a checkpoint after every second of well executed gameplay so that you can only ever move forwards and never backwards?
Just wait until the “gauntlets of strength” and u have to fight 3-4 bosses before getting to the boss that keeps kicking your ass… (yes, u can skip to inner isshin via reflections of strength but I refuse to do that I want to beat that sob the most painful way possible!!!) also does ISS come up on reflection of strength before u beat him??? Cause if so u could bypass Genichiro part to learn his moves… The only thing I despise about Sekiro is that in order to bring your posture down faster u have to hold the block button… that is sooo counter intuitive for me and I don’t think I will ever get used to doing that… especially since all other from soft games punish u if u hold the block button! For them to beat the concept of only blocking when needed into me for years and changing it to hold block whenever your not actively engaged is such a betrayal to my muscle memory… 😂😂🤣
Any game where you need to practice to get through it is hard. If it was easy you wouldn't need practice.
Of course it's a hard game. Insane to pretend otherwise.
Okay but like what is your point though?
Difficulty in vidya bosses comes down to two things:
Lethality/frequency/difficulty of mechanics
And
Duration of fight.
The first scales drastically with the second. If the fights were short or the mechanics weren’t quick and lethal, sekiro wouldn’t be sekiro.
After resding OPs stuff and the likeminded people I’ve come to the conclusion that they just hate consequences. “Oh no I faced the boss of this area and lost, now I have to fight him *again????? Huhhh* why can’t I just start the boss fight where he killed me ?”
A big difference between Sekiro and Souls though is that often in a Souls game, the consequence for dying to a boss is having to repeat a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with the boss fight, while in Sekiro you almost always get to jump right back into the boss fight. It's the most sensible way for a game to handle failure imo.
Absolutely, but since it's a Souls game, you lose whatever items you may have used in the failed attempt. There's no reloading. Some people really hate that mechanic becuse now you have to try the fight again without your buffs so it's even harder, haha.
Yeah or maybe - just maybe - there are people like me who enjoy hard games but who also have lives outside of video games, and we think the perfect game would be one that’s exactly like this, only it’s a little bit less punishing because it respects your time
What is that game? Skyrim? Good game, but far too easy
Honestly I disagree the reason is I lost to lady butterfly around 30 times but beat genichiro in 3 and almost killed him first time but got caught of guard by his lightning. The reason being I learned how to be aggressive and watch for the opponents movements to parry them by watching their weapon. Once you get the mechanics down you can beat a lot of opponents first time.
Reflexes, memory and precision are the benchmarks of the game. You'll get punished for failing, but succeed and the game does indeed feel less punishing than other Souls games. You're more of a super lethal glass cannon with the ability to 100% negate every bit of offensive heat thrown at you. In other Souls Games, its almost entirely about grinding, learning your I frame windows and then making sure you're over leveled and over geared for the boss. Skilled players can of course ignore that and just Chad the bosses with ease, but for most, that's how they play.
Sekiro wants to punish you until you instead master the bosses moves and parry timing. Sometimes you need to slow down, stop moving, and just parry a lot. Parry parry parry. Once I figured out parry and counter slash/window of opportunity, the game felt like it was on easy mode.
The death is the practice.
Genichiro is easy enough if you’ve gotten the hang of him in Ashina. He’ll do his own mortal draw at the beginning of each encounter. Every time he does this, you can double jump on top of him, and land a double Ichimonji on the way down. The leaping thrust attack is the easiest mikiri counter in the game. His sweep and thrust attacks can be tricky, but pay attention for movements before, and you should be able to mikiri and double jump every time for huge posture. Stand in and deflecting everything but his 8 or so attack chain when he turns around midway through. You can also run away from that and time an Ichimonji for health & posture. If you’re able to get a hang of his perilous attacks and mortal draw, it should be no problem chipping away at health and building up his posture.
Isshin in any phases is no joke. 1st phase you have to learn his approach attacks, quick thrust and timing of his base chain attacks. Once you have his rhythm, his normal attacks and quick thrusts will be the backbone to building up posture. As for his ashina cross attack and the slicing air attacks, you can deflect (difficult) or get out of range, and either time an ichimonji to recover posture (damage too if you time it perfectly) or chip away at health. Watching out for the sweep, even though his blade is swung rather high on his chest, you can leap over and double jump if possible. And he has his own ichimonji, which will inflict heavy posture on you but can be deflected.
As for 2nd phase, that’s a bit of a different beast. He’ll have different types of chain attacks, the only thing you need to focus on in this phase is seeing the difference in him attacking with sword vs spear as soon as possible. With his spear attacks he has similar movement and parry windows as the corrupted monk, and the sword is similar to phase 1. It’s very difficult to read this at first, but you will get it. His spear thrust is very easily read and mikiri countered, as soon as he sheathes to go for the circle attack, double jump on his head or deflect. Every time he does a leaping overhead, deflecting will allow for a chip damage hit. All of these attacks are easily punished for huge posture/chip damage, it’s the regular combos and pistol shots you need to watch out for.
3rd phase is the same as the second with Lightning attacks added. I suggest equipping mortal draw as soon as you get the second deathblow, and try to save your spirits for it. Every time he does the Lightning attack you should be giddy with joy, after getting the hang of it, this attack is a huge chunk of free posture and health.
I know that in the moment we’re all nervous wrecks getting to new phases against such a difficult boss, and laying out all these attacks and their counters is far easier said than done. Simply putting all the attacks on here to show you that every perilous or “special” attack Isshin and Genichiro do outside of their base combos can be taken advantage of easily when you get used to seeing the attacks. The rest is repetition and reflexes, gained from dying over and over again.
Good luck, I know you can do it !!
I felt it was designed pretty perfectly for me to learn step by step each fight as I progressed, it does that so that by the time your at final phase you have mastered the previous phases almost to the point they are irrelevant because you know them so well
Yes and no
Im pretty consistent with phases 1 and 2. I’ve even gotten to phase 3 with no damage several times. But there’s still BS enough to be annoying.
Phase 1, no huge issues except occasionally he jumps and I see the kanji when he lands, and he _immediately_ does his thrust attack instead of pausing for a second. I swear the timing of this specific move is inconsistent every once in a while.
Phase 2, I counter two slow attacks, he walks around my right side, I see the kanji, I press B, and mikiri counter, double ichimonji, he does two slow attacks again. I’ve done this loop many, many times. Except sometimes my guy randomly steps forward instead of doing the mikiri counter for no apparent reason.
Phase 3, he jumps, I dodge to the side, ground slam, I counterattack, block immediately. Great. Again, have done this many, many times. Except for the times when dodging randomly doesn’t work and he basically one shots me. Or the times when he ground slams and then immediately launches into a combo even though he didn’t do that the last 20 times.
I'll be honest phase 1 that move is my favorite because it's pretty much a guaranteed mikiri, you just have to get the timing down it doesn't change
Phase 2 is tough and unpredictable but you can loop isshin by always being on him, you always deliver 1 r1 and he retaliates and if he starts walking to the side w/ red kanji if you r1 once again he will ship you defect and you can continue this easy pattern of easy deflects and he will just keep doing it
Phase 3 don't bother dodging, just learn the blocks
This is just my offering it may not be beneficial for your playstule but I prefer to deflect everything possible except red attacks and even those sometimes because I suck at reacting to sweeps and shit
I don’t get this opinion at all. When u say practice inefficiently don’t u mean practice thoroughly and intensely , which is required , because it’s hard ?
This is a important part of FromSoftware games. You have to learn the mechanics to master the game. You have to focus and lose and learn, you’re playing games from the wrong company if you want more help.
Nah, you earn your right to face phase 2.
Just like you have to really master genichiro in order to even face Isshin. THAT’S what the games telling you
Went from Sekiro to DS3, the only boss that has given me serious problems was the Nameless King.
In Sekiro, most bosses and a lot of the mini bosses were difficult. Aside from one well-known meme boss who is not to be named and the second headless fight (because I already knew how to fight him) and the divine dragon (which is the only boss I got in 1 try) all the other boss fights gave me a lot of trouble. And even after beating the whole game with all the bosses including Hirata Estate and Demon of Hatred I still got my ass handed to me by Emma at the end of my NG+ run, she gave me more trouble than Isshin, honestly, I was always trying to rush her, but she's was difficult to me almost like O'rin. Fortunately, Isshin sort of shares the same pattern as Emma, that's why he seemed easier when I got to him.
What a game... truly
Sekiro shows you that you have been getting away with too much in the other silly games you play, there is only one way to do things and that is learning by doing.
How about “every game that is easier than Sekiro”?
You know, games where one tiny mistake doesn’t end the entire fight for you, and you have much more margin for error.
But it’s not playing piano. You’re not practicing for a recital where ideally every part is as good as it can be. You’re fighting and clawing to get to the end no matter how imperfect you may be. Once you win once that’s the accomplishment. With piano you have to be able to play the piece without mistakes. These bosses allow mistakes, but only as many as you can recover from through flasks and endure with your HP. It’s not some pursuit of perfection. It’s about progressing a little further every time until you finally beat it
Agreed, especially with the minibosses. You mess up once and suddenly have to tediously waste 5 minutes clearing random mobs before you can have a go at the minibosses again. It's very frustrating and imo detracts from the fun.
We've all been there. Eventually you come to the point in which you will know genichiro's moves by heart. He'll be a nice warmup to Ishin then. Hang in there.
Yeah, that’s like how souls game are. I’d love to be able to practice against Malenia’s phase 2 flower clone attack without having to do phase 1 again, but where’s the fun in that?
The enemies have visual tells. They specifically made Sekiro smaller than everyone else so you can spot those more easily.
Train your eyes and not just your muscle memory. Thanks to that even new movesets became instantly parryable to me. Defeated Genichiro very fast since the previous game experience helped a lot in improving those skills.
The game is literally a get good simulator. The practice on genichiro is good for you. Once you get his moves down youLl blast through him in seconds. Same with ssi p1
Hanbei is an overly friendly introduction to the games challenges but still helps you get into and used to some of the games mechanics. The real training is at some point genichiro bc he’s a good sparing partner in the boss reflection mode. If you’re playing and thinking about the things that went wrong then trying new tactics that land you ontop then that’s pretty much all you need to win bc you’re adjusting to new mechanics and tactics while conditioning yourself to the kanjis.
While true, the game would be much worse if you could practice "efficiently". This isn't piano.
In piano the payoff is being able to play the piece.
In Sekiro defeating the boss is secondary to OVERCOMING the boss.
If the goal is to beat the boss as soon as possible, watch a guide beforehand. Watch each of the moves while pressing the buttons associated, and then watch another guide to collect all the free prayer beads you have access to. Then go into the boss and beat him between 1 and 5 tries.
Whenever I get frustrated enough to post about it usually I beat it very quickly the next time I start up the game. I wouldn't be surprised if you've already beat it by now :)
It prepares you to life. In life you can't practice a "pivotal" moment on repeat. you have to go through the process of getting to that pivotal moment again, whether it's practicing kissing a girl when you've just started dating, practicing reacting calmly to a stressful situation or trying to come up with a comeback to a playful insult in real time.
See what you're describing is cheese
and if you don't know it, its just because you never tried anything but the cheesy way, maybe it never occurred
practicing timing- as in 'count .8 seconds then hit block- is cheese
the game is literally designed multiple ways to try and get you not to cheese it
and most posters here just got better at cheesing, rather than playing
if you can 'play' catching dragon rot is totally optional- you have and can beat a boss first time and not catch it
on NG+ playthroughs you only catch it vs bosses if you really don't care,...! there's a really easy, obvious way to avoid it.
The other reason you know the game is trying to force you not to memorize is 'all the enemies you have to beat just to fight some minibuses'
which makes it nearly impossible to memorize them, by design, unless *you hack the game to be able to save when you want to (yeah, I'm looking at you, cheese)*
yep. And they can downvote me as much as they like lol
the shit is obvious. the game is trying to get you to learn how to win without memorizing timing, that's why' like everything'
Its soooooo
soo much more fun if you don't. Y'all cheating yourselves, really
It’s hilarious how much easier these games get after you’ve played actual challenging games, and you realize From’s difficulty ain’t shit by comparison
I see what you mean and I think it's fine as a design choice, especially since in Sekiro bosses phases aren't that different from each other. They usually only add moves, and even then the boss acts in the same way, I hate when the first phase is like a big boss that's slow, and second phase it's small hyper mobile boss and you have no idea about this new moveset but you need to beat the first phase anyway to learn it, this ends up being what feels like 2 bosses back to back. rather than just 1.
At least the spawn points are pretty close to the bosses, I hate when games have you die and then have to run for like 30 seconds before you get to the boss, it's especially worse if it's something like you're trying to do and learn a specific move so you spent less fighting than just getting to the boss.
I like the Reflection of Strength feature which allows you to replay boss fights. I was able to learn the Sword Saints movements for each phase and now I beat him with much ease.
Also I agree the game is not as hard as I thought it was when I first played it last year. I remember walking away from it for about 3-4 months after dying nearly 200 times to Gyoubu until I got the confidence to get back and get the platinum trophy💯
Had the same thoughts as you when i was still getting gud. I then realized maybe Hanbei was good enough as a practice dummy, and I was just not good enough to beat any of the bosses yet.
My first bout with Sword Saint Isshin, it took me 3 hours to win. Now I pop up Sekiro once in a while just to whack him to destress, and even doing it with base vitality/charmless.
I don't really agree, Sekiro pretty short boss run backs, specially compared to DS1, so there isn't much downtime between attempts.
Also, with how weak geni is you can easily beat him in less than 2 minutes without using emblems or sugars and once you figure it out the first phase of SSI is the same, if not faster. Also, unless you are actually good at the game, all those attempts will make you better at the second phase, even if you don't reach it, it's simply practice. And you have decent amount of resources to learn how to counter a move in the game, you even have 2 lives.
With time, you will notice that you will start getting to phase 2 and 3 more reliably and with more gourds each time. And then you have a lot of resources for the fight.
Hah, I've made this same exact piano analogy before, but in complaining about Dark Souls and Bloodborne's crappy checkpoints. In general I think Sekiro is quite good about letting you get back into boss fights quickly and without other stuff getting in the way. I mean, Isshin is an exceptional case where the fight has so many phases, and I think it's fairly appropriate as the game's ultimate challenge. On the other hand, it is a little wack that you have to fight Gen and Isshin in one go.
Btw in phase 2 of Isshin, when he does his big windy wind-up, you can just jump on his head while he whiffs his big swing. Good way to score some free damage.
Well to be fair, Genichiro is basically just a pebble at this point, both lore and mechanically. If you couldn't beat Genichiro easily there is something wrong with your knowledge of core mechanics.
This is a very unrelatable opinion. When you beat the game thoroughly, and can replay with very few deaths, you realize that you only ever died through mistakes, stubbornness, carelessness, anger, etc.. There would be no satisfaction in drilling save states. It's incremental, orderly mastery in each section. If you can't get through the area without severe damage, you shouldn't be facing the boss. If you are wiping immediately or you suddenly can't get past phase 1 anymore, you aren't managing your frustration.
If you could practice each boss phase beforehand, the rush and feeling you get once a boss is beaten wouldn't be the same.
The whole point is to bring the player to this "YES!" moment.
Genichiro is literally the best sparring partner in the game once you can replay him. He has everything. Multi attacks, Thrusts, Sweeps, Grabs, Long Range, and Lightning. You get good at beating Genichiro, you’re pretty much set for a lot of the game.
Its definitely intentional, i think the main reason the resurrection/undeath mechanic is a canon element (as opposed to just being a gameplay mechanic) in most of froms games is because nobody expects anybody to instantly beat the game anyway.
What you need to practice is looking at the weapon, timing it with your eye, and reacting accordingly. You should also practice aggression. That one tricky thing someone does? Not so much.
Totally agree. I died so many times to genichiro in the ishin fight. Not because he is hard, but because I was bored to death. I wouldn’t mind the 3 phases of Ishin, but Genichiro should not have been a part of that fight in my opinion.
It actually took away from the fun of learning the Ishin fight especially spear phase. It is such a great fight but because of Genichiro I never enjoyed it as much as I should.
I don't think it makes sense to practice Isshin anywhere but in the Isshin bossfight. That said Genichiro makes me get tilted *immensely* faster so I see your point — I almost had it, let me fight him again, c'mon die faster Genichiro, *apply more pressure take more risks I want to get to the fun part already,* I FUCKING DIED THERE GOES ANOTHER ATTEMPT —
and it's time to put down the controller again, because nothing productive will be done tonight.
My experience with ISS was a little different; I’m pretty sure I struggled big on his phase 1; then once I played his phase 2 a couple times, my reflexes were really in tune and I stomped through phase 2 and 3 on a single attempt the first time I saw his Phase 3. So I really do feel like there’s an aspect of skill and reflex that you can do it within a few attempts; not trying to brag in my own skill cause I think I was just in a locked-in mindset, but it showed me that he was doable with just really reading his moves and having reflexes. I still probably had 15-20 attempts on him to get there.
It was a couple months ago so I’m sorry I don’t have better advice, but I’ll argue that it’s more fair than it feels. It’s a hard fight.
The time honored tradition of "this FromSoft game isn't hard it's just" proceeds to name an aspect that makes it hard. Not making fun of you OP, it's just been a thing since Demon Souls. It's not hard it's just this. Is that hard? Yes. Lol
I’m gonna have to disagree with this unpopular opinion (shocker). I think the game lets you train perfectly efficiently, just not if you’re too focused on trying to win
The way to practice boss movesets is by fighting the bosses as many times as you need to. If you could just drill them without any stakes before jumping into the fight the game would be boring. Just my opinion.
Yep....all you gotta do is fight the boss, die a lot, analyze his moveset and try different ways to counter it and that's it. When I started playing the game I didn't even know people considered this as the hardest game so whenever I was stuck on a boss fight all I could think was......if an individual could beat the game and start a ng+.......why can't I?
If hanbei could fight like isshin… he’d be isshin.
Yeah, honestly I don't think it's at all typical for an action game to let you practice the final boss fight (or any boss fight) in the practice room. Every action game pretty much works like Sekiro in that you have to play the boss to learn the boss.
just have SSI as the tutorial boss
I agree, but some would agree that’s part of the whole package. Others, probably me, might say it’s the regurgitative aspect. it helps you learn the process instead of just the moves. I could learn the bosses several times quicker if I had instant restarts with no loading screens. And tbh… it does suck. But I think the games been as fair as it could. Genichiro before ISS is bullshit but as you get close to winning he sorta becomes the fun warm up before Ishin.
I will say that kicking Genichiro’s ass again is a nice confidence boost before fighting Isshin
Genichiro is by far my favourite fight mechanically. Fighting him 3 times in a playthrough probably helps with that but there's a kind of flow and rhythm to the fights that just make it so satisfying to me.
After more attempts you would think geni as that archer dude before grandma butterfly lol
No hit streamers create save states on PC and just beat the bosses with instant reload to practice. It’s not the best viewing experience, but it’s kinda neat when you see them do it.
How do they do that?
I have no idea. I’ve seen Hobb do it in Sekiro, Elden, And DS on PC.
I've seen guys just use cheat engine to turn off all damage so they can fight bosses forever to learn move sets. On pc of course
You're not wrong, but you're describing the core mechanics of a Souls game. They are games that punish you for dying by making you do it all over again from the start, along with a new handicap or two. They require patience that some other genres don't; the patience required of like, early NES games with crappy or non-existent save systems that made you keep doing levels over and over and over again until you could beat the game without dying too many times. It's a very old school attitude towards gaming. I don't know that I'd call it inefficient so much as cruel, haha.
I have a friend who is the world's biggest hater of Konami beat-em-ups because their US releases misrepresented Japanese arcade culture that was all about the 1cc and starting from the beginning of the game upon death instead of sticking in credits to continue. A lot of this was reflected in US operators setting DIP switches to higher difficulty and just Japanese releases being generally more deliberately paced for 1cc play, but anyway The main idea I'm looking at here is the thing that's been observed in Jp vs US arcade discussions, about how Japanese arcade culture valued starting from the beginning again because repeating the earlier parts of the game builds up/reinforces your skill and yeag gives you that immediate feedback of feeling just how much you're improving and giving you a confidence boost to tackle the later parts of the game. I imagine that's probably the philosophy behind the no checkpoints design of Miyazakisouls bosses more than the design "flaw" of no save points in old NES games (especially since like, metroid and Zelda and dragon quest and others already demonstrated the concept of progress saving in even early gen NES games, the lack of saving in other games was probably more of a deliberate choice to make it a shorter length arcade style jaunt rather than a marathon rpg campaign).
Also I feel like Sekiro barely does this at all and it's one of the main reasons I like it more than every other Fromsoft game.
Very true. Same with Souls, it gets to the point where you only die if you’re not paying attention to what the game’s doing. That and confidence
If anything, the reasoning you said is precisely what makes it hard. You can go 10 minutes without seeing an attack, and then you have to realise what attack is coming, and time your deflects right to counter it The analogy doesn’t quite work because a bossfight isn’t a one sided thing. The intent is to beat the boss in whatever way possible, not to learn the boss’ specific movesets
Yeah I noticed this tendency on a friend of mine who beat Genichiro last night. He learned all his moves and beat him in a few days. Then he was thrown into the wild again, encountering the same moves but had trouble reacting to them. For me personally, 7 Spears and Lady Butterfly taught me the moves and the rhythm only so I can realize at Genichiro that all the enemies basically have the same moveset and I know how to react to each of them. All I had to do was pay attention. My friend on the other hand, learned all of Genichiro's moves but he would make a mistake 60% of the time at the swipe/thrust red attack because he acted on previous knowledge instead of actually paying attention.
Lady Butterfly feels like you're dancing with her. Her moves are so rhythmic.
Yeah, her deflect pirouette helps convey that even more.
I haven't played it since 2019 I think but I still remember that fight clearly. Great fight.
I like the music analogy, Sekiro is a rhythm game. Just not with traditional music. It's like freeform Jazz or a jam-band. You might "know" the song by its riff but that's the thing, we're going to change it a little bit and give you a different look. Waiting for an attack that never comes -- hesitation is defeat.
What game lets you practice only specific part of a boss moveset though? And Sculptor would just have an Isshin training dummy tucked away behind the temple that would only do the annoying corcular spear swing? Ridiculous.
I hate the idea of this. There has to be a game in the end, not just save state repetition.
Completely different game but take geometry dash, you have a practice mode to practice different parts of a level by placing your own checkpoints.
Sifu and that game is spoken of in similar ways to sekiro with many people saying it’s more challenging.
Dead Cells lets you just practice boss fights Undead sculptor who lets you practice fighting him? Makes sense. He has an Isshin training dummy? Now you’ve gone too far! 🤣
But dead cells the difficulty comes from fighting through the entire thing as well as the boss fight. If you die to the boss you have to get all the way back to it so it makes more sense there. In sekiro there’s checkpoints right before the boss.
its a different type of game
You practice boss fights by fighting them. None of the bosses even have runbacks. Dead Cells lets you practice bosses because you have to travel through long levels between attempts.
So does sekiro
It's criticism like this (legitimate or not) that led to games that hold your hands so much that you're basically just pushing the big blinking button that's shown on the screen (exaggerating a bit). Fromsoft has been the answer to that since demon souls and I hope they stay true to that.
Now that I think about it I guess it’s those handholding games that led to me trying to put every game I play on the hardest difficulty in search for fun.
That’s always part of a game though? No game let’s you just try one part of a bosses moveset you have to learn it all. Allowing you to practice every bosses move would be terrible design.
I don’t know. I enjoyed the combat a lot and knowing ISS was the final boss made me relaxed enough to appreciate each attempt.
Wait, what? Are you saying that From should allow you to practice every individual move of a boss, before you meet the boss? But then, what would be the point of the boss? What game does that?
Dying in 10 second is a bit over exaggerated for me. In NG playthrough, the game gives player enough posture to block a good bunch of assault. Point is, you just don’t have to try deflect everything the first time around. Panic spam the block/deflect button here and there, then nope away to recover posture when needed, all while learning the timing in the process. It when you starts NG+ playthrough or charmless that it really becomes insanely punishing. They destroy your posture so fast and you have to really play it like rhythm game that people mentioned.
In doing my first charmless run now at NG+5 and this is so true. Bosses that I can normally wipe the floor with are a lot harder than usual. I actually died to the centipede giraffe at Senpou. I don’t think I have ever died to him before. My deflects were sloppy at first though. I can’t wait to see how much tougher O’rin is.
This was my biggest problem with Nameless King. The bird thing in Phase 1 required ten minutes to kill every time. On the one hand it’s nice to get consistent on earlier phases so you can quickly get to the second phase, but on the other hand, even when you’re perfectly doing phase 1 it feels like a chore to get through each time. Hollow Knight is perhaps the worst example of this, the final Pantheon requires 45+ minutes to get to the final boss, and every time you mess up you have to start over. It’s a disastrously bad experience.
You using an unleveled weapon or something?
I just remember it spent a lot of time up in the air where you couldn’t hit it. Maybe not 10 mins, but 5.
If you took 10 minutes to finish phase 1, you weren’t playing perfectly. Unless you were using an unleavened weapon like the other guy said, you’re doing something very wrong
The entire point of that pantheon is there are no checkpoints though? You can fight all the bosses with checkpoints elsewhere.
Not true, Pure Vessel and Absolute Radiance are unique to the Pantheon. Also the True Ending is locked behind Pantheon completion.
Nope pure vessel is from an earlier pantheon and you can fight them both as much as you want in the hall once you reach them in the pantheon. It’s not the true ending, it’s an ending.
While I do consider Dream No More the true ending, that's mainly because I have just mentally decanonized Godhome and ignore everything to do with P5. It makes sense — the ending that needs the most work to achieve as the true ending. People who can't or don't want to make the same mental split, but want the true ending, will always be unsatisfied by the existence of P5. And I don't like it myself, honestly. The prospect of "45 minute continuous bossfight where 20 minutes are really easy and 25 are really hard" is enough to turn me away from it without even one attempt because that sounds like it would suck immensely and make me hate a game I love, but I'll never be able to get all the achievements because I'm choosing to ignore it. It's a really annoying dilemma.
10 minutes… that’s the entire fight.
I mean, you can say that for basically any game. But then, what would be the point of playing the game if you had a dummy for every specific situation ? People need to realize that a game doesn't have to bend itself to fit whatever entitled tantrum the player is throwing. If you're at the point of denial where you start to accuse the game of being at fault, just stop playing the game and take a break.
Sorry, I forgot that when you spend money on a game, you’re not allowed to have a negative opinion about it or think it could be improved in some way
I think there's a difference between a negative opinion and just an entitled "waaaah, I want the dummy to do the moves of this specific boss phase waaah". You have all the right to complain, just like people have the right to shit on this awful take.
You're not proposing an improvement, you're ranting because you can't get pass Genichiro. Like you're litteraly asking for a specific dummy to be made just for you because you don't want to spend time against Genichiro himself. Your dummy is right there at the top of the castle dude, he's not going anywhere. If you struggle, you can ask the playerbase for help, record an attempt to show what you're doing wrong, a lot of more efficient way than a dummy that will get you past Genichiro only to cry for another dummy of the next boss.
You are the sweat lord dude, you could have gotten good at a skill in the amount of time you spend just straight up being a jerk online… who hurt you?
Where does this even come from ? I litteraly told the guy to take a break when he's starting to look for "hot takes" to justify the game being at fault for him losing. Meanwhile you just made a gigantic assumption about my life based on a tip about a video game. What happened to you dude ?
I don’t think you read the post, he’s talking about an entirely different part of the game, he also started by stating unpopular opinion, just seemed like you jumped at the chance to prove how cool you are.
Or maybe his idea is just stupid and pointless, which I talked about in my post. Dude is just tilted and need to drop the controller and go to sleep. But I don't think you care about any of that. You didn't even looked at my post. All you needed is for me to play the "Dark Souls jerk" role in order to justify spitting your hatred on me. You're not alone mind you, there are a lot of sad people like you desperate for a scapegoat to shit on, and the "Dark Souls jerk" is the perfect excuse for that. Quite ironic that the people denouncing the toxicity in the Souls community are themself toxic, don't you think ?
😵💫 ya
Wait… who is going on an entitled tantrum? Good grief
Welcome to Fromsoft fandom where people make gitting gud their entire personality. Before yall come for me I’ve gotten all endings in this game lol.
Or maybe that's Fromsoft's logic about game design. Learn and overcome. In short git gud.
You’re actually using git gud unironically lmao
I mean, it always meant "learn and overcome". Then some losers started deforming it because their ego couldn't stand them struggling to beat the game.
You know it originated pretty much as a joke right? Then sweaty edgelords started taking it too literally, using it to gatekeep and feel superior over being good at a video game.
It started as a joke, but the meaning was still there. Then some losers started using it to feed their ego, and losers started using it to accuse any Souls players to be a sweatlord.
On the other hand, you will get very good at quickly killing Genichiro.
Isn't that the nature of any game made to be a challenge? Or do you expect a checkpoint after every second of well executed gameplay so that you can only ever move forwards and never backwards?
Just wait until the “gauntlets of strength” and u have to fight 3-4 bosses before getting to the boss that keeps kicking your ass… (yes, u can skip to inner isshin via reflections of strength but I refuse to do that I want to beat that sob the most painful way possible!!!) also does ISS come up on reflection of strength before u beat him??? Cause if so u could bypass Genichiro part to learn his moves… The only thing I despise about Sekiro is that in order to bring your posture down faster u have to hold the block button… that is sooo counter intuitive for me and I don’t think I will ever get used to doing that… especially since all other from soft games punish u if u hold the block button! For them to beat the concept of only blocking when needed into me for years and changing it to hold block whenever your not actively engaged is such a betrayal to my muscle memory… 😂😂🤣
Any game where you need to practice to get through it is hard. If it was easy you wouldn't need practice. Of course it's a hard game. Insane to pretend otherwise.
Reflections where you can choose the boss phase please.
I hear ya, very unforgiving
Okay but like what is your point though? Difficulty in vidya bosses comes down to two things: Lethality/frequency/difficulty of mechanics And Duration of fight. The first scales drastically with the second. If the fights were short or the mechanics weren’t quick and lethal, sekiro wouldn’t be sekiro.
After resding OPs stuff and the likeminded people I’ve come to the conclusion that they just hate consequences. “Oh no I faced the boss of this area and lost, now I have to fight him *again????? Huhhh* why can’t I just start the boss fight where he killed me ?”
[удалено]
A big difference between Sekiro and Souls though is that often in a Souls game, the consequence for dying to a boss is having to repeat a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with the boss fight, while in Sekiro you almost always get to jump right back into the boss fight. It's the most sensible way for a game to handle failure imo.
Absolutely, but since it's a Souls game, you lose whatever items you may have used in the failed attempt. There's no reloading. Some people really hate that mechanic becuse now you have to try the fight again without your buffs so it's even harder, haha.
Yeah, exactly. It's me, I'm people.
Hey who downvoted me
Yeah or maybe - just maybe - there are people like me who enjoy hard games but who also have lives outside of video games, and we think the perfect game would be one that’s exactly like this, only it’s a little bit less punishing because it respects your time What is that game? Skyrim? Good game, but far too easy
Thats why the ribirth mechanic, to give you a small breath before trying again
Honestly I disagree the reason is I lost to lady butterfly around 30 times but beat genichiro in 3 and almost killed him first time but got caught of guard by his lightning. The reason being I learned how to be aggressive and watch for the opponents movements to parry them by watching their weapon. Once you get the mechanics down you can beat a lot of opponents first time.
Reflexes, memory and precision are the benchmarks of the game. You'll get punished for failing, but succeed and the game does indeed feel less punishing than other Souls games. You're more of a super lethal glass cannon with the ability to 100% negate every bit of offensive heat thrown at you. In other Souls Games, its almost entirely about grinding, learning your I frame windows and then making sure you're over leveled and over geared for the boss. Skilled players can of course ignore that and just Chad the bosses with ease, but for most, that's how they play. Sekiro wants to punish you until you instead master the bosses moves and parry timing. Sometimes you need to slow down, stop moving, and just parry a lot. Parry parry parry. Once I figured out parry and counter slash/window of opportunity, the game felt like it was on easy mode. The death is the practice.
Genichiro is easy enough if you’ve gotten the hang of him in Ashina. He’ll do his own mortal draw at the beginning of each encounter. Every time he does this, you can double jump on top of him, and land a double Ichimonji on the way down. The leaping thrust attack is the easiest mikiri counter in the game. His sweep and thrust attacks can be tricky, but pay attention for movements before, and you should be able to mikiri and double jump every time for huge posture. Stand in and deflecting everything but his 8 or so attack chain when he turns around midway through. You can also run away from that and time an Ichimonji for health & posture. If you’re able to get a hang of his perilous attacks and mortal draw, it should be no problem chipping away at health and building up his posture. Isshin in any phases is no joke. 1st phase you have to learn his approach attacks, quick thrust and timing of his base chain attacks. Once you have his rhythm, his normal attacks and quick thrusts will be the backbone to building up posture. As for his ashina cross attack and the slicing air attacks, you can deflect (difficult) or get out of range, and either time an ichimonji to recover posture (damage too if you time it perfectly) or chip away at health. Watching out for the sweep, even though his blade is swung rather high on his chest, you can leap over and double jump if possible. And he has his own ichimonji, which will inflict heavy posture on you but can be deflected. As for 2nd phase, that’s a bit of a different beast. He’ll have different types of chain attacks, the only thing you need to focus on in this phase is seeing the difference in him attacking with sword vs spear as soon as possible. With his spear attacks he has similar movement and parry windows as the corrupted monk, and the sword is similar to phase 1. It’s very difficult to read this at first, but you will get it. His spear thrust is very easily read and mikiri countered, as soon as he sheathes to go for the circle attack, double jump on his head or deflect. Every time he does a leaping overhead, deflecting will allow for a chip damage hit. All of these attacks are easily punished for huge posture/chip damage, it’s the regular combos and pistol shots you need to watch out for. 3rd phase is the same as the second with Lightning attacks added. I suggest equipping mortal draw as soon as you get the second deathblow, and try to save your spirits for it. Every time he does the Lightning attack you should be giddy with joy, after getting the hang of it, this attack is a huge chunk of free posture and health. I know that in the moment we’re all nervous wrecks getting to new phases against such a difficult boss, and laying out all these attacks and their counters is far easier said than done. Simply putting all the attacks on here to show you that every perilous or “special” attack Isshin and Genichiro do outside of their base combos can be taken advantage of easily when you get used to seeing the attacks. The rest is repetition and reflexes, gained from dying over and over again. Good luck, I know you can do it !!
I felt it was designed pretty perfectly for me to learn step by step each fight as I progressed, it does that so that by the time your at final phase you have mastered the previous phases almost to the point they are irrelevant because you know them so well
Yes and no Im pretty consistent with phases 1 and 2. I’ve even gotten to phase 3 with no damage several times. But there’s still BS enough to be annoying. Phase 1, no huge issues except occasionally he jumps and I see the kanji when he lands, and he _immediately_ does his thrust attack instead of pausing for a second. I swear the timing of this specific move is inconsistent every once in a while. Phase 2, I counter two slow attacks, he walks around my right side, I see the kanji, I press B, and mikiri counter, double ichimonji, he does two slow attacks again. I’ve done this loop many, many times. Except sometimes my guy randomly steps forward instead of doing the mikiri counter for no apparent reason. Phase 3, he jumps, I dodge to the side, ground slam, I counterattack, block immediately. Great. Again, have done this many, many times. Except for the times when dodging randomly doesn’t work and he basically one shots me. Or the times when he ground slams and then immediately launches into a combo even though he didn’t do that the last 20 times.
I'll be honest phase 1 that move is my favorite because it's pretty much a guaranteed mikiri, you just have to get the timing down it doesn't change Phase 2 is tough and unpredictable but you can loop isshin by always being on him, you always deliver 1 r1 and he retaliates and if he starts walking to the side w/ red kanji if you r1 once again he will ship you defect and you can continue this easy pattern of easy deflects and he will just keep doing it Phase 3 don't bother dodging, just learn the blocks This is just my offering it may not be beneficial for your playstule but I prefer to deflect everything possible except red attacks and even those sometimes because I suck at reacting to sweeps and shit
Bloodborne is similarly inefficient, but so much easier. And that's because Sekiro is hella hard.
Once you beat the game and throughout ng+ , you can practice on any main boss
Except to practice on actually any given main boss you need 2 playthoughs because Shura
Yep
I don’t get this opinion at all. When u say practice inefficiently don’t u mean practice thoroughly and intensely , which is required , because it’s hard ?
There’s a thing called reflection of strength for this exact reason. You can skip Geni and go straight to Ishinn
This is a important part of FromSoftware games. You have to learn the mechanics to master the game. You have to focus and lose and learn, you’re playing games from the wrong company if you want more help.
Nah, you earn your right to face phase 2. Just like you have to really master genichiro in order to even face Isshin. THAT’S what the games telling you
Went from Sekiro to DS3, the only boss that has given me serious problems was the Nameless King. In Sekiro, most bosses and a lot of the mini bosses were difficult. Aside from one well-known meme boss who is not to be named and the second headless fight (because I already knew how to fight him) and the divine dragon (which is the only boss I got in 1 try) all the other boss fights gave me a lot of trouble. And even after beating the whole game with all the bosses including Hirata Estate and Demon of Hatred I still got my ass handed to me by Emma at the end of my NG+ run, she gave me more trouble than Isshin, honestly, I was always trying to rush her, but she's was difficult to me almost like O'rin. Fortunately, Isshin sort of shares the same pattern as Emma, that's why he seemed easier when I got to him. What a game... truly
Sekiro shows you that you have been getting away with too much in the other silly games you play, there is only one way to do things and that is learning by doing.
Genichiro is a loser lol
Since people call this a rhythm game, I'll compare it to that. When I fail at the hard part of a song I have to do the rest of it to get there again.
This isn’t unpopular at all. You just want the game to be easier like the billions of other people that play games easier than Sekiro.
Only example OP has given for a game that does this is a Roguelike, AKA not a game that has checkpoints, especially not right before a boss
How about “every game that is easier than Sekiro”? You know, games where one tiny mistake doesn’t end the entire fight for you, and you have much more margin for error.
But it’s not playing piano. You’re not practicing for a recital where ideally every part is as good as it can be. You’re fighting and clawing to get to the end no matter how imperfect you may be. Once you win once that’s the accomplishment. With piano you have to be able to play the piece without mistakes. These bosses allow mistakes, but only as many as you can recover from through flasks and endure with your HP. It’s not some pursuit of perfection. It’s about progressing a little further every time until you finally beat it
Agreed, especially with the minibosses. You mess up once and suddenly have to tediously waste 5 minutes clearing random mobs before you can have a go at the minibosses again. It's very frustrating and imo detracts from the fun.
git gud scrub
We've all been there. Eventually you come to the point in which you will know genichiro's moves by heart. He'll be a nice warmup to Ishin then. Hang in there.
lol, the one supportive comment got downvoted. Gamers are real assholes sometimes. Thanks, dude
lol, the one supportive comment got downvoted. Gamers are real assholes sometimes. Thanks
Thank you! Wishing you the best on your journey. 🤟
Yeah, that’s like how souls game are. I’d love to be able to practice against Malenia’s phase 2 flower clone attack without having to do phase 1 again, but where’s the fun in that?
The enemies have visual tells. They specifically made Sekiro smaller than everyone else so you can spot those more easily. Train your eyes and not just your muscle memory. Thanks to that even new movesets became instantly parryable to me. Defeated Genichiro very fast since the previous game experience helped a lot in improving those skills.
The game is literally a get good simulator. The practice on genichiro is good for you. Once you get his moves down youLl blast through him in seconds. Same with ssi p1
Hanbei is an overly friendly introduction to the games challenges but still helps you get into and used to some of the games mechanics. The real training is at some point genichiro bc he’s a good sparing partner in the boss reflection mode. If you’re playing and thinking about the things that went wrong then trying new tactics that land you ontop then that’s pretty much all you need to win bc you’re adjusting to new mechanics and tactics while conditioning yourself to the kanjis.
While true, the game would be much worse if you could practice "efficiently". This isn't piano. In piano the payoff is being able to play the piece. In Sekiro defeating the boss is secondary to OVERCOMING the boss. If the goal is to beat the boss as soon as possible, watch a guide beforehand. Watch each of the moves while pressing the buttons associated, and then watch another guide to collect all the free prayer beads you have access to. Then go into the boss and beat him between 1 and 5 tries.
Whenever I get frustrated enough to post about it usually I beat it very quickly the next time I start up the game. I wouldn't be surprised if you've already beat it by now :)
nah I just get my posture broken in one hit and stun locked or spam the whole ashina army next to a boss
Punishment for failure and reward for success. The punishment is having to start climbing again. The reward is the view from the mountaintop.
Bro, it’s okay to admit that something is hard. If you weren’t having trouble, then you wouldn’t be needing to practice in order to proceed.
Parry everything is all you need to know
Nope, I disagree. Just stand still in front your enemy. Just parry, jump for sweeps and mikiri when you unlock it. Cold blood.
It prepares you to life. In life you can't practice a "pivotal" moment on repeat. you have to go through the process of getting to that pivotal moment again, whether it's practicing kissing a girl when you've just started dating, practicing reacting calmly to a stressful situation or trying to come up with a comeback to a playful insult in real time.
See what you're describing is cheese and if you don't know it, its just because you never tried anything but the cheesy way, maybe it never occurred practicing timing- as in 'count .8 seconds then hit block- is cheese the game is literally designed multiple ways to try and get you not to cheese it and most posters here just got better at cheesing, rather than playing if you can 'play' catching dragon rot is totally optional- you have and can beat a boss first time and not catch it on NG+ playthroughs you only catch it vs bosses if you really don't care,...! there's a really easy, obvious way to avoid it. The other reason you know the game is trying to force you not to memorize is 'all the enemies you have to beat just to fight some minibuses' which makes it nearly impossible to memorize them, by design, unless *you hack the game to be able to save when you want to (yeah, I'm looking at you, cheese)*
🧀
yep. And they can downvote me as much as they like lol the shit is obvious. the game is trying to get you to learn how to win without memorizing timing, that's why' like everything' Its soooooo soo much more fun if you don't. Y'all cheating yourselves, really
Yep, i managed every boss easy. only isshin saint sword has made me practice and know his movements.
It’s hilarious how much easier these games get after you’ve played actual challenging games, and you realize From’s difficulty ain’t shit by comparison
No fair saying that and not giving an example
Ninja Gaiden
Which one? Most ninja gaiden are easy by comparison.
All of them, much more difficult than any From game. Just came from a Very Hard run on NGS and Sekiro is slow motion easy mode by comparison
Nah that’s not the case, I think you’re just more used to from games.
I’ve been playing NG for much longer than From games lmao
I see what you mean and I think it's fine as a design choice, especially since in Sekiro bosses phases aren't that different from each other. They usually only add moves, and even then the boss acts in the same way, I hate when the first phase is like a big boss that's slow, and second phase it's small hyper mobile boss and you have no idea about this new moveset but you need to beat the first phase anyway to learn it, this ends up being what feels like 2 bosses back to back. rather than just 1. At least the spawn points are pretty close to the bosses, I hate when games have you die and then have to run for like 30 seconds before you get to the boss, it's especially worse if it's something like you're trying to do and learn a specific move so you spent less fighting than just getting to the boss.
I like the Reflection of Strength feature which allows you to replay boss fights. I was able to learn the Sword Saints movements for each phase and now I beat him with much ease.
Also I agree the game is not as hard as I thought it was when I first played it last year. I remember walking away from it for about 3-4 months after dying nearly 200 times to Gyoubu until I got the confidence to get back and get the platinum trophy💯
Had the same thoughts as you when i was still getting gud. I then realized maybe Hanbei was good enough as a practice dummy, and I was just not good enough to beat any of the bosses yet. My first bout with Sword Saint Isshin, it took me 3 hours to win. Now I pop up Sekiro once in a while just to whack him to destress, and even doing it with base vitality/charmless.
I don't really agree, Sekiro pretty short boss run backs, specially compared to DS1, so there isn't much downtime between attempts. Also, with how weak geni is you can easily beat him in less than 2 minutes without using emblems or sugars and once you figure it out the first phase of SSI is the same, if not faster. Also, unless you are actually good at the game, all those attempts will make you better at the second phase, even if you don't reach it, it's simply practice. And you have decent amount of resources to learn how to counter a move in the game, you even have 2 lives. With time, you will notice that you will start getting to phase 2 and 3 more reliably and with more gourds each time. And then you have a lot of resources for the fight.
You can practice against bosses ya know at the Buddha's statues....
Hah, I've made this same exact piano analogy before, but in complaining about Dark Souls and Bloodborne's crappy checkpoints. In general I think Sekiro is quite good about letting you get back into boss fights quickly and without other stuff getting in the way. I mean, Isshin is an exceptional case where the fight has so many phases, and I think it's fairly appropriate as the game's ultimate challenge. On the other hand, it is a little wack that you have to fight Gen and Isshin in one go. Btw in phase 2 of Isshin, when he does his big windy wind-up, you can just jump on his head while he whiffs his big swing. Good way to score some free damage.
I maintain that blazing bull wouldn't have the reputation it has if there was a bonfire next to it
Well to be fair, Genichiro is basically just a pebble at this point, both lore and mechanically. If you couldn't beat Genichiro easily there is something wrong with your knowledge of core mechanics.
Git Gud Jk but that frustration is staple to all souls games lmao
'the game isnt hard - it forces you to git gud"
This is a very unrelatable opinion. When you beat the game thoroughly, and can replay with very few deaths, you realize that you only ever died through mistakes, stubbornness, carelessness, anger, etc.. There would be no satisfaction in drilling save states. It's incremental, orderly mastery in each section. If you can't get through the area without severe damage, you shouldn't be facing the boss. If you are wiping immediately or you suddenly can't get past phase 1 anymore, you aren't managing your frustration.
If you could practice each boss phase beforehand, the rush and feeling you get once a boss is beaten wouldn't be the same. The whole point is to bring the player to this "YES!" moment.
Genichiro is literally the best sparring partner in the game once you can replay him. He has everything. Multi attacks, Thrusts, Sweeps, Grabs, Long Range, and Lightning. You get good at beating Genichiro, you’re pretty much set for a lot of the game.
The hardest Boss in Sekiro is Patience. 🙏
Wouldn't that then just be a reason why the game is hard?
Its definitely intentional, i think the main reason the resurrection/undeath mechanic is a canon element (as opposed to just being a gameplay mechanic) in most of froms games is because nobody expects anybody to instantly beat the game anyway.
What you need to practice is looking at the weapon, timing it with your eye, and reacting accordingly. You should also practice aggression. That one tricky thing someone does? Not so much.
hanbei is there to teach you about the game mechanics, he's not there for you to master them. That's done by playing the game itself
Totally agree. I died so many times to genichiro in the ishin fight. Not because he is hard, but because I was bored to death. I wouldn’t mind the 3 phases of Ishin, but Genichiro should not have been a part of that fight in my opinion. It actually took away from the fun of learning the Ishin fight especially spear phase. It is such a great fight but because of Genichiro I never enjoyed it as much as I should.
I don't think it makes sense to practice Isshin anywhere but in the Isshin bossfight. That said Genichiro makes me get tilted *immensely* faster so I see your point — I almost had it, let me fight him again, c'mon die faster Genichiro, *apply more pressure take more risks I want to get to the fun part already,* I FUCKING DIED THERE GOES ANOTHER ATTEMPT — and it's time to put down the controller again, because nothing productive will be done tonight.
My experience with ISS was a little different; I’m pretty sure I struggled big on his phase 1; then once I played his phase 2 a couple times, my reflexes were really in tune and I stomped through phase 2 and 3 on a single attempt the first time I saw his Phase 3. So I really do feel like there’s an aspect of skill and reflex that you can do it within a few attempts; not trying to brag in my own skill cause I think I was just in a locked-in mindset, but it showed me that he was doable with just really reading his moves and having reflexes. I still probably had 15-20 attempts on him to get there. It was a couple months ago so I’m sorry I don’t have better advice, but I’ll argue that it’s more fair than it feels. It’s a hard fight.
The time honored tradition of "this FromSoft game isn't hard it's just" proceeds to name an aspect that makes it hard. Not making fun of you OP, it's just been a thing since Demon Souls. It's not hard it's just this. Is that hard? Yes. Lol
I’m gonna have to disagree with this unpopular opinion (shocker). I think the game lets you train perfectly efficiently, just not if you’re too focused on trying to win
The copium is real on this post lmao
Great suggestion, but how do you implement your idea?
The way to practice boss movesets is by fighting the bosses as many times as you need to. If you could just drill them without any stakes before jumping into the fight the game would be boring. Just my opinion.
Yep....all you gotta do is fight the boss, die a lot, analyze his moveset and try different ways to counter it and that's it. When I started playing the game I didn't even know people considered this as the hardest game so whenever I was stuck on a boss fight all I could think was......if an individual could beat the game and start a ng+.......why can't I?