Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (

2019

) ½

Dark Souls [2011] remains one of my favorite games of all time, as I will happily mention with even the slightest provocation. Yet, for my money, neither of the game's sequels really measured up. Dark Souls 3 [2016] while not a bad game in its own right was too much of a retread of familiar ideas and far too laden with fan-service for my liking. Dark Souls 2 [2014], despite benefiting from a solid core lifted entirely from the original Dark Souls [2011] still felt like a shabby knock-off. When I was playing through it I couldn't escape the suspicion that it was meant more as a means of capitalizing on the first game than as a unique artistic vision in its own right. It also boasts some of the worse bosses in the entire series with stinkers like The Dragon Riders, The Covetous Demon, and The Prowling Magus. Still, I suspect that part of the reason why I like Dark Souls [2011] best of all, is because it was the first game in the series that I played. Every mechanic was fresh and ever area rife with danger as I adjusted to the game's frightening difficulty curve. Gradually I started to “git gud” and previously insurmountable obstacles became mere speed-bumps on the road to my progress. Unfortunately, I can never have the experience of playing Dark Souls [2011] for the first time again and when I go back to replay it now the opening areas become a snap to just speed through. The sequels were similar enough in controls and mechanics that they did not offer the same meteoric rise from uncoordinated doofus to terrifying god of war. Fortunately for me, the guys behind Dark Souls [2011] finished the series and moved onto a new project, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

I cannot overstate how bad I was at Sekiro when I first started playing. I struggled to get past the first Samurai General in Ashina outskirts, a “mini-boss” who is basically just an average goon with more health and a few odd tricks. Still, Sekiro gives you enough options and tricks that even if you're as hopeless as I was you can still struggle through it. That is, at least, until I got to my first boss: Lady Butterfly. This is the point where I ran headlong into the wall of Sekiro's combat system. To be fair, this problem was partially self-inflicted, as Lady Butterfly is an optional boss. You don't need to fight her first, hell you don't need to fight her at all. Indeed, I'd recommend new players to wait before taking her on, and at least fight Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa first. However, a curious thing happened while I was struggling with Lady Butterfly, I didn't get frustrated. Instead, I was completely hooked. I probably spent three hours in total facing off with her, again and again. Each time getting a little be better at the game's combat until I finally triumphed. I enjoyed the victory but more than that I enjoyed the struggle to achieve it. The fight was as rewarding as beating The Bell Gargoyles for the first time in Dark Souls [2011].

While it recaptures the same feel of playing Dark Souls [2011] for the first time, Sekiro is actually quite a bit different. For one thing, there is almost no character customization. Your character, Wolf, will look the same for every player and be armed and armored in almost exactly the same manner. Your primary weapon will always be the same sword, though you can switch out secondary weapons/tools on your prosthetic arm. There is still experience but rather than increasing statistics, going up levels will allow you to unlock various buffs and techniques. These can be useful, but other than a few staples like The Mikiri Counter, none are really essential. As a result, there is no real way to grind your way through this game, a few upgrades might give you an advantage but the only way to beat any of the game's challenges is simply to “git gud” at the combat.

The combat itself is also vastly different from any of the Dark Souls games. For one thing, there are no shields, you can block with your sword in a similar fashion but it is highly encouraged that you try to parry the enemy attacks instead as that will do less damage to your posture as well as inflicting more damage on your enemy's posture. Fortunately, parrying here is a good deal easier than in any of the Dark Souls games. Likewise, the dodge roll has been replaced with a dodge that is significantly less useful. You can no longer simply dodge through enemy sword swings, so the dodge is only really helpful in avoiding overhead slashes and thrusts. There's also an emphasis on jumping in combat, as for once FromSoftware has bound jump to a normal button. So you can effectively counter enemy sweeping attacks by jumping over the blow and bouncing off the enemy's head. The biggest difference of all though is the way that combat works in general. Both the enemy as well as Wolf have both a health and a posture bar, and for the most part, you will not be damaging the health bar at all, rather you'll be racking up posture damage until you can deliver a death blow. This means it's possible to beat some bosses without even attacking them, as you can deplete their posture just by parrying every blow. In practical terms, though you'll still want to attack as deflected attacks also damage the enemy's posture and successful attacks will damage it still more. Since posture gradually regenerates this encourages a faster, more aggressive playstyle than any of the Souls games. If you're ever unsure about what to do in the game, it's usually a good idea to get right up in the face of your opponent and deflect his attacks until you can find an opening.

The storytelling is also significantly different than Dark Souls. For starters, I actually know who all the characters are and what their goals and motivations are; and I didn't even have to watch a lore video on youtube to do it either. The story is straightforward enough, the main character, Wolf, is a shinobi sworn to a young boy called Kuro the Divine Heir. Kuro has the blood of the Divine Dragon, which means no earthly weapon can harm him and he can never die. He is kidnapped by Genichiro Ashina, the young heir to the Ashina clan. Ashina's lands are besieged by forces from the Interior Ministry, and though the Ashina are holding out for now it's only a matter of time before the weight of the Interior Minisitry's attacks crush the upstart kingdom. Genichiro wants to exploit the power of the Divine Heir's blood to reinforce Ashina with an army of undying warriors. In particular, he wants to save the life of his dying grandfather, Isshin Ashina, the legendary sword saint, who is the only reason that Ashina is an independent kingdom in the first place and the main reason why the Interior Ministry hasn't completely overrun the place. Curiously, Isshin himself is indifferent about this project and is instead prepared to accept his death with stoic indifference. Wolf, meanwhile, is not about to let his lord be kidnapped and do nothing about it. Since Kuro had previously gifted him with the power of resurrection, Wolf can never truly die and consequently, he will never stop hurling himself at Ashina's walls.

This is still a FromSoftware game though and while the basic plot and motivations of all the characters are easily accessible there is a layer of lore beneath the surface that can only be deduced from careful study of the game's environment and item descriptions. I think this is a fair compromise between a totally shallow story and the unintelligible confusion of something like Dark Souls [2011]. It provides us with a hook to draw us in and then additional depth for those that want to go deeper. Obviously, there is no one “right” way to tell a story, but Sekiro finds a nice balance between the obvious and the obscure.

This game is unquestionably a masterpiece that is well worth anyone's time, but of course, it is not perfect. The stealth elements, in particular, are basic and exploitable. Only some enemies have the ability to signal their comrades as if yelling is a special ability in the world of Sekiro. As a result, you get into absurd situations where you'll see an enemy charging at your with a drawn sword while ten feet away his friends look around furtively, wondering if they've heard a noise somewhere. In one notable instance, I fought a duel with a bandit while not five feet away another bandit was just relaxing and enjoying a drink of sake. Even alerted enemies will only hunt for you in set areas, so if you've kicked the hornet's nest all you need to do is fall back or climb a tree and wait for things to die down. It's also absurd how easy it is to knock down enemies without their comrades noticing what's happening around them. There are multiple times where I killed enemy soldiers with shurikens from the distance while the guards at their side stood by and were not even suspect that something might be amiss. Just like in Dark Souls [2011] the enemy AI is unfathomably stupid, having difficulty with even basic tasks like pursing you up a flight of stairs. However here, where you're fighting human beings rather than undead husks, the sheer unbridled idiocy is more noticeable. All this combines to create moments in the game where you can easily bypass tough areas with cheap tricks and patience rather than skill.

It's especially jarring because if you stand and fight your adversaries man-to-man like the honorable warrior your character is supposed to be, the immersion is nearly seamless. However you can't give me an array of stealth tools and not expect me to use and abuse them, especially in a game where fighting more than one enemy at a time is both common and, at least at first anyway, a death sentence. Indeed many mini-bosses, like Juzuo the Drunkard and Seven Ashina Spears: Shume Masaji Oniwa, hinge on exploiting the weak AI to annihilate the mooks around the boss before taking on the main opponent.

The poor AI becomes absolutely appalling though when it allows you to trivialize an otherwise challenging mini-boss. Simply leading them out of their expected boss arena is often enough to utterly break them. This happened during my first playthrough when I was wrestling with one of the Lone Shadow mini-bosses and brought the fight outside of the area he spawns in. At a certain point, he lost interest in the fight and started slowly walking back to the place he originated in, leaving himself wide-open to my attacks. I won the fight but felt a bit dirty afterward like I'd outsmarted the game rather than beat it. Fortunately, there's no option to use this tactic against any of the game superb boss battles, as they are invariably locked in a fixed arena blocked off by fog walls. Still, if you're so inclined I've heard that there is a way to get the Demon of Hatred, an end game optional boss that many consider to be the most difficult enemy in the whole game, to run off a cliff and kill itself. It hardly seems sporting to me, especially considering that the Demon of Hatred is one of the best boss battles in the whole game.

The camera system that FromSoftware is using is obviously lifted from Dark Souls [2011] with only minimal tweaking. It works well enough most of the time, but the lock on camera does have a tendency to lose focus on the boss if they jump over you, a tactic that a lot of the ninja bosses will employ regularly. It would be nice if when this happened in a 1v1 boss fight that the camera locked back onto the boss once they landed on the ground, as it should be pretty fucking obvious at this point that I wanted to lock onto them, but that is a minor quibble. Much worse is the unpredictable way that the camera behaves when you're backed into a corner, which can easily make the player confused or disoriented. The player can prevent this in most cases by not allowing themselves to be back against a wall (which is probably sound advice for real-life sword fights too) but some mini-bosses are fought in such tiny arenas that you can't help but run into this issue. The Lone Shadow Longswordsman is a particularly annoying example of this issue.

Yet none of that matters when you find yourself face-to-face with one of the game's absolutely perfect boss fights. Having played through the game twice now, I cannot, in all honesty, pick a favorite. The first duel with Genichiro atop Ashina castle is a spectacular midpoint in the game. The fight with the Guardian Ape that throws poop at you poisons you with a toxic fart cloud before surprising you a brutal second form is also a real gem. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the second fight with the great Shinobi Owl in the burning temple or the final boss battle with a resurrected sword saint. Indeed, it would be easier to mention the boss battles that were lackluster (Folding Screen Monkeys and The Headless Ape) than to list all the ones that were spectacular.

There is an attention to detail in the fighting style used by each boss that reflects both the individual boss' personality as well as their position in the world and surrounding lore. The Great Shinobi Owl is a sneaky bastard so he uses an array of tricks and tools (indeed many of the same shinobi tools you've been using to exploit the enemy AI) to get the upper-hand in battle. When you fight him in his memory, he also has some great reactionary AI that baits you into flanking him so he can deliver a devastating counter-blow. His combat techniques are tailored perfectly to his personality and he fights just as you would expect him to. Likewise, Genichiro Ashina, the grandson of Ashina's lord, has a fighting style that reflects both sides of his training. On one hand, he uses the sword-style of the Ashina clan, employing many of the same melee attacks that his grandfather uses in either of his two boss battles. But Genichiro was also trained by Tomoe, an Okami warrior, and consequently, he uses a bow with the same moves as the Okami warriors you fight in the Fountainhead Palace.

There is a fantastic moment in the final boss battle where, after the first form, the fight transitions from a battle against Genichiro to a fight against his grandfather Isshin at the height of his powers. It's here in the details where each boss' fighting style and skills are made obviously clear. Genichiro uses the same style as his grandfather, drawing on many of the same moves, but his attacks are frantic and rushed while Isshin strikes in a much slower and more precise fashion. There is a clear difference in emotional state between the two that is present in their combat technique. Genichiro is fighting with desperation to preserve the homeland that he loves and a willingness to sacrifice everything, even his humanity, and ultimately his life to achieve that. Isshin on the other hand does not fight from a high-minded passion, rather he fights solely to test his mettle and for the thrill of combat with an equal. His kingdom and his prestige are nothing to him, only a side-effect of his quest for martial perfection. As a consequence, he doesn't go all out all at once but instead spends his first form testing Wolf with the blade before unleashing his full arsenal in his second form. It's also clear that Isshin is a cut above his grandson. Even though they use the same moves, attacks that leave Genichiro wide-open are far more difficult to exploit when fighting his grandfather.

The boss arenas are among the most beautiful and detailed environments in the entire game, a game I hasten to add is pretty fucking beautiful when looked at as a whole. This makes sense as you're going to spend more time in the boss arenas than anywhere else as you gradually learn the bosses' attacks and how to counter them. Might as well paint the wall a pretty color as you bash your head against it. The field of shimmering white flowers where you fight the final boss, and the bridge to Fountainhead Palace where you face the True Corrupted Monk, are especially lovely. The only complaint I have is that the game has a habit of reusing these arenas regularly. Lady Butterfly has to share an arena with Owl (father), the Demon of Hatred is fought in the same location as Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa, and Great Shinobi Owl is fought in the same place as Genichiro. The arenas are lovely enough to support multiple battles though and at least the second battles generally take place at a different time of day so there is some variation in lighting and general appearance.

There is also greater care in the arrangement of bosses here than in any of the Dark Souls games. The first boss, unless you're a doofus like me who insists on beating Lady Butterfly, is Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa who is probably the easiest in the game (excluding puzzle-bosses like The Folding Screen Monkeys). From there, there is a steady ramp up throughout the early and mid-game. Everybody seems to have a different moment where the combat clicked and they “git gud” be it the fight with Lady Butterfly, the first fight with Genichiro, or the battle with the Guardian Ape. However, the game keeps the most challenging bosses for the end game, where you can square off against The Demon of Hatred, Owl (Father), and Isshin The Sword Saint. Indeed, the sword saint, the game's final boss, is fittingly the most difficult in the game. This doesn't seem like much but this has been a persistent problem with the Dark Souls series. In Dark Souls [2011] every boss after Ornstein and Smough was a letdown, as none of them offered the same level of challenge. In Dark Souls 2 [2014] mid-game bosses like The Ruin Sentinels and The Looking Glass Knight were way harder than any of the game's three final bosses. Dark Souls 3 [2016] did have an absolute beast as an end game boss in the form of The Nameless King, but he was totally optional, and the actual final boss was way easier than the mid-game boss Pontiff Sulyvahn.

Admittedly, not every boss in Sekiro is great. The Headless Ape and his Bride fight is yet another failed attempt at recapturing the 2v1 magic of Dark Souls' fight with Ornstein and Smough. Seriously FromSoftware, you try this in every new game and you never get it right. Just accept that the fight with Ornstein and Smough was a fluke of bewildering perfection that can never be replicated and focus on 1v1 fights instead. In this case, the issue is that the two apes move at the same speed, and the arena has no line of sight blocking to exploit, so the two apes are constantly on top of you at the same time. To balance this out the Bride is pitifully weak, and can easily be dispatched with a few fireworks and well-times attacks. The Headless Ape himself has also been nerfed to a frankly ridiculous degree. Moreover, you've already faced both of these bosses before, and they have no way of surprising you beyond the sudden shock of there being two of them.

The Folding Screen Monkeys are a gimmick boss fight, where it is almost impossible to lose. Once you understand the trick to beating them they pose almost no threat whatsoever. The same could be said for the Divine Dragon, but at least the Divine Dragon's boss fight is accompanied by some fantastic visuals. Sure, it's rather pitiful when compared to the other bosses you've had to face, but it looks damn good in the process which has to count for something.

When Sekiro was first released last year, it became the center of the latest round of the “are video games too hard” argument a debate that seems to turn up whenever a major release pops up that that requires more than a pulse and a couple of hours of free time to complete. The usual suspects at the big publications were, unsurprisingly demanding that FromSoftware include an easy mode in their game. Obviously, this is a demand that only these critics want and they only want it because they have to play through this game as part of their job. Certainly, the fan-base of Dark Souls and Sekiro are uninterested in such a thing, indeed, FromSoftware's games have achieved such remarkable success due in no small part to their extremely high difficulty. They have cultivated a particular niche of gaming and it turned out to be a highly profitable one. You could say that they aren't for everyone, and you'd be right, but only because no work of art is for everyone. I don't have the patience to untangle the complicated systems of a Grand Strategy game, but it would be absurd if I demanded that Europa Universalis IV [2013] simplify itself to appeal to me, a guy who thought that Starcraft [1998] was as complex a strategy game as he could handle.

Moreover, the argument that no game was made worse by adding in an easy mode is wrong on the surface of it. Plenty of games have turned into buggy, unbalanced messes because of poorly thought out difficulty mechanics. One has only to play through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2007] on veteran and run headlong into the horrendous grenade spam to see that for yourself. Giving Sekiro an easy mode would be no mere matter of making the enemies do less damage and giving the player character more health. Bosses can kill you in one combo already, stretching that to killing you in two or three combos would not do much to address the game's underlying challenge. You would have to tweak the window on the deflects for every enemy and every attack, adjust the player's attack and movement speed, and add invincibly-frames to the dodge move to even begin to create a reasonably easy mode. All these things take development time to implement, test, and balance, time that takes away from polishing the rest of the game. I see no reason to inflate already arduous development cycles just so journalists can have a slightly easier time.

There is also an argument, that video games are the only medium that gate-keeps its potential players from experiencing the full range of content. A book, for instance, does not lock you out from finishing it if you cannot correctly analyze its themes. Yet this argument is obviously false to anyone who has ever browsed through the covers in a foreign bookstore or library. There are plenty of books that gatekeep you from reading them by being in a language you don't understand, though perhaps you could learn if you worked hard at it. Even books in English can be inaccessible if they are written in a particular dialect or from a vastly different time period or just at a reading level that is too advanced for the reader. There's a reason why I didn't grok every nuance of Shakespeare or Chaucer on first reading and why you can't just give a ten-year-old a copy of Gravity's Rainbow and expect him to appreciate it or even understand it. Indeed video games are a good deal better than books because books tend to simply assume you understand all the words they intend to use at the start and then proceed normally. Video games at least have a ramping up process. Indeed, Sekiro's difficulty curve, while brutal in the extreme, is actually handled with a good deal of finesse. The first boss you must defeat to proceed, Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa is the easiest in the game and does a good job of teaching the player how later boss battles will function. Right before you fight the second mandatory boss, Genichiro, there's a miniboss that will force you to master the game's parry mechanics as there's no way in hell you manage to beat Genichiro without that knowledge. By this metric video games are actually less exclusionary than books, and Sekiro a good deal less exclusionary than the average game.

The other argument that came up was that Sekiro needed to have an easy mode so that it could be accessible to gamers with disabilities. Which fair enough, I'm sure that there are some people with cognitive and motor difficulties who would struggle with Sekiro, even if they were using adaptive controllers. This is not Dark Souls [2011] where the combat is so slow and clunky that gamers with highly honed reflexes are actually at a disadvantage. However, as noted above the changes needed to create and implement an easy mode for Sekiro are not insignificant, and if your goal was truly to champion accessibility reforms there are far easier entry points. For instance, games like The Walking Dead [2012] frequently require the player to mash a single button rapidly in order to proceed. However, for many with motor disabilities, this is not a trivial action and can make the game effectively unplayable. This, compared to the Sekrio easy mode is an easy fix, just a single option that switches mashing buttons to pressing and holding. Hell, I might toggle that option myself as I detest this sort of non-gameplay. Indeed, one could make an effective argument that every QTE sequence is inaccessible and should be removed. However, the game critics up in arms about Sekiro's difficulty almost never talk about these sorts of examples. Why would they? QTEs and button-mashing don't make it harder for them to get their review in on time. For them, disabled gamers are just a convenient shield to use to get people to stop making fun of them for being shit at games.