For this reason, I completely hated the game at first, when pitted against its earliest mini-bosses, like the Chained Ogre and Juzou the Drunkard. Over and over, I found myself being cut down by these opponents, and my frustration was simmering. Worse, I didn't understand what I was doing wrong. Up until I was hit by “some bullshit” grab move that dealt over half my health's worth of damage, I'd be attempting to dodge attacks, swinging in when I felt it was safe to do so, and backing off to heal up when I was sustaining too much damage. These habits I had picked up when playing Souls games were successful up until this point. I was an expert at From Software games, so why was I getting trounced by these foes?
Looking up
strategies online eventually taught me one crucial lesson: That I
could sneak around these bosses and deliver a backstab by leaving the
boss area and going back in to activate their search routines. While
it wouldn't kill them outright, it would bypass one of their two
phases, meaning I could skip half of the fight. A step in the right
direction, enough to get me through the obstacles in my immediate
path, but I was still missing a crucial component to my later success
with the game. I was still getting through fights mostly by brute
force, failing to internalize the lessons that Sekiro was trying
desperately to teach me. Lessons that my puny Souls-addled brain
couldn't begin to understand. That wouldn't happen until I fought my
first real boss. I remember that he was riding a horse, but his name
escapes me...
Right.... That guy.
Like many of the
bosses before him, I found myself getting crushed again and again by
attack patterns that I couldn't dodge correctly. Even when I could
find an opening to swing in, Mr. Oniwa would recover and start
swinging, leaving me to dodge the first hit and get swiped during the
recovery frames of my evasion. As I always do, I looked up clips of
other people beating the fight, so I could figure out what I was
doing wrong. In one video, I discovered my big mistake, and started
seeing genuine improvements in the way I played Sekiro.
In Souls games,
whenever a boss enemy performs a big swing that causes tremors when
it hits the ground, the implicit contract is that it cannot be
blocked. If the player does not avoid this attack, they will
assuredly take damage. Watching Gyoubu's spear impact the ground in
that same way fooled me into thinking that was true in Sekiro as
well. I believed that if I could not dodge those attacks, I would
sustain damage. In a game where a single attack can easily eat
through a third, or even two-thirds of one's health, that was a
dangerous prospect.
Imagine my surprise
when I saw others boldly hold their sword in a defensive stance and
just block and deflect these awesome, earth-shattering blows with
ease. Masters of the blade going up against a foe far stronger than
they were, on the razor's edge between life and death, maintaining
perfect posture as the force of Gyoubu's attacks glances harmlessly
off of their weapon. When the horseman attempts to make space between
them to charge in, these warriors would using their grappling hook to
close the distance and punish this brute for his cowardice.
Just like that, I
understood what Sekiro wanted me to do, and who it wanted me to
become. In From Software's previous work, the player was an
adventurer going up against overwhelming odds. Giant enemies, hordes
of undead, and a world filled to the brim with perilous adversity
were the name of the day. If one survived, it was by the skin of
their teeth, just barely outwitting and outmaneuvering these powerful
opponents. In other words, oppression was the name of the game. One
had to be defensive in their thinking just to stay alive.
Fearlessness would be punished by a swift execution.
While opponents are
no less tough in Sekiro, a whole new paradigm is required to be
successful. Gone is the adventurer who secrets away to heal, biding
their time as they gradually chip away at their larger, more ominous
foes. In their place is the titular one-armed Wolf: Ruthless
assassin, slayer of man and beast. An opportunist who never relents,
the shinobi presses offense such that their opponent, no matter how
fearsome, cannot breathe for even a moment. If they respond in kind,
the ninja must deflect those blows in the hopes of breaking their
stance. After all, no matter how strong the enemy, a few well placed
slashes and thrusts are all one needs to defeat them.
Taking this new
mentality in, the difference was night and day. Within two tries, I
was able to knock Mr. Oniwa off his literal high-horse and deliver
that one, fatal strike. A boss that had slain me countless times
before now lied dead at my blood-stained hand. And while I would
never say that the game became easy, learning to play it the way it
was intended to be played, rather that try to force my own approach,
alleviated a lot of strain that was building up in the early game.
Some habits died harder than others (it took me far too long to
internalize that I could jump to dodge sweep attacks), but
understanding what was going wrong and being able to correct it gave
me ample incentive to keep going.
If you're reading
this and struggling in Sekiro, take that lesson to heart. Let the
game guide you towards mastering the systems at play. Treating it as
another Souls game will simply add to your death count. I almost quit
because of how frustrating it was, and I'm glad I didn't. Sekiro
deserves more than to be treated like that. It's not going to be a
game for everyone, but it's so unique compared to much of what's on
the market today that I can't help but fall in love it. Never before
have I felt like such a skilled fighter and assassin, and the game
guided me into that.
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