Hello everyone, hope you're all doing well, and welcome to my review of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice! I've been looking forward to this game ever since it was officially announced at last year's E3 2018. Actually, I was really hoping for the announcement to be Bloodborne 2, but Sekiro looked very promising as well. The Soulsborne series of games have all been incredible so far. At first I didn't like them because I didn't understand why they were so difficult, or how you're supposed to play them. When I started to figure things out and it all made sense I became obsessed with these games, trying to conquer every challenge they threw at me. This series has become my favorite modern franchise, creating a genre all it's own, and now that I've finished this latest entry I'd love to tell you all about it.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an action adventure game made by developers FromSoftware. These are the people who made Dark Souls, Demon Souls and Bloodborne, so I knew going into this that it would be an extremely difficult game. As someone who's a huge fan of this series and has had a lot of experience with this genre I thought I was ready for what I'd have to face in Sekiro, but I was wrong. The developers have made quite a few changes to the formula that we've all gotten used to, forcing me to break my old habits and learn a whole new way of playing. There are specific mechanics that you have to master in order to successfully progress through the game and it can be brutally unforgiving at times. This feels like a distant cousin of the Soulsborne series, sharing the same DNA, but also quite different.
The game takes place in a fictional version of 16th century Japan where you play as a shinobi taking part in an epic quest. Your story begins as an orphan who gets taken in by a shinobi master named Owl. He trains you for the next twenty years, turning you into a highly skilled warrior. Owl assigns you with the mission of being Lord Kuro's personal bodyguard. Lord Kuro is known as the Divine Heir and he's a boy who possesses a very special bloodline called the Dragon's Heritage. One day Kuro gets kidnapped and taken away to Ashina Castle. You go after him in an attempt to rescue Lord Kuro, resulting in a one on one showdown with his captor. Unfortunately you lose the fight, and end up getting your left arm cut off in the process.
As you lie there left for dead a mysterious person known as the Sculptor rescues you, taking you to a nearby temple. He fits your left arm with a Shinobi Prosthetic, allowing you to upgrade it with many different items that will help you in combat. It turns out you did die from your wounds in that battle, but you've been given the Dragon's Heritage from Lord Kuro and now possess the power of resurrection. That's why he's been kidnapped in the first place. His captor wants to use the Divine Blood to create an army of unkillable soldiers that will make him undefeatable on the battlefield. The Sculptor dubs you with the name Sekiro, the one armed wolf, and now you set out on your journey to save Lord Kuro once and for all.
This quest takes you through many regions of Japan, battling with various enemies, sub bosses and main bosses. Sekiro will most likely appeal to fans of Dark Souls, but I can't stress enough just how different the combat is. For starters there's no stamina meter, which means you can attack as much as you want, except that's now how you should be playing. The main focus is the deflect mechanic, pressing block just as an enemy's attack is about to hit you, which will chip away at their posture. Once their posture is fully broken you can perform a deathblow and take them out for good. You need to master this deflect mechanic, while also keeping pressure on with attacks, finding the right rhythm for each encounter.
Even the most common of enemies can take you down easily if you're not approaching combat correctly. Boss fights, and sub boss fights, are usually made to test your skills and they can be relentless at times. Some didn't give me any trouble at all, others took countless tries before I finally figured it out. The final boss in particular was one of the toughest encounters I've had in any FromSoftware game. In Dark Souls you have a lot of options in how you approach each situation, and if all else fails you can grind for a while to become stronger, or call for backup by summoning for help. In Sekiro you only have one main weapon, your katana, no armor sets, and no summons. You either overcome the challenge fairly, or not at all. This forces you to play a certain way, but once it clicked for me I was having a blast.
You do have lot's of other options that make combat even more unique in Sekiro. Your character is very agile, able to jump and dodge with great speed. The combat in general is very fast paced requiring you to react in the blink of an eye. Not only do you move fast, with a wide range of motion, but you are also equipped with a grappling hook that allows you to easily traverse the environment, or quickly retreat from a fight. Zipping around each level and finding the right position was incredibly satisfying. There's also a very effective stealth system that let's you sneak up on enemies for a one shot kill and the grappling hook makes this an easy strategy most of the time. Again, once I became comfortable with all these new mechanics I was loving this game for how different it felt compared to other entries in this genre.
Since your arm has been cut off and fitted with the Shinobi Prosthetic this opens up all sorts of other combat options. As you progress throughout the game you will find many different attachments for your new arm that can really give you the edge you need in a tough battle. You get shurikens that you can throw for a long ranged attack, a heavy axe for shattering shields, a long spear to keeps enemies at a distance, a blow torch for inflicting burn status, and many more. Each of these attachments can be extremely useful for certain situations and they're a lot of fun to use. They can all be upgraded multiple times as well, making them stronger and sometimes changing the way they operate. It was always exciting discovering a new prosthetic, figuring out how it worked, then trying it in a real fight.
Now that you've been been blessed with the Dragon's Heritage from Lord Kuro you possess the ability to resurrect yourself if you get killed in battle, hence the name, Shadows Die Twice. So if you're fighting someone and you end up dying, which happened to me more times than I can count, you have one opportunity to get back up and either retreat, or continue fighting. This can be used to your advantage in a number of ways, but it also takes some of the frustration away from getting killed and I appreciate that. If you die too many times it causes a disease called the Dragonrot to spread to all the NPCs in the game, preventing you from completing side quests. That's only if you actually die though, so you always want to resurrect and get away if you can.
Honestly I could go on and on about all the things I liked in Sekiro. From the beautifully detailed environments, tight controls and combat mechanics, the interesting story and lore, and the wide variety of enemies, bosses, and sub bosses. It's a fantastic new addition to the FromSoftware library that I would highly recommend to any fan of this genre. Just be prepared for the fact that it's a lot different from their other games, with a pretty steep learning curve, some incredibly tough boss battles, and a lot of new mechanics that you will have to get used to. This actually reminded me of the first time I started playing Dark Souls and had to figure out how everything worked. Overcoming the challenges in this game was a great feeling, now it's on to new game plus. I'm going to give Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice a grade of..............................
A -
Thank you for reading my review of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I hope you enjoyed it!
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