Sekiro

8 entries. 15,157 words.

March, 2019

• Sekiro Initial Thoughts. 2019-03-25 3:25 PM.
  • RPG
  
  Just some quick spoiler-free bullet points about the first five-ish hours of Sekiro, the latest game from From Software. It looks like a slightly-improved version of the Dark Souls 3 game engine. It has basically the same bleached-film aesthetic. I’m playing with mouse-and-keyboard to save my thumbs. The implementation is slightly better than Dark Souls 3, which was better than Dark Souls, but it’s still probably going to be “best” with controllers. I’m regularly cursing how inefficient it feels to find the right keys and buttons, and this is after spending a good 10 hours practicing with mouse and keyboard in Dark Souls 3 The Ringed City. There’s no character creation and very few stats. There’s only one weapon and combat style (so far). The combat is very different from Dark Souls. There’s a focus on “deflection” which seems to be a hybrid of blocking and parrying. I’m terrible at parrying in Souls so this is not good for me. There’s no stamina management, but “posture” management. Timing is everything, and there’s very little room for error. I don’t quite have a handle on it yet. Experience with Souls is not necessarily helpful here. There are no player messages or multiplayer components (yet?). I get the sense they simplified the UI from the Souls series in a deliberate attempt to make it more accessible. There’s only one equipment “slot” to manage, as opposed to the four (item, spell, left and right hand) in Souls. There’s more “environmental storytelling” (in the form of overhearing conversations and such) than any Souls game. There’s a very prominent stealth component that isn’t in any Souls game. It’s skating around the edges of being a full-on stealth game, if you want to play it that way. You can also charge headlong into every fight if you want to (and frankly I have more success that way). The grappling hook is a bit more limited in its use than I expected. It works like what I remember of Far Cry Primal, where you can only grapple to pre-determined points around the environment. Sometimes you’ll see places you *should* be able to reach, but can’t because the game didn’t put grapple points there. The death penalty seems more forgiving than Souls, because there’s a limited-use resurrection-in-place. You don’t necessarily have to go all the way back to the last checkpoint. (But there’s still a cost.) I don’t quite have a handle on this system yet either. In general, it seems like they made a conscious effort to pick and choose some but not all of the elements from the Dark Souls gameplay formula, then sprinkle in some elements from games like Assassin’s Creed, to make a new game that would have a more “mainstream” appeal. The default voiceovers are Japanese, and the Japanese voice actors sound more professional and interesting than the English ones. The combat is pretty frustrating for me so far with mouse and keyboard. I’ve hit a pretty hard roadblock merely 5 hours in. I get killed over and over and over again, I’m early or late on every deflection, I dodge right into every attack, and I feel like my Wolf is hitting with the strength of a wet noodle. I think my Souls experience is getting in the way of doing well in Sekiro. 629 words.

April, 2019

• Games Played – March 2019. 2019-04-01 2:00 PM.
  • Roundup
  
  March was a veritable explosion of gaming variety for me. I dropped Dwarf Fortress like a hot potato (just when people were starting to like my videos, oops) and picked up Souls again in anticipation of Sekiro. Not that there’s anything wrong with Dwarf Fortress, but nothing compete when the From Software fever hits. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, 16 hours. The new game from From Software. I just love writing “from From Software” and do it every chance I can. I’m not sure what I think of it yet. Dark Souls III, 12 hours. This time was spent re-playing the The Ringed City DLC to get back to where I left off when my SSD crashed in 2017. Then Sekiro arrived and I stopped. (I also love writing “the The Ringed City DLC.”) The Division 2 Open Beta, 2 hours. It was kind of fun, but not worth a full price purchase for me. Dark Souls Remastered, 2 hours. Finishing up the Dark Souls Remastered Casual Nostalgia Tour video series. Maybe I’ll get to Manus and Kalameet in New Game+. Lord of the Rings Online, 2 hours. A somewhat generous rounding-up. I finished Volume II, Book 7, Chapter 8 “The Secret Road” and I’m back outside again! Still haven’t gained a level though, holding steady at 62. ANTHEM Open Demo, 1 hour. A generous rounding-up of time played. It just didn’t appeal to me. Considering that even the superfans are giving up on it already, it’s probably just as well. The rest of the month’s time was taken up watching or listening to Critical Role hehe. Which was, in fact, more entertaining than playing most games. 276 words.

May, 2019

• Games Played – April 2019. 2019-05-01 4:54 PM.
  • Roundup
  
  It’s been another odd gaming month. I thought I would be playing a lot of Sekiro, but it turns out I’m just not in the mood for it, or any games really. I’ve gotten much more enjoyment from consuming plain old non-interactive video content in my free time (ie. mostly Critical Role). Sekiro, 28 hours. I am currently on the “Guardian Ape” boss and not terribly interested in putting in the repetitive practice needed to get past it. I’m also recording my playthrough so I not only have to be in the mood to play the game, but also in the mood to record and talk about it, so it’s doubly difficult. Honestly I’m not enjoying it as much as the previous Souls games. 7 Days To Die, 16 hours. I’m pretty surprised I played for this long actually-I feel like some of this might be AFK time. Anyway, this is the game I’ve turned to when I want to do something with my hands while listening to Critical Role. The newest version (17.2 I think) seems to have a lot more difficult survival mechanics than previous versions. Albion Online, 3 hours. I tried out the free-to-play release. I found it was surprisingly interesting in the first hour but it became apparent in the second two hours that the gameplay would probably never change, so I felt like I’d seen everything the game had to offer. Conan Exiles, 2 hours. I tried it again for the first time since the Early Access launch. I thought more would be different, but it’s still pretty similar. The new combat didn’t seem like much of an improvement to me. Anyway, since the map was the same, I didn’t really want to repeat what I’d already played before. Elder Scrolls Online, 2 hours. Continuing the search for the elusive hook to get back into that game. Just can’t find it. No PS4 games. I didn’t even turn it on in April. 327 words.
• Sekiro Completed. 2019-05-25 1:50 PM.
  • RPG
  • Single-Player
  
  I finished my first blind playthrough of Sekiro* this past week, so I can finally post my thoughts about it. It took me two months and two days, or 76 game hours by the game’s accounting. I recorded 95 roughly 25 minute videos documenting the journey. There might be some minor spoilers below, but nothing about the story. I'm part of the 22.7% club! Now I enter the second phase of playing every From Software game: Learning about all of the things I missed or did wrong the first time, as I finally go around reading about the game (a little bit, at least-there is still a lot I can discover about the story and different endings on my own). 2,247 words.
• Sekiro Blind Playthrough Index. 2019-05-26 3:12 PM.
  • RPG
  • Videos
  
  The following is a list of Sekiro video episodes I recorded in my first blind playthrough, with descriptions for each. This is the document from which I will be cutting and pasting all my YouTube video descriptions. You can use this as a searchable index to see the odd path of progression I made through the game. One interesting thing about From Software games is that everyone plays it differently, and it’s fun to see how others may have taken different paths. For example, I seem to have gone through a lot of the early to middle part of the game backwards from what was intended, since I put off the Genichiro fight for a long time. 9,036 words.

June, 2019

• Games Played – May 2019. 2019-06-03 11:43 AM.
  • Consoles
  • Roundup
  
  This should be a pretty short list. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, 53 hours. I finished my first playthrough and started NG+. I got bored about halfway through NG+ though. 7 Days To Die, 2 hours. I don’t remember why I played this. I think I might have been playing it while listening to Critical Role early in the month. I have thoughts about the newest version but I can’t remember what they are at the moment. I got bored in Sekiro NG+ because the only thing that’s different the second time around is the new satisfaction of roflstomping all the bosses now that you know what you’re doing. Even carrying the Bell Demon around, NG+ is laughably easy thanks to the previous 75 hours of training. 334 words.
• Bloodborne Impressions (PS4). 2019-06-28 2:12 PM.
  • Consoles
  • Reviews
  • RPG
  
  Bloodborne: It’s fantastic. I’m not even finished yet and it clearly deserves to go into my entirely fictional All-Time Hall of Fame Game Library. That’s it. That’s my impressions. If you like this kind of game, it’s a must-play. (If you don’t, then you probably won’t like it, because it is the quintessential version of this kind of game, the template from which all others of this kind of game are poorly copied.) 1,767 words.

January, 2020

• Endgame Viable Awards 2019. 2020-01-04 10:50 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2019. 2018 Awards 2017 Awards 2016 Awards 2015 Awards 2014 Review 2013 Review This year, I’m going to shrink the size of this post considerably. I didn’t buy or play very many games this year, so there’s not much point in making a huge affair out of it. I’m going to list all the games I bought this year, then I’m going to pick the ones I liked best, and that’s it. 541 words.