(PT-BR Version here: https://recantododragao.com.br/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-uma-danca-sem-movimento/

It's my native language & it has images)

Sekiro is a motionless dance.

It's common to see people comparing, directly, games that are about movement (mostly, action games) to dance.

Platformers, beat em ups, shooters, fighting games and other action subgenres share a single gene, essential for this analogy to work – body movement.

We can understand “body” as the personification of the character that we controls or an object that the character controls – weapons, spells, summons, etc. Either way, what we controls in a videogame is the extension of our senses. And it creates a dynamic, that in the case of action games, it's a real-time dynamic, which is compared to the dynamic of a dance.

I can't and I won't get deep into this comparison (because it's not part of my knowledge and not the focus of this critique) – but assuming that “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is almost like a dance for how beautiful are the combat movements” – I agree to some extent, but here is my counterpoint: Sekiro is like a dance, a dance that is inert, stagnant.

I'm not interested in finding the answer to “Is Sekiro a soulslike?” but it's undeniable that the game shares a lot of “souls elements” from the previous games – linear progression with a lot of ramifications, corpserun-based progression and checkpoint system which you can heal yourself, upgrade some levels and fast travel, losable EXP, enemies that always respawn, more focus on enemy impression than player expression, healing system akin to Dark Souls III – and even with a different approach, the story themes are also similar – and I'm not saying that “Souls created all of that”, but in a full package, those are elements that shares the same solid DNA and Sekiro is clearly inspired by this DNA.

And this depends on what the person thinks that it's essential to considers it a soulslike – some don't think Sekiro is souls because of its storytelling, some think this is because of the lack of RPG elements, others thinks it's because of the combat, etc.

Regardless, I think Sekiro tries to take a step that the other Souls doesn't – to be entirely different. Readapting the souls elements to create an action/adventure game with much more focus on mechanics rather than RPG systems – and I'd say a lot of that is thanks to Bloodborne success. Even DSIII is more focused on action than the others Dark Souls, for instance. That said, Sekiro tries to break free from its own DNA – the Souls design.

And it fails.

Sekiro combat is completely different from Dark Souls and it's unique even compared with other action games. It's still somewhat methodic, but with a greater focus on the body dynamics (player – weapon – weapon – enemy) like a rhytmic tug of war between both player and enemy's posture, like it's a second health bar.

It's a constant war between your reflexes, enemy AI and a third element, the elephant in the room, known as expression.

Player expression is a self-explanatory term that is at the same time, vague – where does this expression come from? When the player cries, smiles, gets angry, it's all expression but it's outside the game. But what we call “player expression” is the expression inside the game – and it depends on the game, the genre, and the player. Determining your playstyle is player expression, create a character in a RPG is player expression.

“Every game have expression?” is not the matter – but some games are more concerned about it than others.

Even though Sekiro tries to innovate with its combat, it's still the same old rigid From Software design that is more about how the player will impress the enemies patterns in memory than how they'll make decisions given the situations – it's not a game “without player expression”, but a game that prioritize a more prescriptive combat over that expression. That's not a problem per se; I like a lot how the game works with that “performative, cinematic” fight style, with a clear rhythm that knows how to dynamize some situations with enemies that modifies that rhythm.

But this dynamic breaks every time the game tries to invite the player to fight against multiple enemies.

Sekiro proposes the protagonist as a Shinobi with two playstyles: the swordsman, always fighting, and the ninja, always hiding and running. I appreciate this kind of “ninja roleplay” but I see a contradiction here: the game rewards fighting much more than avoiding fighting.

The stealth is nice but there are not many interesting interactions and mechanics enough (besides Ninjutsu) to keep it up for the entire game (not to mention the segments that are impossible to pass through without engaging with the combat). Flee works… if you want to sacrifice sens, xp, spirit emblems, loot and minibosses. The combat itself gets lost when it's time to propose Crowd Control Situations – because the ways of dealing with multiple foes in Sekiro are uninteresting.

In Souls, that crowd control is also kinda poor, because these games are not focused on multiple mechanics and all the ways of deal with them revolves around the range of your weapon and some AoE tool – but in Dark Souls, this works very well, because the enemies are more “readable” than in Sekiro: noticing that is hard to face the big boar in Undead Parish, then climbing upside, killing the archers and attract the boar with the alluring skulls to make him burn – that kind of stuff makes the combat loop against multiple enemies much more interesting, even though the game has the same “impression of challenge” base.

In Sekiro, in that type of situation, I see some options

Playing tag with the enemies (hit one of them, run to avoid the others, turn back, hit again, repeat); using some attack, skill or item to AoE; Stealth'em (still kinda lacking since this will mostly be useful against a single enemy, unless you loop their AI, which honestly, is still uninteresting); trying to face everyone (which for me, in practice, it's just Not Good because the timing of the parries will always be different so this ends maximizing the “infinite reflexes” game that Sekiro is); or just… running away.

Absolutely all of the options above break the “dance dynamic”. The strength of Sekiro, to me, it's being that “one-take” game that I always found myself in the same action, same rhythm, same dynamic – and this pulse is lost when the game tries to mix its Sould DNA with its action/adventure roots – because the game it's not prepared at all for this.

The game’s abilities (combat arts) are mostly rigid animations with a single input that are limited to a single slot, and some of them are cool (like the praying strikes) but overall, they're not interesting enough to impact the game's dynamic.

The prosthetic tools mechanic is a good example of “interesting on paper, bad in practice” – the tools per se are cool, like the firecrackers, the divine abduction, the whistle, Sabimaru, etc – but the upgrade paths are ridiculous (why do you need to upgrade ALL of them simultaneously?) and the mechanic is pure self-sabotage in the sense that it needs Spiritual Emblems to use. It's a kind of resource necessary to use prosthetic tools and some skills and ninjutsus – it works, basically, like “mana” but limited to a certain amount that you can carry along the run, losable in the use, dropped from enemies and sold on checkpoints. The thing is, the best way to get those emblems is to buy it, hut you always lose sens on death, so the game is basically punishing the player for experimenting – not to mention the fact that the price of Spirit Emblems increases throughout the game. This is probably the biggest symptom that Sekiro doesn't try enough to break free from Souls chains.

Among the basic mechanics of the game, I think the one that annoys me the least are the items – this game has the same bless of Bloodborne for being less focused on RPG and curiously, the items end up being more “useful”. The sugars, the divine confetti, the Mibu spheres, the antidotes (considering that Sekiro doesn't have a stat to increase poison or terror resistance), etc – even though they have the same base of the other Souls, the items in Sekiro are very interesting.

In the end, I think Sekiro mechanics have some interesting ideas (specially because I really think that the combat basis is very unique), but it ends up implementing them in the most underwhelming way possible.

But the problem is also elsewhere.

The enemy design is okay… when you're not facing multiple enemies of different tiers at the same time. The regular fights of the game, the “enemy encounters, are, generally, bad. Even though a good portion of the enemies in this game are Simon Says (in the sense that your reactions are always binary, with little space to decision-making) and this being very limiting to the combat, I kinda like how this dynamic works – attack? parry; thrust attack? mikiri; sweep attack? jump on the enemy's head; big AoE move?; run away, wait and come back to attack the enemy. The problem is that the game mixes that with other mobs on the stage and the rhythm breaks, what the game shares with other action games, is shallow, what the other souls does with positioning/spacing, faded away, and Sekiro found itself in a deadlock situation.

One of the most memorable moments in the game (not positively) was when I fought Seven Ashina Spears in Ashina Reservoir, in the staircase – there are a soldier, an ogre and the miniboss. Dealing with them three at the same time is not impossible, but it was very annoying. I could take another path, avoiding the ogre, but “the right way to play” is not in question here.

Quoting Masaru Yanamura, the Lead Game Designer of Sekiro: “Mastering the parry is the key to mastering the game” – he didn't lie. In fact, the biggest lie I was told is that “Sekiro is more skill-based than the others Souls” – first of all, I didn't play any From game besides Souls; second, almost all of the souls that I've played, demanded more from me. Don't fool yourself: Sekiro is hard and challenging, the learning curve is decent and it makes a good job on giving the player the sensation of “becoming better” – but all of that it's thanks to the game's structure, not the combat per se.

But to be honest, I think the most relieving part of the game is when I'm at a 1v1 fight miniboss or boss – it's when the game is at its best when it comes to “impression of challenge”. It's fluid, satisfactory, beautiful. Playing the stealth ninja is also fun sometimes, and the mountainous and extensive level design gave me some good times (shoutout to Ashina Castle and Sunken Valley, my favorite areas in the game). I like the soundtrack, the bosses, the level design, even the story – I can see what the game is trying to express.

But unfortunately, in the end, I got some mixed feelings towards Sekiro – conflicted feelings towards a conflicted game.

A system of losable resources conflicted with one of the main mechanics, focus on memorization of patterns as the core of the game loop, corpseruns that it's not worth your time, an unique combat that is stuck in the rigid design that structures the souls games – all of that, within a story about “the death of immortality”, which sounds very hypocritical to what this game means to me.

Sekiro is fragile, and tries to immortalize deteriorated aspects of its roots in a false attempt of “being different” – and it ends up being a conformist dance. A motionless dance.