I'm not going to pretend this is a completely bad game or even one I didn't enjoy for a good amount of the time I spent with it, but I think it's maybe the most painful recent Fromsoft release since you can see how much they wanted to make something completely new that ended up being way too constrained by a ton of needless mechanics and design ideas carried over from the Souls games and Bloodborne. The basic framework for combat here is so good it's unreal, the flow of parrying and attacking in one-on-one fights is unmatched. But instead of making a really fun 12-15 hour swordfighting game mostly focused on duels with some larger groups to use stealth on, Sekiro is bloated to 30 hours with all the asymmetrical fights, copious amounts of consumable items, and obtuse storytelling that worked in Dark Souls and feel completely pointless and often aggravating in a game like this. The double guardian ape fight is ridiculous in a game focused on single combat (and I'm not mad, I beat it in two attempts. It's just an awful fight). You only need to use one of the dozens of different items you find, and this isn't an RPG anyway so you could drop consumables entirely. There aren't different "builds" to choose from here, everything should be in service of the sword combat, since that's literally the only way you can play the game! And drop half of the prosthetics while you are at it. The disconnected, hard-to-follow plots and sidequests worked in Dark Souls because they suited the tone of the setting and the world design. Here it comes off like Miyazaki doesn't know how to write any other way. This is a story set in real-life Sengoku-era Japan, with a large cast of normal human characters who talk to you in and out of gameplay, but the game still purposefully hides so much of its story from you in a way that now feels less deliberately mysterious and more rushed and poorly written.
(I'm going to ramble about the story for a bit so skip this section of the review if you dont care about Buddhism or lame shit like that. Also spoilers I guess.)
I went for the "true" ending and tried to follow as much of the story as the game was willing to tell me and it didn't seem like much to write home about, which was a shame because I heard that this had a more involved narrative with real dialogue and cutscenes. All you get is a weak fetch quest stretched to half the runtime of the game, and the ultimate conclusion seemed to be "Buddhism is evil and turns people into evil centipedes so we need to send it back to China/Korea/the West" (????). Maybe that's an oversimplification of the story but "man... eternal life... would kinda suck..." is a completely uninteresting take on Buddhism because yeah, that's the whole point of Samsara. As far as Sekiro is willing to delve into providing a solution for its in-game eternal rebirth is vaguely saying "The Divine Dragon must return to his homeland," which doesn't mean anything and the game is never willing to expand that into something real. It's especially muddled because Buddhism originated in India but the game heavily implies that "The Divine Dragon" came from Korea, and he's even holding the Seven-Branched Sword a Korean king gifted to Japan in the Yamato period. I think this comes from the Nihon Shoki and I guess the implication is that they're sending Buddhism back where Japan specifically got it from, but calling it the "Dragon's Homeland" makes it confusing because that's just not true lol. It's obviously not as simple as this but it really feels like Fromsoft is attempting to apply their overdone messages about how awful it would be if you couldn't die onto Buddhism seemingly without accounting for the fact that A. Buddhism is literally founded on that concept and B. Buddhism pretty explicitly provides a solution for that problem that Sekiro never even remotely addresses. Considering they worked the concept of Samsara into the gameplay itself with the respawn mechanic it would have been interesting to see Fromsoft at least attempt to write a route for this game focused on achieving Nirvana/following the Noble Eightfold Path and somehow working it into the gameplay as well. Obviously, the centipedes and the waters imply the infinite life curse is more widespread than just the main characters, but Dragonrot, the most (only?) tangible impact it has on the world, specifically comes from Wolf. You've got a perfect combination of personal and general stakes there, achieving Nirvana both to break free from Samsara and to put an end to the rot your rebirth is inflicting on those around you (to be honest I think Tokugawa sending an army in to kill everyone and burn the map to the ground in the late game flattens the impact of the dragonrot stuff anyways but that moment is way too cool for me to complain about it). I know there's an ending where you use the Mortal Blade on yourself but idk I kinda feel like a magic sword that can cut through Samsara is a complete cop-out. Maybe I shouldn't expect good writing from modern Fromsoft or maybe they just can't write a normal conventional narrative to save their lives, but I really enjoyed Elden Ring so who knows (could be attributed to an actual good writer working on that game lol)
I feel like I should reiterate that this is a very good game when the combat actually works, it's just carrying so much dead weight from Fromsofts earlier work. It's more disappointing than bad. Dark Souls 3 is ruined by (among other reasons) trying to be a Dark Souls game blatantly built on the framework of Bloodborne. Sekiro has more than enough originality to stand on its own, and its basic framework is completely distinct from Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but it's held back just enough by Dark Souls style boss fights like the Demon of Hatred, Dark Souls style side quests, and Dark Souls style item collection and weapon upgrades, all of which do nothing to enhance the one-on-one combat where the game thrives and do everything to bring it down. This review has gone on longer than I expected but I'll conclude it with a moment that, to me, summarized everything wrong with Fromsoft's recent output.
The final boss of this game has four phases and is, to put it lightly, ridiculously difficult. I beat every boss in this game in less than 5 attempts, as far as I can remember, but the final one took me more than 50, easily. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but because this is a modern Fromsoft game the bonfire equivalent is right outside the boss room. The first twenty times you think "oh that's nice I don't have to run past any enemies to get to the boss fight again," but somewhere around attempt 27 you realize what that actually means is that you are running through a completely pointless hallway where you can't die to anything for like 15 seconds every time you try again. Then you remember that this game has the functionality for instant respawns, like actually instant respawns. It's basically the core mechanic of the entire game. So all the bonfire placement actually does is force you to walk down a hallway again and again until you finally beat the boss instead of just instantly respawning and having the boss get a full heal/phase reset whenever you do. In Hotline Miami 2 if you spam the "R" key fast enough you can be respawned before you even see the death screen, and despite being a much harder game than anything Fromsoft has ever made I never got mad while playing it like I did while fighting the final boss here. I'm not even saying it would be easy to implement an instant respawn that also reset the boss or anything, but it would do wonders for setting this game apart from its predecessors and making it feel like a genuine evolution of the formula rather than constrained by it. If every new Fromsoft game is going to let you spawn right outside the fog gate without having a runback they might as well go the distance and let you just respawn in the arena, but I genuinely think they are too set in the design choices they've been relying on since 2011 to even consider the possibility of making a game without bonfires in it. Even in their most sincere attempt at branching out from the style they've become known for, they can't commit to any changes beyond the most superficial.
Some extra notes I don't want to try and add back into the review now:
- The soundtrack is fine but very repetitive. I don't think a single track is going to stick with me for more than a couple of days, I already have trouble remembering any of the music. Par for the course with modern Fromsoft I guess
- Similarly, the game looks really ugly. It's not quite as bad as DS3 but it's way too muddy and grey despite the setting theoretically lending itself to nice vibrant visuals. Fountainhead Palace looks amazing but that's not enough to make up for the entire rest of the game. As with the writing Elden Ring improves this and I can only hope they stick to putting actual color in their games from now on.
- I hated the minibosses at first and they do feel a lot more difficult than most of the real bosses but once you get the puppeteer ninjutsu they become much more fun and manageable, you should probably just have that one from the start
- same for the Mikiri counter, which feels like a core part of your toolkit here and the only consistent way to get good posture damage on a few bosses but you have to unlock it through the skill tree for some reason? weird.
- The Armored Warrior miniboss was really cool and I wish he was more involved in the story, even any more detail about him and his son who I assume are Portuguese traders would have been nice. Or just more unique minibosses like that in general. Maybe I should just reinstall Total War Shogun 2.
(I'm going to ramble about the story for a bit so skip this section of the review if you dont care about Buddhism or lame shit like that. Also spoilers I guess.)
I went for the "true" ending and tried to follow as much of the story as the game was willing to tell me and it didn't seem like much to write home about, which was a shame because I heard that this had a more involved narrative with real dialogue and cutscenes. All you get is a weak fetch quest stretched to half the runtime of the game, and the ultimate conclusion seemed to be "Buddhism is evil and turns people into evil centipedes so we need to send it back to China/Korea/the West" (????). Maybe that's an oversimplification of the story but "man... eternal life... would kinda suck..." is a completely uninteresting take on Buddhism because yeah, that's the whole point of Samsara. As far as Sekiro is willing to delve into providing a solution for its in-game eternal rebirth is vaguely saying "The Divine Dragon must return to his homeland," which doesn't mean anything and the game is never willing to expand that into something real. It's especially muddled because Buddhism originated in India but the game heavily implies that "The Divine Dragon" came from Korea, and he's even holding the Seven-Branched Sword a Korean king gifted to Japan in the Yamato period. I think this comes from the Nihon Shoki and I guess the implication is that they're sending Buddhism back where Japan specifically got it from, but calling it the "Dragon's Homeland" makes it confusing because that's just not true lol. It's obviously not as simple as this but it really feels like Fromsoft is attempting to apply their overdone messages about how awful it would be if you couldn't die onto Buddhism seemingly without accounting for the fact that A. Buddhism is literally founded on that concept and B. Buddhism pretty explicitly provides a solution for that problem that Sekiro never even remotely addresses. Considering they worked the concept of Samsara into the gameplay itself with the respawn mechanic it would have been interesting to see Fromsoft at least attempt to write a route for this game focused on achieving Nirvana/following the Noble Eightfold Path and somehow working it into the gameplay as well. Obviously, the centipedes and the waters imply the infinite life curse is more widespread than just the main characters, but Dragonrot, the most (only?) tangible impact it has on the world, specifically comes from Wolf. You've got a perfect combination of personal and general stakes there, achieving Nirvana both to break free from Samsara and to put an end to the rot your rebirth is inflicting on those around you (to be honest I think Tokugawa sending an army in to kill everyone and burn the map to the ground in the late game flattens the impact of the dragonrot stuff anyways but that moment is way too cool for me to complain about it). I know there's an ending where you use the Mortal Blade on yourself but idk I kinda feel like a magic sword that can cut through Samsara is a complete cop-out. Maybe I shouldn't expect good writing from modern Fromsoft or maybe they just can't write a normal conventional narrative to save their lives, but I really enjoyed Elden Ring so who knows (could be attributed to an actual good writer working on that game lol)
I feel like I should reiterate that this is a very good game when the combat actually works, it's just carrying so much dead weight from Fromsofts earlier work. It's more disappointing than bad. Dark Souls 3 is ruined by (among other reasons) trying to be a Dark Souls game blatantly built on the framework of Bloodborne. Sekiro has more than enough originality to stand on its own, and its basic framework is completely distinct from Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but it's held back just enough by Dark Souls style boss fights like the Demon of Hatred, Dark Souls style side quests, and Dark Souls style item collection and weapon upgrades, all of which do nothing to enhance the one-on-one combat where the game thrives and do everything to bring it down. This review has gone on longer than I expected but I'll conclude it with a moment that, to me, summarized everything wrong with Fromsoft's recent output.
The final boss of this game has four phases and is, to put it lightly, ridiculously difficult. I beat every boss in this game in less than 5 attempts, as far as I can remember, but the final one took me more than 50, easily. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but because this is a modern Fromsoft game the bonfire equivalent is right outside the boss room. The first twenty times you think "oh that's nice I don't have to run past any enemies to get to the boss fight again," but somewhere around attempt 27 you realize what that actually means is that you are running through a completely pointless hallway where you can't die to anything for like 15 seconds every time you try again. Then you remember that this game has the functionality for instant respawns, like actually instant respawns. It's basically the core mechanic of the entire game. So all the bonfire placement actually does is force you to walk down a hallway again and again until you finally beat the boss instead of just instantly respawning and having the boss get a full heal/phase reset whenever you do. In Hotline Miami 2 if you spam the "R" key fast enough you can be respawned before you even see the death screen, and despite being a much harder game than anything Fromsoft has ever made I never got mad while playing it like I did while fighting the final boss here. I'm not even saying it would be easy to implement an instant respawn that also reset the boss or anything, but it would do wonders for setting this game apart from its predecessors and making it feel like a genuine evolution of the formula rather than constrained by it. If every new Fromsoft game is going to let you spawn right outside the fog gate without having a runback they might as well go the distance and let you just respawn in the arena, but I genuinely think they are too set in the design choices they've been relying on since 2011 to even consider the possibility of making a game without bonfires in it. Even in their most sincere attempt at branching out from the style they've become known for, they can't commit to any changes beyond the most superficial.
Some extra notes I don't want to try and add back into the review now:
- The soundtrack is fine but very repetitive. I don't think a single track is going to stick with me for more than a couple of days, I already have trouble remembering any of the music. Par for the course with modern Fromsoft I guess
- Similarly, the game looks really ugly. It's not quite as bad as DS3 but it's way too muddy and grey despite the setting theoretically lending itself to nice vibrant visuals. Fountainhead Palace looks amazing but that's not enough to make up for the entire rest of the game. As with the writing Elden Ring improves this and I can only hope they stick to putting actual color in their games from now on.
- I hated the minibosses at first and they do feel a lot more difficult than most of the real bosses but once you get the puppeteer ninjutsu they become much more fun and manageable, you should probably just have that one from the start
- same for the Mikiri counter, which feels like a core part of your toolkit here and the only consistent way to get good posture damage on a few bosses but you have to unlock it through the skill tree for some reason? weird.
- The Armored Warrior miniboss was really cool and I wish he was more involved in the story, even any more detail about him and his son who I assume are Portuguese traders would have been nice. Or just more unique minibosses like that in general. Maybe I should just reinstall Total War Shogun 2.