I think a lot of this game is truly excellent, but with all of the bugs, the frame rate, and numerous other technical issues I can't bring myself to give it anything other than three stars.

It's both a big improvement over Fallen order (which I liked a bunch at the time) and a bunch of steps backwards. It's got some real PS2 era energy platforming (not a complaint), and at times can feel a little like earlier Ratchet & Clank games, but then the combat can swing wildly from "this is a blast" to "fuck me, this is frustrating" in an instant. Honestly, I think they should do away with a lot of the Dark Souls-isms. I just don't see how collecting your "souls" upon death even benefits the player when skill points don't really upgrade you in significant ways. While I do enjoy the exploration, the game is far too big for its own good, by the end stretch there were like 75 icons for cosmetics or buying cosmetics all over my map, just totally unnecessary fluff that detracts from the games biggest strengths. A bit of optional puzzle platforming is good, but the game excels when it drops you into structured, more linear story missions, with truly excellent presentation, and exciting set pieces peppered with some of the better character writing in video games.

Despite the downer the game ends on, I found myself excited to see how this storyline plays out. I just hope it's a little more focused next time around, which I know won't actually happen, cos, y'know, modern video games and all that, but I can hope... I'm also hoping that whoever designed the map in this game goes to video game design jail, but it is what it is.

There's two ways to come at this. It's either a three star game with a LOT of problems or it's a two star game with good art, humour, and charm... Unfortunately, I veer a little closer to the latter.

I found my patience seriously tested the further I got into this. The best way for me to deal with it was to keep adding assist features until some of the rough edges were sanded off. Keep getting killed by unfair, gotcha! ambushes on small ledges? On goes the keep souls on death option. Keep slipping off or falling through ledges you clearly landed on? On goes no fall damage. But the real problem is that none of the assist features can fix the game's numerous technical problems. The stuttering when hitting new areas can be overlooked to a degree, but suddenly depleting health or falling through the world makes the game feel really broken. The final big area had me fall through the world three times, two of those times I got blue and red screens with a bunch of text from NPC's I hadn't hit yet, and the third time I fell back into the dark area below, but couldn't interact with anything.

I was so irritated with the game by the time I hit the final boss I just switched on the gun, and killed him in two hits. And by that point even the humour and fun aspects of the game have given way to serious storytelling that feels completely unearned.

I was going to play this on Switch, which I assume is borderline unplayable with the state the Xbox version is in, but thankfully, I opted to just play it on Game Pass which is definitely the way to go while it's so wonky. The technical stuff is fixable, but things like terrible enemy placement/density and a volume of platforming that requires much tighter controls than what's on offer aren't.

There's good things in here, and I'd definitely try a sequel if it ironed out a bunch of this game's problems, but as it stands, I think this maybe needed a little more time in the oven.

started this the week it came out, and have picked away at it a couple of times in the last few years, but I thought it was about time to just get on with it.

I always seemed to bounce off of it for the same reasons. None of that "It's too hard business", just this sense that I wasn't really improving. I'd stealth an area, kill some mini bosses, then fight a big boss that would generally seem impossible on the first attempt, but after a couple of goes would show ways you could probably exploit it, and that's generally how I made my way through it. A little parry, parry when the game demanded it, a little bit of cheese when it was useful. I don't think it takes anything away from it, but I always had the feeling like there was a lack of progression. Sure I could get better at deflecting strikes and reading patterns, but that isn't half as satisfying as rolling up on a boss or two ready to wreck it in thirty seconds with a mega powerful weapon.

I think there's a good reason why so many more people are enamoured with Elden Ring, and Sekiro seems to be the most bounced off of when it comes to modern From games. Did I enjoy my time with it? Yeah, sure. Would I have probably liked it a little more if it had a few more ways to make parts of it a little more forgiving? Most definitely. And just to be clear, I fully understand why some people love it, as on paper it's my kind of shit, but honestly, it ain't no Bloodborne.