I don’t have the energy for a full review, so I’ll just offer a thought. Dark Souls III served as the culmination of the unofficial Souls series to that point. Elden Ring represented the next proper step in the series’ evolution. Sekiro, standing between these two, is interesting in that much of what distinguishes it from other Souls games serves to stand in subversion of them, and through that it generates meaning. Consider the single set character, a representation of both your and his lack of agency, a subservience to the Iron Code which ultimately you and him may learn to forgo as the game progresses. The inability to kill most NPCs also serves to inform about the character; while in most games this would not elicit a react from me, Sekiro’s use of the Souls framework forces me to consider it in contrast to games where I could kill any NPC. Blocking reduces posture damage, in stark contrast to slowing stamina recovery as in other Souls games, and there are significant differences in how death is handled. These, along with many more examples, play on our expectations and learned behaviours, and thus I think Sekiro's placement between between the end of Souls' first phase and the beginning of its second was perfectly timed for maximum impact.