The 2019 Goaties: #4 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
I stand at the base of a natural staircase, my gaze locked on to one of a hundred invading swordsmen. He rushes forward, his stance shaky at best. His blade rises. I parry, he stumbles. With a single slice, the swordsman falls, and I hear a rumbling at the top of the stairs. A moment later, the sound of splintered wood, and a colossal, red-eyed ogre is barreling down those stairs to dropkick me off a cliff. He is remarkably successful, and I am cackling.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is full of battles like these, where lightning quick combat gives way to profoundly memorable conflicts and set pieces. It’s a synthesis of the Souls formula five games in the making, profoundly streamlined and approachable without sacrificing difficulty in the slightest. It features some of the best boss battles FROM Software has designed, very little in the way of fluff, and a markedly understandable story (relative to the inscrutable, buried-in-item-description lore of previous FROM RPGs). To be blunt, it’s one of the most satisfying action games I’ve played in close to a decade.
“Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
(Steam, Xbox One, Playstation 4)
”
The tale told in Sekiro revolves around heritage and devotion in late Sengoku-era Japan. Enlisted as the personal bodyguard of the land’s Divine Heir, the shinobi Wolf is cut down during an attempted kidnapping, losing his arm. He wakes to find himself with a prosthetic replacement and the knowledge that he’s been infused with the “dragon’s blood,” in itself a blessing and a curse of immortality and rebirth. He begins a one-man crusade back into the heart of Ashina, going after both the man responsible for his failure and the conspiracy surrounding the invading force.
It’s very easy to see how Sekiro builds off of the changes to core loops made in FROM’s previous release, Bloodborne, which eschewed heavily armored, sword-and-shield defensive combat for much faster, parry-oriented battles. That ideology is taken one step further here, with combat focusing on intense, frantic one-on-one duels and the back-and-forth of parries, ripostes and dodges. Nearly every enemy has some form of a guard strength: parry, sneak up behind them, or otherwise wear them down, and you’ll have an opportunity to deal a brutal Deathblow that works on the lowliest pawns as well as it does full-fledged bosses with multiple health bars. Being able to immediately chip away at half of a boss’ HP is one of the most satisfying experiences it is legally possible to have.
The refinements in these core pillars of the Souls formula allow the combat to rocket forth into focus and really, truly force you to learn how it works. This is exemplified in one of the first “mandatory” boss fights (of which there are...surprisingly few?), where every instinct that’s been instilled in the mind of a Souls veteran is thrown into the garbage. It’s the moment where, after several boss fights of varying difficulty where you sit back, avoid an attack pattern, and then rush in and back out, the game says, “No, that’s not gonna fly anymore.” Sekiro is a game that rewards aggression, not placid defense; pushing forward, rarely holding back. As you become more and more comfortable with your blade, there’s a genuine feeling of mechanical progression as you return to earlier areas and cut down smaller foes in ways beyond just “I put 19 points into Strength, so I do more damage.”
In nearly every way, the tale of Wolf and his flight to free his chosen ward is the most streamlined “one of these” to date. Gone are the cumbersome walls of stats, menagerie of weapons, and three different meters to worry about. You’ve got one weapon with a handful of core abilities, two stats, and some of the most exciting, roughest bosses ever conceived by the FROM nightmare mongers. They span the spectrum from human-sized creatures to ancient daemons, dragons, and...uh, very large humans? These bosses are some of the most memorable since the original Dark Souls, with clever twists that don’t always boil down to “hit guy a lot until he dead.” There are a couple fights that are emotional rollercoasters, with surprises and mechanical changes that keep you on your toes.
If you’ve tried previous FROM games of this breed and found them overwhelming or kludgy, I would still recommend giving Sekiro a shot. The world is one of the most lavish and gorgeous this generation, with locations ranging from quaint gardens and open fields to besieged castles. Though it does dump a lot of the mechanical baggage these sorts of games have always traded in, it is so far from an easy task that you’ll still feel exhilarating highs and demoralizing lows.
