Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an action-adventure video game developed by FromSoftware and published by Activision. The game takes place in the Sengoku period in Japan, and follows a shinobi known as Wolf as he attempts to take revenge on a samurai clan who attacked him and kidnapped his lord. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on 22 March 2019.
Gameplay is focused on stealth, exploration, and combat, with a particular emphasis on boss battles. Although most of the game takes place in fictional areas, some areas are inspired by real-world buildings and locations in Japan. The game also makes strong references to Buddhist mythology and philosophy. While creating the game, director Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted to create a new intellectual property (IP) that marked a departure from the Souls series of games also made by FromSoftware, and looked to series such as The Mysterious Murasame Castle and Tenchu for inspiration.
Gameplay:
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an action-adventure game played from a third-person view. Compared to FromSoftware's own Souls series, the game features fewer role-playing elements, lacking character creation and the ability to level up a variety of stats, as well as having no multiplayer elements. It does, however, include gear upgrading, a skill tree, and limited ability customization. Rather than attacking to whittle an enemy's health points, combat in Sekiro revolves around using a katana to attack their posture and balance instead, which eventually leads to an opening that allows for a single killing blow.
The game also features stealth elements, allowing players to immediately eliminate some enemies if they can get in range undetected. In addition, the player character has the ability to use various tools to assist with combat and exploration, such as a grappling hook. If the player character dies, they have the option of being revived on the spot if they have resurrection power, which is restored by defeating enemies, instead of respawning at earlier checkpoints.
Plot:
In a re-imagined late 16th century Sengoku period Japan, warlord Isshin Ashina staged a coup and seized control of the land of Ashina. During this time, a nameless orphan is adopted by the wandering shinobi named Ukonzaemon Usui, known to many as "Owl," who named the boy "Wolf" and trained him in the ways of the shinobi. Two decades later, the Ashina are on the brink of collapse due to the now elderly Isshin falling ill and the clan's enemies steadily closing in. Desperate to save his clan, Isshin's adoptive grandson Genichiro sought the Divine Heir Kuro so he could use the boy's "Dragon Heritage" to create an immortal army. Wolf, now a full fledged shinobi and Kuro's personal bodyguard, loses his left arm while failing to stop Genichiro.
Having received the dragon's blood from Kuro, Wolf survives and is brought to an abandoned temple to recuperate by a Sculptor; a former shinobi named Sekijo who now carves Buddha statues. Armed with a Shinobi Prosthetic, Wolf assaults Ashina Castle and confronts Genichiro again, defeating him, although the latter is able to survive as he had drunk from the Rejuvenating Waters, a man-made replication of the dragon's blood, and flees. As Wolf rescues Kuro, the two are given the opportunity to flee Ashina forever, though Kuro instead decides to stay and perform the "Immortal Severance" ritual, which would remove his Dragon Heritage and prevent anybody else from fighting over him to obtain immortality. Wolf reluctantly agrees to help Kuro and sets out to collect all of the necessary components for the ritual, including a special sword that can kill immortals known as the Mortal Blade. During his quest, Wolf crosses paths with Isshin Ashina, who gives him a new name: Sekiro; the "one-armed wolf."
After collecting all the components for the ritual, Sekiro is confronted by Owl; who was thought dead years prior. Owl reveals he also seeks the Dragon Heritage, and orders Sekiro to renounce his loyalty to Kuro. If Sekiro sides with Owl, he is forced to fight Isshin's doctor, Emma, and Isshin himself. Upon defeating them, Sekiro proceeds to betray Owl while Kuro, in horror, realizes he has been corrupted by bloodlust. If Kuro is chosen, Sekiro fights and kills Owl. He then uses the gathered items to enter the Divine Realm to collect the final component: the Divine Dragon's tears. Upon returning to Ashina, Sekiro discovers Isshin has succumbed to his illness and that the castle is under attack by the clan's enemies. Being informed by Emma that Kuro has fled, Sekiro finds him under attack by Genichiro, wielding a second Mortal Blade. Genichiro then challenges Sekiro one last time, only to be defeated once again. Realizing Ashina is lost, Genichiro sacrifices himself to use the Mortal Blade to revive Isshin in his prime so he might restore it. Although he disagrees with Genichiro's methods, Isshin honors his grandson's wish and fights Sekiro.
After defeating Isshin, there are three possible endings. Giving Kuro the Dragon Tears results in the standard ending, "Immortal Severance," where the Dragon Heritage is removed at the cost of Kuro's life. Afterwards, Sekiro takes the Sculptor's place at the abandoned temple and ends his life as a shinobi. Working with Emma to find a way to complete the ritual without Kuro having to die will result in the "Purification" ending, where Sekiro manages to save Kuro at the cost of his own life. The final ending, "Dragon's Homecoming", is obtained by helping the Divine Child of the Rejuvenating Waters. Kuro's body dies but his spirit lives on inside the Divine Child. Afterwards, Sekiro chooses to follow the Divine Child on a journey to return the Dragon Heritage to its birthplace in the west.
The Verdict:
When I saw the initial trailer for this game at E3 (linked above), I was instantly intrigued by what I saw because it reminded me of Activision's work on the Tenchu: Stealth Assassins series back during the PSX and PlayStation 2 eras that I thoroughly enjoyed playing... At least until Fatal Shadows, but that's a topic for another day... Every single one of my SoulsBorne loving friends that I mention my comparisons to this game get annoyed that I bring up the quirkiness of those games in comparison to this one, but I can't help but see it a LOT in this game.
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| My most hated enemy in this game, the (True) Corrupted Monk. |
One major difference that Sekiro has over the Tenchu series are EXCELLENT boss fights. Where the Tenchu series excelled in stealth gameplay (more so than the Metal Gear Solid series in some aspects that tends to get more credit for paving the way for that genre), it had horrible boss encounters in those games. Every boss - minor, major, or progression-required - had a method to their madness that left players to figure out. There isn't any button mashing your way to victory here. These bosses will punish any and all mistakes. Sure, you can find a wealth of "cheese" strategies here and there online for the bosses but I can guarantee that you will hit a wall that will force you to tucker down and actually learn how to fight properly in terms of well-timed deflections of enemy attacks, knowing the differences of when and where to merely block or deflect attacks, and the importance of managing your posture bar for your stance won't be broken, hence leaving you vulnerable to even more devastating attacks.
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| The Deflection mechanic in this game is a thing of beauty once you have mastered it. |
I was fascinated with the deflection mechanic in this game after coming from playing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. That game's deflection/parry mechanic wasn't anywhere as refined as the one in this game, but I still loved it nonetheless. That foundation made me appreciate the deflection and posture mechanic in this game even more. I would pump fake deflections in preparation out of nervousness and tension in boss fights. That would get you by here and there, but there's plenty of enemies that tactic isn't going to work on in the long haul. I found that fact out the hard way over the course of the game. It's not the best educational method, but the game is dead set in hammering understanding it's gameplay mechanics into your head with consecutive failures and brutal difficulty until you master these vital skills for survival.
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| It's a better strategy to sneak up behind stronger, more troublesome foes, rather than fighting them head on. |
Some enemies have multiple life bars of vitality, so multiple deathblows will be required to defeat them. Fortunately, Wolf is able to sneak up on some foes and instantly kill them with stealth deathblows, but that won't work on every adversary you face. (Laughs) In regard of stealth gameplay in this game, I can easily tell that this game used a few of the older Tenchu titles as a blueprint as a lot of the enemies in this game can be fooled in the same capacity. For example, once you're spotted you can hang off ledges to de-aggro hostile enemies and approach again from a different angle. This will even work with some bosses and sub-bosses to an extent. In terms of stealth, I got frustrated a lot of times in terms of attempting approaches from the air for the "death from above" deathblows, only for them to whiff completely more often than not. I shouldn't be surprised as that was pretty hit or miss in that series too, but c'mon, we're on current generation hardware. That should be an easy quick fix/patch at this point to an overall great game.
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| Your first exposure to the Lightning Reversal in Sekiro. |
I thought it was pretty cool that this game even has a counter for lightning-based attacks, much in the vein of Avatar: The Last Airbender's own fire benders' lightning redirection techniques. As cool as this technique looks, it proves to be a double-edged sword. If you can successfully counter and redirect any lightning-based attack, it deals massive damage to the initial attacker, but if you fail the counter in any capacity, Wolf takes massive damage to his vitality gauge instead.
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| Even the Corrupted Monk is no match for one's mastery of the Deflection mechanic. |
I personally got into this game at launch last year shortly after it released early into the first quarter of 2019 from a few weekend Redbox rentals. I liked the game enough to purchase a copy a few months down the road to continue my progression throughout the game until I hit a road block in the form of the Corrupted Monk in Mibu Village. From my understanding, most players either hit the progression block with that boss or with the ones in the Ashina Estate (flashback) or with the Blazing Bull. That was definitely my white whale for a LONG ass time. I actually quit playing the game for a few months after getting caught back up into my obsession with Monster Hunter World: Iceborne and only picked the game up recently between free content updates. I can't explain it but everything just clicked at one point after so much trial and error. It was bad enough I had seen this boss made out to be a joke on AGDQ 2020's (pre-patch) speedrun of the game, so I had even more extra motivation to see this game to it's end. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that it was easy. I know that I had a lot of lucky accidents and close calls that got by merely God's grace, but I can still tell you that I enjoy vastly majority of this game. Well... other than the Gun Fort and the manor portion of Fountainhead Palace, because fuck that shit.
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| Boy, do I wish I had that Shinobi Prosthetic the first time I went to the Gun Fort. I cleared that entire area before I even knew you could acquire the umbrella to block gunfire. |
If I had one major nit-pick about this game, it's the sub-weapons in the form of the Shinobi Prosthetic. Over the course of the game, you come across items that the Sculptor can fit to your Prosthetic as additional sub-weapons/gadgets in combat. These tools are limited to use for as long as you have Spirit Emblems (this game's equivalent of mana points for casting these spells/special attacks), but the problem lies there in the fact that your stock of Spirit Emblems is always going to be a rarity. You can sit back and farm them on hours end in some remote locations in the game, but to say the game expects you to invest so much time and in-game currency on upgrading them, your mileage for these sub-weapons is going to go only so far. I hate to admit it, but your Shinobi Prosthetics aren't an end-all solution to everything either. I found myself getting out of more hairy situations from my understanding of the combat techniques from Wolf's mere katana than relying heavily on the Shinobi Prosthetics.
It's a darn shame too because these tools could make the game a lot more fun if they merely put the tools on a sort of a cooldown timer (for they won't be heavily abused in combat) or merely allowed your Spirit Emblems to be automatically replenished at any save point/Scupltor's Idol.
Since it was hot topic at the time of release and the months that followed, I wanted to comment on my own thoughts about the subject of difficulty and accessibility with a game like this. Rambling About Games has a great piece about their own thoughts about how Sekiro failed players in that regard. In my own opinion, I always felt alienated when it came to these SoulsBorne games in the aspect as the player community always came off with this elitist attitude of "git gud" at any sense of weakness or shortcomings when newcomers ask for help. That concept was foreign to me as I didn't come to this game with that experience and mindset hammered into my head, much like seasoned veterans of previous SoulsBorne titles. It was foreign to me two-fold, especially coming from Monster Hunter World, where the community seems to be open arms to help and all players of various skill levels. The sheer difficulty and lack of any help of any friends/allies to invade/join your game left players to their wits end to get the most out of this game. I'm not going to lie, but I referenced Google at every opportunity when I got stuck or reached a crossroad in this game. This title was uncharted territory for me. During the first portion of the game when I made by without any help during my first few Redbox rentals, I was going all over the place without any sense of direction. If I hit an obstacle or something too hard for me to progress against, I would backtrack and try the other fork in the road until I found something that I could actually defeat then come back to the previous path with renewed purpose. That was well and good until I ran out of options and I had absolutely no idea where or what I should be doing. Truth be told, but this is a very daunting game. You can't help but feel a sense of anxiety at the unknown. Not from just the next challenge around the corner, but from whatever crap that you're going to stumble into next. Sub-bosses roam the locales like normal enemies and you won't know they were a sub-boss until you see their name pop up on the corner of the screen with their vitality gauge.
It's one thing to tell someone to "git gud" but that's one hell of a feat to accomplish when you don't know in what shape or form what exactly you should be getting good at. I'm not going to shit on this game and act like it doesn't have in-game resources at the player's disposal to help them out either. Want to improve your combat skills and mastery or merely practice a new technique you just learned? Go talk to Hanbei the Undying, where you can practice all of your skills on this respawning enemy to your heart's content. He even goes over the combat basics in a series of lessons. That's one aspect I have to applaud Sekiro for as there's no excuse not to get the combat basics down when you have essentially a training mode from a fighting game in this to work with. Devil May Cry 5 actually has a similar feature to this as well to allow players to hone their skills.
Getting lost in Sekiro's world is inevitable as there's no way around it. There's no in-game map for each area, just an overworld map of all of the locales. For the most part, the various NPCs will give you a sense of what you should be doing or looking for, but even that information is vague at best at times. My guess in that regard is the game is laid out where if you ping pong around enough from the bosses that are available and/or accessible at your stage of progression in the game's narrative that you would eventually find your way to where you need to go to next.
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| The best analogy for how Sekiro hammers it's gameplay lessons home to players, whether they like it or not. |
While I don't necessarily think this approach in terms of game design is best in terms of accessibility and reaching a wider audience, I understand that this game wants the player(s) to master a particular set of skills before opening up more of the world to the player. I would have liked to see various difficulty settings, but I can't knock a game that forces me to master a technique that will be a godsend for the rest of the game or for the challenges that lay ahead of me.
For example, the most frustrating enemies to face early into the game are spear-wielders, especially the Shinobi Hunter sub-boss in Ashina Estate (Flashback). Those enemies exist to force players to master the Mikiri Counter technique that allows Wolf to instantly stop any incoming enemy thrust attack, not just from spear-wielders, but from swordsmen and even thrust-style kick attacks. I didn't even realize until towards the end of the game that the latter was even possible to counter with that technique. The Mikiri Counter made fighting those Longshadow ninjas a lot easier throughout the game. Even though I hated the Corrupted Monk boss with a passion when I first encountered her in Mibu Village, I have to thank that boss for engraving the notion in my head to utilize that counter, precise Deflections, and the mere fact that you can jump over sweeping attacks and land on an enemy's head to deal posture damage coming down. By the time I encountered the (True) Corrupted Monk in the Fountainhead Palace, I had those skills engraved into my brain that I little to worry about in that rematch. Another example I can fondly remember are the monks prior to the Divine Dragon boss fight, who all utilize lightning attacks for you can practice Lighting Reversals. This skill is worth mentioning as it's definitely worth having as a trump card against the Divine Dragon boss shortly after, but even the final boss, not too far down the road of progression after that encounter.
At the end of the day, I'm split on the argument concerning accessibility with this game. In some ways, I can easily see how Sekiro fails newcomers and a wider spectrum of players outside of the SoulsBorne elite by alienating them with it's difficulty and lack of direction at times, but at the same time, I feel that the game provides enough tools (I don't mean the Shinobi Prosthetic either...) to allow most players to succeed on their own as well. The problem lies in the fact that the game doesn't really do a good job in presenting them to you right off the bat. Miyazaki is used to hammering his lessons into his player base with repeated failures until they get the point across. Sadly, that type of tough love not going to work for everyone in terms of forcing players to learn from their mistakes. On top of all of that, there's a great story that is told in this game and I'm sure that there's players that merely want to experience that, but not worry about the intricate details of the combat mechanics. Multiple difficulty settings would have alleviated that issue, but this game is dead set in it's ways with a "take it or leave it" approach much like the other SoulsBorne games in this same vein.
Play It or Don't Bother?
Coming as someone who has been generally turned off to the steep difficulty curve of other From Software games, such as Bloodborne and Dark Souls, I actually came into Sekiro expecting to feel the same way, but was pleasantly surprised that was enjoying the challenge by the time the game came to a close. I can easily see why this game isn't for everyone as not everyone will have the patience with the game's difficulty and steep learning curve, but I found this to be one of the most rewarding gaming experiences in modern memory. If this is how all SoulsBorne players feel after besting the horrors of those games, then I applaud Hidetaka Miyazaki for finally winning me over in that regard.
Would I run out to give more SoulsBorne games a fair shot? Maybe, but I'm not going out of my way to try them either. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice just happened to be subject manner I was really interested in and gameplay that I found myself loving more than I thought I would have going in. In that regard, then yes, Sekiro is definitely worth a shot and worthy of it's Game of the Year praise for 2019 too.
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| On a side note, I might have to hunt down one of these just for the statue of Wolf alone. |
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