What Makes Sekiro So SPECIAL!?

sakuro Shadows die twice AKA weeb Dark Souls is a fascinating game it is really a soulsborne game as it appears in from software's lineup and titles and shares a large amount of DNA with dark souls and all of its brothers and sisters however sakuro is the one that Strays the farthest from the traditional Souls formula to a point where sometimes I find it realistically difficult to put them in the same type of genre of game they're very similar in a lot of ways but could not be more different in its approach with others I have a hard time even calling it a Souls game even though for the sake of this video I will be drawing those comparisons no matter how you perceive it it is the biggest deviation from The Souls tried and true formula by far while the underlying philosophy of level progression boss encounters and combat ideas are all still pretty much intact it mostly separates itself from the pack in a few key ways firstly sakuro foregoes many of the RPG mechanics that are so integral to the Dark Souls series Sakura oriented self by being more of an action Focus game in exchange for many of those RPG elements that were featured also it's almost like doing the exact opposite design approach of Elden ring not implying one game is inherently superior to the other simply for this aspect but in some sense Elden ring is a game that is vast expansive and in some cases a little too big for itself it has like an unreal amount of sheer content and it does get unruly at times but a lot of it isn't incredibly polished or dialed in for the overall experience sakuro on the other hand manages to do so much in terms of satisfying gameplay experience and Polished challenges with comparatively speaking less than like a tenth of Elden Ring's total content it's a much smaller game from a certain point of view but the content and experiences to offer have been carefully and meticulously hand crafted you can tell there was a much more deliberate amount of thought and effort and energy that went into every single major boss in sakuro compared to you know the hundreds of bosses in Elden ring they just can't all get the same amount of attention it's more complicated than just a quantity versus quality situation because to imply that Elden ring on the whole isn't quality as well would just be wrong and disingenuous but to simplify it Sakura manages to do so much with such little pieces and on top of that it's uh it's a lot more grounded in a deliberate narrative and story in fact this is the only Souls game that has a set character you play as who has a given name look and backstory there's also a far heavier emphasis on story and narrative throughout the game which we'll discuss but this means that you effectively skip all of the create a class and like character stuff you know or or role picking and basically all of those previously mentioned RPG mechanics now this might serve as an off-putting fact to some and understandably so to completely do away with the core features and just basic drywall of what made Souls games work in the first place could be seen as a bit of a betrayal of sorts so I I want to say I totally understand people who may find Sakura approach to progression and combat a little bit jarring it's not a lie that you can't just sit down and play Sakura the same way that you would play a Dark Souls game at all however I'd argue that that's its biggest selling point and strength what's Wild is that Sakura statistically speaking is the hardest soulsborne game the amount of people that complete a game like Dark Souls 1 2 or 3 from start to finish is around 31 to 38 percent somewhere in that ballpark whereas Sakura's completion rate is around 20 to 25 percent and the reason for that what I'd argue sakuro offers is a totally distinct type of gameplay that allows it to exist at the table of fromsoft's dinner and have something to make it worthwhile and worth playing now I'd be lying to you if I said I thought this game was perfect however I think it's flaws from their perspective were difficult to see coming and to prevent because its problems usually aren't the same kind that have affected the Dark Souls series well at least not exactly but it has become undeniably one of my favorite games inform's catalog to replay and that's by Design it's no coincidence that the most tightly nicked game happens to also be the one that's the most friendly for repeat playthroughs I would argue but at this point you may still be wondering if it's a weird deviation from The Souls formula and not without its own faults either what exactly is it that makes sakuro so special foreign is not something I usually spend too much time focusing on in any soulsborne games and when I speak about them primarily because story isn't my main draw of playing them the stories in lore can be cool supplementary information and quite interesting in their own right when going throughout your journey and usually that's how you can treat it dark souls stories are typically very hush-hush they're a bit low-key and you need to put the pieces together by yourself by you know paying attention to item descriptions the world NPCs and so on you know there's not really like long-winded cut scenes after every boss and stuff like that but in order to get a grasp on sakuro and the meat and potatoes of what makes it interesting I think we do need to ground ourselves in the basic and you know vanilla story first since it is such a heavy Focus now I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject or story details by any means but you don't really need to be for this video essentially all you need to know is we play as wolf a young man taken in and trained by Al who served as his father for pretty much all of his life you're a duty-bound Shinobi that will do anything for his master Kuro the Divine Heir who has been cursed with immortality wants you to sever this relationship to the power to make him truly human and Mortal kinichiro wants the Divine Heir for his own sake and for ashina and the dynasty ishin fought so valiantly for kuro's curse of immortality is what actually allows you to cheat death hence Shadows die twice and so Wolf's duty is to protect the Divine air from those who would use it for their own benefit that's really all you need to know for now and we'll touch back on the story a little bit later in the video I mentioned at the beginning that Sakura Strays the absolute farthest away from traditional RPG Mechanics for more action-based ones so what does that mean in Practical terms sacrificing the more RPG stuff means well I mean besides not being able to be a nerd about no I'm just kidding well besides not being able to do stuff like pick your general build and play style it goes far beyond that for example sculptor's Idols are far more close together than bonfires of the past usually this I believe was tied to the way the death system works at least in theory so in Dark Souls if you die you can try to make it back to your place of death to retrieve all your souls in sakuro you when you die you lose half of your total current XP on your point counter and you lose all of your money and you cannot retrieve it that is unless you receive unseen Aid which happens randomly but it happens less often if you have dragonraw and it gets complicated it gets a little messy I'll get to that system later but anyways this is a seemingly small adjustment but I think the whole dying twice mechanic was supposed to encourage people to if they die then maybe they go back to the safe Idol that you know if they died if they hit a tough patch of enemies or something but I'd say even more prominently the big difference contrasting these RPG versus action systems are the fact that there's no way that you can traditionally level up I.E you can't use a giant Bank of points to increase the base stats directly thus increasing attack power in health in sakuro in order to do those two very important things you know getting strong longer you are actually going to require prayer beads and gourd seeds prayer beads and gourd seeds that sounds like a Dr Seuss book when I say it out loud I'm leaving that in the video but this means in effect is that there are not really many ways to soften the base difficulty of an encounter uh prosthetic tools and Shinobi Arts aside you know whether that be in the form of level design or the more obviously noticed in bosses in contrast to Dark Souls you cannot simply Farm regular enemies until you buff your character's base stats to your satisfaction and that is the main progression so to speak in those games so what is the progression in Sakura then well the progression is seen when you the player overcome an obstacle instead of power leveling or using another outside mechanic to change the Rules of Engagement and soften its difficulty here's where we get into the bread and butter of Sakura combat and this is where the biggest differences between Souls combat and Sakura combat are highlighted in Souls combat roughly speaking you're essentially wearing away at a giant health bar and looking for openings and with punish opportunities and to kill the boss uh before the boss can make your own health bar reach zero it's kind of the same here but also not really in in Sakura the goal is to react to the right options and choices from enemies and aggression on your part as perfectly as you can executed rewards you exponentially this in turn Makes You The Boss when done to the Flawless degree Sakura combat is really more akin to a rhythm game but the rhythms thrown at you can vary and be mixed in with each other at any time this means that the game requires a certain amount of implicit muscle memory for you to execute in battle to deal with opponents effectively you're required to learn an entire boss's moveset and moreover the correct way to respond to each and every one of those moves a lot of people will be a Dark Souls boss on the first try using the same strategies as any other boss however it's very unlikely that a first time player you know will beat any sakurobos on their first try because you're not really meant to you're meant to learn the patterns and rhythms that allow you to pressure a boss enough to land a death blow in Sakura you have two things going on you have a health bar and you have your posture bar that indicates essentially your weariness in combat and if it fills up all the way wolf will get stance broken and enemies can be death blown death blown I don't like the way that sounds this posture meter effectively acts as a second health bar and maintaining pressure and not allowing your enemy to recover is the core to winning engagements in this title you absolutely cannot let up for a second and you're rewarded for playing that way parrying which is timing a deflect as soon as the strike happens costs you no posture and adds on to the enemy posture making it your best defensive response that on top of some other stuff like Mercury counters and so on but more on of that a bit later that on top of the core defensive option in Souls games that being the rolling or dodging mechanic is very situational but heavily discouraged in combat in this game you have to rely on your ability to deflect in Parry instead of dodging this means you're encouraged to stay in the fight and never let up or even break the pace of the fight by rolling away for too long the Dodge insecuro is borderline useless and wolf can block just about every single attack in the game with his sword with a couple exceptions so while it's not pointless in combat there's comparatively very little incentive to rely on dodging at all now I mentioned there aren't a whole lot of ways to soften up the difficulty of something that doesn't include beating bosses and you know getting memories and attack power or prayer beads from mini bosses however there is an X Factor in this game that takes the form of the prosthetic arm and tools these are specialized abilities that cost a reserve of spirit emblems to use and some very specific encounters the prosthetic arm can completely trivialize some fights but outside of those few situations the arm is more of a secondary tool to use in concordance with the main combat systems this arm is the only real way to soften the game's difficulty some of the most applicable ones are like The Umbrellas the Shinobi firecrackers the in the mistraven these can all be pretty much utilize somehow in virtually every battle you might find yourself in however what I like about these is that they're not mandatory at all and you don't have to use anything you don't want to now personally I've found it more fun to play this game by not using many Prosthetics because in general I tend to not find as much enjoyment by beating a boss simply by exploiting vulnerabilities to the most degree I can I also like find it interesting to Steel Man the boss instead of making a straw man to overcome it with that being said I have no problem with players wanting to explore and utilize all the potential the prosthetic system has to offer in sakro's combat in fact you can actually use a lot of them in Symphony and in combination with the main combat systems to begin with so it's a fine system for what it is I just personally don't find myself gravitating towards it a whole lot and I noticed after playing through a couple of times I started gradually decreasing the amount I use the tool anyways but some of you may find you end up using it more which is fantastic and there are certain arts and abilities that are locked in your skill tree and just like Prosthetics outside of a few key ones there aren't a whole lot of fundamentally game-altering abilities here to be clear there are a few outliers on either system that can cheese certain bosses and such but generally makes a negligible difference in moment-to-moment combat one of those few exceptions being the Mercury counter skill you basically have to get this one in order to interact with Sakura's combat especially in the latter half of the game it's easy to get but I'm not so sure how I feel about making a fundamental player mechanic in optional unlockable skill that can certainly be missed While most people realistically probably won't it it's still worth taking note of also you can't really use this ability in the you know first playthrough against konichiro and so that's probably why but outside of any Shinobi Arts Ninjutsu Etc and the prosthetic tools there's really nothing else that can fine tune any boss encounter or something that you may be stuck on why is this important well it pretty much gives us as a community more or less a shared difficulty experience that's going to be more more similar player to player as much as that's possible whereas in a Souls game someone's experience with a section or boss can vary so widely depending on all kinds of factors such as soul level build specifics and character class weapons and so on on the other hand it's kind of interesting and neat having something where the difficulty is going to be roughly consistent for each first time player on the other hand you could make the argument that this ability to fine-tune the difficulty using the RPG mechanics are what made them accessible and enjoyable to all kinds of players sakuro demands that you learn the way it wants you to play to some degree but not in a negative sense all of that progression in the feeling of advancing is all still there in the way that you physically get better at learning and responding to the enemies in combat it's been suggested that secro is far too punishing and difficult even for a from software game and to some degree I do empathize with why people may feel that way but personally I'm glad there's at least one game that takes this approach instead and it makes for one of the most satisfying experiences in any video game period when it all finally clicks and those of you who have beat the game know that click that I'm talking about you have this moment where suddenly what seemed like an immovable object previously you're now just completely dominating and obliterating each and every time around when everything falls into place it's been said a lot but sakuro isn't really about beating the boss it's literally about becoming the boss in some real sense and I'll come around to discussing each boss later in fine detail but for now you just need to understand that bosses command Perfection from the player and when you're dancing on the very edge of your abilities to overcome something that seemed completely impossible is a top 10 human feeling of all time right up there with Mom anyways I hate to even use this terminology but sakuro is the true embodiment of a get good game the entire phrase of get good has been completely stripped of its original meaning while it was originally used as a playful remark of encouragement that you too can get better at something if you keep trying to overcome it and correct mistakes it's now largely used as an insult to nullify anyone having an issue with an aspect of the game even if that problem has nothing to do with skill or getting good the act of getting good let's say is by definition making fewer mistakes and getting closer to perfection each and every subsequent try you don't solve the fact that gourd seeds which are a crucial game item are found in really arbitrary places a lot of the time and are just far too expensive to invest in anything else for example or the fact that some bosses design just don't work super well with Securus combat mechanics and camera or the fact that shortcuts make absolutely no sense in this game and so on I think it should be pretty obvious at this point how much I love this game but there are certainly some things I take issue with in Sakura which I will illustrate for you as we go on most of my problems have actually nothing to do with the act of getting good or improving at an encounter I have nothing but High Praise for the parts of the game that require you to improve in a trial by fire kind of way most of my problems are critiques of the overall design choices that hinder the experience but really are out of the players control for the majority of the time foreign [Music] so far we've covered combat and why it's by far the most deep and complex combat system in fromsoft's history and how it all works because knowing how combat interacts with enemies and therefore the world design is key in understanding the main changes to Sakura's levels the thing is Sakura has an awesome opening that quickly distills a handful of valuable lessons all in about five minutes you learn the basics of movement and walking you're introduced to jumping and stealth mechanics and eavesdropping right away although I don't think this particular mechanic is really well used throughout the rest of the game but you get through the stealth sections and then you meet Kuro who gives you your mission and a lot of exposition about the story you can find items upstairs encouraging exploration and then the combat Begins the ocean of soldiers are easy enough just to kind of swing through but they gently teach you the combat of also blocking and parrying within these little paths eventually leading to what is at the moment a mini boss for you to test your newly learned skills since you can't just immediately run him over you have to learn how the posture meter Works in order to fill it all the way up and land a death blow and then you're greatly rewarded for doing all that it's a brilliant way to open your game that teaches you so many important things in a concise way arguably the best intro bit since Dark Souls 1 I'd argue it's so good but while it teaches you almost every basic lesson it doesn't expect you to be an expert already as the first section of the game in the ashina outskirts is more or less an expanded tutorial this area is a lot like hey we gave you the tools you need to know can you apply them in a real setting but before you get to your first main boss after chewing through this area you will arrive at the dilapidated Temple and this is like coming home from a long day of school or work you've got all of your necessities and Comforts close by and this is also where you meet Emma who is your fire keeper and then the guy who is basically your blacksmith for your dead arm that ganichiro slicer oh yeah yeah about that it doesn't matter whether you beat or lose these scripted fight fight against kenitro here in the beginning however a really neat touch is that in this opening as wolf goes to draw his kubamaru he fumbles around a little bit and misplaces his hand showing that wolf is not exactly prepared for this and this is representative of a first time player they're going to be somewhat nervous and unfamiliar with the combat mechanics and a little clunky about the game especially for a encounter such as this one it's a neat subtle moment that helps you really connect with everything and wolf more specifically the change from the player at first being nervous and a little bit clumsy in the first encounter with kenichiro to the end where wolf is much more capable this time around as well as you as the player being far more confident and proficient is beautifully conveyed however before that can happen we have to work our way through the initial areas in the ashina outskirts what you'll notice right away is a few things first is how close the sculptor's Idols are again I think this is because you cannot recover money or XP by a pickup plus dying once May may cause you to retreat back to safety which I think is the original intended way to play like I think if you die once it's more encouraged to oh I need to go run back to my safe Idol before continuing but I don't think a lot of people actually play that way but also there isn't much you can do at Idols for your character outside of occasionally increasing your power through some prayer seeds and whatnot and this leads us to the level design when it comes to its emphasis on stealth and grappling zekrow has a fairly pronounced emphasis on stealth based combat especially in the early game being sneaky has really never been a requirement in other Souls titles sure you can do it I guess but the games aren't really cut out for that but sakuro is guiding you to that kind of play style from the very beginning for example one of the first mini boss encounters can either be taken head on but you'll notice if you do that he has two death below dots and you can snag one off for free by finding a route behind him and sneaking instead effectively knocking off half his health bar so at after this point you also run into some normal enemies that introduce you to ranged weapons such as guns and such as well as later a chained ogre that I personally think is a little awkwardly placed and executed as at this point it kind of runs contradictory to all the lessons in the ashina outskirts up to this point so far you've been pretty much encouraged to Parry and block whereas that strategy doesn't really work as well here but regardless as a whole the stealth sections in the early game aren't necessarily my favorite thing ever uh mainly the issues with stealth come due to the fact that the AI detection is just not optimal for a game like this but more importantly is the way it interacts with combat I spent a good chunk of the beginning of this video illustrating just how genius and intricate the combat mechanics really are when set up right this means sekuro is optimized for one-on-one encounters anything with two enemies is a little messy just isn't as much fun but anything more than three is a complete nightmare now I suspect that grappling originally had a much greater role to play in combat because it's only used a handful of times and mostly to cut through levels as well as a couple opportunities to use it in boss fights during a certain set of moves otherwise I personally just find the stealth and grapple elements of the game a little Bland unremarkable and somewhat underdeveloped to be clear I don't even dislike them they work okay I guess but they're simply a means to an end for me rather than actually enjoying taking part in the process itself grappling and doing stealth things against regular enemies was just a little more tedious than really anything else there's a couple cool moments like the scripted segment with the Great Serpent and that initial encounter which is absolutely incredible by the way I just don't find these systems all that compelling in and of themselves outside of these moments What's very interesting as well is that fromsoft really doesn't do these scripted moments at all like they they tend not to have these giant interactive set pieces like this only on occasion but this is the one this is probably one of the best ones I feel like they've ever done and so after escaping the serpent in the scripted encounter the player is getting more comfortable and familiar with the flow of the game and then you're hit with your first major boss normally I talk about bosses a little bit later but Gobo is for all major purposes your first main boss in the game you've only fought many bosses up to this point and it kind of serves as a tutorial for the rest of the game guilbo is important because he's not only a real challenge just by himself but he is a test of all of the lessons thus far he teaches the importance of parrying but the fact that he moves around so much initially pissed me off I didn't like it but now I get it you can't have a boss that's totally unrelenting this early in the game that's just gonna snuff players out he comes and goes and you have moments to heal or reset neutral or prepare for the next interaction I really like yobu for the most part not as much of a mechanical boss but more for the subtle lessons that he conveys he also serves as the literal and figurative guard and checkpoint to the actual game which is the castle that will eventually open up to you only after you've overcome him I love it it's awesome it's such an incredibly memorable boss even if his English voice acting is a little goofy audio after yoboo you can almost arrive at the castle But first you have to fight literally the worst mini boss in the game and I'm just gonna say that and I know people are already going to be typing get good uh skill issue Bros shut up for the two people that actually like this fight just why I just think the Blazing bull makes no sense at all for this game and even worse it's placement this early in the game I don't think teaches any valuable lessons on its own you can't just sit there and deflect like you've learned as you'll accumulate burn damage your most realistic Strat is just to hit and run for chip damage and then just run away and exploit end lag Windows like it's a Dark Souls boss its implementation is just a little sloppy and I don't even mind saying that the Blazing bull is a bad boss especially considering what amazing bosses in Sakura are truly capable of with that embarrassing awful boss aside we finally make it to ashina Castle and this is Sakura's moment you know what I'm talking about right the moment in video games the moment of stepping out of the vault in Fallout the moment of walking into Lim grave for the first time in Eldon ring and so on you know what I'm on about and this is where the game and its possibilities are in your complete agency at this point I'm gonna discuss the various level designs of the areas and some of the key things about them but I'll save bosses 4 afterwards Sakura's levels are basically linear areas with a few mini bosses within them to get prayer beads and a major boss at the end but otherwise one of my biggest criticisms of all levels and areas in Sakura is that for the most part there's not really much incentive to kill normal enemies at all in this game especially in the late game because you know you can no longer just Farm souls and therefore stats off of normal enemies there's not actually much reason to engage with them whatsoever especially the more Ganky encounters really feel like you're meant just to stealth or run past them until you get to either the mini boss where things actually matter or the major boss at the very end also a little criticism I have is that so in seoul's games you know the player and where they should be spending their time is usually conveyed very well typically by having enemies that are an optimal challenge not too hard and not too easy means that you're in the right place once again Dark Souls 1 does this Great where if you try to go to the catacombs too early you get you know promptly thrown away Dark Souls 3 does a phenomenal job at guiding the player along a progression path that gives them an optimal challenge but still room to experiment and do things in a little bit of a different order every time I think sakuro has a bit of a hard time uh guiding the player along to where it wants them to be in fact I think for first time players knowing where to go next is a huge problem it certainly was for me on my first time for sure and after doing something major I feel like I'd have to go look up online to figure out where the hell I'm supposed to go next and you might say well well dude just go explore no as I've detailed sakuro in large part really isn't built for exploration exactly or at least in the way that other Souls games before it are outside of gourd seeds prayer beads and the occasional interesting item maybe for your prosthetic or something there's not much incentive at all just to walk around aimlessly in a game like this you know where you are and where you want to be and where you're going and especially wandering around aimlessly gets you into fights with more than one person and again Sakura is just not built for that in a game like this you always want that forward moving momentum and things just sometimes kind of happen and unless you've already played the game before or have watched it or read online The Game does not make it clear on where you're intended to be at all this problem is alleviated in subsequent playthroughs but my point is in a game that's much more linear I just feel like for a first time player it should be clearer on where you need to be at any given time instead of of having to look it up online or just getting vague dialogue from NPCs that stuff's great and all too and it has a time in place but I do think it hurts the progression of the game on the whole hang on just a second real quick pause the video can you guys believe that only 16 of people are subscribed to my channel that is absolutely criminal if you are not a giga Chad that's already subbed I don't know what you're waiting for click that thing right now let's continue in sakuro it's very easy to end up in an area that you really shouldn't be in or at least at that moment even though you technically can do it in almost any order its enemies and level structure can make this somewhat misleading usually people will go right after the ashina castle to typically senpo Temple but you can also not do that and go to the Sunken Valley instead regardless of which way you decide to go you have to hit every area in order to collect a certain item you're basically collecting items for Kuro that will allow you to access the Divine realm and so while these items can be obtained in any order the experience in which you obtain them and the order at which you you know do the areas will greatly determine your experience with the flow of the game after getting to the castle and exploring for a bit you get an item that allows you to travel from the dilapidated Temple into a memory into harada estate and this is where most people usually go and where you'll encounter lady butterfly however not that's not always the case you could fight corrupted monk technically as like your second boss us as well and so this means you and another player may have a widely different experience with each boss even though I did mention earlier that this game is more built to have that Collective sense of difficulty than an individual difficulty like Dark Souls it's less about how the boss experience is going to be more the order that you take them on in and how prepared you are as you know your own individual character and even your skill regardless of which areas you choose to do first you're eventually going to end up at the same point as everyone else regardless and so I do want to highlight a couple of the mini bosses and talking about them because they're an integral part of sekro's progression system and levels and it's certainly worth mentioning a few of these seguro's game path is pretty much divided into two halves you have everything up until you get to the Divine realm and then beat the dragon spoilers uh and then afterwards everything beyond that but in the first half of the game you do get introduced to a ton of mini bosses that also get reused and reorganized in the latter half of the game and there's some I want to talk about because I feel like they're important to understanding a lot of the game design choices that they made in the ashino outskirts area you may run into the seven Spears mini boss and this I think teaches the player a couple of things and you have to unlearn some things you thought you knew because of how hard this fat man will hit his spear is going to be unbelievably dangerous to your own posture and can frequently result in you getting stance broken and even just outright killed in maybe one big hit so the unique lesson I feel like seven Spears conveys is that you can't just rely surely on staying in front of a boss and deflecting you have to employ makiri counters good spacing great timing and even then sometimes it's not enough if you make one small mistake in harada's state you will definitely encounter the mini boss jozo the drunkard and I think in its first encounter it's absolutely Immaculate however they do reuse this boss a little uh too much for my liking I would say I understand they all have you know slightly different names and there's more reasons why they exist and all that I get that but they are the same boss mechanically speaking and I think once you've kind of figured out how this works one time around and especially if you're doing you know a certain ending in which you're going to encounter this fight a lot more than you probably expect it's a very good fight for what it is it's not my favorite in the game but it's pretty excellent he's got you know a interesting sword Combos and the fact that he can basically spew poison onto his sword what I don't really agree with in this fight is that you take poison damage even if you block or deflect something and it still causes that build up but honestly I have to say it was really cool of them to make Discord moderators a mini boss in this game The Headless is a boss that you're gonna find also a little bit too much in this game just like Jojo where I don't think the boss necessarily is outright offensive but the fact that it gets reused again and again certainly took away the charm and the special feeling that it had the first time first time I encountered a headless I went in this little like thing open this tunnel flip the Secret Door walked into this cave that felt completely disconnected from the rest of the world of sakuro in general it felt so unique and out of place in a good way where I was interested in what else the game was going to offer me but unfortunately seeing the Headless in just other like random spots in the game that aren't this cool cave uh it really did take away from that initial encounter that I once had also the thing I don't love about this fight is that in order to deal damage that isn't like giving it a back scratch you need Divine confetti for the most part and that is a consumable resource that you really cannot get other than farming it or buying it from a vendor after you've gotten to a certain story point in the game making a limited consumable a requirement for dealing any kind of real damage to these sorts of enemies are not something I will ever agree with and I think that is probably one of the biggest weaknesses as it relates to headless fights specifically inside of the ocean adepts or in the Gun 4 or the Sunken Valley you're probably gonna find a couple of these Snake Eyes mini bosses whether it's your Fuji or the other one I don't remember his name but when you fight these you're going to notice that not only do they have range they have this like Giant Cannon but they also have pretty high posture for what they are encouraging you to either get sneak death blows or some something like that on them to start the fight what's really fun and effective is being Airborne against these as you can jump and block their bullets in the air and then come down with some aggression to get some free posture damage once again besides from like Visual and context changes depending on where they appear in the world they're largely the same fight and this one did get a little bit boring if you play every single one of them but at the very least they have a super consistent way you can take them down which is simply playing the game however the same could not be said for the siegeman Warriors and this has the exact same problem as the Headless I just mentioned in both ways I think the first ever time I encounter these again was Unforgettable it was unbelievable jumping into the ocean Adept and then discovering this really dark cave and then seeing the Sichuan Warrior cooking something with this ritual you really have two options here you can use a prosthetic that completely trivializes the fight and negates all damage or you can run around you know with some Divine confetti on your sword and then just kind of go at it and you have to avoid these orbs that he summons as they cause Terror buildup which can essentially in to kill you and so if you're not using any of the prosthetic tools to defend against that you have stuff like pacifying agents to counteract it but otherwise you have to deal damage with these consumable resources which I argue is the worst part about this fight and the Headless and again they reuse this fight later in the Divine realm where the siegeman warrior first in the ocean adepts is amazing in terms of its atmosphere it's just kind of hanging out at this random waterfall that makes it feel much less impactful than it did in its original encounter I understand it probably wasn't viable to develop a unique boss for every single little location including many bosses in the game I mean hell even the Blazing bull gets reused as the soccerable that still doesn't mean that some mini bosses don't get their impact short-handed by you know constant copy paste throughout the game Joseph's probably the worst at that but they're not my favorite counters in the world but also we have the armored Warrior and the sempo temple and I like this fight because it is an interesting uh way to throw off the player initially if you don't know what's going on you'll try to deal damage to this thing and eventually death blow and you realize that your little sword cannot get through this giant hunk of armor in the relatively compact Arena you're in it becomes pretty obvious quickly that the armored Warrior will destroy the sections around you and instead of wasting your time trying to poke your sword through this giant thing you realize it's more efficient just to push him off and make him falls to his death as he screams Robert I know who Robert is it's this guy so I want to wrap back around to story before we continue as I stated earlier I really like Sakura's story and a lot of its methods for conveying it however in my opinion seko's bigness weakness is usually the method of delivery for its storytelling moment to moment Dark Souls storytelling works because it's so much in the background much of it is not at the Forefront with giant overbloaded nine minute long cut scenes and that sort of thing giant set pieces in intricate settings and while secro does have its fair share of cut scenes and more story oriented moments a lot of it is just talking to NP PCS while in the classic Dark Souls fashion it's just two static characters standing while text pops up at the bottom of the screen I feel like Sakura honestly could have benefited from a more traditional method of story delivery God of War Ragnarok for example Ragnarok does a lot of things to make X position dumping interesting a commonly used term in film is business and blocking and when this applies to video games it's like okay we've got to tell the audience a bunch of Story I mean well how can we do that in a way that isn't totally dull or boring for example while delivering dialogue you might be climbing and Swinging across cliffsides or you might be going with atreus on a sled slide or something like that the blocking is the scenery in the setting and the business is what you're doing sakuro usually has a static environment with static NPCs that don't do anything at all when they're speaking I can't lie this did take me out of the story at times and made the experience be a little bit uh flat and made the story feel less emotionally heavy when I'm being told the most heart-wrenching things by basically a a t-posing Emma at the same time they made eavesdropping what is supposed to be a vital part of the game feel not immersive or engaging at all because again pretty much everyone just stands there motionless as you click through text the whole time I think the problem with this is that they want it to be a more story and narrative heavy game but they use the same tactics that a lore heavy game would use instead you know which makes sense because they're so used to doing that with their souls games creating this kind of awkward delivery for its main story beats there's moments where it feels like you're getting a lot of really good stuff fed to you and then there's huge stretches of the game where it's completely vague and arbitrary and it's bone dry I think the story is heartfelt and incredible for what it is but I think you see my point about its method of delivery being my biggest issue with it now I also want to wrap back around to level design for a moment I mentioned how Sakura is divided into two halves the first half of Sakura is you working your way through up the sections of ashina Castle and the outskirts and then you know the subsequent areas that are branching off to get the things and even though it does appear an attempt was made to make them interconnected at least to some degree mainly through stuff like the temple shortcuts the abandoned dungeon and so on the problem is they really felt like an illusion they weren't that real authentic hard connection that the gargoyle Castle has back to fire Link in Dark Souls 1 for example the shortcut stuff like that works especially in DS1 when the entire level design is stacked on one one another and it's meant for you to do that and you don't have access to fast traveling in the beginning however in Sakura you can travel to anywhere pretty much at any time and then also they have just more or less hidden loading screens from when you travel place to place using these shortcuts I think they wanted a more intimate feeling world like this to have that interconnected level design but it doesn't even really matter anyways because besides a few important story moments in the game you can fast travel to any sculptor's Idol at any time anyways and you also replay almost every section in the second half after the invasion of ashina Castle although it's under a much different tone and setting an atmosphere than before this is another example of what I meant about doing a lot with comparatively very little raw material in fact as you know trophy as it might be the game ends where it all started even in the beginning you have your Showdown with kenichiro when you were just a timid and clumsy wolf to the end where you're now a confident and practiced and proficient wolf to really show how far you've come what I noticed is Dark Souls and I mean all of them are more about their vast and sprawling world in the forward moving Adventure on a seemingly really Grand scale sakuro by contrast is a much more personal and intimate feeling story and world and I really like that for a change it was nice to feel like this was all happening in its own self-contained part of the world and I liked the the more grounded approach you know despite having more mystical elements that it's based in much of that was likely due to the fact that it had to be grounded in realistic material in future Japan even though they take quite a few creative liberties with some of the places you go I'm absolutely okay with that well the first half of the game is pretty just realistic feeling and authentic it really plays up the fantasy inspired by Japanese lore in the second half of the game and then when you get to the Divine realm and when the war breaks out I cannot give enough praise to from soft for going about it in this way I really liked having a world feel like I could wrap my entire head around before we talk about main bosses I want to get into a few systems that are unique to Sakura and its balance now to some extent this can be alleviated by New Game Plus for sure but I noticed that the cost of items and the earn rate of money is just not right and when especially considering the high ticket important items like gourd seeds or prayer beads at certain vendors or like you know certain arts and skills far outweigh purchasing anything else to a point where you realize how stupidly expensive prosthetic upgrading is and how ultimately pointless that can be to pursue with how slow money is to collect without aggressive farming and the risk of losing half of them on death makes the items and shops in secro feel like they're oddly stacked against you for example Spirit emblems get more costly as the game progresses and yes I know you're earning more in the late game but if you know this in the early game you may as well spend all of your money that you're making buying up Spirit emblems and putting them in storage while they're cheap foregoing really important items until later bloodborne also had this issue too where blood vials would cost more after certain story beats were achieved and I don't love that implementation here thankfully it's not your actual healing items it's only Spirit emblems and they're more or less optional but still I I don't love the fact that even Spirit emblems get hit by crazy inflation as the game goes on it's kind of ridiculous and that is in hindsight something I I don't think is perfect about this game I feel like you know this new money system and their earn rates and their store pricings are not perfect understandably so because it was their first time doing this system specifically I just think it has a lot of room for improvement I also want to talk about Dragon rot for a moment the most pointless feature in this game I understand they had a hard time getting the correct punishment for death in Sacramento since it's pretty much more of a guaranteed thing than even in a Dark Souls game but so when you die too much or you know too often without cleansing you accumulate what's called Dragon rot and all of this really does is lower your chances for unseen Aid which keeps your XP in money and then also makes NPCs sick I guess um I I suppose and initially dragonrot was going to be a lot more effective in this game it had a lot more punishments that came alongside it but they you know backtracked this because maybe they thought it was a little bit too much who knows I'm also not advocating for them to make dragonrop more punishing I think that would actually get quite annoying depending on what it is but it just seems that it doesn't belong in the game currently as it doesn't have much of a real uh place in the game those are my only real complaints with this game without getting too nitpicky and I think in a game with my favorite combat system ever that's pretty good as far as like there's not a whole lot that I even dislike about this game whatsoever in a game that has probably the best bosses of any video game period there's a lot to talk about so I want to get into main bosses we talked about Gilbo already being the literal gatekeeper for the rest of the game and after that you're most likely going to encounter lady butterfly in the harada estate memory now this fight is the one that I feel as if they had it first this would cause a lot of players to quit what this fight demands of you is complete and supreme aggression you cannot let up even for just a second her posture recovery isn't crazy but she has a few of these moves will she'll jump up on these strings and come at you from above and if you have shurikens to knock her out of the air you get exponentially rewarded for that so you're greatly encouraged to use something like a projectile prosthetic but even if you don't you can still run her down when she is you know in her end lag Windows a bit of criticism I have for this fight before you get into here there's actually an NPC that gives you snapseeds and pretty much tells you that you cannot beat it without you know breaking the illusion and you get one consumable Snapseed you have no idea going into this fight of you know what to expect with it or when to use your Snapseed or anything so if you waste it it's gone and the way that they convey it makes you feel like you have to have it like it's a mandatory item even though it isn't and I just think that was kind of poorly executed because in her second phase she can summon these Illusions but really you can shut her down in the beginning if you want to to where she doesn't even summon these they're not that big of an issue uh and I think the way that's conveyed is a little misleading lady butterfly for me on my first time around was the boss where it kind of clicked up to this point I was kind of you know fumbling my way through the game on my first attempt and when I got to lady butterfly it took me a little bit but then there was that moment when everything fell into place and I got it everything the game was asking for me snap together and I could subsequently steamroll lady butterfly every time I played it after that point and then after that we're gonna talk about ganichiro in the ashina castle now I think it's fine to fight genitoro a few times throughout this game I don't feel like this is a case of reuse for the sake of it it has implications for the Player's progression it has implications for ganitra himself and he has basically a different moveset every time you play him to some degree after beating lady butterfly you should be much more well equipped and understand what sakuro is demanding of you and you should have your Mercury counter at this point that you need to employ and when you have all of these things in place ginito is honestly not that hard of a boss when I talked at the beginning of the video about you becoming the boss in this game that is quite literally what you're supposed to do here kinichiro will be the boss if you play Passive and only reactionary to what he's doing if you take initiative you stay aggressive and you prevent him from doing anything to box you out you will win this fight quicker than you can imagine and you need to because it's multiple phases it may seem initially unfair or oppressive to have genitoro a boss this early in the game have three separate phases but when you understand that his posture meter can be quite easily broken it becomes much more manageable and the third phase is unironically the easiest part about it once you understand the one mechanic that completely changes this I agree with the entire Community where lightning reversals are introduced at a completely inappropriate time this is when I said that pretty much no blind player is gonna be a Sakura boss on their first time because you just don't know this is coming and without that prior knowledge you are 100 of the time gonna die to this and it's introduced at a kind of cheap way I would say which is why nobody really beats kinitro their first try but after you know knowing the gimmick or trial and error you understand that lightning reversal pretty much completely Cooks his health and posture meter what feels like seemingly an impossible three-phase oppressive boss fight at first becomes surprisingly easy and manageable once you figure out the Rhythm and everything clicks because sakuro has much fewer opportunities for bosses in terms of sheer numbers there aren't that many gimmick bosses however there is one the folding screen monkeys and the concept is based off a real Japanese proverb of the uh speak no evil see no evil hear no evil do no evil monkeys and essentially you have to kill each and every one in a different way they have a weakness to exploit so to speak but it's pretty much just a puzzle boss like there isn't actually anything Sakura combat related to talk about here once you understand which each vulnerability is and you can do it one time over and it's fun to I guess solve for the first time but this is not a boss you just sit there and replay because there's no point you don't train any skills you don't learn anything new you don't get more proficient at something it's just a puzzle boss I don't have much to say about the floating screen monkeys they're cool though now if you thought those were the only monkeys in the game uh you'd be wrong because we now have the big monkey and I think this was the roadblock for many first-time Sakura players I went and you know loaded up my dial-up internet and I browsed the interwebs for what people were saying about this boss at the time this game released and I know this was a roadblock for you know personal friends of mine playing the game and stuff like that I just feel like a lot of people got stuck and gave up on Guardian a that is the sentiment I got and understandably so there's no real way to position yourself in order to exploit this boss it's kind of dangerous no matter where you are but as long as you're responding to most moves that you can actually deflect even though it doesn't really seem like you should be able to you are mostly okay but I think the coolest part about the guardian ape assuming you actually managed to get a death blow is the iconic moment where you land the Shinobi execution use its actual sword necklace around its neck to chop its head off and then you get the Shinobi execution message and unless you've had it spoiled for you if you're a first time player you think you're done you put down your controller you're hyped as hell only only for it to literally pick up its head and start a phase 2 unexpectedly after starting its phase two the animations completely change and it really creeped me out because it doesn't move the way that like a normal two-legged mammal would you know in this way it's moving around very like bug-like and that's because there's the centipede controlling it the animation team absolutely crushed it with this and you have to play The Headless ape a little bit different to the guardian ape where it's more about these giant whiff punished windows and a little bit more on deflecting you'll notice that you are also much more likely to drain its HP to land a death ball rather than actually just like breaking its posture because they're about the same it's posture meter is a little bit too high to consistently break in this way and again the way the fight is paced you're more encouraged to weave in and out and get in chip damage while you can I think the way this entire fight is executed is brilliant I love the arena I love the presentation the Shinobi execution the first time around only for it to pick up its head and then continue in phase two I think it's beautiful it's not my favorite fight in the game but I love again I love its presentation and everything about it what I don't love is the Headless ape fight and I mean the second one that you fight in the cave after the ashina depths I'm not in love with this boss just because it is just a copy paste of what you've already played although there is just more monkey this time that's that's it it's a second monkey which I believe is the Headless Apes girlfriend but has a much more limited move set than the original Guardian ape I have to dock some points for its presentation here and I also don't love the arena as much as the original it doesn't play as well with the cameras and especially the more constrictive walls it is a uh probably a lower tier fight for me in the game but I I think the original Guardian ape is a great one and I can understand again why this was a complete roadblock for a lot of players corrupted monk is going to be the next boss and I don't actually have any problems with this boss as far as its design in terms of its move set its Rhythm and what it does it's very formulaic and once you can learn the pattern recognition you can pretty much Flawless this boss each and every time which is what you need to do for later on but we'll get to that in a second what I do don't like about corrupted Monk Is again throughout the game using the mini bosses you're taught that for these more phantom-like enemies you want to use Divine confetti to take them down or cheese it in some other way although this boss doesn't necessarily need to be cheesed but you're encouraged to do so completely defeating the point of learning those pattern recognitions for later on that you can't cheese what I'm getting at is based on the kind of boss that it appears as I'm like okay I fought the siegeman warrior and I Fought The Headless and so I need Divine confetti to take this thing down or at least optimally to deal any damage but you don't really need to and it's probably better to actually just fight this thing head on so you can learn the move set for the important encounter it's a really great fight and corrupted monk has an insane posture bar recovery and so you learn to really you know Marathon these fights and I love it I just didn't have the learning experience until the actual final encounter which we'll get to later so it's decent uh but now if you do these shura ending you get two bosses that are unavailable to you later in the game this being Emma the gentle blade and ishin in Ashen Castle this version of ishin is pretty good he has a couple of moves that completely snuff out any playable space you have in this make it feel really constrictive he's got his one mind move which is actually kind of broken to be honest but other than that Emma I think is a very easy boss and it's kind of strange as well because Emma is the only real main boss in the game that is the same size as you if not smaller than you fromsoft generally makes opponents bigger than you so not only do they feel more intimidating but you can see what they're doing I think Emma gets actually blocked by your player model and you can't really see what she's cooking and I feel like that's the only drawback to this entire fight and same thing with ishin it's a good fight but it's not the main boss of this game and you can kind of tell because it I think it's meant to feel like an underwhelming final boss if you do this ending which is you know the worst possible one now if you don't do the shura ending and you decide to serve Kuro instead and betray your father you then get access to like another third of the game and a lot more bosses and if you decide to do this route you will fight against Great Shinobi out what they really nail about this fight is you almost feel you're fighting a mirror version of yourself that has access to so many different tools and methods some of them being a little underhanded I keep coming back to the fact that sakuro makes you the boss and it kind of feels like with his entire move set and toolkit that Al is trying to cheese you and that's a very different feeling than what we're used to it puts you on the flip side of this encounter he's got a little smoke bomb that can even flat out prevent you from healing and in the second phase he can spew poison and if he does manage to nullify your healing options it feels like he's playing so incredibly dirty and that's the point Al is not an honorable man and you can tell in his fighting style that is the case in the transition to phase two he begs for Mercy from you but this is a trick you need to keep attacking and once doing so he will let out this giant smoke bomb that will completely envelop the playable space it's reflective in his character but even in his actual moveset he goes for cheap hits he constantly you know Retreats away and you have to consistently stay in his face and make him face you if you manage to do all this perfectly and don't let up you get rewarded and you'll beat this fight almost 100 of the time I feel like this is the boss in which I knew that Sakura was an amazing game I I knew this was going to be something special as soon as I completed this one and I was just eager for what the game the rest of the game had to await for me so when I finally got to the Divine realm I went in the giant straw thing and then ended up in The Fountainhead Palace I realized before you get there you need to fight true corrupted Monk and I mentioned earlier how corrupted monk the presentation kind of ruined this fight for me it didn't ruin it but I feel like I wasn't as prepared going into this one as I should be I got stuck on true corrupted monk for a little bit because I hadn't actually needed to learn the move set as you know I felt like I just used Divine confetti to get through it and so this was my trial by fire but once I perfected this fight I I finally got it it took me about two hours for everything to click and you can also do this thing where you skip its second phase by Landing a death blow from up top but learning the patterns of the first and third phase is something that is very doable because it plays incredibly rhythmic but once that Rhythm clicks you pretty much can't lose It's Made Me Love true corrupted monk I love basically all these bosses but especially this one and I love the way this fight sounds just the rhythmic clanking of the swords and the Spears and especially because corrupted monk has such a rhythmic move set it makes that Rhythm sound and feels so good man it's one of my favorite fights in the game even though it took me a minute to really learn after getting to the end of the Divine realm Fountainhead Palace is like the best area in the game it does have an amazing boss but not for its mechanics exactly uh Divine dragon is a fight that I think a lot of people wrongfully call it a gimmick fight because it really isn't I think this is just more of a cinematic fight than anything I'm not gonna say it's the most mechanically interesting thing ever but it's not really trying to be this is the story moment boss which I'm okay with because in a game that's chock full of mechanically interesting bosses it's okay to have a fight like this every now and again you just have to evade really obviously telegraphed attacks and then after a little while these trees will pop up one of them will be glowing and you go up to it you use the thing to get lightning and then you go and posture break the dragon I think it's an awesome presentation it's very cinematic I love the display of it again not the most like cool mechanical fight but it's not trying to be so I don't hold it to the exact same standard as the rest of the lineup in Sakura but I I love divine Dragon I think it's great and it's in the best area in the game by far so if you're going for the purification ending or just wanting to do all the bosses you're gonna make your way back to harada estate eventually and fight Al and this time the father version this is Al more in his prime while he still does use his underhanded tactics it's not quite as pronounced as the great Shinobi fight where he's a little more actually aggressive this time and you know what I'm just gonna say it I I love the last fight in the game which we're gonna get to in a minute but I think after playing a couple of playthroughs and especially in New Game Plus I think alfather is my favorite fight in Sakura hands down I think the amount of variety in this boss's moveset the ways that it can go the logic trees in which that it can switch up on you and it has unbelievable Mix-Ups the way that you can get mikiri countered if you do a Thrust attack in neutral is insane for example when he does this move where he's going to do this overhead swing you need to stay for in front of him for long enough for him to actually slam down because if you go to the side you think you can easily punish this move he does this mix-up where then he does an extra two swings from his side it's crazy man in the second phase he actually utilizes The Owl and I don't love everything about this mechanic there's times where like he'll do this giant combo and you think you're gonna have a whiff punish window only for him to just disappear and become invulnerable he will strike out of this and that's usually punishable so you do get rewarded for it eventually but I think almost outside of a few tiny little mechanics I love everything about owl father and it's quickly become my favorite fight to look forward to in sakuro after a couple of playthroughs and you also can't really like speed through this fight all that quickly you can get a lot more proficient at it but you can't just like shut it down in a few seconds like you can like a ganichiro for example this fight no matter what still has a giant posture meter giant health bar and you're gonna have to you know endure the marathon to some degree no matter what I haven't mentioned this yet but one of securo's coolest features is the fact that you can replay bosses through these battle memories at a sculptor's idol at any time you know in every other Dark Souls game you beat a boss once and unless you're playing Dark Souls 2 and use like a bonfire aesthetic to reset the boss you can't really replay them unless you do a new game plus run once they're gone they're pretty much gone but you can replay each and every boss as much as you want to to literally perfect them and I personally found owl father to be the most consistently rewarding and I would even go so far as to say I think it's the most difficult fight in the game it's very close to the final boss fight in Sakura which again we're gonna get to in a second but I feel like that boss is difficult for totally different reasons our father I cannot praise enough man I I love it I'm probably gonna go I'm gonna go play it right now actually I'll see you guys in a minute near the very end of the game after the invasion of ashina Castle when you make your way backwards through the outskirts and instead of coming forward this time you have this entirely different setting where the actual Austin soldiers are running away in fear when previously they may have given you a hard time you realize just how much this battle is out of your hands you're running through and you go back to kind of where it all started this is where you encounter the demon of hatred and I want to stop and talk about this one for a minute because I feel this one gets unfairly criticized I've heard many people make the claim that they feel demon of hatred is basically if you just took a Dark Souls boss and slapped it into sakuro but I don't actually agree one of my slight criticisms of bloodborne was that I felt like a lot of the Beast fights just didn't really gel well at all with bloodborne's combat they were completely at odds with one another but I don't feel that's the case with demon of hatred after playing this fight quite extensively the way that it's integrated with Sakura's fundamentals is actually very well thought out and even though it's a larger enemy where you know it kind of drags like a dark souls camera boss would it moves in a way where you can actually position yourself you can deflect you can even use the grapple to go in and close the gap when it does its big AOE move there's a lot that separates it from being a Dark Souls boss and integrates it with sekro's com combat even though this isn't again a fight that you can just like run through and posture break and everything like you kind of got to take this one slow and wear down at its health and all that stuff I still think that it is probably one of the best examples of using a bigger enemy like this in the game you can even utilize wall jumps to punish and stuff in here it's great I think the demon of hatred is an extremely underrated boss I hate using that word but even if hatred does make you employ a lot of the lessons that you've been taught it's very much like the gyobu fight and which is ironic because it takes place in the exact same Arena but it has that property where you know it runs away it outspaces you but its moves are a lot more devastating this time it has giant attacks giant hitboxes it's a lot more aggressive so you as the player being a lot more confident and proficient it's now able to match you I think they share you know very similar Frameworks and I love it it's actually probably a pretty high tier fight for me in this game so otherwise even though I love the Sakura boss lineup and alfather is All Things Considered my favorite fight it wouldn't be you know a proper video without talk about the real final boss in the game which is The Showdown against genichiro and then ishin the sword Saint this I think is truly what a final boss should be and as far as any Souls game goes I think is the true hardest final boss we've ever had Dark Souls 1 Gwen easy baby mode get that out of here Dark Souls 2 Nashandra light work Dark Souls 3 soul of Cinder who who are you talking about bloodborne German he's pretty good uh Elden ring radagon yeah you're pretty good too but give it up because none of you are ishing the sword Saint you are not him bro I promise you so this final boss is an interesting structure it's four phases which might seem ridiculous or unfair and to some extent maybe is true but the thing is it's built in a way where the first fight or the first phase is supposed to be a non-factor this is your Showdown with konichiro himself where he now has his like final move set and you're pretty much supposed to just steamroll this fight this should be a show of your proficiency how much better you've gotten at the game and learning kanichiro himself and then afterwards he literally summons his grandfather in physical form and then ishin the sword Saint becomes who you face off against and this fight is absolutely perfect in so far as it tests literally every aspect of combat you've learned and you fight against every weapon type in the game so for example even in you know the first phase you fight against kenichiro's bow in ishin's fight you fight against swords Spears in the second phase you get lightning reversals later on in the third phase and you know every weapon type even a gun like he'll shoot at you as well so every single weapon that's been you know exemplified throughout the game you have to encounter at some point in this fight and you need to know how to respond to each and every one of those I can't even lie the first time a Soul's boss really had me stumped for a few hours was orphan of cause the first time I played it in bloodborne and I really hadn't had another boss that stumped me like that until ishin the sword Saint my first time around learning this was actually took me hours upon hours I was determined to beat it not using any prosthetic tools or really any like Spirit emblem stuff I wanted to do it without you know exploiting the boss's vulnerabilities and the far the first time I did it I literally jumped out of my chair I'm very glad they didn't end Sakura on like a cinematic boss like Divine Dragon even though I love that fight it wouldn't feel right to you know have that be the final way that you send off the game this is what I want out of a final boss always this is literally the blueprint for what I think they should do with them going forward ishin is actually per perfect when he kills you he literally says hesitation is defeat it sounds just like you know like a a cool thing that you know a samurai would say or whatever but you realize he's actually telling you what his weakness is how to beat him of course the first time around you're gonna be hesitant to fight him because you don't know what he's capable of you don't know his move set but as you learn you trial by fire you die over and over again to a point where everything finally clicks it snaps into place no more hesitation and you come out Victorious it's an actually unbelievable feeling that a game really hasn't given me in a long time and although I still like owl father better as a boss I think that iching the sword saying is the best way to end this game I found ishin on subsequent playthroughs much easier than I did my first time around and our father still kind of retains that that sense of difficulty so ishinping becomes much easier once you understand his fight but I I still think you know regardless of what it is for a first time player it's an experience that cannot be replicated and once again the overarching theme for all these fights is there is really no way to soften the difficulty whatsoever outside of a couple Buffs to your character maybe but there's no summons you know you can't do anything to like completely change the Rules of Engagement for the most part and that makes completing said fights on your own this unbelievably gratifying experience it is worth mentioning that while secro didn't get any real DLC there's not any like actual DLC content or bosses to talk about they do have this feature that are the gauntlets where you can fight the inner versions of kanichiro and ishin and so on they have slightly different move sets in their I you know a little bit different to the original experience but for the most part they largely are the same boss there's a bunch of different endings you can get depending on what you do and in order to get the true ending it's a very very complicated and convoluted sequence of events but regardless I think all of the endings besides the shura one are really beautiful and well done there is an ending that's kind of sequel bait where it implies that wolf is traveling to the west to do more things but I don't feel like there was ever a plan to you actually follow up on this to do DLC or even a secant a second sequel game and honestly I'm kind of split on this because as much as I would love to have DLC for this game as much as the next guy I would love to see what they cook up to some extent I feel like the like really you know dialed in package of what Securo is currently is enough to stand on its own and present itself people have already taken it into their own hands to you know develop more content for this game I mean you can play against Millennia in secro in a mod which is unbelievable so I'm sure they could do DLC if they really felt the need to but I think again the experience standing on its own two feet is enough this game is pretty much the exact opposite to Dark Souls 2 for so many reasons but one of them being the fact that it doesn't overstay its welcome it does not feel over bloated with content or that things are just slapped in there because the things that are in here are for a very deliberate reason and they've all been polished and handcrafted even though there isn't maybe quite as much content numerically speaking as some other games that's completely okay with the amount of almost perfectly Polished and balanced experiences I have a hard time thinking of another game that gave me as much satisfaction to play my first time around and being more of an action-oriented game made subsequent playthroughs quite attractive for me I would really love fromsoft to try something with this style of level design and combat mechanics in another game although I feel you know a lot of them were underdeveloped in sakuro that doesn't mean they couldn't be improved on you know in future titles not even necessarily in a Sakura 2 or DLC or something like that but overall I think it's just a genius approach to flip their tried and true formula of the souls games on its head in a way that works and provides something totally special and fresh this is a really good game for the palette if after Dark Souls 3 for example you were beginning to feel a bit fatigued from the formula it's easily become one of my favorite soulsborne games in the entire lineup and I think all of the praise and love that it gets is well deserved once again I cannot say that the game is Flawless but that doesn't matter as much since there's so much pure gold here to get your hands on that it's easier to accept a lot of that stuff you'll know what I mean when I say this it's one of those games that I wish I could erase from my memory and Replay for the first time again because as much as I love subsequent playthroughs of Sakura and it completely changes the experience for me there's something about learning every single mechanic and boss for the first time that one when everything snaps into place it's like a moment that cannot be replicated and so even on subsequent playthroughs it's great but you already know the bosses and stuff like that so I think it's fair to say that sakuro has undeniably become one of my favorite video games that have ever been made period foreign

Channel: Ch0pper

Views: 141,984

Keywords: Sekiro, sekiro shadows die twice, sekiro retrospective, sekiro gameplay, sekiro review, sekiro all bosses, sekiro hardest bosses, dark souls

Id: 5RPvDjTPtCQ

Length: 68min 43sec (4123 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023