[Special TGS 2021] Sekiro's first impression
“Why keep playing when the game is just frustrating?” is one of the things I ask my friends when we are in a party and I hear them complaining while playing Dark Souls. “The feeling you feel when you win against a boss that you have fought over and over for several days, no one can beat you” is always the answer they gave me. As a Monster Hunter player I quite understand that feeling, but it makes a big difference when they breathe a sigh of relief defeating Lothric or any boss in the game. these little events are quite frequent, especially when games made from new software come out.
When we received an invitation to try Sekiro at TGS yesterday, my view changed slightly. Challenging games I usually avoid, why buy a game that I can’t finish, and maybe many people think the same. However, after playing the Sekiro demo yesterday, instead of being frustrated, I’m even more curious.
It might sound strange considering that the average game rate by director Hidetaka Miyazaki is indeed famous for Burtal, but the speed of movement that I felt, the grappling hook, stealth kill and combat gameplay that I tried when trying to play this game made me believe that this game is more than just a game. “difficult” by From Software.
“Option” seems to be the main focus in making this game. When we started the demo we were trying out, we were shown an area that looked like an ancient Japanese castle. The enemy patrol moves below us towards the door guarded by 2 enemies. We were then given instructions to use the Grappling hook to move to the roofs of several buildings. This vertical movement seems to be one of the choices we can take in Sekiro. Instead of directly taking to the streets and attacking all enemies from the ground, we can choose to observe enemy movements and attack suddenly from a height.
Of course, you can attack the enemy directly from the ground a la Dark Souls or Bloodborne, but the fact that we are given the option to defeat the enemy in other ways proves that From Software will give players more ways to solve problems in this game. In the given 15 minutes we also try to defeat the enemy in the usual way, but the game gets even more difficult the further we play it. Enemies will attack simultaneously, and the fact that we had a hard time facing 1 enemy proves that this game is probably too difficult to finish in the same way as Dark Souls or Bloodborne.
Shortly after defeating the enemy guarding the door, we met our first “Mid-Boss”. A red armored samurai with a large sword. In this battle, the difficulty and brutality that is typical of games made by From software begins to feel. We also started to really notice some important elements that started appearing in the battles in this game that we didn’t realize from just doing Stealth kills. The enemy and our own character have a Bar that continues to fill when doing attacks or parrying. (we call it the stamina bar) and we continue to attack the enemy to fill the stamina bar. When we manage to fill the mid-boss’s stamina bar, a signal appears and our character performs a bloody, brutal finisher attack. we thought, “Okay, next enemy”, just before we continued our journey, the samurai got up and started attacking again. this sudden attack finally brought us back to the beginning.
you could say we were stuck in the fight against the samurai. our efforts were fruitless, even after we “wake up” 1 more time after death. Miyazaki didn’t lie when he said “Shadows Die Twice”, it was a bitter pill we swallowed after dying the second time, time and time again.
although this game is difficult, my view of this game has changed. Its stealth and combat mechanics are much different from previous From software games, giving players more power. The ability to “wake up” again in the middle of a battle after being defeated once provides a breath of fresh air into this notoriously challenging genre. The demo I tried made me more confident, I can play Sekiro later, I can finish Sekiro later.
Post a Comment for "[Special TGS 2021] Sekiro's first impression"