@therealturk said:
@efesell said:
If dozens and dozens of strikes being required to take out bosses is what you come away from Sekiro with then I'm inclined to think that you aren't meeting it halfway with its mechanics. The beauty of Sekiro is how decisive most encounters are when you engage with its intended mechanics.
To be fair, I found Sekiro to communicate what exactly its "intended mechanics" were exceptionally badly. The entire first area is basically telling you "OK, stealth kills most things in one hit and it knocks a health pip off everything else. This is a stealth game. Be sneaky."
As far as health goes I sort of agree with OP? I don't think it's a game killer, but the health bars do feel kind of redundant given the other systems. There's already a posture bar that for all intents and purposes serves as a health bar due to the deathblow system. Having health on top of that doesn't really add much. If they'd removed health and slowed down how fast posture damage decays a little bit, they'd end up with basically the same game, just more streamlined.
I'd also argue that the mere presence of a health bar is another example of the game communicating poorly about what it expects. Combat in Sekiro is all about getting up in an enemy's face and being aggressive, but having health runs counter to that. When an enemy is taking 1/2 to 2/3 of your health off in a single hit, what that's communicating to the player is "this is a big powerful thing that does a lot of damage, don't get close" not "stick with it and be aggressive."
You learn this in the first 30 minutes of the game. Once you get to General Naomori, the first guy with two pips after you "wake up" following the introduction, it lets you sneak behind him to get a stealth attack on him. That teaches you that you cannot automatically kill guys with multiple pips.
It's also not telling you it's a stealth game and that you must be sneaky. It's telling you stealth is an option. It's an option you can use to avoid fights, it's an option you can use to auto-kill mooks and it's an option you can use to get an advantage on bigger enemies if you can fight a path around them to get a strike in on them.
There are times I played that game as a stealth game and then there are times that I dove into a flurry of action, parrying and dodging and fighting multiple enemies at once.
The game lets you kill enemies by weakening them through attrition of breaking their posture, or death by a thousand cuts. It's one of the better feeling sword fighting games out there. Instead of it just being "well you reduced this guys health to 0hp" it's that you relentlessly fought him until his guard broke and you got the killing blow in. Health doesn't regenerate, but posture does, and the lower their health, the slower they are to regain posture. And that's much more interesting.
Also if an enemy hits you - you either didn't dodge or you didn't block. That's not telling the player not to be aggressive. It's telling them, you need to be aggressive, but you can't just mash the melee button and hope for the best. You need to be reactive the the enemies of you'll be punished.
Log in to comment