You've reminded me that I did change the controller setup. The default setup is quite bad, IMO. I'm pretty sure I put block on the X button and moved dodge/sprint to the A button. That way, they both naturally sat underneath my right thumb allowing for easy access. I found the left bumper to be way too mushy and difficult to use with precision, causing me to drop blocks/deflections, and also my left hand would start to strain after a while. With block on the X button, I never dropped any button presses, and it was also easier to feather the block when I wanted to. I moved jump over to the B button where the dodge/sprint originally was.
As far as the "Combat Skills" go, I didn't find them very useful. A lot of people like the Ichimonji, and I used it a bit, but in most cases I preferred simply using normal attacks. You may get more mileage out of them than I did, though. I focused on getting the passive skills I wanted first, such as increasing the Healing Gourd's potency, increasing the Mikiri's posture damage, or increasing the money and item drops from enemies.
Great job taking down the Chained Ogre! I cracked up when he threw you off the mountain...
One thing to remember in Sekiro. Anytime you ask yourself "Am I being too aggressive?" the answer is always "No. I am not being aggressive enough."
Yes! If you can get good at managing aggressive play while simultaneously blocking/deflecting/dodging attacks, you will have 90% of the combat completely locked down (the other 10% may require some flexibility). A big mistake I see a lot of people do is attempt to play this like a DS game where you might hover around an enemy waiting for opportunities. Go at them hard! It not only helps build their posture meter, but it allows you to influence the enemy's responses. Jan's instincts are pretty good here, so I don't think he's going to have too much trouble once he really gets a feel for the game.
"Men's clothing" has always been so terrible for color and variety. If you ever wanted something with a lot of color and pop, Hawaiian shirts have often been one of the few things in that category that were ubiquitously available outside of, like, tye-die t-shirts. It seems like slightly less of a problem nowadays, but aspects like these in how clothing is gendered always seemed really shitty to me.
@janman: I just remembered on a previous episode you asked about changing font sizes in VLC... There is a custom skin tool on VLC's website that may let you change some of that, but it looks like it hasn't been updated in over a decade so I don't know if it still works with current VLC. That said, I use foobar2000 for all of my audio playback needs, and it allows you to easily customize most of its interface including the fonts. May be worth looking at if that's still an issue.
@entireties: Yeah, lmao, I forgot about that. Some people have cats, especially "outdoor" cats, who are less like pets and more like fellow residents who occasionally see each other. The strange thing is the one I was thinking of was supposed to be a personal pet, but the owner's idea of engaging with it was doing things like testing out the theory that cats always land on their feet. They handled it more like a doll than an actual living thing. It made me--and the cat from what I saw--pretty uncomfortable, lol.
Lovin' these! Knew some people who had a cat named "cat"... Not sure if its related, but they had a lot of turnover with their pets who seemed to die or run away more frequently than you'd expect.
Watching all of you build up GBEast over the years absolutely revitalized my love for the site and got me through so many difficult times. Vinny and Alex (and Brad) in particular have been a regular voice in my ear--and face on my screen--for roughly a decade and a half at this point, and that's a hard thing to process. I don't wanna get messy so I'll leave it at that. Wishing you all good luck and nothing but the best. Pour one out for the greatest podcast in the universe!
@noboners: Yeah, pretty sure, unless it's just confirmation bias. I do know you can do it even at zero SP.
If you don't have SP, you'll still do it and get the height boost but it's weaker and you can't do the follow-up plunge. If you have SP, you'll use one pip of SP, do more damage, and be able to do the follow-up.
Best of luck, Will. It's always been fun when you surface up to the front-end of the site, and your hard work--as well as the work of the team continuing on--in making GB a better website is greatly appreciated.
MillaJ's comments