@tennmuerti: That’s all I know of. The charm is rough but I still don’t know how much the bell is changing.

What carries over to ng+? Can you max out things easily if you missed anything on the previous play through?

Everything carries over that isn't related to story progression.

@secondpersonshooter: Does the anxiety ever go away?

@sethmode: Absolutely, although probably not your first time around. There are a good amount of instances during your first playthrough where you might go "I know how to do this, this is easy" as well.

Surprising probably no one stacking the two difficulty modifiers onto a fresh game turns it into something that is mostly just a chore. I spent many tries only to end up with this miserable performance

Against the games easiest boss. I don't think I have it in me to fight something good at fighting back in the first place. You have to be so careful about everything when a block doesn't help you that it really messes up the whole dynamic.

@efesell: Yeah, I just finished that fourth playthrough with both debuffs and it definitely throws the risk/reward for deflections out of whack. I often only deflected the easy hits and dodged or ran away from the rest or found other ways around them. The upside is that when you have to deflect and you finally nail the timings on a tricky combo, you'll feel like a god.

It's neat for the crowd who'll play this game for hundreds or thousands of hours and go for the no damage runs, but for the rest of us the NG+ design leaves something to be desired.

Nevertheless, I'm liking this combat enough that I'm still going to go back for more. It helps that there's nothing else that interests me releasing in the immediate future.

I think I'll try the debuffs again on a ng+ when I actually have proper health, which is probably what they actually intend for you to do instead of the stupid thing I chose.

I just want a yes or no answer without extraneous details since I want to go in fairly blind aside from my experiences with every Souls game and the little bits here and there that I've heard about this game:

Is this basically Parry Souls? Or in other words; I can successfully parry about 75% to 90% of the time in Demon's and Dark 1 (granted after years of bashing my head against the games until Vanguard became as easy as parrying Gwyn to death), so would the learning curve not be as steep for me?

I mean, I'll get the game eventually because I want the latest Soulsborne challenge, but I'd appreciate the input.

@facelessvixen: I would say that... if you were good at parrying in earlier games then you have a definite advantage... unless you were also prone to dodging a lot.

@facelessvixen: It's not. Will it soften the learning curve ? It will give you a crutch to lean on initially.

Just finished the extra boss required for Purification ending Owl(Father) on the NG+ demon bell+no charm run. Bruuuuuh!

That was a fight I was still not ready for, even after one/two shotting like half the other bosses on this second time around. Blocking is obviously just not an option (even more so then it was for the rest of the playthrough) as it is essentially just a net loss every time due to massive chip damage and your posture getting broken like crazy. So it's perfect parry or go home because 9 out of 10 of the moves/combos one shotted me with 10/10 prayer necklaces. And this version has the mechanic of recovering posture fast before his health is lowered (unlike the regular version), so basically a Mikiri counter might as well = 1-2 normal hits until that happens. Plus his ability to switch up moves mid combo on you. Final attempt I took out every possible consumable for extra health bars and revives because every little single mistake is so expensive. It was like the game saying for the final time, oh you think you're hot shit? Here: get good, but for real real this time. And I still half assed it over the finish line.

I really feel like the "no charm" option is there specifically for those who though they've learned everything and Sekiro is now easy, and is basically the intended way to challenge yourself once again; as it is kind of the proper difficulty increase instead of just the NG+ being it; and a much more interesting way of re framing the game at that. I've had way more fun and engagement with it being done this way compared to the blandness of the previous Darksouls games NG+ modes.

Chiming in here to echo that getting rid of Kuro's Charm is 100% the way to humble yourself when you feel like you're hot shit after flying through NG+ normally.

I only got rid of it on my NG+3 playthrough, and that made some boss fights that I thought I had mastered into abject lessons on how to deflect damn near every attack and dodge more or die.