Load Our Last Save: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

DAMMIT I MISSED BEN DOING IT LIVE FOR A FAMILY DINNER FUCK

This game is awesome up until the last boss which is tediously hard. To the point where I almost don't like this game.

You might never finish the game.

BTW I love the site(!) and have followed you lovingly for years!

I also happen to be familiar with the team's level of dedication to certain titles and y'all don't got it for this one.

Yet another sad bystander of the GOTY process.

OK where I can I get the Wii Shop Channel Remix of Temporary Secretary they played during the pre-show because it is AMAZING

I finished this game but i was so tired of the camera losing me whenever the action got really intense i ended up hating the game by the time i finished it.

TEMPO-RAAAARY

This is going to win GOTY, isn’t it? It’s going to win GOTY.

Ugh.

You're welcome.

@therealturk: I still believe that latest odds on favorite CONTROL (via Dave's Top 10 oddsmakers) can take it home

@mikeytz: Yeah. No way this gets GOTY or finished. They didnt even give dark souls goty. Dark souls 2,3 got shafted cause they said it was just more dark souls Bloodborne had a better chance of getting goty from gb then sekiro. BB is easier and weirder. Much more up their ally. Sekiro is only easy if you "get it" within the first 5 hours where it is super punishing. I can see them hating the game more by trying to finish it. i fell off hard and was loving it at first. just saw the tedium of harder and harder and im too use to dark souls to go all offense. Same reason im not good at bloodborne. By making the games more appealing to mass crowds ie faster it made it like all the other games i skipped by. Just feels like devil may cry, ninja gaiden, or bayonetta on extreme hard mode with less floatiness :/ still fun games thou just like dark souls more.

EI

Everyone except for Ben dropped this game so I think if anything it makes top 10, but no way GOTY, based on how passionate the staff has been in discussions so far this year, the main fight this year seems to be between Outer Wilds, Outer Worlds, and Apex Legends (with the dark horse contenders being Judgement and Control)

I have no idea how you're coming to this conclusion lol

Get up that ass and feel the vibe

This is the only From Software game I've played more than 2hrs of because I always found the combat clunky (dodge-roll the giant thing that is obviously hitting you, hit, repeat), and I thought Sekiro was amazing and completed it. Love the parry system. I hope more GB staff give it a fair shake for GOTY discussions!

LMAO just after Ben kills 2 guys you can see Jeff look down and back up after 2 dogs are killed, I can see his confusion there

That is some sick editing by Jan while Jeff is reading `Ninja` and Ben says 'NOOooo'

@juanarturo said:

And this is why punctuation is important.

@therealturk: What a weirdly and needlessly antagonistic take on what you think the team feels about the game.

You do know it doesn't matter what game gets GOTY, truly?

My favorite game of the year, even though I was ready to quit like 4 or 5 times. Finishing this thing makes you feel like you can do anything.

And then you go watch a speedrun where they beat the game before you left the first main area. Ugh.

Hoping for a DLC announcement at the Keighleys!

Go, go, Ben!

I'm so glad Ben has gone back to this. It might be my favourite game this year; it's one of From's most demanding and least malleable titles so I can understand why it wouldn't stick for everybody, but I was completely won over by the setting, characters, and narrative. Plus that combat just feels phenomenal once you get into s rhythm.

The fight in the thumbnail is a solid contender for my favourite in the game, maybe close second to the final boss of the secret side path - although honestly pretty much every major encounter in this game is incredible.

Hell yeah, let's go!

Love this game, was hoping they'd return to it in some form or fashion.

@quasiconundrum: I just taught a lesson yesterday with an after school English club about the importance of punctuation (in a vein such as this, just minus the fucking) and that post made me laugh very hard.

So, on the one hand, yeah that Ninja graphic novel sounds really lame but I don't think I or really anyone on this website is the target audience so can we step back and realize how cool and absurd it is a freaking video game streamer has ascended to the popularity necessary to sell their own graphic novel? Personally I think that's dope, even if the book itself is incredibly lame and childish.

Sekiro is currently my GOTY and that boss fight is one of my favorites in the game.

You did really well Ben, that is a tough fight, you cannot say you are not good at the game anymore :-)

Also that mikiri counter death was great :-)

I broke the 'L1' button on my controller playing through this game. GOTY

You really gotta get in that ass in this game.

Now this is content I can appreciate. I always enjoy watching the GB crew bang their heads against From Software games. Vinny's Dark Souls and Brad's Demon's Souls runs are some of my favorite content on the site. My pipe dream is still that @rorie will play some King's Field: The Ancient City on stream someday, unlikely though it may be...

This boss really is a tough one. I ended up using the strategy in this video to kill him primarily with the umbrella. Pretty easy that way. You do need to have the skill unlocked that lets you attack out of it, but if memory serves either the fire or lilac umbrella works fine.

A beaten every box in this game except for the demon of hatred. I did beat him but I cheated him he fell off the map.

I haven't looked through any of the other comments, but this game is waaaay different than any of the other Souls games. I spammed R1 all the way through this game. It worked until the final boss where I had to learn the actual mechanics. Mastering this game is more akin to DDR than Dark Souls. Listen to sounds and act on rhythm. If you try to spam your attack your will regret it.

Was thinking about getting this since it’s on sale during Black Friday but was also thinking about The Surge 2. Has anyone played both?

Nelly coming up coast to coast on Giant Bomb, apparently. Weird.

Wait till you have till you have to fight owl the second time

This was my Game of the Year until Outer Wilds showed up. I beat it five times. It has the best satisfying combat in any game I have played, if you actually take time to learn the timing and such that is. When you get into the flow it is so much fun. It's sad how most of the Crew didn't get into that flow, so it will be far down the list come GOTY-time.

@shorap: This all the way.

A bit more background: I really liked Sekiro, and also really liked The Surge (the original). Played through the latter six times (you can beat the whole thing in like 2-3 hours once you know your way around all the areas). Then I pre-ordered The Surge 2, because I wanted to support the dev after I bought the first game for not much. And it's... not great. The first game is much better. The second one makes the Darks Souls 2 mistake of swarming you with enemies in narrow areas in lieu of well-designed difficulty. It also introduces a lot of cheap ranged enemies that you can't do much about other than try to rush them down since you don't have any robust range options yourself, which wasn't a thing in the first game. I actually stopped playing it and don't really plan to go back, which is pretty unusual for me.

BTW don't know if it's on your radar, but you might also look into Remnant if you haven't already. That game is thoroughly OK, and scratches some of the same itches as Souls games.

@atheistpreacher: thanks. I think I’ll be getting sekiro this Black Friday then and will look into Remnant. I don’t know how I missed that game?

@shorap: Yeah, Remnant seems pretty great, and the GB crew has been playing it a fair bit. I would bet it makes it into their top 10 games list this year. I picked it up and beat it a couple times already, and I'm probably still not done with it. Thankfully it started off at $40 new, and perhaps there'll be a Black Friday deal on it somewhere, I dunno.

I'm still curious whether I'd hate this one more or less than other Souls games. Every one I've eventually bounced off of, DS2 being the longest holdout for me. Then again, this being somewhat different may be the key. Then again again, Bloodborne was supposedly somewhat different and I bounced off that the hardest.

Guess these just aren't my thing, though supposedly you're a heretic if you don't like Souls games.

@therealturk: on this site? Are you nuts? Or just new to this site. No ones beat it lol

@quasiconundrum: hahahahaha!! that made me chuckle :D

Sekiro rules, watching it is fun but not as much as playing it, stream made me boot it up way too late at night to just feel that flow.

This is probably yet another souls game that's gonna get snubbed for goty despite merits in several categories, the crew seemed into it briefly but I guess fell off after a point.

Nice Ben! I would have a really hard time playing this game on a stream.

This games combat is so rewarding when you give it your time and patience.

@shorap: Having played both, I would say you can't really go wrong with either. I found Sekiros combat alot better, but I loved building my mech suit up in Surge 2.

Also, I found the Surge 2 a much better experience than 1. It has much better bosses (and more of them), and the world was more varied and interesting than all the space station looking interiors of the first.

@admiral_crunch: Maybe I’ll give it a go as well during a gaming drought or when it’s on sale, thanks!

@shorap: I’ll be another person to say Surge 1 is a really fun game and generally better than Surge 2. The sequel is definitely bigger but it seemed to have lost a lot of focus along the way.

I had a bit of a ride with this game. I'd found the Souls games harder to get into starting with Bloodborne and going forward so for the first day playing this I really didn't like it. Then, finally making it past a few of the early mini-boss roadblocks I started to get a feel for the game and was very into it, even if I found the trial and error of every boss encounter very draining.

Once I got to the late game I decided to do some grinding to fill out the skill tree before fighting the final boss and that, among other things, killed my enjoyment of it. I just wanted to be done with it at that point and once I beat the last boss I left it unsatisfied and annoyed at its design.

Luckily, after a bit of a break and seeing one of the other endings from a route I'd missed, I wanted to make a run for that ending and, if possible, the Platinum. Replaying the game on New Game+ and already having most of the skills and knowledge of the bosses lead to being able to one-shot bosses like Genichiro just because I had their moves so down. It was the satisfaction that had eluded me for the last part of my original playthrough and I was happy to be able to leave the game with it this time.

@therealturk: Hahaha noooooo, RE2 and RedDead are gonna be argued till the heatdeath of the universe.

I am already ready for the RedDead endless praise from some of the cast.

@jacksukeru: Hmm, maybe i should go back but i was so annoyed by the final fight and the horrid camera in this game that i was glad to put it to rest. I just wasn't having fun with the combat towards the end and the bosses having "Surprise i wasn't really dead" moments just fueled this further.

@zengaijin: Yeah, I was definitely in the same place at a point, and I wouldn't expect most people to be in a place where they keep giving a game chances until it hits for them.

I started and played the first half of Bloodborne 3-4 times before it finally, truly clicked for me, where I also just figured out that I enjoyed the game more if I overleveled and could be more sloppy in the later levels and bossfights.

This is one of those games that seeing it played makes me want to go back and play it from the start. It goes the same with Bloodborne