JosephKnows

Resident Evil 6. What an absolute slog of a game with so much nothing.

1. Outer Wilds
2. Control
3. Resident Evil 2: Remake
4. The Outer Worlds
5. Apex Legends
6. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
7. Luigi's Mansion 3
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Dark Souls

Metal Gear Solid

Uncharted

Batman: Arkham

Dragon Age

Darksiders

God of War

Max Payne

Dishonored

Having gotten the Platinum myself and beaten the game through NG+3 with all the different difficulty modifiers, I still have to say this isn't close to being in the lower end of the difficulty spectrum of the Soulsborne games. I also say this having completed all those other games multiple times through multiple NG+ cycles with no summoning and with all the major build types.

It really comes down to:

A) simply pressing the dodge button at the right time works 99% of the time against every non-gimmick enemy in all the Soulsborne games whatever your build

B) you only have to worry about whittling down an enemy's health bar in those games

C) Sekiro requiresa base level of reaction time to properly respond via blocking, dodging, OR deflecting, OR jumping, OR Mikiri counteringto overcome most of the game's mini-bosses and proper bosses. only a handful of bosses in the DLCs for Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne demand a similar level of reaction time, and there are plenty of people who just don't have the reflexes. To be clear, I'm not making any value judgments on those people! It's just a fact that some people physically can't react fast enough!

and D) all the Soulsborne games openly present options for players who can't react fast enough or panic under pressure against tough encounters. Whether it's magic/ranged builds, the ability to grind for higher stats and just overpower enemies, or the simple ability to summon other players, a Soulsborne player isn't requiredto physically react quickly under pressure to progress through those games.

I think it's why the discourse around Sekiro's difficulty now seems even louder than the "easy mode" talk around the Souls games. Players frustrated with the difficulty of the combat just don't have any other option outside of modding in cheats than to directly engage with the combat, memorize attack patterns, and have the reflexes to respond properly, which can be physically impossible for some players with disabilities, if they wanna see more of the game.

On a completely personal level, I do think there isn't a single area in this game that comes close to being as hard to get through than any of the infamously hard areas in the previous From games. Sekiro's mobility, the stealth mechanics, and the sculptor idol placement make it so much easier to traverse areas. This is so obvious in NG+ onward, too, when you've got most/all upgrades and don't have to fight anyone in-between bosses. The mandatory combat encounters though more than make up for the lack of areas' relative lack of challenge.

Ranking of difficulty on my first playthroughs of each game from hardest to easiest:

Demon's Souls (yeah, nothing's topping my first time ever experiencing this kind of punishing game design philosophy) > Sekiro => Bloodborne > Dark Souls > Dark Souls 3 > Dark Souls 2

Subsequent playthroughs:

Sekiro (w/o Kuro's charm) > Bloodborne > Dark Souls 3 > Sekiro (base difficulty) > Demon's Souls > Dark Souls 2 > Dark Souls

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.

Every Souls game and Bloodborne could be beaten by just simply timing the roll/dash button correctly.

In Sekiro, dodging as well as blocking, deflecting, and jumping are requirements to win against bosses and even some higher level grunts. The introduction of these verbs into the combat system make it more complex by default, which generally translates to a more difficult experience. That's not even mentioning how you can't just grind out levels or summon for help.

I've played all the Soulsborne games multiple times. Sekiro is no doubt the most mechanically demanding game of them all, with a ramp up that makes my first time in 1-1 in Demon's Souls and in Central Yharnam in Bloodborne look like cakewalks.

Cool thing about it though is that I've yet to hit a wall that's taken me longer than, say, an hour and a half, and I'm pretty sure I'm almost at the last quarter of the game. It really is so much better at teaching you how to "git gud" in straight-up fights.

From the couple of hours I've played of the open beta, I've got mixed feelings:

The Good:

The Colossus feels like a goddamn tank and I love it.

Flying is cool.

Combat as the Colossus feels satisfying.

I enjoy the frenzied, large-scale battles. I think with enough experience, it would be really fun corraling enemies into big combos with your squad.

Javelin designs have that right mix of looking sci-fi badass and highly functional.

Cons:

The Ranger is pretty bland. I get the decision to start the demo for every player with the most basic class: make it simple for people to understand the fundamental flow of traversal and combat!

It just didn't leave me much of a good impression. Playing as the Ranger was just... okay. Fine. Competent. The only thing that I loved was its ult, because missile barrages will never not look awesome as fuck.

I think if the demo had let players choose a class from the beginning, there wouldn't have been so many complaints about the "game feel" being so average. The Colossus plays so different from the Ranger, and from what other posters here and players in other forums have said, the Storm and Interceptor classes also have significant differences in how they play compared to the Ranger.

Nothing about the world pops, visually or narratively speaking. There wasn't a single gameplay moment either that I could point to as a highlight. I wouldn't even have minded if there had been a totally scripted sequence in the middle of a battle or while you were flying toward an objective that forced the player to look at and engage with. Anything that would have gotten people talking about ~that one cool thing in the demo~.

Soooo maaaaaany goddamn loading screeeeeens

The UI is in this awkward spot where it's going for a slick style but it just lacks any sense of flair or satisfying feedback. The menus just feel half-baked.

Experienced some progression-halting bugs and latency problems, but I assume those things will be fixed when the full game releases.

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I don't need this to take over my life for months and months so I'm not so concerned about end-game content, but I see how other players who do want a reason to keep playing for a long time can find the reports about the launch window content worrisome. If I can enjoy this for a couple of weeks to a month, I won't have too many complaints.

Yeah, if it's a game I really enjoy. All the games in my top 10 list I've replayed. Did the same with the entire Souls series. Replayed God of War, too, even after I had already gotten the platinum for it.

I'm gonna add the people who dropped their PSN here. Y'all can add me too! Feel free to send me an invite. If I don't join, I'll likely send you a message why!

PSN: Howlin_Forever

heads up

the graph on the left for 2010 and 2011 are the exact same down to the times for each day. i don't think it's supposed to be that way given 2011 is longer!

also, in the daily podcast runtimes graph, 2010 somehow has a day 6???