Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Heart-stopping swordfights and deft, panoramic stealth waged across another vast, gorgeously rancid From Software landscape. [Eurogamer Essential]

It's a sublime distillation of everything that makes the Souls games so amazing, but it truly is more challenging than any of those games by a very long mile. I am not exaggerating here. I think Sekiro may be one of the very best games ever made, but it is not going to be for everyone. I still recommend that everyone gives it a shot. It takes patience but it's just such a well-crafted action game, I've never played anything quite like it...I'm playing the game at my own pace rather than rushing through. I'd get too frustrated, I think. So I'll take my time to finish this beast. And I'm okay with that. I'm in no hurry to be done with the world of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It's the best game I've played since Bloodborne.

Quick look (video).

Sekiro gets a whole lot right. Its themes permeate its feudal Japan in a compelling way, and for the most part, the gameplay is deeply satisfying. There are things it could do better, particularly avoiding repetition, but the notes Sekiro does hit are memorable enough that the slog doesn’t totally ruin the flow of gameplay, and the inertia into the end of the game carries strong. The challenge Sekiro presents is daunting and time-consuming.

Rarely do my insights or incremental improvements give me anything close to an easy win, but Sekiro isn’t difficult for difficult’s sake. It gives me hints, but no roadmap. It implies. It finds ways to reward me when I read between the lines. It hands me my ass when I try something a little too clever or panicked or cheap, but it gives me victories when I act with care and react with considered split-second decisions. This is the skill that Sekiro challenges me to accumulate, and it never lets me forget that. [Polygon Recommends]

When Sekiro soars—sending you flying across the battlefield like a medieval, Japanese, and extremely blood-drenched Batman—it finds a beautiful sweet spot between Dark Souls’ cautious, technical combat, and the backstab-heavy joys of something like Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. There’s a simple genius in the studio inverting its tried-and-true formula by making Wolf the most mobile creature on the battlefield for once, running circles around his lumbering opponents. It’s only when the pleasures of those movements are denied to you, in favor of a “straighter fight,” that the game makes you realize how far you are from being the perfect player it’s apparently seeking.

It's a From Software instant classic, a game of stealth, brutal combat, and punishing difficulty. I also don't like it... Sekiro is a very good game that's absolutely not for me.

This is a brutal, brutal game that makes no apologies whatsoever for grinding your resolve into dust...And I love it...I have played enough to know it’s something very special. It never feels unfair, and always inspires me to improve myself, even if that seems like an ever-distant goal. The difficulty will be off-putting to many people, but for many others it’s part of the draw. If you’ve ever yelled at a TV screen before pressing “retry” with determination, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is for you. [Review in Progress]

Sekiro is a game a lot of people are going to bounce off. It’s one for the “git gud” crowd – for people who want a feeling of accomplishment, rather than the fake achievement you feel from finding some Level 20 Pants in most modern triple-A experiences. It’s FromSoftware at its most confident, at its most unapologetic. It’s Bloodborne but faster, with fewer crutches yet somehow more fair. It’s also one of the best games released so far in what’s already looking like a strong 2019.

Yes, FromSoft could have shipped another game that more cleanly fits one of their successful molds, another Souls, another Bloodborne. Instead, they radically iterated and came away with something that feels genuinely new to play. Which is appropriate: Like one of their own protagonists, FromSoft faced a choice between sustaining the past and charging into the unknown, and they chose the latter. [Impressoins]