Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Though Sekiro feels impossibly hard at times, the level of euphoria you experience when delivering a death blow to a tricky boss or when you finally clear a castle grounds of all enemies is almost unparalleled.

A brutal and challenging game that admits few shortcuts to success. But for every cry of frustration there is a revealing discovery, and for each walk through the darkness there is an ascent towards mountains bathed by the Sun. The father of Dark Souls and Bloodborne makes us suffer again but, at the same time, provides the kind of experience that allows us to emerge reinforced at the other side.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the hardest game created by From Software and is also their most ambitious IP. It is a great example of game and combat design.

Sekiro is From Software’s purest distillation of a game design philosophy that values skill-based combat and isn’t afraid to challenge the player at nearly every moment.

Sekiro is a worthy heir to the Souls-like dynasty. It's not a new chapter of the old franchises, is another interpretation of From Software's philosophy, and another hardcore masterpiece.

If you are willing to invest work in learning the combat system, you will have a lot of fun. Away from this, Sekiro, like his spiritual predecessors, convinces with a fascinating setting that does not match the quality and variety of game worlds like Lordran or Yharnam. Technically, however, the game presents itself from a single source, tells an exciting story and offers sufficient scope for many fun hours.

Its boss fights highlight the contrived lengths that FromSoftware has gone to in order to satisfy players’ thirst for difficulty.

We all have limits - be them external or internal , along our paths we learn to deal with them , and Sekiro is the best at teaching this when it comes to games. Not following the original souls formula was something bold indeed at first, but after playing it for longer and grasping the feel of the combat - we learned to master the combat in a way that the only limit for Wolf was just another playthrough, again & again & again. 10/10

Jeu très difficile et exigent mais très bien fait dans le style. J'ai pu arrivé jusqu'à la fin mais jamais pu battre le dernier boss..

The combat system and game environment are repetitive, as are the NPCs. The best battles take place in the final part of the game; the repetitive gorilla combat feels unnecessary. The final boss fights are truly epic and make the experience more rewarding. I feel the difficulty starts off very high for someone without experience in games featuring parry mechanics—it seems somewhat unbalanced to me. Overall, it is a great game that deserves the Game of the Year title, even if the balance is a bit off.

I have tried, so so hard, to love this one. I love every other FromSoft game. I love being challenged -- I think it's extremely rewarding. I love the utter, unabashed Japanese-ness of this game -- I truly do. It just, so unfortunately, ****. It ****. And that makes me sad. It is a game that robs you of options on how to play. There is also zero payoff to killing bosses -- there's more of a "good riddance" feeling, rather than a "good battle" feeling after killing a boss that you've been bashing your head against the wall trying to eliminate for days. I hate the control scheme as well. I hate how repetitive it is, and I hate that it actively tries to punish you for dying. The Souls formula (and yes, I am going to relate it to the other ones, because they introduce the same dying mechanic, so I am going to criticize how they erred on it in this one) is perverted greatly by actively punishing you by dying more and more. It was a bad mechanic in DS2, and it was a bad mechanic in Demon's Souls. I can say, for certain, that I am totally sad that I do not like this game, but I can also say, for certain, that I do not like this game.

This game was a huge disappointment for me at launch and it has only gotten worse after I played Elden Ring. Sekiro is japanese Dark Souls but most of the good stuff is gone. - Worst customization of the series, because there isnt any. - Worst gameplay of the series. Fromsoftware can make games with a hundred weapons that all feel great, so if they make a game with just one weapon it would result in absolutely god tier gameplay, right? No. Its just one dimensional Katana bashing all the time and nothing else. Not really better than using a Katana in all their other games. Gets boring after the first few areas. Also it straight up doesnt work when fighting multiple enemies at once and all the other minor problems these games have (bad camera, weird hit boxes etc) are still there. - Worst online of the series because there isnt any as well. No coop, no pvp, nothing. - Worst overall content of the series, most bosses and all mini bosses and even some areas get reused multiple times. 3x Ashina castle, really? This is lazy. All the other Souls games have way more content and Elden Ring is probably ten times bigger than Sekiro. - Besides that its not better than the other games at anything. Bloodborne and DS3 still have the same or even better overall quality than Sekiro and ER and the Demon´s Souls Remake absolutely dunk on it. If Elden Ring is a $60 game Sekiro would be $5. Good that Fromsoftware got away from this misguided garbage.