“Sengoku-Era-Japan Souls“
Hey, remember when I wrote that post about why I was excited for a little game called Sekiro Shadows Die Twice to come out, and then it came out and I haven’t talked about it since? Well I remember vividly. And I’m finally here to rectify that with a review is pretty late, but not very late like some of my other reviews about media that, even at the time of my review, was already decades old. At least Sekiro, if it were a child, would still be in diapers. Diapers and a katana.
As it happens, almost nothing of what I was hopeful to show up in Sekiro, developed by From Software, actually showed up. Well, that is to say, none of what I learned in my east Asian literature class was implemented in the game, with two exceptions; there’s a lot of references to Buddhism in Sekiro, and there’s a very, very brief mention of Tomoe, a name that I was familiar with in the sense that I read a story and a noh play about her. But, unfortunately, there are no yokai, no crazy weirdo demons, and only one alternate dimension dragon. I guess if I want utter madness, I have to go to Nioh.
Maybe I was destined to be let down a little if I was expecting something as completely wacky as the Journey to the West, but I’m also maybe going a little bit hard on Sekiro. And, you know what, let’s start with that, hmm? I’ll get my issues with the game out of the way first and get to why I like it so much. Because, damn, I really like this game.
First things first: some of the enemy design isn’t great. There are a lot of enemies that are just regular people. Sure, some of them teleport and shoot owls from their hands, and another one crawls out of some other guy’s skin, but I was a little disappointed by the lack of more varied enemy design, at least visually. There’s plenty of ways that enemy types keep gameplay varied, for sure, but for every unsettling centipede man, there’s a dozen more dudes with swords. But hey, for one of the only From Software games to take place in the real world, I guess that’s what I should have expected.
I had some other minor issues, too. The camera can be a bit fucky at times, especially when you’re jumping from post to post and enemy to enemy and suddenly someone shoots you out of the sky and you have no fucking clue where they are. That can be frustrating, but that’s a problem that practically every souls-like game has, I think. Other than that, though, the controls are pitch-perfect in every way, timed to ultimate polish.
The only other issue I had was that the game’s kind of short, all things considered. Well, it isn’t short, I guess. It still took me forty hours on my first playthrough to beat every boss available to me. And that’s a pretty long time. But maybe it’s partially due to the unparalleled freedom of movement that Sekiro offers, or the fact that the game genuinely is a little smaller than other games I’ve played recently, but the gameworld felt kind of tiny, and boxed in. There aren’t really any optional areas except Hirata Estate, and only a couple of optional bosses (besides mini-bosses), and you have to play through Ashina Castle three separate times to progress the story (though I didn’t really mind it that much). As far as From Software games go, it seemed pretty linear, besides in what order you collect certain items.
But who cares about that, right? Let’s get on to the good stuff; the part of the post where I unabashedly praise this game like an absolute nincompoop. That’s what we’re all here for, anyway. Or at least that’s what I’m here for; one of these days I’ll get around to doing a more varied review of something. A post where I’m not just praising, but critically engaging with a product in a way that’s both meaningful for me and any potential readers. Like my creative writing classes have taught me to. But I suspect that day is not today, so let’s get rolling.
As it happens, I couldn’t actually play this game for a long time because my old computer was unable to run it. Well, maybe it could have run it, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. I knew I needed a new computer to play it, and that’s one of the reasons that I actually built my own computer last winter. In a way, I built my fancy, expensive desktop just to play this game. But it can do more than that! It can play Doom: Eternal at 60 FPS on High graphics straight out of the box, which is an immensely satisfying feeling. But maybe more impressively, my computer can open the notoriously slow ArcMap in about ten seconds. Which, if you know anything about GIS work, is blazingly fast.
So, overall point is, I really like Sekiro. Like, a lot. Almost as much as I like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. In fact, I may like some parts of Sekiro even more than I like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. For example: the combat. Easily the shining star of Sekiro’s gameplay loop, the swordplay and combat is the best thing about the game. It’s so minutely tuned to every perfect detail, and everything about it feels so right, so satisfying, that I’m not even mad when I get executed by Butterfly Grandma for the 80th time in a row, because I know it was my fault. And then, when I came back on my second playthrough and beat her on my first try? That was pretty fucking cool, because my character didn’t get stronger. I got better at the game.
That was actually an interesting point of contention that a lot of people had when Sekiro was first announced; that there wasn’t going to be the kind of role-playing item and leveling systems that Dark Souls and Bloodborne had. That is, in Sekiro, you’re playing as one specific dude with specific items and abilities; you can’t change your sword on the fly or wear a new outfit to boost your defense while lowering your speed. But honestly, I didn’t mind that so much, since I always played Dark Souls and Bloodborne by using the same weapon and armor the whole game. So being limited on my choice of main offense didn’t bug me that much, especially since it was so good to begin with.
That isn’t entirely true, actually. There’s a lot of customization in the prosthetic tools and the combat arts and things like that; you can switch out your secondary weapons at any time to match the situation at hand. So you can go from spewing fire to disappearing in a cloud of feathers to throwing ninja stars and back again. It’s pretty versatile, but if I’m being honest, I really only ever used the firecrackers and the umbrella-shield. Yeah, not every tool is as useful as the others. Especially the leaf. I used it only once, and that was to abduct a strange middle-aged man-child.
Speaking of that middle-aged man-child, let’s talk story. Compared to the obtuse nonsense of the other From Software games, Sekiro’s story is pretty straightforward. You’re bodyguard to a noble kid, and uh-oh, he was stolen and your arm got cut off. Side note, the game has nothing interesting to say about living with disability or prosthetic or anything like that, so just because the main character is missing an arm doesn’t mean that it makes a difference to anybody. This is video games, after all. It’s pretty rare when you can actually get a meaningful message out of one of them.
Once you rescue your young ward, you find out that, since he’s immortal, he wants to become not immortal, and tasks you with helping him fix that. So you go around to try and find some smelly flowers, you stab a dragon in the eye, and help your kid reach his goal. There are three different endings depending on how much stuff you collect, and a fourth one if you decide to be an asshole, but other than that, the story isn’t very complex. Of course, there’s the usual reams of lore hidden in item descriptions, the game world, and random character dialogue, too. Like stuff about how Lady Tomoe may have been a demigod, and your friend the sculptor is the anti-Christ and/or you are the anti-Christ, and the monks at Senpou Temple are mass child murderers. You know. The usual.
Senpou Temple, actually, is one of my favorite areas in the game. Minus the child murder, of course. But that area is, I think the prettiest part of the game, except for one other place. The game as a whole is absolutely beautiful, with exquisite detail being given to everything from the way that the main character’s clothes ruffle to the way that fish move in the water. It’s exceptionally pretty, is what I’m saying. Way prettier than Dark Souls, which, at times, was just butt-ugly. Though Dark Souls had its moments, too.
And besides the graphics, though, the level design is pretty great. There wasn’t a single area in Sekiro that I just didn’t like playing through. This is opposed to places like Blighttown, where just moving around is a pain in the ass, or the Forbidden Woods, which is such a twisty-turny mess that I just run through it most of the time. Every area in Sekiro is packed with secrets, from items to mini-bosses to special characters, and exploring them is, after the combat, the best part of the game. And since the movement is so great, too, jumping around and finding stuff is, even without enemies, just a lot of fun. Oh, yeah, did I mention you have a grappling hook in this game? That’s pretty sick, if you ask me.
And something that I had to get to at some point: the difficulty. I’ll be real, Sekiro is a tough game. It demands full attention from the player, and rewards mastery over brute force. But, even for all that, I found Sekiro to be way more forgiving than any other souls game to date. For one, you get a second life. So if you’re caring a lot of stuff and you screw up and die, just resurrect and run back to a checkpoint and try again. Of course, this is compensated by the fact that you can’t recover your stuff if you die for real, but there’s like a ten percent chance you won’t lose it, anyway. And checkpoints are regular, right outside boss encounters, there are plenty of shortcuts, it’s easier than ever to avoid enemies, and falling off the edge of the map no longer kills you instantly. Overall, very forgiving compared to Dark Souls.
There’s a lot to like about Sekiro, because at the end of the day it’s just a fun game. Sure, there isn’t a lot of replay value unless you want to get every boss and every skill and every ending, and there were parts of the game that I felt like required grinding to get through (like when I ran out of Spirit Emblems), but those are minor annoyances that pale in comparison to incredible design of the rest of the game.
I don’t think Sekiro will have the same lasting impact that Dark Souls had. I’m not even sure why that is, or why I still like Dark Souls so much. Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s because Dark Souls felt, surprisingly, more relatable to me. Maybe it’s sun bro. But whatever the reason, I enjoy my time in Dark Souls, and I enjoy my time in Sekiro just as much. It’s an easy recommendation, especially to scratch that soulslike itch. I’d play it again, and I think you should, too. Play it the first time, that is. You know, unless you have already played it. Then play it again.
Oh, and one last thing: play it with the Japanese voices on. Besides being more authentic, the fact that I can’t understand what they’re saying helps mask the… questionable quality of the English voiceovers. Just read the subtitles.
