sekiro is fun because it has the first souls protag with an established personality and backstory, which allows us to have the first souls protag whose life fucking sucks for reasons completely unrelated to living in a souls game. ashina is beautiful but sekiro lives in his own personal hell. yeah, the fact that he can die from being hit with shit from a butt launched by a giant ape is because hes a souls protag, but he also gets hit by his dad a lot too. he doesnt get yummy estus soup, he has to drink medicine that is explicitly stated to taste and smell bad, and the way he levels them up is by focusing on how shit it tastes and smells. worry not, tho! he can follow it up with delicious handfuls of loose, uncooked rice. he can speak for himself in non-plot essential conversations, which means the player doesnt even have to touch the controller for him to fumble a bad bitch! literally the first npc conversation you can overhear is people calling him pathetic. the game starts with him #girlrotting in a hole he could easily escape but doesnt care enough to do so. hes an orphan of war. his adoptive dad tried to kill him. truly he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone

great work everyone!

“your characters need to be likeable” allow me to introduce you to the very worst guy who ever lived