#high difficulty

TLDR: I talk about what I liked and disliked about Sekiro and why it in my eyes is probably* the best game From Software has released to date. Which means I also compare it to Dark Souls a lot.

*I havent played Demon Souls or Bloodborne, so I cant really talk about those. As someone who played through all three Dark Souls games as well as several other soulslikes on stream, I always stood by the unpopular opinion that Dark Souls 1 is a good game, but also a vastly overrated one - with one of the most unbearable fanbases out there, right up there with Undertale, albeit for very different reasons. My opinion is of course strongly coloured by my interactions with diehard fans of Dark Souls, both on stream as well as everywhere else on the Internet, but at the end of the day I never hated Dark Souls. I wouldnt have played through all three games otherwise. I *did* hate smaller aspects, like the fact that I ended up entering the tomb of the giants without ever finding a lantern and therefore  being forced to crawl through that place in near complete darkness until I found the emergency lantern in there, simply because I was unlucky enough to have none of the necromancers drop one for me. Or how the curse mechanic in the sewers got me trapped in a place that i already struggled with, but now with only 50% of my original HP. Or the entire “Git Gud” mentality that is so grossly abused to defend poor game design that the travesty that is camera control in the Ornstein and Smough fight looks like a piece of art in comparison. Onionbro and Solaire would weep if they knew. There were other things that I didnt enjoy, like what the Souls games count as a story, but I have an easier time pinning that down as personal preference and something that just isnt for me. Vaatividya makes good videos. The tomb of the giants without a lantern however, that just shouldnt exist in any game, not to mention a game that is glorified to such an extent that it could get its dick sucked every day by a different dude without running out for centuries. Can you taste that sweaty salt yet? Along comes Sekiro, a game by the same dev studio, with the same feel, minus many of the things that I have hated and criticized for several years now. Guess what, I like it.    This isnt a review, Im not trying to tell you if you should buy, Im not telling you that there are no microtransactions in the game or what framerate it isnt capped at. There are tons of videos online that jump-attacked all over that on day 1 of release or earlier. Im telling you why, in my opinion, this game is so vastly superior to Dark Souls that it simply warms my heart. Let me start a list and then never finish it: - You can swim - You can jump - You can talk - You dont immediately die when you fall off a cliff - You cant accidentally walk over a cliff like a moron, at least most of the time. - You can’t simply rely on dodgerolls and invincibility frames all the time - You can understand the story without having to go to Youtube to have it explained to you by someone - You can’t kill strong enemies simply by chain parrying them over and over, or at least it is hell of a lot harder - You can’t simply kill strong enemies by knocking them off a cliff (I think) - You can’t abuse magic for an immediate easy mode - You can’t abuse coop for an immediate easy mode

TLDR: I played Dark Souls 1-3 about 18 months ago and yesterday I abandoned my first ever Nioh playthrough halfway through. I compare my experiences and declare them both winner and loser at the end of the day.

Today after waking up I was greeted on Discord by a public message of one of my mods which had me typing frantically in a matter of seconds: so Nioh went the same path as every other soulslike game ? Final call on it matt? ( wich mechanics where new wich ones where even more frustrating and wich ones where a welcome change from the other soulslike games?) I wanna clarify that I played a couple of “soulslike” games over the past 2 years and rarely left one of them unbeaten, so his first line had me somewhat confused about what exactly he meant, given that I had abandoned my Nioh playthrough halfway through only the day before. The games I had played (and I am aware of the fact that some rather important ones are missing) were the three Dark Souls games, Salt and Sanctuary, Dead Cells, Titan Souls and now Nioh. I usually want to beat these sort of games even if I don’t enjoy them, and be it only so I an criticize them without sounding like a whiner who simply didn’t git gud enough. Useless gamer pride, I know. But while I sat there, talking about how I had beaten all the other games before this one, I knew what he was probably talking about - which was me not liking the game. I also didn’t like DarkSouls 1-3 that much, and back when I streamed them it was usually me versus my chat as I tried to win the unwinnable argument of convincing fans of a game why it was clearly and “objectively” bad. Or at least not as good as everyone wanted me to believe. But let’s look at Ashtaks actual question. At first glance, Nioh does a couple of things which had me praising it as soon as I encountered them. Inventory indicators for what you had picked up since you last looked into your inventory. A clear path to follow. Storytelling that looked like actual storytelling for a change. I was sure I would like this one! But the longer I played, the more I noticed the glaring flaws that were worked deep into the games core, and which became even more apparent given how those flaws were mostly absent from the soulsgames I had worked my way through back then. The linear progression was nice in comparison to the at times random and unintuitive nature of Dark Souls, where I only managed to find the painted world of Ariamis after my chat had given me step by step instructions on how to find and enter it. But at the same time the missions soon started to feel same-ish, another temple, another batch of yokai that had corrupted something vengeful spirits something save that village something hope you dont mind taking a look at my yard while you are there Anjin Sama please make sure I didnt leave the window open. The storytelling had me intrigued for about as long as it took me to realize that the narrative was meaningless and bland and that it didnt make much sense up to the point I had reached in my playthrough. There’s a villain and he wants to gather that ressource Amrita that the game had introduced you moments before, now he stole your guardian spirit which you apparently had all along and that seems to be the only spirit in the world that can detect that Amrita stuff even though you are collecting it left and right as quickly as you can because the next levelup will require another 78 000 units of it because, hell, gotta keep you grinding, am I rita? The inventory indicators were good at least. Sorely needed in the trash collecting simulator that both Nioh and the games in the Souls Franchise are, too! But while it made sifting through trash a lot easier and more practical, it didn’t really change the fact that I was collecting trash 99% of the time. At least in Dark Souls you didnt feel like losing out if you left that stuff lying on the ground because you couldn’t exchange it for souls as easily, if at all. (I don’t exactly remember.) But while I’m listing pros here just to pluck them apart right afterwards, I wanna say that weirdly enough I felt like I enjoyed Nioh more, on a surface level. Sure, the story was weirdly uninteresting, but at least it was there, right? The game was reusing the same enemies for mission after mission, but at least it didn’t give me bullshit like the Anor Londo archers or the Tomb of the Giants, or that fucking disgusting curse mechanic in the canalisation of dontaskmewhatthatareawascalled. At least I had my sense of where to go and my inventory indicators for newly picked up equipment, right? And finally some proper tutorials! Yes and no.

While Nioh comes with a metric shitton of improvements that Dark Souls would have desperately needed back then, while it looks great and plays smooth and overall does everything I wanted Dark Souls to do back then, it lacks the inspiration and credibility to actually make it all work for me. On day 6 I encountered a bossfight that was somewhat similar in tone to the Sif encounter in DarkSouls. You know, sad music, the boss was kind of a good guy, this time it was a cat spirit instead of a giant wolf, but yeah, you get it. All it accomplished was making me realize that I never cared much for that feline companion of mine in the first place. Sif, in comparison, had never been my companion. He(?) had never tried to be loyal or helpful to me. Weird how I still ended up caring so much more for him than for my own weird cat buddy that I had never really gotten to know all too well, but... at least he was around? I guess? Must have been the missing limping animation. Another thing that always struck me as unpleasant about the Souls games was that there were no proper tutorials. Here, you are in a cell, now go die. Again, Nioh delivers where Dark Souls fell short, several nicely spaced out tutorials to show you the ropes, how to switch stances, how to use skills, how to take a dump behind a tree. But while Dark Souls would have had me confused about many things if not for my chat, Nioh locks tutorials behind mission progress and usually ended up teaching me things only after I had figured them out on my own. And weirdly enough, those tutorials managed to both make me feel as if they were holding my hand too much as well as(!) if they weren’t clear enough on things. How do you even pull that off? Sure I’m learning in detail what I already know, but I still need to do the tutorials for the rewards and it has me standing there unsure about why it is not continuing because I already did what it wanted me to... I think.

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