S.G.S response to Sekiro critique

Response to: https://itsmorecornflakes.blogspot.com/2019/06/sekiro.html

I’ve read it a while back. Mostly I feel he made good observations, but I kinda disagree with some of his judgements. I'll start posting a bootleg essay discussing the article and reviewing Sekiro...

I agree with his vision that Sekiro should balance dodges, the 3 reactions, and prosthetics/skills. It’s true that Sekiro heavily incentivizes parries (and if you wanna be generous, maybe Mikiri too) over mostly anything else. This is due to the generous timings the game has for the 3 reactions versus dodging.

However, I would go one step further criticizing the game in this regard. Despite the game punishing dodging heavily, whiff punishing is borderline ideal play and is more rewarding than deflecting. It deals consistent HP damage, leading to faster deathblows on stronger enemies. My criticism would be best summarized as “The game creates a local optimal with parries, when more rewarding play styles exist”. I would apply this to Soulsborne dodging as well. However, dodging is a deeper mechanic than deflecting so I don’t weigh it as heavily.

I agree with his point on Skills. While I do feel there are a bunch that are useful, use cases are too sparse. They should have trimmed the excess/added switching/balanced them better. Prosthetics are very useful, but are one-dimensional and are extremely limited by Spirit Emblems. This was a failed attempt at boosting game replayability and is in dire need of fixing.
I’ll use this as an excuse to talk about all three Ninjitsu. Puppeteer is the best. A cleaner version of Undead Rapport, and the faster pace of Sekiro makes it more interesting to use. There are plenty of multi-enemy encounters to test it in, especially in the latter half. Friendly fire is a problematic addition, but really not that limiting. It is trollish fun, but I love trollish fun, so it’s all good for me. Improvements here would be removing friendly fire, limiting the number of enemies you control, removing Spirit Emblem use, and maybe having some degree of control over the puppet.

Bloodsmoke is a stealth aid. Really simple. Really boring. There is a great way to improve it, but for some reason it’s a hidden property of certain enemies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3rnJobmnYM

An idea here is allowing sword imbuements to affect the bloodsmoke cloud. Something like poison sword results in a poison cloud, fire sword results in a scalding ash cloud that blinds and burns enemies, divine confetti sword results in a terror cloud, and a bestowal sword results in a larger bloodsmoke cloud. A much harder change would be to add wind that could be manipulated someway, allowing you to divert the smoke cloud accordingly. Bestowal works as a buffing ninjitsu. More possible buffs is the only suggestion I make here.

Danger Symbol is pretty useful at the start. I do agree that disabling it for later runs would have been nice. Now this is a bit of a tangent, but the Danger Symbol is where the entire Simon Says criticism stems from. I’ve stated my position on this before. This part of Sekiro is Simon Says only through the lens of posture damage. If you want to maximize posture damage, there is only one response to these Symbols. But maximizing posture damage isn’t the only priority the player has. Oftentimes focusing on health damage/healing/prosthetics/skills is better, so I don’t fully endorse the Simon Says criticism.

The enemy patterns and moves criticism is something I fundamentally disagree with. I love elongated and tricky attack animations. They make learning enemy movesets more interesting and are excellent ways to push simple mechanical systems. While you will struggle getting the timing down at the start, you eventually realize what actions you can squeeze in during the attack delay. Attacks that can be changed midway also lead to interesting tactics and baiting strategies. These are some of the reasons why Owl (OG/Father) and Isshin (Ashina/Sword Saint) are such amazing boss fights.

Multiple boss phases are perfectly fine. As long as the phases are interesting, multi-phase boss fights are a thorough test of consistency. In Sekiro’s case they blaze through really fast if you git gud, acting as a reward for consistency. One point I will add is hiding phases from the player. While not egregious, it is annoying to realize that a boss you’re “done” with isn’t really defeated. In Sekiro’s case, hidden phases are few and mostly limited to one extra phase (aside from Sword Saint Isshin). Also with Guardian Ape, I really can’t complain about hiding phases too much.
I agree with the Slowness, lenient timings and some clunky animations section. I completely disagree with his assessment of stealth, but he isn’t a fan of the concept so eh. I agree with his conclusion and really like his suggestions, although DMCekiro sounds hmm to me.

Sekiro is a flawed, almost “proof-of-concept” game. It takes a very confident step forward for From and has a lot of potential, but has core issues and slips up often. It’s a ton of fun when it works, but has some clear (and not-so-clear) improvements that can be made in a sequel/spiritual successor.

Flawed-but-has-great-potential/10


	Durandal's response for good measure:
	I can't say I like "tricky attack animations" because of the inconsistent way they are telegraphed in a system heavily relying around pressing dodge/parry at the right time, even if the dodge/parry windows are (compared to other games with similar mechanics) fairly lenient. By obscuring the timing required to parry/dodge an attack by having each enemy have his own unique set of attack animations, the learning process for each enemy type or boss is effectively expedited with a layer of trial 'n error because at first you can only guess from seeing an attack animation for your first time when it is going to land or what its unique properties are. The consistency between what kind of attack each animation indicates in Sekiro is rather shaky. It's not like a bullet traveling in a straight line where you can predict when it's going to hit you or when you can parry it.

	It makes learning individual enemy movesets require more effort on the player's part, but on the other hand the feeling that you're getting better at the game is postponed because every enemy has its own bag of tricks which means that for each different enemy you basically have to start from the ground up learning their timings by playing safely with blocks and observing their attacks. Which in my opinion is needless had the game communicated parry timings and enemy attack properties more consistently with audio-visual cues which consistently appear f.e. 0.8 seconds before each attack lands regardless of what the attack animation implies. Also I believe that "try figuring out when you have to parry based on this ambiguous animation" on its own holds no gameplay value because it's a one-and-done memorization ordeal and is only tolerated because nearly every game centering around melee action does this. This is more clearly seen with games with more giant non-human enemies with similar i-frame dodge or parry mechanics like DaS or Bayonetta.

	This may make the game feel more QTE-ish when you're reacting to abstract cues rather than natural enemy movements, but in terms of gameplay things will remain the same; you will parry/dodge anything your way and strike accordingly just as normal, but now there's less ambiguity in when you need to parry/dodge and you can apply your skills you have learned from other enemies to new ones more consistently. That this might make the game simpler because you have to learn less has more to do with the flawed fundamentals in the combat system because of enemies not performing fake-outs or mix-ups frequently enough to keep you guessing and reacting instead of playing a passive pseudo-rhythm game.

	And S.G.S's reply:
	While I do feel there are some inconsistencies in Sekiro's telegraphing, the Deflect timing is hideously lenient. 30f is something I would criticize heavily, but for learning enemy movesets it's more than enough. Most roll i-frames in Souls are tighter timing-wise. Even with the crazy damage pumped out by some enemies, Sekiro is prolly the only From game of late where you can just go in, learn a boss' moveset safely, and defeat them 1st-2nd try.

	I think the learning process here is measured by how quickly you can learn an enemy moveset funnily enough. Once you understand the timings on your tools, you learn newer enemies/bosses faster. I dunno if opting for a Furi-esque audio-visual cue is really useful. Furi has zero animated telegraph to its melee attacks, so a blatantly Simon Says system is used to make it fair. However, this makes later bosses really manageable in the melee phases  since it's always the same timing. Sekiro has telegraphs of varying lengths for you to learn. Even if this adds a ever-decreasing layer of trial & error to the learning, it is more rewarding after the learning is done as you can squeeze in actions as the attack comes out (sometimes even staggering the opponent and cancelling the attack outright)