Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Review

Shadows Die Twice:

As a stalwart fan of the Soulsborne series, I was at once excited and a little nervous for Sekiro. It’s FromSoft’s first real return to development since that comfortingly familiar franchise, and it’s rightfully been sold as quite a departure from the sword-and-board hack and slash of its predecessor. I’m thrilled to say that Sekiro is a confident step away from the series that brought them international fame, and looks to set a precedent all of its own.

Story:

You play as Wolf, a Shinobi who is duty-bound to protect a little prince in Sengoku-era Japan. The only problem is, early on you get your butt kicked, your arm lopped off, and left for dead. Waking up in a strange sculptor’s house, you find yourself newly equipped with a multi-function prosthetic arm and a hunger for vengeance.

What helps – and hinders, to some extent – in this quest is a newly appointed curse. You cannot die. Instead, upon ‘death’ you are able to stand back up and try again – though this boon seems to come with drawbacks of its own. Making your way through the feudal Japanese setting to reclaim your ward and do away with this pesky curse sets the stage for the entirety of Sekiro, and whilst some of its storytelling is traditionally ‘between the lines’ as much of FromSoft’s narratives are, the main tale of revenge and redemption is presented here in a more straightforward way.

Tense cutscenes are precursors to some of the game’s most memorable fights, and plenty of time will be spent chatting to NPCs around the world. It’s a good balance between traditional storytelling and FromSoft’s usual stable of optional lore and item descriptions. The story is good, too, with a few different endings depending on how you let events play out and which choices you make.

Gameplay:

Of course, the real draw of Sekiro is its bloody – and bloody difficult – battle system. Coming from the developers of Dark Souls you might not be surprised to hear that this is yet another title that will push your skill and patience, but whilst a lot of outlets have said that it’s slightly easier than souls I’m going to have to vehemently disagree. As a Souls veteran I found myself struggling harder in Sekiro than in any game in that series, and it might be because of my multitude of playthroughs in Souls that I actually had a disadvantage going into this one.

Forget everything those games have taught you – trying to play Sekiro in a way that resembles Souls will result in you getting your ass kicked time and time again. Instead of the patient combat or Dark Souls, Sekiro demands you either deal with enemies from the shadows like a true Shinobi or get up close and personal with each and every enemy in the game, pushing them back with an onslaught of attacks and being primed to parry at the moment an attack of theirs comes through.

Almost everything in Sekiro has a counter of some sort, and learning exactly how to answer every attack from any given enemy in the game is key to progressing at a decent clip. This reflex-based, pattern-recognition-demanding combat is at once thrilling and infuriating. Wolf is squishy – a couple of hits by any given boss will usually be enough to put him on his back – and that’s where the game’s core mechanic comes in.

As you ‘die’, the game asks if you want to resurrect right then and there and carry on from where you left off. Doing so repeatedly makes incurs Dragon Rot – a mean-spirited system that poisons NPCs around the world as you abuse your revives – but as a boss stands over you smugly, perhaps with only a fraction of health left, it’s very difficult to keep a level head and accept defeat. There’s a decent balance in this mechanic, and it can’t be used over and over again to power through a tricky boss. It’s only offered as a sort of ‘undo’ button to a single mistake that spelled your doom, but more often than not I’d get up from these deaths and get killed all over again immediately.

Besides this core combat change, a lot of what you might expect from a FromSoft game is present. The slow exploration of striking areas filled with deadly enemies, a collection of goodies and trinkets to make your journey slightly easier, levelling up and learning new skills and of course, an Estus Flask (here called a Healing Gourd). This deceptive familiarity is what might trick returning players into thinking they have the necessary skills to race through this game, but the bosses quickly put you in your place.