Whenever you die in Sekiro, you
lose half of your XP, and you don’t
get a chance to reacquire it by
reaching your previous death point.
Plus, every time you die, you spread a
disease called Dragonrot around the
game world, which afflicts the few
friendly characters in the game. Thus
FromSoftware is able to remind you of
its obsession with making sure that its
players die with a dispiriting frequency
and inevitability – although it has
softened sufficiently to let the Wolf
resurrect once, with half his health,
each time he dies.
With Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,
FromSoftware has taken the formula
which, since 2009, has seen it
elevated to the status of one the
world’s favourite developers and
freshened it up with real intelligence,
but without doing anything so drastic
as dismantling it. Sekiro still plays
how you would expect a FromSoftware
game to play: it takes no prisoners,
never gives its players a moment’s
respite and refuses to water down its
quest to test your precision, timing
and mental fortitude to their limits.
Yet, thanks to new elements like
the grapple and stealth, along with
its winsome setting and a narrative
thrust, it has acquired a unique and
distinctive flavour of its own.
In certain ways, especially in
comparison with the Dark Souls
games, it has benefited from a bit of
simplification: the shield-free fighting
system, for example, has fewer moving
parts to it, although you do acquire
new attacks via the skills tree as you
progress through the game. And the
RPG progression no longer forces you
to spend hours scratching your head
over which particular stats to improve.Tough cookie
But that doesn’t mean it is in any way
a simple game – quite the opposite, in
fact, since the single word you would
use to describe it when pressed is
‘hard’. FromSoftware’s ‘cruel to be
kind’ philosophy, which dictates that
if you don’t make a game fearsomely
difficult, you won’t give your
customers the chance to experience
proper, deep satisfaction, seeps out
of Sekiro’s every pore.
If you had to nitpick, you would
point out that, much like the
Soulsborne games, Sekiro’s cameracan sometimes act against you. But
other than that, it’s a masterpiece,
sitting at the honed pinnacle of
FromSoftware’s modus operandi.
But whether you have the bottle
to take on the challenge that it
represents is a different matter.
Those who prefer their games to be
gentle should give it a wide berth – it
was designed, above all else, to be a
test of your mettle as a gamer, and
unless you have healthy levels of both
patience and concentration, it will
have you smashing up your controller
after about half an hour.
But the corollary of its obsessive
refusal to countenance even a hint
of compromise is the vast amount of
satisfaction it provides when you do
finally make those breakthroughs and
progress to a new area. If you fancy
yourself as a hardcore gamer, Sekiro:
Shadows Die Twice is the embodiment
of what games are all about. QFROM THE
SHADOWS
Sekiro has a slightly
surprising source of
inspiration: Tenchu:
Stealth Assassins, the
1998 ninja-stealth
game developed by
Acquire for the
PlayStation. Remaking
Tenchu has clearly
been something
FromSoftware had in
mind for a while: in
2004, it acquired the
Tenchu rights from
Activision. Sekiro is in
no way a remake of
Tenchu – it feels too
much like a typical
FromSoftware game
for that to be the
case, however
changes that
FromSoftware made
to combat appear to
have had Tenchu in
mind. Director
Hidetaka Miyazaki
admitted that with
Sekiro’s combat
system, he wanted to
recreate the feel of
“swords clashing”.“Sekiro still
plays how you
would expect a
FromSoftware
game to play”
OXM VERDICT
A fearsome, yet
immaculately
constructed and
cleverly refreshed
test of mettle.9
LEFT The
Sengoku-period
Japan setting
is gorgeous to
look at.
FAR LEFT You
having trouble
with one-on-one
brawls? Well,
we’ve got some
bad news...16th century Japan was a time of great upheaval. The period’s name, ‘Sengoku’, translates to ‘age of warring states’More Xbox news at gamesradar.com/oxm THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 077REVIEW