with a tap of the A button on a
controller for a good dose of posture
damage. You can use your dodge to
avoid many grab attacks, but as you
fight deeper into the game, expect
enemies to start wrong-footing you
with unusual attack patterns.
You can counter with your
increasingly powerful prosthetic arm.
As you find upgrades you can return
to your hub, the Dilapidated Temple,
to have your gruff but caring sculptor
friend install and upgrade them.
Upgrades include an axe that
smashes enemy shields, an unfolding
metal umbrella that deflects gunfire,
a device that throws shuriken
(brilliant for knocking jumping
enemies down mid-flight), and more
that I won’t spoil. You can switch
between three at a time and swap
those three around in the pause
menu whenever you like. They are
often designed to counter specific
enemy behaviours, and an opponent
that initially seems impossible can
often be defeated easily with a
specific prosthetic attachment –
shield enemies are comically rubbish
once you find the axe attachment.
This isn’t a Dark Souls game, but
Sekiro has plenty in common with the
dark fantasy RPG series. Sekiro is
made up of large but separate zones
rather than a huge connected world
like Lordran. Dark
Souls fans will still
enjoy the knotted
structure of these areas,
though, and there are
many secrets hidden
just off the critical path,
often reached with the
excellent grappling
hook, which lets you
vault between tree branches and
rooftops using the left trigger. You
will find yourself returning to old
areas frequently to catch up with
merchants and NPCs, who have their
own mysterious needs and
backstories. As ever with a From
Software game, I feel like I’m skirting
on the surface during the first
playthrough. I expect it will take
months of fans making connections
for Sekiro’s deeper stories to emerge.
WOLF’S PACK
Sekiro’s main plot is told through
Sekiro’s conversations with the little
lord and other NPC hangers-on.
Sekiro himself is also voiced, and plot
development happens in
conversations that occasionally offer
multiple choice options.
Yo uc a n
counter
withyour
powerful
prostheticarmARM YOURSELF Get the most out of Sekiro’s prosthetic weapons
FAN
The fan turns enemies
around in combat so you
can get backstabs.FLAMETHROWER
Beasts hate the
flamethrower
attachment.POISON
A smaller second blade
poisons enemies with
fast combos.AXE
The axe smashes shields
and can cause fire
damage when upgraded.For the first ten hours or so I
found the world itself to be quite
bland – a mix of samey brown-hued
townships with a slim selection of
enemies. The variety expands
enormously as the game progresses
and beautiful new areas open up.
Strangely, though the combat
system is very challenging, Sekiro is
less punishing than Dark Souls. The
environments are bound together by
Idols, which are the game’s
equivalent of Dark Souls bonfires.
When you die you respawn at the
last Idol you touched, but you only
lose half of your money and some
skill experience. Thirty per cent of
the time you will get ‘Unseen Aid’,
which means you
lose nothing.
Dying repeatedly
reduces that
percentage chance of
getting Unseen Aid, but
there’s no way to get
completely stuck in
Sekiro. You can bank
your money by
purchasing bags of coin at vendors,
and if you really want to buy
something you can do a lap of an
earlier area after popping a gold-
boosting balloon. New skills are nice,
but they’re not crucial to progression.
Importantly, stat boosts are tied to
bosses. You can process memories of
great boss fights to increase attack
power and turn in prayer beads to
increase health and posture. You get
prayer beads from secret chests and
one-off kills of tough ordinary
enemies. That means you
can’t grind for stat boosts.
Instead, the game is balanced around
a predictable player power level. To
me this is a considerable
improvement on the Dark Souls
formula. It removes all anxiety about
being under-levelled or underequipped – you just take on the
challenge that’s presented and
improve your skill to progress.
It helps that you can come back
from the dead. Every time you rest at
an Idol you restore up to one
resurrection, but killing enemies
charges up a second. You can’t use
multiple resurrections in quick
succession, but they are a vital crutch
and an interesting tactical
consideration, especially during boss
fights. Sekiro always presents you
with multiple exploration avenues at
the same time, so if you get stuck on
one area, you can try to progress in
the other, or backtrack to take on a
miniboss that was too tough earlier.
Stealth also takes the edge off. In
some areas with a lot of ordinary
enemies you can discover stealthy
routes past them, which makes
repetition far less dull. It’s also fun to
use stealth in combination with
combat. I like to try to eliminate at
least one member of a group with an
instant stealth kill before blitzing the
rest with my sword.
Sekiro took me 73 hours to
complete, but there are high level
challenges hidden throughout that
could add another ten before I
plunge into new game plus. Sekiro’s
combat system serves up exciting
new challenges to the end and the
shinobi fantasy is powerfully realised
in every savage deathblow and
perfectly timed parry. If you’re up
for the challenge, Sekiro will
reward your patience with some
of the most spectacular,
nerve-wrackingduellingonPC.92
An uncompromising
action game with
sensational sword
combat. From Software
has done it again.VERDICTSekiro: Shadows Die Twice
REVIEW