And now I just fucked up Lone Shadow without stealth. Shit is getting real, can't believe it.
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And now I just fucked up Lone Shadow without stealth. Shit is getting real, can't believe it.
Oh shit, sorry. Somebody tells you to follow the smoke signals to find somebody later. I thought that was what you meant. Forgot about the FIRST guy who talks about the smoke signals.
For now they pretty much just guide you to progress through the level. They're not really necessary though.
I have a pro strat for the dumb miniboss with a large gun (don't remember his dumb name)
Start from the second sculpture in the back, kill the two guys there and stealth the miniboss. Then just go back by the sculpture and grapple up to the platform above and just sit there. Miniboss will waddle around in the poison swamp and after like a minute he'll take damage for a bit. Then it stops, then he'll start taking damage again.
Just sit there and let his bar completely drain itself for 5 minutes or whatever and then grapple down and instantly kill him because fuck that dumbass fight
Just sit there and let his bar completely drain itself for 5 minutes or whatever and then grapple down and instantly kill him because fuck that dumbass fight
It's not explicitly explained but you do see more of them, yes, and can dig around for a little more lore on what they are. It's very similar to the Byrgenwerth scholars but not quite the central focus of the game.
It's not clear, but it could be China. The Corrupted Monk has a Chinese surname, which I thought was odd.
It's not clear, but it could be China. The Corrupted Monk has a Chinese surname, which I thought was odd.
not from the sound of it! Can you not get to where you're going next to that idol? Even if that doesn't work, the other entrance certainly will
Just cheesed the fuck out of
the snake-eyes boss in the poison lake in the depths. I retreated to a safe spot and she just kept strafing in the poison lake which eventually poisoned her for 1/4th of an HP bar. I waited untill her HP was completely drained, went in for the hit + deathblow and got the fuck out of there again. Rinse and repeat for the second health bar lol. A true shinobi uses his environment to his advantage.
Hard to pin down really. I think emerging from a lengthy boss encounter to find myself flat broke and covered in Dragon Rot, having won either a single prayer bead or a Memory is a little dispiriting. It feels less like a hard won victory and more like an ordeal survived.
Without wishing to court any accusations of bias for stanning a PlayStation exclusive, I guess I just miss that purely organic design of Bloodborne, where the levels and enemies taught you the mechanics of the area boss without the direct tutorialising Sekiro opts for.
I think that's perhaps a major root of a lot of people's frustration: mobs and bosses are very separate encounters. What you learn fighting the former won't greatly inform the latter. New mechanics are almost always introduced in high-pressure boss encounters, rather than as your exploring the world: sweeps, thrusts, red eye, poison, illusion and lightning are introduced by high-level boss or sub-boss encounters with punishing, aggressive and varied attacks.
If you could hone your skills on smaller enemies with similar attacks thoughout the game world before linking up all that learning in boss encounters, I think those bosses would feel less overwhelming and affect a more natural difficulty curve.
To compound this, the stealth element also discourages combat outside of bosses, as you can down entire areas of enemies without any real duelling combat and areas are clearly designed with this in mind.
These options go out the window in many boss encounters though, and all the traversal, sneaking and baiting skills you develop in general exploration are completely cut off in big boss encounters.
I think this is where the sense of hitting a wall comes from: mob encounters can be easily avoided and even when in direct combat, most smaller enemies can be guard-broken in a single parry or a short flurry of hits.
To add to this, boss mechanics are often singular and sometimes completely at odds with surrounding mobs. Consider Robert's father: an undamageable enemy with an enormous great sword, who can only be overcome by posture breaking him and pushing him over a ledge. He's the first of his kind and almost every enemy around him is mechanically different (close-combat, unarmoured monks or projectile-firing 'rat' enemies - all can be stealthed).
This is where the game design feels most decidedly muddled. Great and celebrated games (including many of FromSoft's) build on this natural philosophy of 'show don't tell' - Sekiro seems to consciously avoid that. It wasn't necessary to have an NPC outside the Church of the Good Chalice to warn you about the Blood Starved Beast's poison attacks and hand you a fistful of antidotes - it was already tutorialised through more manageabe enemies in the run up to that encounter.
I don't know if this really answers your question and apologies for the lengthy post, but to summarise, bosses don't feel like a test you aced because you paid attention and completed the reading, they feel like a calculus paper someone pulled out in the middle a geometry class that your made to fail repeatedly while watching you're GPA tumble in the background.
Dude, I've been trying for hours now.... I use Mikiri in 90% of the cases, yet I still lose. I must be doing something very wrong....
Any tips for LB's second phase?
I feel like I can reliably get her there without getting hit and avoid the little grey dudes, but once she just starts spawning magic out of nowhere it's super hard to not get chain stunned by it.
Legit just figured out the same thing
The best is I did it by accident
I hid in a safe spot to try and lose aggro so it could reset and I could get the stealth deathblow. Looked up after a little bit when I heard it still going and saw the bar draining, lol
For
Guardian Ape, make sure you use those terror reducing items, I find I did a lot better trying to parry all his sword swings and then only hit when I knew it was a safe shot. His sword swings are really obvious, when he turns his back on you DON'T go in, he often does a 360 and triple slashes you.
As for Corrupted Monk, I found getting 2 or 3 hits in before she attacked worked well, she often takes a step back or a second after being hit before starting an attack again. Honestly, just have to learn her moves and get really good at parrying (she has odd timing with her swings) but I beat her because I could literally non-stop parry all of her swings, 6 or so parries in a row gets through a good chunk of her Posture
As for Corrupted Monk, I found getting 2 or 3 hits in before she attacked worked well, she often takes a step back or a second after being hit before starting an attack again. Honestly, just have to learn her moves and get really good at parrying (she has odd timing with her swings) but I beat her because I could literally non-stop parry all of her swings, 6 or so parries in a row gets through a good chunk of her Posture
I thought mikiri counter is suppose to do posture damage, I could understand it not doing much on miniboss but this dude doesn't even have extra lifes lol.
It does nothing. I just did it and immediately countered hit him and its tiny. Then he immediately just speared/skewered (raises you up) me and one shot me. What did I learn from this? Nothing much really. Just spam attack I guess.
It does nothing. I just did it and immediately countered hit him and its tiny. Then he immediately just speared/skewered (raises you up) me and one shot me. What did I learn from this? Nothing much really. Just spam attack I guess.
It should do posture damage, but it doesn't do a lot. There is a skill that increases the amount of posture damage it does, but the main advantage is just being able to survive a thrust and stay close without timing a dodge.
The first two are related. The smoke was to find Isshin's letter, that's where he'll be after you're done at the top of the castle.
I might be wrong but I think it does more posture damage the lower their health and/or posture, so the more you weaken them the more effective it is
I think you are getting to the heart of the issue, at least with me.
With how this game functions in combat, and the style of play needed in order to have a hope in hell defeating these bosses, there is a direct disconnect between mobs and bosses.
There is almost no themes with enemies and what I'm about to face in the next boss battle, no tells about a weakness or style of move I should start looking out for.
You deal with trash and then deal with the big bad, who has a completely new set of moves that you need to memorize in order to properly counter and parry. Now, obviously it's good that each boss and mini boss are unique in combat.
The issue that comes into play is Sekiro has one combat style and one combat style only. In my experience, I'm not really improving much. I know the general idea of how to counter, how to dodge, the mechanics are pretty sound and I can execute them on a regular basis. The difficulty is that every single boss is like playing the game for the first time all over again. You need to relearn the dodges, the parries, the counters. Nothing ever carries over, there is no progression between areas of the game.
Every time you defeat a boss the game practically hard resets. Your character hardly progresses, you get no weapons, no armor, no money. All you get is another area to go into that will just need to be cleared before reaching another boss that you will have to learn-by-dying over and over again until you memorized the pattern and routine.
This has been my gameplay loop, this is why I'm getting little pleasure in the difficulty, because I'm not actually improving, I'm just imprinting an endless amount of boss attack patterns into my skull that get instantly tossed once the boss is dead. The combat is simply too fast and bosses are too punishing to actually improve beyond learning their movesetts.
There is an amazing game hiding in Sekiro, the combat really is amazing, but how they decided to piece the game together is horribly flawed.
Get behind pillars, every time. And hold B/O to sprint
Ok Miyazaki for the love of god, you need to stop with the gimmick bosses. Forever. I like the idea but after 5 games of them you clearly aren't very good at it and its not your strong suit nor why we play these games. I think its safe to say theyre never going to be good and it would be better if we just had straight up boss encounters.
I mean that dragon fight was a joke. Wail on defenseless mini dragons for 10 minutes, then fight a huge dragon where if you lock on you can't see the weapon attacks. Once you figure out that the lighting trees are the correct tress to go to, the fight is basically over. Love the concept but its execution is so poor. Would have been way better had we fought this guy straight up.
I imaine it's there to show how far you've come, similarly to the chained ogre on the first floor of Ashina castle on the revisit. Also it would be strange if the bull was the only mini boss type you only fought once.
Same thing for me lol. Was trying to lose agro to initiate with a stealth deathblow, but quickly noticed a better way. Took some time though.
hmmmm
what i did was stayed on him like fly on shit and everytime tried the thrust move i used it, pretty sure the last phase of the flight didn't last more than an minute.
Genichiros tracking thrust is shit. Takes out all the joy of fighting him. What awful game design. It's not as bad as in Bloodborne (or god forbid the awful DS2) but it's still trash at times.
Otherwise I really like the game and especially that exploration is rewarding because you find stuff to upgrade your shinobi modules and modules itself. That's how to add meaningful content to your game.
Otherwise I really like the game and especially that exploration is rewarding because you find stuff to upgrade your shinobi modules and modules itself. That's how to add meaningful content to your game.
I thought fighting her straight on was cool. Probably favorite mini-boss type so far.
You're not supposed to be trying to dodge/jump thrusts.
I was out of confetti, so it still took a few hits after the takedown.
The "skill" is in recognizing the attacks; if every unblockable had a different warning sign, responding to them would be considerably easier. Nothing gamble-y about it, every attack has a tell.
Feel like I hit a wall. Can't beat the horse boss. Can't beat the drunkard. Is there another path I can go down or is the only option to git gud now?
It works on other enemies and the game itself tells you to either parry them perfectly timed or dodge.
Those are your two options. Do you have firecrackers? They make the horse a joke.
Tracking isn't really a big deal to me in this game because you can just Mikiri counter the thrusts and side sprint/deflect most vertical overhead chops.
The game leaves it up to you to decide based on the enemy's stance what kind of attack that's going to be. Many unblockable attacks are at the end of combos with split second windups, long enough to recognize, deflect if you can, mikiri if you can't, or jump if it's a swipe to kick down. It takes some time, but is rewarding without ever stopping the threat they pose. I feel if it used different color characters, it might be easier to tell. The camera is not fantastic for this.
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