Mister Jack

It occurs to me that barring any delays, we have four samurai games coming out this year from four different publishers. I'll probably play them all, too.

So this is kind of a weird one. I hated Demon's Souls. In fact, I still hate Demon's Souls and I imagine I will always hate Demon's Souls so I never played this for more than a few hours before I got annoyed with it. However, I enjoyed Bloodborne and I really liked Sekiro, so I'm going to give this game one more chance, mainly because I got it dirt cheap. People keep saying Sekiro is the hardest game From has made and I got gud enough to get through three playthroughs so maybe I can manage this one now.

Fuck me I forgot how hard it was to come up with a name that isn't taken on PSN. I picked the original one out of desperation after hours of trying.

It's been a long time but I remember I didn't like how slow it was, a lot of deaths felt like "gotcha" traps, I absolutely hated how Demon's Souls would cut your health bar when you die, the story was too cryptic for my liking, and too much backtracking to get to the boss that just killed you. Maybe I'll give it another shot, though. I got pretty damn good at Sekiro and if that's the hardest game they've made then maybe I can get through Dark Souls this time. Oh yeah, I loathe invasions. Not only am I not interested in pvp, but the fact it's there means you can't pause the game. In my opinion, no degree of "git gud" will ever excuse the lack of a pause function. Sometimes I have to get up to take care of something, you selfish bastards.

We'll finally be able to change our PSN IDs later today! I don't have to be stuck with the stupid name I made all the way back in 2006 anymore!

I finally got the platinum in NG++. By the time I was at the end of the game I still had to grind for about 4 or 5 hours. Mind you, I was using a more difficult grinding route that isn't as safe as the one everyone recommends on YouTube but it gets you much more xp. Never thought I'd 100% a From game but I enjoyed the hell out of this one, minus the grinding at the very end. I'm making that platinum my profile image as a badge of honor. Of course, this means losing my Nioh platinum image since I had that before I got a new PS4 hard drive and I didn't think to back up my screenshots, but I think getting 100% in this game is more of an accomplishment since I see so many people online talking about how they can't even finish it once.

Jesus Christ the skill point requirements are getting ridiculous. I went all the way to New Game++, figuring I would get what I need naturally while playing through it again, and I got maybe two or three points through the whole game. As annoying as it is, grinding really is the best way to get more skill points once you reach a certain threshold. If this wasn't the only trophy I needed for the platinum I would consider not even bothering.

I save scummed for the endings. I always do that when it's an option. I like this game a lot but I don't want to play it four times in a row. I went up to New Game ++ for the extra xp but after I get the platinum I'm ready to move on until the DLC is out. The Shura boss is nowhere near as hard as the normal final boss. Still hard, but much more manageable.

Shit, I didn't know that and ended up doing it the hard way. I'm not ashamed to be cheap so I wish I knew that. The way I see it, the game stacks the odds so heavily against you that any strategy short of hacking the game is legitimate. Victory before honor and all that. Oh well. I've officially beaten every boss at this point anyway. Now I just need to buy all the skills and tool upgrades for the platinum.

You...you can cheese him?

I love Nioh but those are legitimate criticisms. I'm really hoping they improve it for Nioh 2 because then it's going to be almost impossible to put down.

You know, it's funny. I struggled through like 20-30 deaths for a lot of those brick wall bosses everyone has trouble with, but on the attempt where I finally beat them, final boss included, I ended up not even needing to use any resurrections to get through it. It's like I suddenly became awesome out of nowhere.

Damn it feels really good to go to new game plus and curb stomp all those bosses who were giving me hours of grief before.

Oh, my bad, I got the name wrong. You hit them once and can hit them two or three more times coming down. The extra hits are small but they add up.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice I'm not usually a guy who likes From games, or at least not the ones they've been making since they became popular. I never finished a Dark Souls, and while I played through Bloodborne and enjoyed it well enough, I haven't felt an urge to ever go back to it. This game is the first one that really appealed to me. For starters, From did away with a lot of the bullshit I didn't like about the Souls games. You don't get your health bar chopped in half when you die, you don't have to turtle behind a shield all the time, there's no stupid forced PVP mode, the poison filled level is a lot shorter, and the story is a lot more straightforward and doesn't require a wiki to get the gist of it. In fact, I was so into this one that I went out of my way to get the best possible ending and kill every single boss and miniboss in the game, minus a few that are only available on the routes in the other endings. I'd say that this game captured better than any other I've played the feeling of being in a sword duel to the death. You truly have to master your blade or you won't get anywhere. Alright, I've kissed this game's ass enough so let's talk about what I didn't like. The ninja tools are a really cool mechanic, but they're highly situational and I went through a majority of the game without using a single one. I tried to at several boss fights, but most of them come at you so hard and fast that you really don't have the chance to use anything except the firecrackers. The gadgets feel like an afterthought when they should really be a major part of my arsenal. Also, the camera fucking sucks in this game and is by far my biggest complaint. There's no worse feeling than when you've got a boss on the ropes but then he gets you up against a wall and you end up dead because you can't see a damn thing. There's also a mechanic where your sword barely does any damage to ghosts unless you use a certain item on it first. Said item is rare and hard to find. I hate when games force you to use rare consumables just to stand a chance against certain enemies. It's annoying, stressful, and completely unnecessary. Fortunately I never reached the point where I used up all of my stock and had to go grind for this item, but I imagine there are plenty of people out there who have since you don't get it back if you die. Lastly, the boss fights are mostly fair, but I can think of a few that are completely unreasonable, the final boss being a major offender in particular. Putting all that aside, I'm glad I gave this game a chance. It has a lot of the Dark Souls DNA in it, but it really is a different kind of game entirely and most definitely not "Dark Souls in Japan."

Something I only just now realized is that you don't always have to hit the deflect button for every single hit in a combo. One of the optional bosses felt impossible until I discovered that as long as the hits are real close together, you can just hold down the button to deflect the first one and the others will be deflected automatically

Surprised this thread doesn't exist yet. Sekiro is hard as balls so I figured we could use a space to discuss tips and boss strategies. Or just discuss the game in general, of course.

Putting narrow corridors in games with bad cameras should be banned. Putting bosses in those same corridors should be punishable by forty lashes.

It's not the worst DC trailer I've seen and Phoenix seems like he could be an alright Joker but the idea of a Joker origin story just rubs me the wrong way. It ruins a lot of the character's mystique.

I've put a few hours into Sekiro now and so far I like it. I'm sure I haven't gotten far enough for it to get really hard but I've killed four or five minibosses and decided to take a break when I hit the first proper boss and got my ass kicked. If I have one major complaint so far, it's the camera. I'd say that about 2/3 of my deaths up to this point have been because the camera got into a position where it was impossible to see what was going on and I got killed while struggling to get it back under control. A few mechanics are also poorly explained and I had to look them up on the internet to fully grasp them. I'm having fun so far, though.

I'm still on the fence about this game so I got a used copy just in case it doesn't gel with me. We'll see what happens.

Waiting in a digital line on Fandango to buy Endgame tickets and it hasn't updated in three hours.