Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice review, plus some trendy discussion on difficulty

Sekiro released two weeks ago, and it has since consumed every second of my life that wasn't spent doing things that must be done as a person who is alive and intends to continue being alive. I get like this with FromSoft games. Initially, it's to beat the spoilers, to be among the first to discover the new world that this developer has laid out. Then it's to master everything. A FromSoft game, for me, isn't finished when the credits have rolled. It's finished when there are no challenges left to conquer. With nearly a hundred hours logged and every achievement unlocked, as of today, that's finally happened.

I say this for two reasons. The first is to underline that Sekiro is pretty much everything I want and expect out of a FromSoft game. The second is so nobody can throw variants of the old "git gud" argument at me when I say that I think every Souls game should ship with an easy mode.

The thing about Sekiro is that it's tough even by the standards of a company known for this sort of thing. Dark Souls, for better or worse, is universally recognized as the poster boy of hardcore challenge, yet FromSoft seems to have invested its time since in demonstrating just how good we had it back then, by stripping away failsafe options we once took for granted. Bloodborne took away our shields, and now in Sekiro, it's counters only, plus you can't summon, and dying gives every other character in the game the goddamn plague.

And look, I love it. Going from loathing the original Dark Souls to including it within my top three favorite games of all time is the sort of learning curve and reward you just don't get from any other developer. But when I imagine a game like Sekiro including an easy mode, the effects are only positive. It means more people get to love a thing that I love, because they can enjoy it on their own terms. It means that those who physically can't play Sekiro as-is -- because they're disabled or else just lack the motor reflex skills -- won't be walled off.

I understand some of the arguments to the contrary. This isn't generally a discussion we have with other mediums, and in fact, broadening the appeal of, say, a movie is generally frowned upon. Whenever a studio mandates that a film's content be toned down to secure a PG-13 rating, it's rightly viewed as the compromising of an artistic vision. And if the question was whether FromSoft should lighten the load for everyone, I'd object. These are obviously games designed for a specific type of player, and at some point we need to acknowledge that not everything is for everybody. I get that.

But let's say, for a moment, that Sekiro shipped with an optional assisted mode, given that such an choice hasn't stopped, say, the Bayonetta games from being regarded as hardcore character action magnum opuses. Let's also say that it wouldn't be possible to switch difficulties mid-game, putting to rest the popular argument that players overwhelmed with frustration would be tempted to bump it down in the heat of the moment rather than soldiering through. I still get the experience I want, and more people get the experience that they want.

To say that's not a good thing reeks of gatekeeping to me, especially now that so much of this discussion is being rightly framed as an accessibility issue. Not a lot of people argue that subtitles, colorblind modes, or rebindable controls compromise a developer's vision. No reason this should, either. And besides, I have a strange hunch that the same people panicking over the prospect of FromSoft losing its artistic license also boycotted Battlefield V for featuring a female lead, so I'll continue to point the finger at rush of being part of an exclusive "club" as the driving issue here.

Of course, the reason this argument has sprung up is because Sekiro is far and away the most difficult game FromSoft has ever released, enough so that even a number of longtime Souls fans seem to have been turned off by it. Even as someone who loves the game, I'll admit that it goes a bit too far in places. The final boss in particular is a four-phase marathon against a guy with a goddamn submachine gun where the most effective strategy is to just spend most of the fight running away and luring him into using a jump attack that leaves him vulnerable for a few quick strikes from behind. For as replayable as FromSoft's titles are, they have yet to make a game where I'm not dreading at least one segment upon revisit, whether it's the Bed of Chaos, Yahar'gul or (the newest entry) Snake Eyes Shirahagi.

For the most part, though, Sekiro worked like a charm on me, precisely because its relentless difficulty forces me to master new tricks. Countering is something I rarely bothered with in previous Souls games -- it was always just a showy move where the risks outweighed the rewards -- but here, it's mandatory.

See, while Sekiro is still very recognizably a Souls game on a number of levels -- from the way its world is laid out to the familiar mechanics it transplants from Hidetaka Miyazaki's past work -- the combat has received a massive overhaul to the point that even FromSoft vets will run smack into a wall for the opening hours. Stamina has long been the backbone of Souls combat, but here, it's called "poise" and it only applies to blocking, meaning that both you and your enemies can attack endlessly. So remaining on the defensive until your enemies inevitably need to recharge is no longer an option. They'll wail on you without relent until your guard is broken.

That's where countering comes in. It's a simple act of hitting the block button right when an attack lands, and doing so successfully will drain the enemy's poise rather than yours. Simply standing there, holding the block button and absorbing hits, will eventually break your guard and leave you vulnerable. Instead, the way to win is to redirect that poise damage back at your assailant. Breaking an enemy's guard opens them up to a finisher. It's possible to kill any enemy in the game -- including bosses -- without entirely draining its health meter. While it's a tricky system to learn (as it involves memorizing attack patterns to the point that you can successfully deflect long combos), nailing it is one of the most empowering experiences in any video game I've ever played. It feels absolutely incredible.

I mentioned that FromSoft has been slowly stripping away our options in combat, and it's evidenced in Sekiro's total lack of character builds. Not only are we playing as a named protagonist this time (with spoken dialog and everything!), but we only have one primary weapon and no real leeway over our attributes. Grinding isn't even really a thing anymore, since the means to improve both our attack power and defense come in the form of finite resources. You can slightly customize your play style with a skill tree and a set of limited-use attachments for your robot arm -- oh yeah, your character has a robot arm, by the way -- but for the most part, there's only one way to fight.

Where Sekiro opens up, and where it continues to diverge from its Souls brethren, is in the way players move about levels, and the number of options they have in approaching tough situations. The main character is a shinobi, and as such, you're given the option to jump, hang, wall-run, and otherwise just navigate levels in a more three-dimensional sense than we're used to in Miyazaki's games. There's even an Arkham Asylum-esque grappling hook that you can use to quickly sling yourself from various points around the impressively open levels.

The result is the introduction of stealth into a series that previously barely featured it. Sekiro was originally intended to be a Tenchu game. I've never played one of those, so I can't speak to the similarities, but I'm led to believe that there are clear parallels in the ways you can sidestep traditional combat by one-shotting wandering enemies from the shadows.

It's an important balance for a game as frequently rage-inducing as Sekiro often is, where the big climactic boss encounters funnel you into a very specific method of play. I don't think a game as brutal as Sekiro would survive as a straight-up boss rush, where we spend hours making dents in a seemingly insurmountable foe only to start the process all over again immediately for the next battle, but it's the moments of exploration and wonder that keep the Souls games from becoming exhausting, and Sekiro's stealth-centric main levels compensate for the increased challenge of its title fights.

Speaking of which, how does Sekiro stand up to the other Souls games from a world-building perspective? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag for me, though much of it comes down to preference. FromSoft's usual style of indirect storytelling is in full force, rewarding players who read between the lines and giving important contexts to areas that would be throwaway transitional levels in a game by any other developer.

On the other hand, Sekiro's feudal Japan setting is extremely genre, and it's a genre that I just don't find as inherently fascinating as the entropic fantasy of Dark Souls and the Lovecraftian horror of Bloodborne. Again, it's all just personal taste, but the warring clans and blood of dragons feel like well-tread territory among Japanese games, and so many characters in this game speak in the same solemn grumble that I found myself wishing the subtitles would label the speaker. The opening hours of the game also have the Nioh problem of repetitive, indistinguishable environments (pagodas for days), though Sekiro's second half is a massive improvement in this regard, with the gorgeous vistas of Mount Kongo and the Sunken Valley providing some memorably colorful sights.

But my general indifference to Sekiro's lore is pretty much the only reason I don't quite regard this game with the same awe that I reserve for masterpieces like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, because not only is it at least as tight and satisfying as those games, but with a revised combat system and a Tenchu-esque focus on stealth, it carves out a unique identity for itself even as it shares many recognizable qualities of Miyazaki's previous work. But having said all of that, know that this debate over accessibility hasn't sprung up for no reason. Sekiro wasn't my breaking point, but it left me wondering what will be.