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« Reply #1545 on: 20 April, 2019, 10:03:13 pm »

Credits rolled.

It's a credit to this game that I managed to beat the final boss on my first try. He's almost overwhelming, but every lesson I had learned up to that point was in that fight. The final prayer bead I got even reminded me the deflect timing for the Ashina Cross. And you get a refresher with the second Seven Spears guy for that phase of the fight. So the only real new thing he shows you is his shockwave attack, but I also learned at some point which attacks to deflect and which attacks to dodge past.

So that's how Saint Isshin met his end.

I went with the purification ending because that felt like what I had been building toward my whole run. I definitely wanted Kuro to live and for him to be totally normal. I wasn't sure what state the whole "returning dragon's heritage" thing would leave him in, but that's probably the ending I'll do next. I don't know if there's another ending beyond those two and the basic option that kills the boy. Might look into it to see if there is.

I'm also not clear on if I can just go do the final boss fight again. I chose not to do NG+ yet, and the secret passage is still open. But I'll probably just play through the whole thing again rather than farm endings like that. It doesn't feel right to do so.

What I want to do instead is use the endgame to farm skill points and get the Shadow Fall combat art. I've already upgraded every prosthetic aside from two of the Lazulite ones (I looked it up and you only get enough Lapis for two of those per run).

Gonna let everything breathe for a bit before a second run either way. Come up with some final thoughts and such.

I'm also, barring any objections, probably going to go through and un-small text the past several pages, just for posterity. Let me know if anyone would prefer I not do that.
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« Reply #1546 on: 22 April, 2019, 08:34:57 am »

Even better that I decided to wait on my next playthrough. They're releasing a balance patch tomorrow that adjusts some combat arts and reduces spirit emblem costs for a bunch of stuff.

https://www.sekiro.jp/news_detail_190422_01.html
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« Reply #1547 on: 24 April, 2019, 10:41:04 am »

Ok, Sekiro final thoughts. Long read.

I've been feeling like this is probably my favorite first playthrough of a From game, and I've been thinking about why that is. I would say I had a similar experience with Dark Souls III where I moved through the game relatively unabated. By the time I played DSIII, I think I understood what was expected of me based on playing Demon's, DSI, and Bloodborne. Those games taught me how to approach gauntlets of enemies and challenging boss fights, where every death is a lesson and, on a smaller scale, so is every hit you take. Playing through DSII and then replaying Bloodborne and DSIII helped me refine all of that and discover a play style that's a lot more like dancing, going toe to toe with enemies of any size.

Sekiro is that style of play, but on a level that is even more engrossing to me. I already said I think it might be the best pure swordfighting game I've played so far. There's so much give and take in every battle, and there is a way to master the combat such that whether you're attacking or defending, you're always winning. Where the Souls games tend to be about avoiding an enemy until they do certain moves that you can punish, Sekiro lets you turn every action the enemy takes into an opportunity. Some attacks present a better opportunity than others, and you can pick and choose based on what you're comfortable confronting, but each enemy gives you the potential to download and dominate them. It's a feeling I think I'll miss the next time I revisit one of the previous games.

Clearly Dark Souls gives you greater variety of weapons and movesets, and that altars the design of the game on a fundamental level, but it's hard for me to imagine them not taking some of the ways that Sekiro has evolved combat forward. Even a game with a more limited weapon set like Bloodborne, if it had the interplay of Sekiro, would be exciting.

Beyond combat, it feels like From has leveled up their other disciplines as well. The movement tech allows them to do really cool stuff with level design, and the environments in this game all feel grounded in the setting but suitably unique. This game also reuses areas really well, which is sort of backtracking done right. They get the most out of their assets without making the game feel padded. Stealth also makes traversal faster and eases the pain of runbacks that would be annoying in a Souls game (though there are plenty of cases where the devs just give you a checkpoint right in front of a boss, which is also fine).

Playing a named character that speaks made me feel closer to the story, but it still felt like there was plenty of the more traditional lore and world building of a From game. The fact that enemies were often other humans that could be overheard and that spoke to you contributes a lot to this.

Anything else? The music is pretty great, both in boss fights but also environmental music. That's something From hasn't done a lot of before. It's a byproduct of the stealth design where you need something to escalate the tension when you're in and out of stealth, and it works really well. They have unique music for each area, which helps color the different enemies and the types of encounters you have (I hate Mibu Village for the battle music even if the enemies are almost completely unthreatening).

I'd say my only major issue with the game is the way prosthetics work. They can be really cool, and one article I read talked about how there's almost this Mega Man lock and key vibe where if you find the right prosthetic for a boss or enemy, suddenly it just breaks that encounter in your favor. I think the firecracker might have been too universal in this regard, but the way Sabimaru cuts through enemies in a later area of the game, or the various applications of the umbrella shield are all pretty cool. I liked the Spear a lot early on but didn't feel like it had enough applications. Shurikens are another one that's pretty universally satisfying. Flame cannon is awesome but impractical. And I think the whistle is pretty niche but you can definitely use it in more cases than you might think.

What holds all of this back is the spirit emblem system, which I don't really understand. On one hand, if you don't have trouble getting through an area and you're just killing things, you'll wind up with plenty of these in stock. There's the potential to earn back as many emblems as you use while moving through regular enemies.

But with bosses and minibosses, you might blow through all your emblems and still have more than half a fight ahead of you. I'm not sure I even realized this was happening, but it led me to not invest a lot of spirit emblems into boss encounters. Part of that had to do with how I would learn a fight, where I go in and don't do anything for the first run or so, just observing attack patterns and learning deflect timings instead. But I think I also didn't like the idea of using prosthetics to get part way through a fight only to have to finish it without them. And I also never wanted to run out. As a result, I probably underused a lot of tools. When I beat the game, I still had more than 400 emblems in storage.

I've heard about people who run out of emblems and then can't buy more because they're too expensive or they've also died enough to lose all their gold. I wind up saying to these people "ok well technically, you don't need to use prosthetics to win that fight," but it makes me wonder if it would just work better if you just respawn with full emblems? That would also make the emblem capacity upgrades more tempting (I only ever took one of those and then got another from beating a miniboss). And it would still work where you can regain emblems between idols from killing enemies. And you would never worry about burning your whole stock on one boss and having to go grind to get more.

I can't say whether that's the main reason I'm seeing a lot of people bounce off of the game, but a not insignificant number of my friends have now. I don't know whether it's the emblem thing or if they aren't letting go of certain tendencies from playing other From games or if there's something else that doesn't jive as well. Maybe there's some other underlying thing to address, though. For my part, I consider this a special game, and I can only hope others come around on it.
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« Reply #1548 on: 25 April, 2019, 01:24:11 pm »

This is my Sekiro boss list, based on one playthrough. There will be two bosses missing (for now) because I am not a monster (for now).

1. Owl (Father)
2. Isshin, the Sword Saint
3. Great Shinobi Owl
4. Genichiro Ashina
5. Guardian Ape
6. Headless Ape
7. Divine Dragon
8. Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa
9. Lady Butterfly
10. Demon of Hatred
11. Genichiro, Way of Tomoe
12. Corrupted Monk
13. Folding Screen Monkeys

Some of these are pretty close, mind you.

I might do minibosses at some point. There are a lot of repeats there that would make that list harder, even though no two fights are exactly the same.
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« Reply #1549 on: 30 May, 2019, 11:58:26 am »

I'm back from a vacation in which I attended a furry convention and, whilst there, won a "For Fun" (FFA items on) Smash tournament. AMA.

New season of Destiny stuff starts next week, which is timely. I still need to beat FFIX at some point. I should just take a weekend and do that. I want to play Night in the Woods finally. Sekiro NG+ is still a thing.

Oh and I played some more Zelda while I was away. Did Eventide Isle and finished the Tarrey Town quest. I'm at the point where I kinda just need to explore the big mountain in the northeast, but I think I've paused looking over Castle Town for now. I suspect the Hylian Shield might be there, and I want it.

death stranding looks hilarious btw
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« Reply #1550 on: 31 May, 2019, 11:37:22 am »

I'm still convinced that Death Stranding will be a gigantic dumpster fire that will make for some quality youtuber playthroughs.
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« Reply #1551 on: 31 May, 2019, 03:29:25 pm »

i want to take a vacation i'm jealous

What was the final for the tournament? Where did you go?
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« Reply #1552 on: 31 May, 2019, 04:02:19 pm »

also missed you booboo
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« Reply #1553 on: 01 June, 2019, 12:38:14 am »

i want to take a vacation i'm jealous

What was the final for the tournament? Where did you go?
So the tournament setup was that everyone starts 5 lives. You play a game that's all items on, random stage, 2 stocks, 5 minutes. If you win the game, you lose 0 lives. If you come in second, you lose one life. Third loses two lives, fourth loses three lives (so you can't be eliminated after a single game). If you lose all your lives, you're eliminated from the tournament, otherwise you keep playing. The guy running it had written a program that tracks all this stuff. It's pretty neat, though he said he wants to make some improvements to it. I think about 25-30 people entered.

For the finals, they upped the ante to 3 stocks, 7 minutes, and they took us to Mementos (with "Rivers in the Desert" playing). I was going against a Ganon, a Plant, and a Lucas. The Ganon was whatever. I'd lost a previous game to the guy playing Plant in sudden death on Palutena's Temple of all places. And I hadn't played the Lucas but I was kinda wary of him given that Lucas can do some whack stuff. And yet when I sat down the guy playing Lucas said he'd been watching me play and that I was scary. I tried to tell him he shouldn't be because all I had done in every game was run around shooting missiles, grabbing ATs/Pokemon, and stealing Smash Balls. I also got embiggened twice by lightning bolts, which seems extremely lucky.

Anyway it came down to me and him. There's a video of me completely failing to take his last stock cleanly. A Black Knight AT got the killing blow instead.

So yeah. I think it's a funny story, and it made me wish I could play more.

This was in the UK, by the way. I've got a decent number of friends over there.

also missed you booboo
<3
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« Reply #1554 on: 01 June, 2019, 12:39:45 am »

Also I picked up Outer Wilds and played some of it tonight and so far it seems extremely my shit
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« Reply #1555 on: 03 June, 2019, 09:25:27 am »

Also I picked up Outer Wilds and played some of it tonight and so far it seems extremely my shit
Spent a lot of time playing this game this weekend. It's sort of like Majora's Mask meets space archeology. The star system exists on this 22-minute time loop, and you have that amount of time to blast off from your homeworld and go explore the other astronomical objects in orbit around the sun. At the end of the cycle, you wake up and start again.

The cycle can end prior to that 22-minute reset point, also. It's pretty easy to die out in space.

So far, I have died by:
- Asphyxiation
- Falling
- Crushed by sand
- Crashed my ship into the sun (Don't trust autopilot)
- Flew my ship too close to the sun and couldn't escape its gravity well)
- Crashed my ship into a volcanic moon (Seriously, don't trust autopilot)
- Landed on said volcanic moon and then upended my ship into the lava whilst attempting to leave
- Stranded myself on a comet and froze to death whilst interacting with Ghost Matter
- Stranded myself in an alien shuttle and drifted out past the heliopause

Much of the exploration is centered on finding ruins of this precursor civilization. There's a measured sadness to finding new sites and translating the runes in each one. They have this Prothean vibe where they're trying to come to grips with the hostile ecology of each planet, as well as their underlying existential crisis.

For every new piece of information you uncover, your ships log is updated, and it winds up creating this really satisfying web of clues and mysteries. I wake up at the start of each loop and have to decide which one to try and dig deeper into.

So far I've pretty thoroughly explored three planets, which leaves me with three more, not counting smaller bodies within the system. I think tonight I'll go to one of the ones I haven't been to yet and see if I can fill in more of the bigger picture.
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« Reply #1556 on: 03 June, 2019, 11:23:04 am »

It's sort of like Majora's Mask meets space archeology.

hey thats the best sell of a video game ive ever heard
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« Reply #1557 on: 03 June, 2019, 11:57:43 am »

it is isn't it

Though I should say the verbs are different. There's no combat. You're spacewalking, platforming, flying your ship, and otherwise just learning how to traverse the system and its planets. You're equipped with a telescopic radio that can pick up various signals, a scout launcher that lets you throw cameras into caves and over the horizon, and a translator for deciphering text left behind by the precursors.
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« Reply #1558 on: 06 June, 2019, 11:01:26 pm »

destiny hype
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« Reply #1559 on: 10 June, 2019, 08:58:59 am »

So between Destiny cross-save, Doom Eternal, and Cyberpunk, it's time for me to start thinking seriously about PC upgrades. I feel like if I target that last one, I should end up with something suitably beefy for the foreseeable future.

Mellow start to E3 otherwise. Deathloop looks neat, and I'm definitely excited to hear more about Elden Ring in the future. There was an interview with Miyazaki that went up after the reveal that ticks all the right boxes.

Not expecting a ton from Ubisoft. Interested to see what the Avengers game looks like at Square. And then Nintendo might have some fun stuff. Hopefully the next Smash character.
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