10 Dark Souls Habits You Must UNLEARN To Beat Sekiro

3. Fighting Too Cautiously

In Souls, exercising caution can help both in combat and progressing through levels. The latter is still true in Sekiro, but a cautious approach to combat can often be deadly. In many ways the game rewards a fast, aggressive combat style more than a thoughtful, defensive one. We talked about why deflecting is preferable to blocking, for instance, and too much blocking can be dangerous because it quickly breaks down your own posture as you take hits.

Attacking quickly and repeatedly means chipping away at enemy posture and health, resulting in bigger posture damage as HP declines. Breaks in your attacks let your foe recharge posture, which can feel like a waste if you've used any healing or items to wear them down.

To put it another way: The longer you leave an enemy alive, the more opportunities they have to wound or kill you. Seeing as so much of the combat relies on hair-trigger reflexes, leaving them alive too long can turn into an endurance game, and enemy AI doesn't get tired.

Don't give your enemies a break. Be relentless. Because you're ostensibly relying on dodges and deflections to defend yourself throughout the process, this also means gitting very gud indeed.