10 Video Game Levels That Gave You Anxiety
5. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - The Four-Stage Final Boss
"Four stages, FromSoftware?! That's insane!"
It's not uncommon in a FromSoftware game (Dark Souls, Bloodborne etc) to pull a second-stage boss fight from under our noses. The developer is notorious for it, sometimes duping gamers with a "too easy" boss, before dropping the real boss fight on them. Elden Ring's Rennala fight, for example.
Yet 2019's Sekiro takes the cake and throws convention to the wind. Having set up a final battle with the persistent Genichiro, that single life bar is fooling no one. Veterans know to expect the rug pull.
But when the resurrected Isshin comes out (we won't spoil how), players were shocked when the in-his-prime Sword Saint has not one, not two, but three life bars/phases to get through.
Combine that with the first Genichiro battle, which can have you burn through a few healing gourds if you're not careful, and that's a whopping four-stage boss fight on your hands.
Isshin holds nothing back, testing players in what this writer calls one of the best boss/sword fights ever in gaming. But if players die, and they will [repeatedly], it can cause some nerve-shredding, panic-inducing slip ups in the next attempt(s).