7 Things Nobody Wants To Admit About Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

6. Combat Is Deceptively Simple And Repetitive

Look, I've died a good 20 times to almost each boss and even a handful of key foot soldier enemies too, but Sekiro's new focus on dodging and parrying drastically reduces your options overall, when in combat.

I'll get to how the Skill Tree peters out in usefulness once you're past the mid-point, but overall, the main thing to overcome in Sekiro is when to tap L1/LB. Once you're pretty reflexive at matching an incoming blow with that button, that's pretty much it. Your learning is complete.

Yes, there's "which of the three things do I need to do if the red symbol appears", but again, you're matching one of three outputs with one of three inputs. Although it does mean that Sekiro's combat is far more intense and relentless than anything we've seen before, I can't help but compare it directly to rock, paper, scissors.

Ultimately, once you've conquered your fear of intimidating boss designs through sheer size or visual effects, this "learn the animations to a T", trial and error approach makes the vast majority of encounters feel too similar, with minimal room for improvisation on your part.

Where past FromSoft titles made you consider different weapons, builds or items, here you're boxed into a specific way to play over time, and it's almost Cuphead-like in terms of boss fights turning into "when X happens, do Y" until you win.