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

1. Post-Genichiro, A LOT Of The Focus Is Gone

The ultimate test of everything you've learned across those first few hours, Genichiro is an unrelenting beast of perfectly-timed attacks and dodges, alongside overcoming the reality of wielding lightning to down his third form.

Genichiro is for my money, the game's best-dealt card, and the highpoint of Sekiro combat overall. He takes patience and a pure tactical focus to surmount, and for me, everything thereafter felt all the more aimless.

Where the likes of the Shinobi Hunter, Gyoubu Oniwa and Juzou the Drunkard all had brilliant skill barriers forcing you to address spear counters, mid-air deflects and shield-bearing foes respectively, this idea of a "combat soup" where future foes would serve up all sorts of encounters requiring a mix of techniques to bring down, never comes.

Sekiro portents to drill down on the idea of "skill" being related to motor functions, rather than pre-thought or pattern learning. While the early game has a razor-sharp focus on meaningful unlockables twinned with a learning curve you need to master, this "elongated tutorial" doesn't bear meaningful fruit, and you're arguably left with something that peaks halfway through.