I recently finished Sekiro Shadow Die Twice and currently re-playing it already. For those who aren’t familiar with the game, Sekiro is a action ninja game from FromSoftware who’s notoriously known for Dark Souls and Bloodborne: the games so hard but satisfying they create their own sub-genre: Souls-like / Borne-like. 

Sekiro is practically Dark Souls but with Shinobi settings.

That being said, what i really like about it: It is damn hard but completing it is completely satisfying. Boss / mini-boss could take hours and countless try to be beaten. You can’t simply run and smashing your button hoping that it’ll work. It feels like classic One Piece fight: Luffy can’t simply beat the arc’s final boss. It needs to figure out what actually the opponent skills are, how those skills are being used, and how to properly fight it. In practice, you’ll get your ass beaten.. a lot. But aftera while you get sense of what the opponent is doing, then formulating a hypothesis on how to beat them, giving those hypothesis a try, get beaten again, formulating different hypothesis, trying it again, sometimes give up and look online on how other people can beat it flawlessly, giving it a try again, on and on until your healthbar is one attack away from yet another failure but manage to beat it.

It is tormentingly satisfying. Compared to other FromSoftware games, what’s fun about Sekiro is how three dimensional and perceivedly fast it is. It is not left-right-dodge-parry-drain the enemy’s health bar: it is left-right-jump-dodge-parry-mikiri-counter-drain the enemy’s posture OR health bar. It is more versatile.

I can’t help but thinking of two things:

1. How relatable its process to real life. If only we can approach actual problem with the same interest and effort: giving it a try, fail, try again, fail, rinse and repeat until succeeded. 
2. How much fun it’ll be if Sekiro mechanic is used for fighting video game: three dimensional, multiple prosthetic weapon with limited number of usage, health bar and posture, etc. It sounds like a super fun.

If you like those kind of challenge, go play sekiro.

NOTE:

• The first game completion where you get beaten and scared feels like you are mere mortal trying to survive the harsh world the character is living in. The second and NG+ run where you inherit stats and prosthetic arms from the previous run feel like you’re flying invicible shinobi.