Reply With QuoteDepending on the game and on your preferences, of course. I'd personally much rather play at a higher framerate at 1080p, especially with a game like Sekiro.
With a TV and at a set distance from it when playing, you'll quite literally see diminishing returns at higher resolutions anyhow. 1440p at max settings should be easily achievable and give you the best performance/resolution ratio for a 1060, provided you're willing to settle for a ~55 FPS average.
Now you can focus on the game's combat smacking you around instead. Enjoy!
Last edited by Sulphur; 13th Jul 2020 at 09:28.
Depending on the game and on your preferences, of course. I'd personally much rather play at a higher framerate at 1080p, especially with a game like Sekiro.
I played with different resolutions and 1080 is definitely the best choice. Rock solid 60 FPS and honestly doesn't look dramatically different from 4k (presumably because it's being upscaled by the TV).
Anyway, this game is really fucking hard. Three Dark Souls did not prepare me for it although it does kind of remind me of the first time I played a From game, being scared of everything, going as slowly as possible, and frequently running away.
For me, the hardest was trying to not fall back into Dark Souls habits, such as stamina management. You need to be much more aggressive in Sekiro to keep up momentum and get into its unique rhythm and flow of the combat. Watch for when enemies start to deflect (bigger sparks, more clang) and you'll know when you have to switch back to defending (preferably deflecting) yourself. The combat might feel weird and even kind of punishing at the start, especially compared to the Souls games, but it's actually pretty neat once everything starts to click.
I'm thinking of giving it another try myself some time, except with a mod to fix odd translation choices, since the localisation doesn't seem to be all that great. I actually already thought a few things were translated kind of funny/off-kilter (that scene with the butterfly lady, for example, was plain wrong), but I figured most of it was just the normal alterations you get from dubbing to better match the voice acting and audience biases. The game seems to be filled to the brim with all kinds of references to mythology and religion and history and whatnot, so I wouldn't want to miss anything.
Yeah, the combat doesn't feel unfair; I'm just not accustomed to it. When I practice with the undead guy, I do okay, but actual enemies have the trademark From Software random-length-pause-before-attacking, that means you just have to learn the timing through trial and error. But it already seems pretty deep.
I am a little annoyed, however, that a game with such a steep learning curve has already started punishing my death count with this dragon rot thing. I know it's eventually treatable, but it still feels like a bit of an insult added to injury.
Yeah, but it is actually just an insult and not much more. Unlike the penalty in DS2 where it actually adds injury to injury, it doesn't affect gameplay in any significant way whatsoever.
If someone's afflicted with Dragonrot, you won't be able to complete their quest until you heal them (understandably). Not many of the quests give you big rewards, but at least one (Tengu's) shouldn't be skipped. Though Tengu apparently can't catch Dragonrot, so it's not a real problem.
Standard tactic is to go in blocking with a new enemy to learn the moveset before you try attacking.Originally Posted by Aja
honestly, it's not really that difficult after all. It's just that it takes a bit to learn the game, and learn not to play it like a Souls game.
That's true of every From Software game. Difficult, but fair. The problem is, the amount of time the game takes to learn can vary widely from player to player.
Parry/riposte is the only mechanic I dislike in the Soulsborne games, so Sekiro posed a special challenge.
Well, I've been playing for about 12 hours, and I've racked up I'm sure at least 50 deaths, so I'd beg to differ on that. Sekiro basically takes the most difficult part of Dark Souls and makes it its entire focus. As much as I try to pay attention to enemies' moves and react accordingly, a lot of the time it just isn't clear what an enemy is doing or how far or wide their attack will reach. So it takes a ton of trial and error, and maybe once you get past that it's not so bad, but at this point it feels like I'm nowhere near that.
The thing about Dark Souls' parry system for me, at least, was that depending on your stats and equipment you had to parry *before* you got hit, and the window wasn't exactly wide. I hated it.
Sekiro gives you a larger window more often than not and the timing is more intuitive - you parry just as the attack hits, at least at the basic level for your normal enemies. Each boss and miniboss is their own dance, though, yes. Their own rhythm, brutal and demanding in their own way, but always a dance.
Don't get me wrong; I'm loving it. But right now I'm at some guy on a horse, and I suspect he's probably not one of the more difficult bosses, but at the same time I know that I'm going to have to die to him at least four or five more times before I even start to get the rhythm.
Meanwhile I accidentally ate my item that undoes dragonrot because the game was unclear on the multitude of different ways you can use it, and everyone is just getting sicker
Don't worry about the Dragonrot, it's pretty inconsequential and you'll get more of that item later. Stick to getting pasted and learning the rhythm for now. For the dude on the horse, there's a few ways to deal with him, one of them is leaning on a certain prosthetic tool. Just don't be greedy with your attacks, and you'll work it out.
Oh yeah. Horse: done. Did it without prosthetics, just deflecting. Bull: done. He was surprisingly easy for me. Now I’m stuck at Seven Spear, but I’ll get him eventually. I’m slowly getting better at countering.
I got interested in Dark Souls because I ran into these little movies everywhere, where people ran around in a fantasy world in colourfull armor or weird clothes. With small or large swords, with hammers, whips, katanas, axes, all kinds of weapons. Or just using magic. On Youtube, on gaming websites, here, everywhere. They would run through gothic cities, walk inside cathedrals, crawl around in caves, climb on top of mountains. All looking dark, gloomy, dangerous, mysterious. All those screenshots and movies made me really want to play the games. I love Gothic stuff (music, architecture, etc). I was a little afraid I would miss out on something wonderful if I didn't play Dark Souls. Or at least try it. Even though the games were supposed to be hard and unforgiving.
When I look at Sekiro stuff, I only see movies with boss-fights.
The atmosphere that made Dark Souls special is completely intact in Sekiro. It has the same sense of solemn grandeur, only in a different setting. There are ancient, dimly-lit temples perched atop mountains. There are bamboo groves and misty valleys and, of course, spooky underground caves. And like Dark Souls, if you can see somewhere, chances are you'll be able visit it eventually. Sekiro has a wonderful sense of place.
There are a lot of boss fights, yes. There were a lot in Dark Souls, too. The distinction is that Sekiro has no pretensions of being a role-playing game. The combat has a similar weight and tempo to Dark Souls, but unlike that game it's not meant to be played in 10 different ways. It forces you to learn its particular style, and when you start to figure it out, it's really satisfying. At this point I think it's too soon for me to say whether it's harder than Dark Souls. Dark Souls was incredibly hard the first time I played it, but again, once I learned it, it got easier.
So based on what you said above, I think you should play Sekiro. Just be prepared for a challenge.
Good to hear Sekiro is more than just boss-fights. That was the impression I got from reading and watching reviews, reading forums and watching gameplay videos.
I'm still not gonna play it. I'm not interested in challenges.
A free update is in the works:
https://blog.activision.com/sekiro/2...ce-Free-Update
So, a way to re-fight bosses, a couple of boss rush modes, some outfits, and player recordings/messages. The modding scene is way ahead of them on the outfit stuff and the rest sound kind of unnecessary, to be honest, but can't complain about free things I guess.
My Sekiro journey is progressing although it's funny; I seem to be missing a lot of stuff. I felt like I was at three or four dead ends but in at least one case it was because I had previously gone to an area, said, "Nope, not going here," and then forgotten about it for days. So far I've downed Seven Spear, (took me probably 40 tries), Armored Knight (I thought his slow-to-recover posture bar was a giveaway), Lone Shadow Longswordsman (had to watch youtube for the tactics), a centipede, and Jinsuke Saze. I've barely been using my prosthetics at all for the bosses; the game seems to want me to use deflections more, and though it sometimes take a long time to learn the timing (Seven Spear and longswordsman especially), once you figure it out, it's not too bad, but I still wouldn't mind the boss rematch mode so that I can practice a bit more after I win.
One issue for me is that the deflect animation is delayed compared to your actual button press, so while the game does appear to recognize quick taps of the button, it's not always visually clear that you've done it right. I try to watch for sparks, but sometimes I can't tell if I'm doing a proper deflection or not. I beat Jinsuke by deflecting, but it took a while to figure out exactly when to tap deflect after the little flash. Sometimes the exact timing seems arbitrary (or maybe I'm not just not very good).
Well, it took me five fucking hours, but I finally beat the second iteration of Owl (Father). Holy shit, that was one of the hardest if not the hardest thing I've ever done in a game. It felt like it was pretty manageable at first, like I was getting some hits in and not dying instantly, but he has so much posture and health and my weapons did next to nothing, so in the end it took like a nine or 10 minute endurance run to finish him. I'm still shaking. At this point I'm willing to admit that perhaps Sekiro treads the too-difficult line for me, but I'm hoping that's about as tough as it gets. It's disheartening to go on the reddit and see guys who claim to have beat him on their second or third tries, not to mention the YouTubers who do it without getting hit.
The physiological effects of getting through a DS boss fight are kind of interesting aren't they. While I've never measured my heart rate at those times, it's certainly gets very high, and not too dissimilar to a good high intensity workout. I can recall times where I've struggled to sleep hours later. It's one of the reasons why I still haven't persevered beyond the first boss fight in Sekiro, as I rarely have much free time in the loungeroom on the weekends, and need my sleep during the week.
Yeah, I think at least in the fight I described above, it was a bit too much. I didn't exactly *want* to spend that much time on it, but once you're a couple hours in, it feels like even more of a waste to quit. The sense of excitement and relief after finally getting it, though, is pretty great. For all its difficulty Sekiro is a mostly fair game, and it's encouraging to feel yourself getting better as you play. I think in the future, though, if I get stuck like that, I'll take a day off and come back fresh. It's the kind of thing where sleeping on it and forming new neural pathways might be faster than just going for hours on end.
Well, this is pretty much just my echo chamber now, but I would like it on the record that I finished the game after about 60 hours. The last boss took me maybe four of those, which wasn't too bad considering some of the others, and it was a pretty fun fight anyway. By the end of the game I felt like I was starting to actually get good at swordfighting (I know, right?), so I'm probably going to do a New Game Plus and maybe another afterward.
Overall I loved it. I'd say that it's From Software's most focused game, and when you finally start to get the feel of the combat (which admittedly takes forever), it's more satisfying than Souls. The world is perhaps not quite as compelling to explore, but the level design makes up for it, with practically no bullshit sections (only one tiny poison swamp!) and never getting repetitive or tedious. The bosses rank as some of From's most polished and elegant (and fun) though they maybe lack the sublime horror of Souls' best.
Storywise I was confused as usual. I watched some lore videos and was surprised at how much depth and detail they put in, but most of it wasn't very apparent without someone pointing it out, which makes me think that From is maybe better at worldbuilding than they are storytelling. And some of the sidequests I would never have figured out without the wiki or maybe after five or six playthroughs, so that's a strike against. But consulting the wiki is tradition with these games, so I didn't mind too much. I just wish they'd make it a bit easier to discover some of it on your own.
So yeah, this an absolute classic, certainly the best game I played of 2019 and probably the few years prior, too.
