Finally finished my run through Sekiro. It was a blast overall, but hard as nails for most of it.
It's my second FromSoft game that I've managed to finish, the other being Bloodborne. And both are fantastic, but for slightly different reasons. But as far as Sekiro is concerned:
+ a very nice feudal Japan setting mixed with Japan-inspired fantasy mythology
+ the game has a very nice aesthetic, and while not the most high-end graphical game, the art is just gorgeous. Most areas are beautiful to look at. Characters are also very nicely designed and animated. It all builds to very a cohesive experience.
+ the exploration and level design is again great, as was expected from FromSoft, but it does fall below Bloodborne. I think the absurdist and nightmarish setting also gave them a lot more freedom with Blooborne, than Sekiro. But it's still great to explore. One thing where it excels over Bloodborne is in the verticality of the world and the traversal of the areas. The addition of the grapple-hook is fantastic for traversal, and also has some nice places where it's useful in combat
+ speaking about combat, Sekiro might have the most solid, tightly designed and fantastic combat system in any game. It's brutal, it's visceral. It sounds amazing. It's also hard as hell to get right. And you need to love the combat system in order to have the patience of repeating fights over and over until you get them right, mostly the timings. For me at least.
+ difficulty is up there with other FromSoft games, but whereas in other games you could theoretically farm for player power, and ease the difficulty a little, in Sekiro that is not the case. The amount of damage you deal and can sustain is very tightly controlled by the game designers. So each encounter has a very intentional difficulty level. And it's brutal sometimes. Especially if you don't take the time to learn the mechanics and practice, practice, practice them. After a certain point in the game, you do unlock a way to farm for damage, but that's very late in the game. And you can only do it for damage. Not for how resistant your character is to damage.
+ the music was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. Plus, there's one particular track that i swear is identical to one in the Witcher 3. Otherwise, the music is decent. But personally, I almost never heard it due to the intensity of the fights you engage in.
+ story is also fairly ok, but again, nothing to write home about. Which is completely different to how I felt about the story in Bloodborne. Weird that they also went with a much more straightforward and less obtuse method of telling the story. Most of it is just told to you, whereas in other FromSoft games you have to actively seek it out
- the difficulty is both a plus and a minus. I just wanted to mention it again, since it will be a turnoff for some people. It's a plus in that "nothing earned easily is truly appreciated". This game, even more so than with Bloodborne, had me almost having a nervous breakdown in some of the fights. But it was mostly my fault, at least 95% of the time. But you can only take so much punishment, and come back for more. At one moment or another you do snap. But I've had an experience with this game that I've not had with any other. The game itself personified a great adversary which you love, hate but ultimately respect for what it asks of you in order to share in its victory. But even so, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to do another playthrough. Just the thought of some of the enemies has me going "nope. not on your life". We'll see.
- oh, forgot to mention I did use a guide throughout my playthrough. Generally I explored as much as I could, knocked my head against the wall as much as I had patience for, on my own. And then I would resort to a guide to see what I missed while exploring but especially for fights, what ways had the community found in beating these tough adversaries. But even with this information, almost none of the fights were made significantly easier. Because the execution itself is pretty much 80% of the fight. You watch a guide do a fight and it almost never goes that way for you. Plus it's highly discouraging seeing someone else pretty much defeat enemies seemingly without breaking a sweat, and then you come in and go 20+ tries and still haven't got it. The way I see it is with the guide I only skipped the part where you try random things, and find out what works. But sometimes even that didn't help, since, for ex, there were situations where I would not manage my resources properly to be able to pull off what the guide instructed you to. It's one thing to watch a guide in video form, and a whole other thing while you're there in the fight. Panicking all over. Feeling like your character is moving through mud, whereas the guide seems to just flash around, doing perfect deflects, using the various prosthetics at the right time.
As a conclusion, I think Sekiro is a fantastic game, with great exploration and level design, likely the best combat system I've ever seen. But with a level of punishment that many will not accept. But it's something you should at least try. If you do manage to pull it through, you'll feel like a god. Unless you lose your sanity.