After picking up Nioh again and starting from scratch (I already had 30ish hours in Nioh but never finished it) I have to say that I like Sekiro even less now. Nioh is everything I loved about Souls games and adds to it. The different weapons, the gear, the methodical combat and the level design, everything feels coherent and thought out. Just like a Soulsbourne game. Adding on top of that the loot aspect is fantastic. Sekiro removes most if not all of that. For me personally Sekiro is almost like how The Surge felt. Like a small slice of Soulsbourne that didn't really work out in the end.
Adding to what
kraspkibble
said: I agree, I never felt that excited after beating a boss in Sekiro. The heavy emphasis on parrying with pretty much every boss fight just felt tedious at some point. And I think the stealth and grappling hook bring nothing to the table. I actually think both remove what makes Soulsbourne games so great, carefully placed enemies and well thought out level design.
I agree, although I did get bored of Nioh too at some point, Sekiro is definitely a regression
I was playing Cuphead this weekend and realised that the gameplay there is similar, structurally speaking to Sekiro -- Levels to grind, but mostly it's a boss battle game.
However, Cuphead knows what sort of game it is and how to make this sort of game, fun for the player. Bosses are tough, but load times are quick so you can get back into the fight instantly. The bosses and levels are also visually inventive and give you a reward simply by viewing them. It's very entertaining. The controls are also very responsive.
Sekiro though, isn't interested in response times, and it seems to think it's doing something special with all it'sgameplay mechanics.
It hides a continue under a 'resurrection' mechanic, even though it's blatantly just a standard continue -- and it puts a layer of quirk over almost every mechanic to try and convince you it's doing something new -- But it's not.
These new mechanics barely add anything. Hidden Aid? Who cares about that? Why would you spend time even developing that feature?
Most of the new systems are like this and have very little practical use. Just a lot of clutter which amounts to little.
A lot of these sorts of mechanics were tried and tested back in the 80's then either disregarded or improved upon. Here From Software ignore all the progress that's been made blending and balancing those sorts of gameplay problems and they just leave them hanging, hiding them under a shroud of 'difficulty'. It's pretty lazy. There are so many loose ends here.
The challenge for From (or any decent company) is to update their systems (ie the camera) and make them work for a modern audience, not just leave them rotting in the past.
To their credit though, the game is fun, and if you like bragging about your prowess even more fun as it seems to be designed for leaderboards and to stoke that audience.
If you're into games mainly for the moment to moment gameplay, there's so much that's broken here, that it's distracting. The game is good, but it's not that good. To me it feels like a Demon Souls... Something that if it's refined will be superb.
