- Tested on PC with a 4K RTX 4070 TI on video projector.
- Game purchased on Steam on a winter night.
- Played 79 hours with the real ending to finish the main adventure and explore from bottom to bottom the universe. He's my first soul.
- I collected 8/10 strings of rosaries and eliminated all the mini-boss met except a Shichimen warrior, the demon of hatred and some Headless for lack of divine confetti!
- Home gameplay captures for videos.
- I propose a very personal analysis of Sekiro through his Buddhist heritage, comparisons to the key.
It is in the cold North American steppes that it is said that an old parchment would contain the traces of a list not like the others: a selection of games to make before making the soul. Timeless and indelible works that no technological prowess can tarnish any years as the old Canadian sage Ummugumma explains. In a fast-paced world, the list reminds us of our duty as a player. On a beautiful winter morning, the respondent's list to undertake a trip unless it is a journey. A beautiful winter morning, I became shinobi at the Sengoku era.
You who enter here, abandon all hope
My report to From Software is as ambiguous as the cryptic lore of their productions. I remember being subjugated by the first trailers of Dark Souls (2011) to the E3. I've long dreamed of playing Bloodborne (2015) which was religiously waiting for a PC release to savor its mi Victorian mi fantastic universe in all senses of the term. And then nothing... Despite the years, From Software remained deaf to the petitions of his fans and some of whom had the misfortune of having only one Xbox when this excluded came to abound Sony's catalog.
When Sekiro was announced, I still thought that the game was addressed directly to me with those swords that constantly clash. Elden Ring (2022) would wait until I first explore the labyrinthic corridors of the soul to attack the Open World formula. Without being able to explain, I had never played a game stamped From Software before. Armored Core VI : Fires of Rubicon (read our critical) and its mechas propelled in a frenetic deluge. A breach had opened somewhere in my unconscious and I had to take the time to look back.
Released in 2019, Sekiro was a step on the side or rather a roll of his genius creator Hidetaka Miyazaki to move away from the original soul formula, more esquive-oriented, in order to adopt a more frontal approach. In Sekiro, finished the gallipettes to avoid a heavy blow ; Here the best defense is the attack. As in all soul, the opponents have a gauge of resistance that will have to be broken to eliminate them at once rather than emptying their life bar with little fire and at the price of a much longer and therefore more painful fight. The same is true of our shinobi, who will have to avoid, or at best, the attacks of his opponents to find the way to success. And on this point, the game is very rigorous. There's no way to keep the trigger down to cover the entire combo. In order not to expose and preserve our resistance gauge, it is necessary to aim for the perfect timing and try to deviate every shot to the nearest millisecond!
Mikiri, kiri!
The game also offers a double parade mechanics. The first one, called against Mikiri, consists of a staggering of the opponent by pressing the round button pile at the same time as the blade melts on us. The second one aims this time to jump on the opponent's head to avoid a scan. And as From Software wants to hurt the player, these two powerful shots loaded by our enemies are indicated by a kanji of the same color. It will therefore be necessary to exercise sharp reflexes and be able to discern the wide range of attacks from our opponents to anticipate and punish their initiatives. Unlike games like Batman Arkham Knight and its aftermath, Sekiro is diametrically opposed to the permissiveness of the Rocksteady trilogy which printed its mark to a whole part of the industry.
Do not imagine yourself sliding towards your enemies as if by magic simply pressing the dedicated key. It is necessary to exercise rigour, positioning and not to engage any other inappropriate movement to succeed in the perilous but duly rewarded manoeuvre. The game borrows much from martial arts where distance from the opponent determines the strategies and counter-strategies to adopt. Unable to cancel an action initiated as is often the case in beat them all and it was necessary to meticulously deconstruct everything that I had learned so far. You might as well say that to master these two aspects of gameplay perfectly, you will have to wipe out many setbacks throughout the game, until the final boss in four phases without checkspoints of course.
Cruel, the game is certainly. In the beginning, amputated with his left arm our character is extremely weak and we quickly encounter much more powerful enemies who can eliminate us in a few well-positioned attacks. Just as the game is. If we take back the basics of the gamedesign, we can say that there are two approaches. The first is to have an evolutionary character who gains in aptitude during the game by assigning him new powers to the image of Metroid for example; the second aims instead to reduce to the maximum alteration of the fundamental gameplay to leave the experience blank from beginning to end as in the excellent Furi For example.
Rather, this second game ethic is chosen by Sekiro. All the gameplay bases mentioned above are given at the beginning; it is up to us to seize them to overcome the challenges ahead. Of course we can dislodge prosthetics that come to replace our arm. Among other things, one can benefit from a spear, an axe or even from firecrackers that come to stun the enemy. But each use costs emblems that are collected by eliminating opponents. Moreover, it is not easy to punish a boss with a well-positioned split. These valuable assets reassure the player even if they are theirs. The best weapon is our ability to read the game. In the long run, faced with the most formidable enemies, we are most often short of emblems and alone against ourselves.
Stockholm syndrome
Just but cruel, because every time we die we lose some of our money, our emblems and even some of the acquired points of experience that unlock passive or active skills in the skill tree of the game. Only collected objects are kept. Explore is a permanent, exhausting but rewarding risk taking when you find an idol of the sculptor to rest. It is also here that we can spend our skill points, buy emblems, save and teleport on already unlocked idols. From Software does everything to push you to understand a game designed to be assimilated by failure. When it blocks, you lurk, you try and find a way out, if not an escape. Nor is it possible to really farm because to gain in vitality, posture and power of attack, the only way is to defeat the (mini) bosses of the game. If the player fails, it is up to him to question himself.
Sometimes we even develop capilotracted strategies to address the most perilous situations like here against these two powerful samurai at the end of the game. After being stealthily snuffed behind them with a Gachiin sugar intended for this purpose, I used my ability as a puppeteer to make them fight one another. A feat that cost me precious emblems that I rebuilt against my blood through the use of a ceremony tanto, torn from a powerful Shichimen warrior shot down in a distant cave. Don't be mistaken, some basic enemies are no less dangerous than bosses when they are many, because they don't show any courtesy to attack you simultaneously and without any frame of invincibility offered to the unfortunate victim. The gameplay is, you will understand, to the antipodes of a Killers Creed. And this kind of strategy is the result of fierce peregrinations and struggles to feint the enemy.
From dragon tears to spiritual awakening
In Sekiro, we must also admit his weakness and the flight is, especially at the beginning. It's literally a question of survival. Developers demonstrate unparalleled intelligence when it comes to level design. Every effort is made to push the player into his gaps. The most reckless like me will not hesitate to travel three quarters of the map from the beginning, even if they break their teeth. When a powerful samurai galvanizes his five archbusters from the top of the main stairway leading to the Ashina Castle, the player immediately knows that a frontal approach will be very punitive at this stage of the game. We try to jump on the roofs using our lasso to sneak behind him. But as soon as we reach the heights, we get hunted by some kind of acrobat scarecrows that throw us shurikens and hunt us without respite. Immediately the player integrates that it may not be designed for such a brutal approach.
So we flee, like a rain, to throw our lasso from one pagoda to another until we find a quieter place to face these enemies as lively as they are agile. A false step and it falls into the bottoms of Ashina where weaker but more numerous bandits will come to finish the wounded beast. At the cost of many attempts, we access the main roof where Genishiro, second boss of the game (and gap of difficulty) comes to test our resistance. This sequence summarized in just a few lines has taken hours of experimentation, as many debandades and tactical withdrawals to explore other corners of the kingdom before returning more confident of my strengths and weaknesses.
At this moment, the game speaks to the player in silence. From Software is for us and the gamedesign reaches the grace of any developer: know how to reveal oneself without tutorials, nor invasive replicas that one conspired in the world God Of War Ragnarök (Please die Atreus!) or in Ubisoft products. Here it's up to the player to decrypt Sekiro and not the other way around. Almost ascetic discipline is the only possible path to victory.
A Level Design in Termitière
The strength of SekiroIt's also its sinuous level of design. We're progressing like a termite tree. As one digs a passage between enemy lines, one discovers that this gallery leads to another point of the map that one thought of places from here. This ability to surprise the player who discovers a cornice or branch to reach to go into a whole other universe is dazzling. In SekiroDon't hesitate to move the camera in every corner. Sekiro is a game that asks us to raise our head. A real demonstration of strength proving that a title does not need to be an open world to have a successful level of design, Sekiro transcends its progression by making us forget its corridors. By the mechanics of the lasso, unlike the soul, the game gains in verticality.
Sekiro also asks to accept failure. He also gives us the opportunity of a second chance after death by using the blood of the heir of the dragon, a little immortal boy to whom he has borne allegiance. Several ends are also possible according to our fidelity to the young master solved. But as a great power involves great responsibilities, overuse will cause an epidemic of plague that will reduce our chances of receiving divine help, a rare and light statistical boost that gives confidence when everything seems lost. In addition, the universe's NPCs will be contaminated and may even die. A well-rounded mechanics that frustrate as much as it gives hope to every trip. Generally speaking, a second hesitation in the middle of the game and this is the game over insured. The offensive is risky but always rewarded. Winning one of the phases of a boss allows to reconstitute the blood of the dragon and enjoy again a kind of one more life if one has already lost a first time.
We sometimes push some well-placed swears, especially at the beginning of the game, after having been thrown into the vacuum countless times by this cursed loose ogre that tests the player's resilience. This passage is the occasion of a first sorting between the most patient and the others. The only real downside of From Software's game and, it is said, studio's signature: its crazy camera and its lock system sometimes failing and devilishly irritating. By pressing the right stick, you lock an opponent but in small environments, it's not uncommon for us to lose the visibility of our character, or even that the camera swings behind the wall that makes us at the mercy of the first bandit. It is certainly the big black spot of the game even though it is also part of the experience. In SekiroEverything is hostile, even the environment. In a hollow, From Software seems to tell us that if we ended up vulnerable, pushed against a wall without visibility, it was that we committed an odd thing somewhere. Cruel but fair.
Touching Ganesh's Power
Known for its cryptic environmental narrative, From Software proves here again its supremacy which makes the studio a real craftsman, far from the canons of an industry that still seeks to imitate the master without ever equalizing. The references to Buddhism are read in the decorations and among the countless statues that recall the sculptor's. Tori Busshi ( « on Buddhist image maker » which will give birth to the Tori style of the beginning of the VIIe century. Isn't that the figure of the mysterious? sculptor of the ruined temple Who collected and treated us at the beginning of our adventure?
In the Senpo temple, the player discovers immortal monks that one can only finish much later in the game after having earned the blade of death. This is a clear echo to the Sokushinbutsu A practice of monks observing an asceticism so extreme that it would allow their bodies to reconnect with immortality without experiencing putrefaction. This mummification the living of the practitioner becomes proof of his faith and the strength of his practice, the monk then considered to have become « Buddha in this body ». According to beliefs, the process of mummification of Sokushinbutsu would begin during the monk's life and not after his death, as it is most often customary in other cultures, in the case of Egyptian mummies or that of the deceased of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo.
Like those monks who prepared their bodies for years with a strict diet of up to drinking vomit infusions to evacuate water from the body and make it imputrescible, the player must purge himself from everything he learned before Sekiro. If this comparative image I have made does not convince you, go take a look at the Senpo temple of Sekiro and you will see for yourself that these monks gnawed by the quest for immortality vomit their bile on the ground.
As required by this ritual of Sokushinbutsu banned in Japan since the end of the XIXe century, the most fanatics entered living position of the lotus in a cavity just large enough to accommodate the devotee. Every day they had to make a bell tumble and when this little daily air stopped, it was known that life had finally left its carnal envelope and the grave was finally sealed. Now, a bell also exists at the Senpo Temple and making it ring releases a demonic spirit which makes the game even more difficult. Should we see a wink to the followers of the Sokushinbutsu ? Like these monks, the player came freely to dig his own grave facing Sekiro. The quest for immortality has a price.
Veni vidi vici
What better way than Ganesh to sync this initiatory journey? The venerated divinity symbolizes the union between macrocosm and microcosm, divine and human. We find this symbol with the figure of the elephant Ganesh, which refers to the largest terrestrial animal and its Vâhana (vehicle), the rat Mûshika, fragile mammal. Needless to say who the player or the game is the small rodent at the start. Caution symbol, Ganesh, « who removes obstacles », cannot penetrate everywhere despite its elephantic force, while Mûshika is able to sneak into the slightest interstices and overcome the most twisted traps. The latter is sometimes represented with a flowing knot that allows it to capture the Error. Error that will have to be analyzed under all the seams in Sekiro where learning is permanent.
When you terrace some mini-boss, you win a prayer necklace composed of beads of rosary. Again, this reminds the one worn by Ganesh around his neck. The more we harvest these necklaces, the closer we get to the divinity guesses the player. Half-man, half-beast, Ganesh's body represents man while the elephant's head is divine. It is said that it is a man but with the spirit gained by the cosmos. It is the supremacy of the head over the body, of the thought on the force to overcome obstacles and ignorance to understand the nature of the universe. This is again the key to the journey undertaken by the « wolf with one arm » Sekiro. Is there better way to represent the game design of Sekiro And the player's path?
Failed to fail, one ends up accepting his condition, and far from the anger of the first hours, I ended up approaching the final boss in complete tranquillity analyzing each of my mistakes to turn them into success. No more a bird's word or annoyments; methodically, for hours, I tried to get the victory out. This winter, when I was 33 years old, I rose so many times after death that I broke immortality. A paradox that I cannot explain further for those who have not had the privilege of touching grace. The old wise Ummagumma said « that after Sekiro, there is a vacuum », others will answer him that after Sekiro there is fullness.
Very interesting the part about Buddhism!
Come on, Dark Souls now, then System Shock Remake! :-p
Why does your article make me want to revive Nioh?
Crazy enough that you managed to take this Sekiro out while it's your first Souls. And rather inspiring, moreover, for players who, like me, have always been fascinated by the genre but have always quickly abandoned out of intolerance to frustration.
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