Recensioni recenti di Talk

Sekiro is an absolutely amazing experience. From start to finish this game makes you feel fragile. While it's only natural for bosses to hit hard, Sekiro gives standard enemies strength and diverse move-sets making each small encounter risky. Because of this design, each triumph, small or large, feels immensely rewarding.

While the combat system and level of difficulty take the spotlight, Sekiro's landscapes and scenery go unappreciated. Beginning the game, the player will find themselves exploring mostly Ashina Outskirts and Hirata Estate, both of which showcase dull grey/brown/blue colors. It's a tragedy that the gorgeous environments of Senpou Temple and Fountainhead Palace are hidden away deep into the mid-late game. Tangentially, I don't believe the soundtrack was anything special, although I may feel differently given a second playthrough. Some games have soundtracks that really influence how the player feels; Sekiro's soundtrack struck me more as a indicator for entering a new location or leaving/entering combat.

Lastly, I feel that the overall gameplay could have been improved with a few QoL changes:

1. Forcing character interaction to be dictated by camera angle. While I understand how this can be useful (e.g. interaction will trigger on the object most likely desired by the player), this mechanic can be extremely unintuitive at times. The first example is when interacting with a Sculptor's Idol; while the player may be directly in front of the Idol, unless the player looks directly at the Idol, no interaction prompt will appear and the player will be unable to trigger the Idol UI. The second example is when searching for grapple locations or attempting to grapple to grapple locations; since interaction prompts/icons appear solely based on camera angle, I often found myself failing to grapple somewhere slightly off-screen yet clearly in front of my character. This mechanism for interaction is in contrast to that found in Dark Souls.

2. Enemies ignoring attacks. While this is entirely reasonable for the highly telegraphed attacks such as unblockables, it becomes unfair when the player's attacks are ignored by run-of-the-mill attacks or swift/counter attacks by enemies. Sekiro rarely allows the player a solid hit on an enemy, and on most bosses a single hit is all that is allowed before they begin auto-blocking again. I believe it is a poor design choice to allow ambiguous or ordinary attacks to ignore disruption, as it defeats the purpose of parrying, and discourages the player from attacking in an already punishing combat system.

3. Sprint jumps and jumping after landing. This point is a nitpick at best, but I found that jumping out of a sprint and jumping after landing felt fairly delayed. Often I would attempt to sprint jump off of a constrained platform and accidentally run off before executing the jump. Likewise, while attempting to maintain a sprint while simultaneously jumping between platforms, the game would appear to be buffering the jump input, but struggle to actually execute the jump over the sprint animation. I am not sure what exactly caused this, but it did feel fairly clunky in the midst of any serious combat.

10/10. That said, "Sekiro is difficult" would be a monumental understatement. I wonder if there is a way to retain this experience without alienating so many prospective players?

Gris is art, and it's amazingly immersive. It's just the cherry on top that the gameplay is enjoyable. There is a quality other games should take from GRIS; a narrative doesn't need to be told explicitly, nor does it need weeks of content. A powerful narrative fit concisely within the span of a few hours.