Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Beating this game with the charmless + bell (and also no health upgrades cause I wanted to keep in the spirit of an SL1 run) was probably my most satisfying gaming experience ever

Weirdly enough one of the highlights was Corrupted Monk, as she works a bit differently than the other bosses. Because of how dynamic her AI is, the fight relies a bit more on reacting to tells, rather than just combo memorization like with other enemies. Learning to perfect parry her was... *chefs kiss*

this game has some characters that are better written than 99% of what you'll find in film or TV, and story isn't even the focus

Only Soulsborne game I just cannot beat. I got to Genichiro on my first playthrough and got stonewalled nervously trying to figure out the lightning mechanic after like 40 tries on his first phase (whyyyy the FUCK do they introduce a whole new mechanic like that in the middle of a boss fight and expect you to grasp the mechanic from text). Then I tried two more times, once a year ago and again just within the past couple days, and now I can't even beat the Shinobi Hunter at Hirata Estate. Game's mechanics are somehow just esoteric af to me even compared to the esoteric shit of their prior games.

this has the best combat system of any game ever made. also 100% agree about the characters, this has better characterization than every tell tale game ever and the story is like less than 10% of the experience here

after about 5 attempts at this game since it came out and hours of frustration and hair pulling, when i finally got to Genichiro Ashina, i was still very frustrated but i managed to beat him. it felt lucky and i didn't really understand how i beat him so using reflection of strength i practiced and practiced for hours until i could beat him 3 times in a row deflecting everything (except for the flurry). After doing this, the combat finally clicked for me and i beat the game in the next couple of days. The combat itself and Genichiro Ashina were a major roadblock for me but after throwing myself for hours at the game i finally understood the combat. it still always took me a lot of tries to beat some bosses afterwards but now i didn't feel frustrated and i knew that i could beat them. I'm glad i finished this game and i think it's one of my favorites in the FROMSOFT series. i don't blame anyone for dropping this game though. if it wasn't a FS game and i hadn't just beat DS3 after dropping it years back making this the last soulsbourne game i had left, i don't think i would have had the drive to see this game through. this is just a particular case for me though, most other people seem to get a handle on the combat way faster than me.

I was struggling so hard at this game until I fought Lady Butterfly and realised how important it is to be aggressive in this game. It all boils down to deflections and posture breaking the enemy.