This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I could not stand Sekiro. I’m not saying it’s a bad game at all, but it’s not for me. On just about every level it felt like a game that was designed to not appeal to what I enjoy, even though I’ve played all of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring enough to complete 100% runs at lvl 1.

• Imo the samurai/ninja tropes and aesthetics have been done to death and beaten into the ground, especially by anime culture, so it holds zero appeal for me. I still tried to get over this and give the game an honest go, but couldn’t.
• I like having different weapon options to play around with to change up how I approach different situations, but Sekiro sticks me with a single weapon that can’t be changed. What’s worse is that katana and other dex swords have been the least interesting weapons to me in other games. Heavy strength builds with stagger are my favorite by far, but int, faith, and just about any other dex weapon is more interesting to me than katana builds, so I’m stuck without alternative play styles to enjoy.
• Unless you do backstabs or guard breaks, your katana does laughably pitiful damage. I don’t want to deal chip damage like I’m killing my opponent with paper cuts, I want the option to deal some chunky hits with a standard attack.
• The secondary tools are annoyingly weak, and also require you to constantly keep a high stock of the ribbon things. It’s like how in Bloodborne if you get stuck on a tough fight and use up all your blood vials, having to take a detour to go back and grind to restock is tedious and breaks the flow of the game.
• I’ve never enjoyed block or parry mechanics in any game, so I just ignored them in all other FS games and had fun with the dodge roll. In Sekiro, the dodge is still included but doesn’t give any i-frames, which is a frustrating bait-and-switch. The fun mechanic I like was turned into a trap to make me eat hits, and the mechanic I don’t have fun with is basically 100% required.
• I really hate the sickness mechanic that stops npc quest progression when you die too much. Npc quests in FS games are already pretty nebulous and poorly implemented in the games I love. Having them get stalled out from dying because you are trying to practice getting better at the game is just making me want to stop playing. It really doesn’t feel thought out and is actively anti-fun.

Overall, my impression of Sekiro strikes me as the devs saying “you play by my specific rules, or you don’t play at all.” I tried to like it, gave it over 15 hours of my time, and didn’t enjoy anything other than some pretty environments. Probably never picking the game up again, even though I’m currently tempted to go back to Dark Souls 1 again for my annual playthrough.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.