everyone here is finishing the final boss, and i just got to Great Shinobi Owl a day ago. Dang i’m slow haha.
2 Likes
I just got to the castle courtyard and am working on Gyoubu Oniwa (a.k.a. the general on a horse) so we’re not all speedy 
1 Like
Trying to articulate my feelings about Sekiro is a bit tough - I enjoy it but the pacing feels off, in terms of boss fights feeling like the focus over exploration. Thinking in particular of the the Jozuo fight leading right into Lady Butterfly, and areas packed with mini-bosses that themselves serve as an obstacle for exploration. I’m just waiting for the game to completely click for me, and it has not quite done so yet.
Am i doing something wrong here? Any advice from you good folks on getting over the hump would be much appreciated.
Are you still at the beginning, the area you described? Here especially it’s worth going and exploring another path. A little bit later on in the game there are a lot of different paths available to you and there’s less of a feeling of “aw fuck anooother miniboss??”
Depending on where you are in the game, there’s a point where the game opens a whole bunch and you have like 3 different main paths you can explore (with a bunch of hidden/explorable stuff on each) before it all comes back) and you have a lot more freedom to bounce around between stuff at will.
Right now I’m on the LB fight, but was thinking of ducking out and exploring Ashina some more. I did check out the area leading down from the General what’s-his-face arena, and got quickly waylaid but the apparition there. That’s the kind of thing that’s been frustrating me.
You definitely have more options on where to go—that apparition (the Headless, right?) is very much a side-item there, and there’s another path you might not have tried that more or less leads to the rest of the game.
1 Like
So, I would say LB can be done as the first real boss I did it that way and wished i had waited a bit. There’s another path behind and to the left of the general that is the direction you probably want to explore.
3 Likes
General tip for apparitions (Spoilers if you don’t want to know about upcoming Shinobi tools): The purple shield removes the necessity of divine confetti and completely trivializes some of those fights. You can come back and kick their butts later.
1 Like
Re: suggested methods for Apparition type enemies:
Really, don’t skimp out on divine confetti, just fought one headless that was near impenetrable without it, but the shield is super good especially for the mage types, and even for those divine confetti tears through their posture and vit.
Purple shield makes you use far less Pacifying Agents though.
There is one small thing re: taking on apparitions (particularly Headless) without the use of Divine Confetti (same sort of spoiler as above for Shinobi tools) I was able to actually take out a Headless when it was maybe 75% of the way to filling out its Posture by deflecting a few times with the purple umbrella shield. I dunno how viable it would be to take it down via ONLY purple umbrella deflects, but it’s what got me the victory after my confetti ran out!
Honestly when I was overflowing with sen in the late game I just started using Divine Confetti for fun, because it makes Sekiro’s katana look extremely dope.
7 Likes
Oh shit, that might the closest we can get to Fashion Souls for this game.
1 Like
Yo, me too 
For me it’s 100% the level design bringing out my worst tendencies, I constantly feel like I’m missing things so I find myself moving very slowly and repeatedly going over the same areas. (Which is not at all a knock on the game at all, if anything I’m glad I’ve been forced to savor the thing.)
I just noticed a particular Headless I fought in the Hidden Forest would take little to no damage without confetti and purple shield wasn’t too much help in the long run, is all. If anything it’s just a good way to avoid making those enemies a pain and reap the rewards.
2 Likes
It was actually that one that I got away with using the purple umbrella for the kill, but this perhaps confirms that I wasn’t able to do that without being able to damage it with Divine Confetti in the first place!
I used Divine Confetti on all of the apparitions because they seemed like such a headache without them, which meant I waited until the late game to take on a lot of them. And that was actually one of my few gripes with the game, that that essential item for some fairly common minibosses was so rare for most of it. Felt like I was back in Dark Souls 2 hoping I could beat Darklurker before my effigies ran out.
1 Like
Apparitions: For me, the cross-slash attack of the purple shield was able to get their vitality low enough that they wouldn’t recover their posture, allowing them to be parried to victory. Still probably easier with confetti, though. (However, the Mage dudes do go down extremely fast and easy with the shield and I wouldn’t waste confetti on them)
Also, final nerd status: Bopped
guardian ape 2 is dead, really fun fight that I cleared on my first try! great Shinobi owl is still kicking my butt though, though I’m improving on the fight
1 Like
FWIW the LB fight is the part of the game that, for me, really hammered home how important it is to focus on breaking Posture. I was playing conservatively, guarding and then lunging in for a quick punishment slice before backing off, and this was both taking FOREVER and I was still taking too many hits during this time and dying. I lost the fight dozens of times. I changed my gameplan to stay as close to her as possible and strike more often, even when I knew it wasn’t going to deal damage, and I ended up breaking her Posture and getting a deathblow while she still had half of her health. You might need to change your methods around.
