Sekiro™: Shadows Die Twice - GOTY Edition

Sekiro is one of my Favourite games. I 100% on the Xbox but haven't on the PC yet owning it twice, completing it 6 times on console and once on PC will I 100% this version it is unknown. It is a masterpiece and I hope they make a second.
If you are looking for fun loving avoid this at all costs, the bosses are relentless and you are not worthy!

best combat in any video game, best souls game, best game for weebs, prosthetic arm is cool, takes place in japan, you are ninja. what else could you want.

Sekiro is a souls-like game that is very different from other souls-likes made by From Software. So if you’re expecting the classic souls formula, that might turn you off.

Combat in sekiro revolves around posture and deflection rather than dodging attacks and chipping away at enemy’s health.

Personally I find Sekiro incredibly fun, even though I die a lot (definitely more than twice). Its unique mechanics with emphasis make it feel very rewarding in a way distinct from the Souls series.

So if you want a challenge but feel jaded from playing Dark Souls, this game might be a good fit for you.

This game has some of the best combat, movement, and boss fights in gaming. It is truly a staple in the souls born/ souls like genre.

Best combat system ever created.
Enemies and bosses perfectly designed and balanced.
Peak lore and story.
Beautiful world.
Runs well on low end machine.

It's Just So Peak.

Out of the (admittedly few) souls-like games which I've played, I like Sekiro the most.

Some say Sekiro is one of the hardest souls-likes compared to Elden Ring or even Dark Souls, but personally I find it easier to certain degree. I enjoy the rhythmic dance of deflecting and parrying more than the rolling / dodging of other souls-titles.

Fuck the Chained Ogre though.

Sekiro is one of the most satisfying games in terms of difficulty. All the bosses are incredibly hard, but each of them has a different strategy, and there is actually an easy way to defeat them. Once you realize this over time, the game can become easier. The mechanics of the game are so good that the combat feels like dancing. Especially when fighting Lady Butterfly, it felt as though we were dancing together. Moreover, the journey of the one-armed wolf, Sekiro, and the game's story are very impactful. The atmosphere of Japan’s Sengoku period and the details of Ashina Castle were beautiful.

"Death of a shadow"

Nothing much to say than what others have written here. Good story, awesome visuals and the badass From Software combat that we all know and love.

Most satisfying combat system out there, 10/10 would hesitate and die again.

This game is truly a masterpiece. I have never played a game with fight and movement mechanics that are so smooth. The hardest game I have ever played. 10 out of 10 for sure.

I am hoping we could get a part 2 of this game based on the true ending.

Best non-Armored Core title that From has ever released, and up there among their entire catalog. Underrated and underappreciated despite its praise and awards.

This is the best video game for faultlessly interpreting ancient Japanese aesthetics I’ve ever been playing. If you are a maniac of ancient Japanese culture, you’d better not miss this game. It may be a little tough at first, though, don’t give up and take your time, practice makes perfect, then you’ll get intrigued by the story of a dashing man with his fascinating chivalry.

What an experience. 10/10. I love this game so much I went out of my way to get every achievement and complete 4 playthroughs. The most flawless combat in any game I've ever played, and one that teaches you something every time.

Game is Goated. Hard as Nails, to be certain, but if you play along with what it's asking of you, you will be rewarded with an experience unlike any other.

Hesitation is Defeat.

I've just completed my first run of the game. As a big Souls fan, when I heard people say Sekiro is better than Dark Souls 3, I was in disbelief. Well, now I believe they're right.

One of the biggest examples I can give is Sekiro's exploration of areas made me realise how much of a slog DS 3's travel between bosses is.

But you probably want to hear more about this game. The combat is very difficult, to a point where I felt quite at odds and had to take a break for a week or two. Plus, you can't summon anyone. It's just you vs. the boss. But then one day, the combat just clicks and you start to see the patterns and telegraphs for the bosses' moves. It's incredible because the improvement of the player ties into the improvement of our character Sekiro himself!

I highly recommend this game because of its combination of stunning areas, addicting deflection mechanic, story and overall consistency in quality.

Game so good it made the other souls combat bad for me

The click is real, just play to feel it.

my click was geni, After that i did everything including the 4 gauntlets, id the entire story with Demon bell and without kuros charm including the Way of tomoe dlc... oh OH Wait sadge :(

well Unbiased opnion as usual 10/10 buy it or else Yous a beeeeeeeeeeech
prolly the game that ever came close to dethroning ds3 for me and I really LOVE ds3, close second

get it full Price half price JUST GET IT ,HAIRE SEKIRO! and do not fall the shura path or else i must cut you down

Compared to Elden Ring and Dark Souls Sekiro will force you to play in a very specific way. However this specific way is the best and coolest way to play this game.

You start off weak and almost get filtered by the bull, but near the end you'll become an almost unstoppable Shinobi. All the bosses (except for an optional boss near the end) are fun to figure out and fight against. I can't wait to try NG+ and get the other endings.

The game looks gorgeous (especially at ultrawide HDR which unfortunately does require a mod).

I don't like the dragonrot mechanic though which makes specific NPC quest lines unable to continue until you get far enough into the game to cure it (temporarily) with a limited resource. Luckily you don't have to use it that often.

Bought this game and had fun until i got to the stupid fucking monkey. I'm now going to commit a mass genocide of all monkeys. Other than that would recommend.

One of the most interesting and thrilling gaming experiences of my life.
The combat is incredibly beautiful, the bosses are well designed, the music is amazing and the characters are well written and interesting.
Even though I enjoyed the Dark Souls series more because of the different play styles, that doesn't eliminate the fact that this game was a wonderful experience for me.

I recommend it even if it's expensive. Worth it. After 22 hours still haven't beat the game

In my opinion the best Soulslike.
Yes, it is hard! yes it takes some time to master parrying!
But if you take your time, you will love it.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☑ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☑ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story (I think)
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ Overall Score }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

this game is amazing and easily has some of the funnest mechanics ever

my favorite part was when big smoke betrayed grove street and CJ had to scale to the top of ashina castle to stop him

10/10 absolute cinema

This game is as good as I remember. One of From Software's best games easily.

Absolutely one of the most rewarding game experiences if you have the patience and willingness to learn such brutally difficult, unforgiving combat.

Art. That's the only way to describe what Sekiro is. Everything, from the setting and story, to the combat system and gameplay loop, is done to perfection. The story explores the perfect mix of a historically-accurate Sengoku era and the fantastical mythologies and folktales of Japan. I just finished a course at University about the mortality of the soul, and the philosophical themes surrounding immortality make the story so well written it's not even funny.

The game teaches you to get better; there are few exploits and little grinding you can do to become overpowered, the only way to do so is to learn from your mistakes and improve, and trust me, you will. It's beyond satisfying to watch yourself become more skilled the more you fail.

Sekiro is, without a doubt, a masterpiece.

Absolutely brutal game. You have to learn the groove to play it well. High intensity blade to blade combat pumping adrenaline into your veins.

My actual hours for this game are 700hours+ i have beaten this game so many times with and without (charmless-demon bell) but it just never gets old simple the pinnacle of fromsoft combat design. Please purchase this game when i first played it i just didn't understand it whatsoever it seemed like it was impossible for me to beat the very first boss let alone the whole game, but once you start grasping the basic concepts of how each enemy moves and when and what input to use then you will really start to enjoy it.

my thoughts after 4 hours of playing, half the time i was googleing the controlls for keyboard, the first part of the game is nice and easy until u get put in a cage with a GIANT FLAMING BULL, and he blocks ur whole screen when attacking FINIALLYT after parrying him 20 times in a row i killed him, this is not an easy game but easier than Mario. Now i have to kill 20 guys and kill the seven spear guy and he kills me in 2 hits OH this is going to be fun. I am enjoying the game so far but i would not recomend it unless you like these type of games

The metal clanking sound was so good they made an entire game around it.

All time Favorite. After 5 years and many gameplays, this game still fells amazing. Astonishing visuals, amazing lore, perfect performance and above all outstanding mechanics that challenge you to literally get good at the game! Simply put this game is a 10/10

What an amazing game! Souls games are my absolute favourite genre, because I guess I'm addicted to the suffering and frustration you feel until you finally work things out and feel immense satisfaction that you finally defeated that enemy or boss. Even the mobs in this game can be a problem to begin with, but as with a lot of souls games you learn to either deal with them or avoid them in due time, and mobs that were once a guaranteed death will become nothing more than mere inconvenience on your way to have another take at that boss that is really ruining your day!

The game has beautiful visuals without trying to be something they're not or trying too hard. I'm playing on my Steam Deck and they hold up just as well in very nearly 2025 as they did when I first played it in 2019. From software definitely focus on gameplay first with graphics coming second, but that's not to say that the graphics aren't beautiful and just what they need to be. The graphics still hold strong on the verge of 2025 as they did on 2019.

This game can be brutally difficult to new players but if you have the percerverance to stick with it then you can get a lot of satisfaction from beating the bosses which, at first, seem impossible, and having to pass through the mobs which will majorly hinder your performance with the upcoming boss will become nothing more than minor inconvenience.

Every enemy and every boss has a weakness, whether it be through your items or skills, or even gameplay events that you will discover along the way.

This game is very difficult but 100% doable and the satisfaction that you get from just defeating just the first boss, for example, is like no other game I have ever played.

In every nook and cranny there are dangers waiting for you, but a lot of these dangers are what you need to truly progress. Yes they're difficult, yes they're frustrating but once you defeat them, feel the satisfaction of doing so, and receive a reward of an item that will help you going forward, you know that you can beat this game, no matter how hard it is going forward.

TLDR;Very difficult but incredibly rewarding game, pay attention to what the game tells you and use it. Satisfaction is like no other.

This game is an absolute masterclass of game design, easily the best combat I've ever experienced in any game ever. Beautiful scenery juxtaposes the grotesque enemy design, as well as the challenge that's expected of any FromSoftware game. This games difficulty is strange, as I didn't find it nearly as hard as some people have described. Nearly everything is intuitive and the game teaches you everything you need to know to face its more difficult encounters, so it's only a matter of time before you learn what you need to know and you can get the ball rolling with this phenomenal experience. None of this is to mention the stellar music, JP voice acting (though the ENG dub sounds great too from the little I've heard), the area design, or the cinematic cutscenes that always made the experience that much more worthwhile. Don't let this games difficulty scare you away, as long as you're committed, success is only a matter of time. 10/10.

Took me 55 hours to finish it once. Took around 2 hours to fi,nish it the 9th time. This game is truly The Masterpiece

Sekiro: lost multi times
First 10h were basically spent on finding the right way, various secret passages and floors are enough to make u dizzy, also brought about deadly cyber sickness, which I have only experienced on Superliminal and Half-Life classic. Interestingly, this dizziness only occurs during exploration and collection.
Apart from this, the game is impeccable, rhythm of battle and action design r completely worthy of goty.
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Reviews: 9/10

Love the timing of this game. Truly rewarding. Hard at first, but very fair once you get the hang of it.

Summary
- A really enjoyable, combat focused, relaxing rythm game with satisfying clink clank sounds.
- One of the best combat systems out there

When starting the game
- Nice rythm game!

After 100%-ing
- Watching streams on the other monitor while clowning on mobs and bosses anime roleplaying
- If you go after bits and pieces of the story and character histories by special interactions, you get a satisfying short novel with a few different endings.

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⭐️ Score

⚖️ Criteria

ℹ️ Information

🧾 Legend

The game clicks after 10 hours. I stopped playing at the ogre and came back later like many of us :P
Turns out, I chose correctly. Should not have hesitated. 100% recommended

Truly amazing experience - Sekiro is one of those games you know you’ll be revisiting before even finishing it for the first time.

It also might be the hardest modern From Soft title, at least for the ones that never liked to parry and most often failed at it like myself. However, learning to fight properly is absolutely manageable and feels super rewarding too.

The story is not hidden from the player like in the other Soulsborne games, and it was definitely a right gameplay choice for Sekiro. There are also several endings, based on rather clear player choices.

Sekiro really amazed me as I was expecting just another Souls game (which I truly adore) but with samurai swords only. However, it’s a totally different experience and it’s absolutely worth it even for the full price.

Ting ting ting ting, that's what it sounds like every time in my mind when playing this game. It feels like I'm back playing the Tenchu ​​Playstation 2 game. I feel like a ninja in this game. The voice actor is really cool. Especially Kenjiro Tsuda, he is my favorite voice actor in both games and anime. So don't hesitate to buy this game, enjoy it, feel for yourself how good it feels to be killed over and over again. That is all and thank you.

DEFINITELY RECOMMEND!
For an 11 GB game, the game offers a variety of challenging bosses and mobs, plus it includes a big map full of hidden items, hidden boss fights that can give you valuable items, and a hidden story behind each and every NPC.

The best boss battles I’ve ever played. Sadly, that’s the only thing in this game’s gameplay that is truly great. The rest of it consists of bad game design decisions: mini-bosses that don’t make sense, a currency system that shouldn’t exist, a random grappling system that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t (and you never know for sure if you can grapple to something or not), enemies that kill you in two hits while bosses take seven to kill you, grabs in THE GAME of parries, throwable items that are almost useless in the early game, countless scenarios with multiple enemies in a game with a combat system designed for duels, ranged enemies that can kill you in three hits from a distance while you need ten melee hits to kill them, and so on.

Yes, the boss battles are incredible, but you have to endure a lot of frustrating gameplay to reach them. I want to love this game for the bosses, but I just can’t. Its bad design is too evident, and it’s a shame because it overshadows the things the game does well.

Update: I beat the game, and I still feel the same way. The boss battles are awesome—on a completely different level compared to other games—but the game is broken in so many ways that it’s still hard to recommend. If your game is more enjoyable when you’re just running from one boss battle to the next, then something is fundamentally wrong.
NO SPOILER: One small example of this is after you defeat an optional boss located just before the final boss. This fight took me countless tries, but it was fun, tense, and epic. When you finally defeat it, you feel like every mechanic you’ve mastered matters. Then, immediately after that, you face a mini-boss with two minions in a tiny arena where it’s practically impossible to dodge or parry. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the best and worst of the game in just a few minutes.

Yes, there are ways to "solve" this mini-boss encounter by playing your cards right. But if you just want to "katana kill" everyone, you simply can’t because you’re attacked by three enemies at the same time. Two of them have long health bars, and their combined attacks don’t give you a chance to strike, even if you time your parries or Mikiri counters perfectly. The developers apparently thought it was a good idea to make the game harder by trapping you in a confined space with multiple enemies, despite having a combat system DESIGNED FOR DUELS, NOT FOR FIGHTING GROUPS OF MOBS. It’s nonsense. I would have preferred a mini-boss with one extra move instead of this garbage encounter. The game designers should have notice this, but instead of give you more and better duels, the just spawn multiple mobs in every corner to make the game "hard", but it's artificial difficulty cause you can avoid that fights or just repeat until you win; you learn nothing in general from that fights. Yes, you can use your shinobi tools, but then, if you do that, you are not fighting with your katana, you're just solving puzzles in combat form.

And then, the optional boss—a nightmare-inducing enemy with an overpowered design—takes three hits to kill you. But the mini-boss that follows? He just spams attacks with his friends and kills you at speedrun pace.

In general, this sums up the experience: every mini-boss has only 3–4 moves but deals insane amounts of damage with every attack or grab. Sometimes, mini-bosses are harder to beat than the actual bosses, which doesn’t make sense. Not only does it feel wrong in terms of gameplay, but it’s also inconsistent with the lore. What’s the explanation for a divine swordsman with supernatural powers not being able to kill you in two hits, but a lady with a shotgun or cannon can?

And this is just one issue with the mini-bosses. There are so many other problems they NEED to address if they ever make Sekiro 2. It’s an excellent game when it works, but it only truly works for boss battles.

Got the platinum on PlayStation and all achievements on Steam, but the combat is so satisfying I keep coming back. Steep learning curve and messes with your muscle memory from other FromSoftware games, but when you adapt to the rhythm of it, Sekiro keeps you hooked. The Inner bosses somehow greatly improved nearly perfect fights from the main game, so if you haven't, definitely give the gauntlets of strength a try to at least unlock those fights.

This game makes me feel like I'm in a abusive love & hate relationship. I love playing this game but the longer I play the more I hate myself for doing so. I want to stop playing it, yet I can't. I have tons of hours on my *legally* obtained version, I can't stop. There's still so many mods and ways to improve even if it feels like a dead end.

my very first souls game
and what a game it is

done all the achievements, i think that says a lot about the game

it was so much fun, it was a challenge, the story, the graphics, the music
theres so much good to say about this game, i loved every minute of it (ofc i cursed it a lot while playing it, but thats part of the experience, no? :D)

It´s truly just an amazing game. The combat flows like it should and the parries feel satisfying. I played this a lot on Xbox all the way back in 2022 and I recently bought it again on Steam, eager to say it still doesn't disappoint. Truly a recommend from me!

Peak combat design and game-play. The boss fights go hard. Although the learning curve will be high for many people, at some point the combat will click and you will start feeling like the boss. First FromSoftware game I played and now I am deep in the rabbit hole.
10/10 - Must play for any gamer who wants a challenging yet rewarding experience

Just turns my monitor off

I've played this game before on other platforms and is genuinely a blast. But if you intend playing this on pc with multiple monitors, be aware that it just might not work