I’m gonna be straight with you, if you can’t git gud real fast and if you think video games shouldn’t be ridiculously hard, then you’re better of playing Kirby’s Dreamland or something of that caliber because you are not going to like this.

From From Software and Activision comes a colourful interpretation of Japan filled with all the things you’d expect a game set in the 1500s of Japan to be like: ninjas, samurai, extreme hand to hand combat. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has it all and more. But the one thing it doesn’t have is an accurate title, particularly the “die twice” part of it. Because what the developers actually meant was “die twice as much as you die in any other game” … with the exception of Dark Souls, perhaps. The game is, as expected from the developers of Dark Souls, hard. Like, really hard. So, with that cheerful thought in mind, let’s dive into a review of the game that’s been kicking everyone’s asses in 2019.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

DETAILED REVIEW

Graphics, Performance & Sound

One of the major differences this game has compared to Dark Souls or Bloodborne is the major change in environment. While previous titles from From software have featured dark and drab dungeons and the like, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice takes off in a different direction, filled with beautiful picturesque landscapes and open snowy mountains. The graphics, as expected, are excellent and you get to experience the many different things that add up to give you the beauty of Japan in high definition.

Perhaps it’s the whole Japanese theme where you fight with samurai, but this game gave me a slight “Tomb Raider” feeling at the start, with the expansive landscape adding to that opinion. Even though the graphics are done pretty well, the recommended requirements for this game aren’t too high, meaning that you can run the game on ultra without an RTX 2080ti.

The one thing that is an absolute must in most videogames I play is excellent voice acting. Of course, it’s not only down to the voice acting when it comes to the ‘cinematicness’ of the game but also a number of other things. With videogames of the current day and age, motion capture is the primary method of animation and using this method is excellent since the person voicing the character would essentially be moving around doing what the protagonist does. This adds to the realism and has greatly helped in telling the story of the game.

This is why with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, both the developers and its fan base recommend you play the game with the original Japanese voicing along with English subtitles. While there is nothing wrong with the English dub, the game isset in Japan, and English dialogue simply cannot match the original Japanese version.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice provides a fluid gaming experience with combat styles that primarily focuses on parrying. Dodging is out, parrying is in. In fact, dodging is not only out but is also punishable by death. This simply means that you cannot beat a boss using a thousand butt pokeslike you did in Dark Souls, instead having to counter all attacks. If you try dodging, you’ll die. If you try parrying, you still die, just not as frequently.

In terms of other game mechanics, added equipment such as the grappling hook allows faster and higher reach around the game’s environment, and the hook itself is pretty fluid. There wouldn’t be much to complain about the game mechanics… if only the enemy AI could have been the slightest bit smarter. I mean, seriously, you could drop a dead body on your enemy and they’d be like “oh look, it’s Mitch with a knife stuck on his forehead. Looks dead but naa, probably just sleeping on the job”.

This is in stark contrast to games such as Hitman, where the enemy AI is smart enough to deduce your location by looking at the dead body. Of course, it’s unfair to compare the stealth features of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice with Hitman since Hitman is meant to be played with stealth in mind (until you get detected and mow down everybody with a machine-gun because that works just fine too). Simply put, your enemies aren’t the brightest lights in the Christmas tree.

The gameplay itself is lots of fun, if your idea of fun is eating a bucket of glass while continuously being stabbed, electrocuted, mutilated, and other horrible things that end with you screaming so hard at the TV your neighbors call the cops. You probably have experience with this if you’ve played Dark Souls. After a while, of course, you may get the hang of it, and the gameplay is extremely engaging so if you don’t have millisecond reaction times, then you might as well give up before you start. There isn’t an easy level, so if you really can’t handle the fast-paced action, then your best bet is a mod. In fact, you could simply use the cheat engine to slow down the game to a fraction of its time which would give you much longer to react to enemy attacks.

Story & Narrative

Games in the genre of fantasy are incomplete without excellent lore to back the game up. Personally, I always love an excellent story (which is why Bioshock has been so memorable for me), and regardless of the genre, having a great story backing up your game is always good.

When it comes to fantasy, you’re allowed to go crazy with your story, and to a certain extent, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has done just that. With hugely warped monsters that resemble apes, to giant snakes that try to eat your head off, this game has certainly covered a lot of ground.

But of course, the number of monsters you shove into a game isn’t directly proportional to how good the game ends up being, and while the majority of players enjoy the story, there are others that accuse the story of being “too typical”. In other words, they say that this is a normal Japanese story from the 1500s with a slight bit of fantasy sprinkled on top.

VERDICT

All in all, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an excellent game, and the cherry on top is that it is available for all platforms. There was a lot of hype surrounding the game, and based on the fact that the game has been given 90% positive reviews from many gaming critics, it can be said that the game lives up to its hype. While the game may be especially appealing to those who are already interested in fantasy games filled with lore, it’s made well enough to capture the attention of anyone new to the genre. Where the game goes next, we’ll just have to wait and see.