You’re Playing Sekiro Wrong

If you’ve played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice you’ve probably have heard or think that the game lacks replay value. Sure, you realize that it’s a great game, but it just doesn’t have as much stuff to explore compared to Dark Souls. What if I told you that isn’t true at all? What if I told you that you’ve barely scratched the surface of what the game has to offer? This mostly comes down to a misunderstanding of what kind of game Sekiro is. It’s not a Souls game and it’s not an RPG. It’s an action game, and action games have fundamentally different ways they offer replay value to their players.

In Souls games, a lot of people (myself included) put a lot more time into regular game than new game plus. And it makes sense as to why. New game plus for the most part simply scales the enemies up. If you want to try a new weapon and progress through the game with it, one of the best ways is to make a new character. While doing so, potentially pick a different starting character. Dark Souls 2 and Dark Souls 3 added a respec option which is nice, but oftentimes, due to how progression systems in RPGs work, you want to go through the game and see how a build develops. This is where Sekiro differs. Sekiro doesn’t have builds, but it does have unlocks. What this means is, as you play Sekiro, and continue through new game plus cycles, you will eventually unlock everything. It also means that you will inevitably go infinite on spirit emblems. This is where you can really dig into the mechanics, explore all the fun tools the game gives you, and truly master the mechanics.

And because the game isn’t an RPG, the game's true difficulty is shown to you. Especially if you end up doing no Kuro’s Charm on max new game plus. In Souls games the enemies get scaled up, but this only really matters based on how much the game scales against your stats. Since Sekiro doesn’t have leveling, the new game plus difficulty can be carefully considered. Regular game in Sekiro is balanced around the player not having access to all the game's special abilities. So as you continue to higher new game plus cycles, you’ll be more and more encouraged to explore more of the games abilties. Still don’t believe me? I made this video a while back to show just how cool Sekiro’s combat can be.

 If you’ve never tried out the prosthetics, combat arts and ninjutsu in Sekiro, play the game again. I’m confident that you’ll see the game in a whole new light. I’ve played through the game hundreds of times and I still find cool new interactions and strategies all the time. Sekiro might not be as big as a Souls game, but it’s insanely dense. 

-MajinSweet