Recent reviews by Razldazz

I have wrote exactly one review in my 14 or so years of using steam, and it's this review right now.

I will organize this into things I liked and things I didn't like, and at the end my overall score (x/10).

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal experience with the game and my thoughts. I also made it to the end of chapter 4 before feeling like I wanted to write this review. I do not care if 70 billion people think this is GOTY material. If you love the game, that's honestly great. There are a sincere lack of new, well made, and fun "AAA" games, and if you can find one that you like, I'm genuinely happy for you.

Also, since I did not make it all the way through the game, I won't be making a judgement on the boss mechanics, hitboxs, etc. I know quite a few people had problems with that, but I did not encounter a similar problem.

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WHAT I LIKED:

SETTING: There aren't that many games that cover Chinese mythology in detail, or at least not many that get as much media coverage as this game did. It's highly refreshing to see something other than high European fantasy (even though I'm a sucker for em). I haven't read Journey to the West or watched/listened to any media about it, but this game has made me more curious of the actual story and of Chinese mythology in general.

GRAPHICS: Holy moly, this game is pretty. Even before the boss designs, the levels look amazing. There is a slight hiccup with each level looking a bit monochromatic (sand, sand, and more sand), but the vistas and key areas all follow their own theme, which matches the bosses and make them feel lived in by the actual creatures that you encounter. Additionally, the boss designs are all top tier. No real problems with the bosses on my end from a graphical standpoint. Animations, art design, and effects all look epic and make you feel pretty small at times, which is what I'm assuming they were going for.

And of course all the later game armor sets and staves were sick as heck. (Too bad you can't get some staves until NG+)

INTERFACE: Sleek and non-intrusive. All the things you can ask for. There was a learning curve to using the RT on the controller to access your other abilities, but once I got used to it, I was comboing my spirits and transformation with ease and was a highlight to the combat.

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WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

INVISIBLE WALLS: Yeah yeah, I know. I'm not going to wax poetic about the insurmountably liberal use of invisible walls and their intrusive and odd placements. However, there is one other huge gripe that I want to point out, and that is their use in boss arenas. If the boss can jump through the invisible wall and attack me through it. Sorry, that is just bad design. The last boss of chapter 2 was honestly one of my least favorite solely because of this. Thankfully, I didn't encounter it again on any other boss, and I don't know if it even happens again to my knowledge. But yeah, invisible wall bad.

STORYTELLING: The translations for this game were challenging to understand, and I really had no idea of what was going on in the story. I understand that that might be due to the nature of how the original story is told. I also know that Game Science made a lot of changes to the story. So I'm not sure how true it is to the original or how that could affect the game's storytelling. Making adjustments to the translations to make it more understandable for players who haven't experienced this story before or this type of mythology and would have gone a long way .

PERFORMANCE: The game is pretty, but man, they really turned the dial up too much some times. The frame drops in this game make certain bosses unplayable at times due to the gobsmacking amount of particle effects. Fighting any of the Loongs with their lightning might as well be actual lightning striking my computer, which is a shame since they are some of the cooler fights in the game. This also wasn't isolated to just one chapter, almost all the chapters I played through had some sort of performance issue at various points. I have no problem fighting Consort Radahn with his five million light particles or the Divine Beast with their various storm effects in Elden Ring, but god forbid I get lightning dragons or sand in this game.

ENEMIES: This is an issue I had with Sekiro on my second and third playthrough. The regular joe-blow enemies and their frequency just prove to be an annoyance. They aren't particularly challenging or interesting and just serve to lengthen the play time. In a boss rush game with no other gameplay mechanics (i.e platforming, puzzle solving, exploration, etc) I do not care about anything else other than the bosses/story/combat. It would be a bit different if there was some diversity to the combat or gameplay, but that is a topic for later.

COMBAT: And by later, I mean now. This one is going to be pretty lengthy since this is the driving point of the game, and I will split this up among a few key pain points of the combat.

Animations: Speaking of animations, what in tarnation is going on with the animation locking? I don't know if this is actually what people mean by "animation locking", but it is supremely annoying not being able to perform combat actions until full animations have been performed. Performing magic roots you in place and you must perform the entire character animation, even if the spell has already finished casting e.g freeze spell. Dodge rolls do not cancel animations like other action RPGS, which makes the combat feel very clunky. It also forces you into one or two specific ways to play the game.

Combat Diversity: Or lack thereof. The combat boils down to pretty much "save focus for big hit". There isn't a consistent way to CC the bosses, since some can't actually be knocked down or stunned. This makes the combat loop devolve into one-two light attacks until you have focus for a fully charged heavy. There is a skill that doesn't interrupt your light combo by dodge rolling. However, most of the bosses have 3-7 attack combos that time out that particular parameter. And yes, there are the "varied combos". I'll talk about those in detail later, but those have their own quirks that interrupt the flow combat substantially.

Stagger: I've mentioned stagger previously, and it is honestly one of the main reasons I stopped playing for now. Bosses staggering me or knocking me down is no big deal. I expect these much more powerful enemies to knock me on my ass. However, when every regular enemy can stagger me out of my combos while I'm flying around with my staff, but I can only stagger them once or twice during a light combo, that just removes the fun. There a stat called tenacity in the game, but you don't get armor for it until way later. Just let me do cool stuff man.

Varied Combos: I'm not going to sugar coat this. These are not good. I had such high hopes for the combat in general because of these, but I got majorly disappointed. These are just worse versions of the charged heavy attacks of their respective stances. They have a long recovery time after performing them that you end up getting hit 99% of the time after using them. The healing is cool, but worse than just using the bo staff that heals on 3 focus heavy attacks. And the so called "counters" can't be performed on the fly and have the narrowest window I've seen for a "counter/parry". If you want to parry, just use rock solid.

There's more I'd like to write down, but I'm running out of room. These are the major points, good and bad, from my experience. TLDR: The game looks amazing, and is set in a woefully underappreciated mythology. However, the combat sucks a lot of fun from the game along with major performance issues.

Maybe I was expecting too much or this wasn't really what I was looking for in an action RPG. Either way 6/10 for me and a no to recommend since it costs $60.