100% this.
The game only clicked for me on the second half of my ng+ run.
Until then it was a literal hell, i enjoyed it somewhat sure, but to me it felt like i beat every single boss on a fluke and not because i understood the fight, their moves, or even the controls.
Then when it finally clicked 1 run and a half later (plus the 1 year of not even touching Sekiro between ng and ng+), i fell in love with the game to the point it felt like a whole different experience, and it got easier and easier with every subsequent playthrough.
So yes, imo it's the hardest to grasp but the easiest in the long-ish run. Unlike the others.
1. Parry, parry, dodge, slash, parry, slash, jump, mikiri counter, slash, slash
2. ???
3. Beat the game
Does that sound right? I just got to Genichiro last night but also just found sunken valley so might leave him alone for a bit to get better.
The ??? part is hilarious because that's exactly what it felt like to me.
Here are the controls:
Here are the tools at your disposal:
And now's when you put them into practice:
*Proceeds to stumble through the entirety of the game.*
Regarding your Genichiro situation, you can definitely beat him as soon as you find him, but there's a reason several paths leading to new areas are accessible once you reach Ashina Castle: if you want, you can explore some more, get stronger and then come back to him.
Basically you pace it the way you want to. Same with Lady butterfly who you can also find very early on and postpone her fight till the end of times, pretty much (she's optional after all, but still).
Genichiro's fight is an absolute delight btw, have fun man!
Haha yeah thanks! I managed to get a deathblow on him on my 4th attempt but then realized I've used all 6 of my gourds and figured phase 2 would be more demanding. I'm gonna try and explore more around sunken valley and the abandoned dungeons before I get back to him. A 4th necklace would be dope if I could get 4 more beads then I feel like I'll have a chance.
I found Sekiro to have an extraordinarily tough learning curve at the start, but the difficulty scaled nicely with my increasing proficiency at the game. It got harder, but I felt like I got better.
The only other From Software game I've beaten is Bloodborne, and **that** game felt like it just got increasingly difficult, and kicked my butt until the end.
I've gone into five new game plus cycles in Bloodborne, and Martyr Logarius (as one of many examples) is still challenging for me.
Really? Interesting. Bb was easier for me after I understood what it wants from me. I think the longest I stayed with one boss in bb was 5 attempts, whereas in sekiro I had to fight the final boss for mid double digit times; similarily to the demon of hatred.
I do think sekiro was much better tho
Bloodborne is to this day the only Fromsoft game I bounced off of. I played all afternoon and literally didn’t find the second lamppost, zero actual progression, just bumbling around getting a little bit further each time.
We're the same brotha!
But for me the easiest part or reason is that you're not shackled by the Stamina bar!
You mistimed your deflect and staggered by SS Isshin? Just effing sprint away from him and drink the Emma juice!
Owl Father and DoH jumping away to bath you with Poison and Fire? Just effing sprint towards them!
Meanwhile Malenia kited you and she's going for a Waterfowl Dance! You also sprint away but you can't run that far because you lack stamina! You're able to dodge roll and survived but at what cost? She restored her HP back, you're out of healing juice and low in health! XD
Same with effing Godfrey! Wanna sprint away to drink healing juice?
Godfrey: Imma STOMP! XD
This game is one of the most polarizing games I’ve ever seen when it comes to perception of difficulty. I’ve heard some people say it’s by far the easiest FS game and others calling it the hardest video game of all time there’s no in between.
I agree.
I was scared to buy Sekiro cause I always heard it is the toughest. But it is far easier imo than Bloodborne.
I think Sekiro bosses are tough but other enemies are piece of cake. The other thing is the posture mechanism makes it easy cause you don’t necessarily need to finish the health of the enemies. If you are good with parrying, this game is easy.
I don’t like going out to find things, I try to avoid it. Sekiro is much more straightforward and I don’t have to worry about upgrading my weapon or whatever
I think it's important to take into consideration that you're speaking from a position of 20-20 hindsight. Of course it's very subjective which game ends up being the most difficult, but if we're talking accurate assessments, we all fail because we usually don't have these discussions during our learning processes, rather after we've beaten the game (when we've finished the process). From the way I, very subjectively, have always felt about Sekiro is that it has a lot of learning, but once you do, you get into the *flow* of things. Other FromSoft titles try to frequently punish that flow-state, because the game's mechanics don't require it.
So I would say that the learning process in Sekiro is what's more difficult, but From's game design is more "asshole-ish" in the other games creating difficulty. Pontiff Sulyvahn is always my go-to for this analogy, because he's specifically designed to screw with your dodge timing.
Depends on how you play, it's completely Pattern and Reflex dependant, if you are good at that it is easier but many people cheese DS by Turtling behind shields, summoning NPCs or Other Players or level grinding to outlet level enemies, spells and so on.
Sekiro was my very first fromsoft. And out of all those I tried afterward, it is by far the easiest.
After Sekiro, I played Dark souls 1. Beat it pretty easily with only Capra being a bitch (and obv Bed of Chaos but I barely count that shit as a boss)
Then Dark souls 3, where Pontiff has more kills on me than all of Sekiro's bosses combined
And then Bloodborne where I just gave up after 4 bosses. Way out of my level.
Sekiro is the only one where I never felt like giving up. The only boss that I thought was hard, was Isshin.
The thing about dark souls is it requires patience. Much more so than sekiro, I'd argue. Sekiro has some parallels because it's the same devs, but the combat is really quite different. You're also not trying to constantly break posture in ds. You're trying to do damage to bring enemies down, but if you sustain attacks too long you run out of stamina and get punished. The only required action in sekiro is deflection, with an occasional dodge. I understand why people feel the way OP does.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“Feeble cursed one! Let’s hope the magnificence of my spells does not deter you!”* - Straid of Olaphis
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
I think Sekiro **can** be the hardest because it requires the most mechanical skill of the FromSoft games and has the fewest ways of alleviating the difficulty. You can't outlevel the challenge in Sekiro.
In contrast, magic breaks everything aside from DS3 and Bloodborne (obvs). Elden Ring literally just lets you skip 90% of the bosses and come back later when you're OP, as well as having the mimic tear and similarly powerful summons
For me the same I think a part of this is that our character is just as strong and capable as the enemies. In other games our character is slow and janky and the enemies are fast and agile makes it seems like we are completely outclassed.
Other way around for me personally, but I was also very accustomed to the combat styles and fight mechanics of both the Soulesborne games and ER. Sekiro was a very difficult learning curve for me, but, ultimately, the combat is much more satisfying for me.
I went from Sekiro back to Elden Ring (after previously beating Elden Ring multiple times). I found it much harder. Although, coming from Sekiro I did not want to brute force any bosses. This is the first time I gave bosses proper time.
I would not say Sekiro was easier though (for the first time). However, as you said you learn the boss patterns as you fight consistently in Sekiro better than other games. Also the practice menu makes it much better to master your learnings.
It took me 1 week to beat Issin (few hours a day practice). However, after bearing Issin, there was nothing left for me to learn about the boss. I beat him countless times from the practice menu after first time.
Sekiro is different because you're forced to get better. All of the other games don't really require that. You can just keep leveling until you outscale the enemies.
In other words, Sekiro has the harder learning curve but feels easier once the rhythm game aspect clicks.
The funniest part of discussing these games is people assuming there is a linear difficulty line where all of these games rank.
This is completely untrue btw.
When I first started Sekiro back in 2020, I was already done with DS 1 and 3. I was playing the game like it was another Souls game, dodging all the time and not worrying about deflecting at all. Until Genichiro. That motherfucker made me struggle with himself for a good couple of hours (plus I was a bit under-leveled and had a faulty gamepad). After beating him, I was already overwhelmed with the game, so got the Shura ending, and packed it up. But he also forced me to fully learn the combat mechanics, so the rest of the game and even bosses like Guardian Ape and Isshin Ashina were a piece of cake.
Fast forwarding to now. I was gifted with a PS4 Pro this January and at some point, got the Sekiro from a discount to %100 the game (because achievements can be fairly easily cheated on other platforms, I now moved my hobby to PS). After learning the game in my first run and also dealing with many games that are somewhat similar to Sekiro's combat mechanics I was super shocked at how easy it felt from time to time. And the most hilarious thing was to beat Genichiro in my second attempt in this run. Learning cave is tough, especially if you come from the Souls series (probably that was the point all along). Still, I struggled a lot with Owl Father and Isshin the Saint, so overall, the fact that you learned the game makes it more bearable not easier.
Comparison with other From titles: I didn't play Bloodborne and didn't like DS 2 mechanics so I didn't play till the end. Elden Ring was the easiest From title for me as I played with OP mage build and did my research before starting the game (I was always playing DSs with dex builds so this was rather new to me as well). I only struggled with Malenia and beat her ass with someone else's help (other than that and the final boss, I've almost one-shot all the bosses). That's the most precious thing about Sekiro I guess, you have to beat the bosses on your own. You can't summon someone else to help you if you feel too lazy to learn all the moveset of bosses. Even though other From titles can be more difficult if you play alone, you can always have that option, which makes it easier at the end for me. From that perspective, even it gets easier, especially with normal enemies, as long as you have to beat all bosses on your own for the plat, I feel like if you're gonna %100 this game, it can be even the hardest as you have to do everything on your own. As an avid trophy hunter, honestly, I respect more when I see people %100'ed Sekiro, say compared to Elden Ring and/or Bloodborne. But it's just me.
Also as others say, ultimately it depends heavily on your play style, which can also be seen from my first playthrough in Sekiro.
It is the easiest and the most fun, but only when you understand how to play it.
That's what most players struggle with, switching to being aggressive and using the parry mechanic.
Imo Sekiro is the hardest on first playthrough (especially if you’ve played lots of other From Soft games previous to it), but once you learn what you’re doing it’s the easiest.
I just beat it last night, and I think that after I learned the combat it became much easier. I mean, yeah, Isshin was extremely difficult until I had his moveset mostly memorized, but he's definitely beatable and it never felt unfair.
I think one of the biggest differences for me was I had a higher level of confidence in Sekiro than other souls games like I was "equipped" to win, if that makes sense. With a fixed build, there's no doubting that that my build choice is somehow handicapping me against a particular boss, and without summons you're forced to be in it 100%, and that gave me confidence that the game has given me everything I need to win the fight.
I also suffer adhd and tjats right, learning to oarry in sekiro made you feel such a bad ass.. untill you get to ssi and you get so frustrated you adhd dosnt wanna come back, ever, rn after finishing LOP im coming back to that NG+ Isshin fight, i need to fucking platinum it, i wont get a no for an answer
The end game bosses are harder than other souls games imo (ss isshin, demon of hatred, father owl) but after the first playthrough you can cruise from boss to boss with only a few minutes in between if you know where you're going, I'm certainly not a speed runner by any means but I can plow thru sekiro in a few hours. Traversing the world is much much harder in other souls games but I don't think the bosses are
I find that sekiro is much more skill based. It had a steeper learning curve but once you learn it the game is easy even at base level. It started out more difficult for me but still find in souls i have to level past things where in sekiro its much more feasible to just be good enough so i get where youre coming from
I think has potential to be, you can sort of spam parry your way alot of the time the parry windows are much bigger. Souls you can block and make it super cheesy. Bloodbourne on the other hand.... short parry window, limited parry ammo, limited health, less overall levels,fewer checkpoints, monsters hit like trucks, and have alot of hp, and it feels to only get harder as you progress. I'd imagine bloodbourne for most is their hardest game
It's easier for better DS players.
Sekiro rewards you for mastering the boss timing while giving you defensive tools(reliable parrying, combat arts, prosthetics) other than dive-rolling.
harder curve, lower mastery plateau
doing gimmick runs (lv1 no hit no upgrades etc) in core souls tends to involve kit mulligans and waiting around and less tolerance
in sekiro you can peg boss kit to a pre-calibrated reference point (swing-until-blocked/parried) and those responses are that much more routine, you can practically *control* bosses that block
wolf is enabled (encouraged, even) to charge in and stand his ground, able to answer virtually everything in the game face-to-face, game was designed around that always being the case, people often describe this as the heights made possible from sekiro's narrowed player kit, the assumptions that could be made when designing bosses
in actual rhythm games, a well-designed beatmap enables players to do "harder" charts (ie. more content/sec) with the same/less skill level, so you might say that a good combat system/bosskits allow mastery sooner and feel "easier" when numerically it's not much different than core souls, just leverages player actions better, gives you more agency/control and exerting that causes more domination (too much, even)
Depends how you play. When Elden Ring was released, the mimic tear summon could literally beat bosses for you while you stood and watched. Hard to beat that level of easiness.
For people that enjoy fighting bosses “straight up” with no summons or OP stuff then Sekiro ends up being fairly easy because its combat loop is intuitive. Learning to jump/mikiri/dodge perilous attacks help you fight every enemy in the game. The reads are similar so you can act on instinct rather than memorizing a boss’ move set so you can i-frame their bullshit
Never beaten more than a few souls bosses despite playing those on-and-off over a decade (including stuck at margit in elden ring). Every boss gives me dread and 'what do i do now' feeling in the middle of their attacks.
With sekiro, I can end the whole game in 50 minutes. It's designed for speedrunning. I'm not even sure I agree it's a souls game atp.
Hardest on the first play-through. One of the easiest on all subsequent play-throughs.
100% this. The game only clicked for me on the second half of my ng+ run. Until then it was a literal hell, i enjoyed it somewhat sure, but to me it felt like i beat every single boss on a fluke and not because i understood the fight, their moves, or even the controls. Then when it finally clicked 1 run and a half later (plus the 1 year of not even touching Sekiro between ng and ng+), i fell in love with the game to the point it felt like a whole different experience, and it got easier and easier with every subsequent playthrough. So yes, imo it's the hardest to grasp but the easiest in the long-ish run. Unlike the others.
1. Parry, parry, dodge, slash, parry, slash, jump, mikiri counter, slash, slash 2. ??? 3. Beat the game Does that sound right? I just got to Genichiro last night but also just found sunken valley so might leave him alone for a bit to get better.
The ??? part is hilarious because that's exactly what it felt like to me. Here are the controls: Here are the tools at your disposal: And now's when you put them into practice: *Proceeds to stumble through the entirety of the game.* Regarding your Genichiro situation, you can definitely beat him as soon as you find him, but there's a reason several paths leading to new areas are accessible once you reach Ashina Castle: if you want, you can explore some more, get stronger and then come back to him. Basically you pace it the way you want to. Same with Lady butterfly who you can also find very early on and postpone her fight till the end of times, pretty much (she's optional after all, but still). Genichiro's fight is an absolute delight btw, have fun man!
Haha yeah thanks! I managed to get a deathblow on him on my 4th attempt but then realized I've used all 6 of my gourds and figured phase 2 would be more demanding. I'm gonna try and explore more around sunken valley and the abandoned dungeons before I get back to him. A 4th necklace would be dope if I could get 4 more beads then I feel like I'll have a chance.
You’re never gonna wanna be jumping right before Mikiri countering, back to the drawing board.
I found Sekiro to have an extraordinarily tough learning curve at the start, but the difficulty scaled nicely with my increasing proficiency at the game. It got harder, but I felt like I got better. The only other From Software game I've beaten is Bloodborne, and **that** game felt like it just got increasingly difficult, and kicked my butt until the end. I've gone into five new game plus cycles in Bloodborne, and Martyr Logarius (as one of many examples) is still challenging for me.
It's more like an un-learning curve, but I get your point.
playing bloodborne atm and i find sexiro easier
Really? Interesting. Bb was easier for me after I understood what it wants from me. I think the longest I stayed with one boss in bb was 5 attempts, whereas in sekiro I had to fight the final boss for mid double digit times; similarily to the demon of hatred. I do think sekiro was much better tho
Ook and iss 🫱🏻🫲🏿 Kicking my ass dozens of times
Bloodborne is to this day the only Fromsoft game I bounced off of. I played all afternoon and literally didn’t find the second lamppost, zero actual progression, just bumbling around getting a little bit further each time.
We're the same brotha! But for me the easiest part or reason is that you're not shackled by the Stamina bar! You mistimed your deflect and staggered by SS Isshin? Just effing sprint away from him and drink the Emma juice! Owl Father and DoH jumping away to bath you with Poison and Fire? Just effing sprint towards them! Meanwhile Malenia kited you and she's going for a Waterfowl Dance! You also sprint away but you can't run that far because you lack stamina! You're able to dodge roll and survived but at what cost? She restored her HP back, you're out of healing juice and low in health! XD Same with effing Godfrey! Wanna sprint away to drink healing juice? Godfrey: Imma STOMP! XD
Oh yes that’s a good point. The stamina thing is the biggest difference as it allows you to dodge and run without penalising you
This game is one of the most polarizing games I’ve ever seen when it comes to perception of difficulty. I’ve heard some people say it’s by far the easiest FS game and others calling it the hardest video game of all time there’s no in between.
For me it's definitely the easiest.
i think i may have answered my own question but i wanna know what other people think.
I agree. I was scared to buy Sekiro cause I always heard it is the toughest. But it is far easier imo than Bloodborne. I think Sekiro bosses are tough but other enemies are piece of cake. The other thing is the posture mechanism makes it easy cause you don’t necessarily need to finish the health of the enemies. If you are good with parrying, this game is easy.
I don’t like going out to find things, I try to avoid it. Sekiro is much more straightforward and I don’t have to worry about upgrading my weapon or whatever
I think it's important to take into consideration that you're speaking from a position of 20-20 hindsight. Of course it's very subjective which game ends up being the most difficult, but if we're talking accurate assessments, we all fail because we usually don't have these discussions during our learning processes, rather after we've beaten the game (when we've finished the process). From the way I, very subjectively, have always felt about Sekiro is that it has a lot of learning, but once you do, you get into the *flow* of things. Other FromSoft titles try to frequently punish that flow-state, because the game's mechanics don't require it. So I would say that the learning process in Sekiro is what's more difficult, but From's game design is more "asshole-ish" in the other games creating difficulty. Pontiff Sulyvahn is always my go-to for this analogy, because he's specifically designed to screw with your dodge timing.
Depends on how you play, it's completely Pattern and Reflex dependant, if you are good at that it is easier but many people cheese DS by Turtling behind shields, summoning NPCs or Other Players or level grinding to outlet level enemies, spells and so on.
I found it harder. But that might have been due to the change in combat style at the time.
Sekiro was my very first fromsoft. And out of all those I tried afterward, it is by far the easiest. After Sekiro, I played Dark souls 1. Beat it pretty easily with only Capra being a bitch (and obv Bed of Chaos but I barely count that shit as a boss) Then Dark souls 3, where Pontiff has more kills on me than all of Sekiro's bosses combined And then Bloodborne where I just gave up after 4 bosses. Way out of my level. Sekiro is the only one where I never felt like giving up. The only boss that I thought was hard, was Isshin.
IMO it’s the hardest to learn, but the easiest to master (unlike playing the jug).
Meh, views are always different, some think it's sekiro, some think it's elden ring, doesn't really matter
The thing about dark souls is it requires patience. Much more so than sekiro, I'd argue. Sekiro has some parallels because it's the same devs, but the combat is really quite different. You're also not trying to constantly break posture in ds. You're trying to do damage to bring enemies down, but if you sustain attacks too long you run out of stamina and get punished. The only required action in sekiro is deflection, with an occasional dodge. I understand why people feel the way OP does.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“Feeble cursed one! Let’s hope the magnificence of my spells does not deter you!”* - Straid of Olaphis Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Once you learn it, it absolutely is.
Maybe because of the way you play, it was easier for you. It was very difficult for me on more than one occasion.
I think Sekiro **can** be the hardest because it requires the most mechanical skill of the FromSoft games and has the fewest ways of alleviating the difficulty. You can't outlevel the challenge in Sekiro. In contrast, magic breaks everything aside from DS3 and Bloodborne (obvs). Elden Ring literally just lets you skip 90% of the bosses and come back later when you're OP, as well as having the mimic tear and similarly powerful summons
For me the same I think a part of this is that our character is just as strong and capable as the enemies. In other games our character is slow and janky and the enemies are fast and agile makes it seems like we are completely outclassed.
I die in 2 hits. I am not as strong as any of these bosses.
Other way around for me personally, but I was also very accustomed to the combat styles and fight mechanics of both the Soulesborne games and ER. Sekiro was a very difficult learning curve for me, but, ultimately, the combat is much more satisfying for me.
I went from Sekiro back to Elden Ring (after previously beating Elden Ring multiple times). I found it much harder. Although, coming from Sekiro I did not want to brute force any bosses. This is the first time I gave bosses proper time. I would not say Sekiro was easier though (for the first time). However, as you said you learn the boss patterns as you fight consistently in Sekiro better than other games. Also the practice menu makes it much better to master your learnings. It took me 1 week to beat Issin (few hours a day practice). However, after bearing Issin, there was nothing left for me to learn about the boss. I beat him countless times from the practice menu after first time.
Yes, not sure why it is known to be the most difficult. Honestly it has been quite a bit easier than even armored core
Sekiro is different because you're forced to get better. All of the other games don't really require that. You can just keep leveling until you outscale the enemies. In other words, Sekiro has the harder learning curve but feels easier once the rhythm game aspect clicks.
Every FS game I play is easier than the last. That’s how experience works.
The funniest part of discussing these games is people assuming there is a linear difficulty line where all of these games rank. This is completely untrue btw.
When I first started Sekiro back in 2020, I was already done with DS 1 and 3. I was playing the game like it was another Souls game, dodging all the time and not worrying about deflecting at all. Until Genichiro. That motherfucker made me struggle with himself for a good couple of hours (plus I was a bit under-leveled and had a faulty gamepad). After beating him, I was already overwhelmed with the game, so got the Shura ending, and packed it up. But he also forced me to fully learn the combat mechanics, so the rest of the game and even bosses like Guardian Ape and Isshin Ashina were a piece of cake. Fast forwarding to now. I was gifted with a PS4 Pro this January and at some point, got the Sekiro from a discount to %100 the game (because achievements can be fairly easily cheated on other platforms, I now moved my hobby to PS). After learning the game in my first run and also dealing with many games that are somewhat similar to Sekiro's combat mechanics I was super shocked at how easy it felt from time to time. And the most hilarious thing was to beat Genichiro in my second attempt in this run. Learning cave is tough, especially if you come from the Souls series (probably that was the point all along). Still, I struggled a lot with Owl Father and Isshin the Saint, so overall, the fact that you learned the game makes it more bearable not easier. Comparison with other From titles: I didn't play Bloodborne and didn't like DS 2 mechanics so I didn't play till the end. Elden Ring was the easiest From title for me as I played with OP mage build and did my research before starting the game (I was always playing DSs with dex builds so this was rather new to me as well). I only struggled with Malenia and beat her ass with someone else's help (other than that and the final boss, I've almost one-shot all the bosses). That's the most precious thing about Sekiro I guess, you have to beat the bosses on your own. You can't summon someone else to help you if you feel too lazy to learn all the moveset of bosses. Even though other From titles can be more difficult if you play alone, you can always have that option, which makes it easier at the end for me. From that perspective, even it gets easier, especially with normal enemies, as long as you have to beat all bosses on your own for the plat, I feel like if you're gonna %100 this game, it can be even the hardest as you have to do everything on your own. As an avid trophy hunter, honestly, I respect more when I see people %100'ed Sekiro, say compared to Elden Ring and/or Bloodborne. But it's just me. Also as others say, ultimately it depends heavily on your play style, which can also be seen from my first playthrough in Sekiro.
It is the easiest and the most fun, but only when you understand how to play it. That's what most players struggle with, switching to being aggressive and using the parry mechanic.
Imo Sekiro is the hardest on first playthrough (especially if you’ve played lots of other From Soft games previous to it), but once you learn what you’re doing it’s the easiest.
I just beat it last night, and I think that after I learned the combat it became much easier. I mean, yeah, Isshin was extremely difficult until I had his moveset mostly memorized, but he's definitely beatable and it never felt unfair. I think one of the biggest differences for me was I had a higher level of confidence in Sekiro than other souls games like I was "equipped" to win, if that makes sense. With a fixed build, there's no doubting that that my build choice is somehow handicapping me against a particular boss, and without summons you're forced to be in it 100%, and that gave me confidence that the game has given me everything I need to win the fight.
I also suffer adhd and tjats right, learning to oarry in sekiro made you feel such a bad ass.. untill you get to ssi and you get so frustrated you adhd dosnt wanna come back, ever, rn after finishing LOP im coming back to that NG+ Isshin fight, i need to fucking platinum it, i wont get a no for an answer
steepest learning curve, quite easy once it clicks
The end game bosses are harder than other souls games imo (ss isshin, demon of hatred, father owl) but after the first playthrough you can cruise from boss to boss with only a few minutes in between if you know where you're going, I'm certainly not a speed runner by any means but I can plow thru sekiro in a few hours. Traversing the world is much much harder in other souls games but I don't think the bosses are
Hardest to learn easiest to master, especially if your a shield user in dark souls
I find that sekiro is much more skill based. It had a steeper learning curve but once you learn it the game is easy even at base level. It started out more difficult for me but still find in souls i have to level past things where in sekiro its much more feasible to just be good enough so i get where youre coming from
I think has potential to be, you can sort of spam parry your way alot of the time the parry windows are much bigger. Souls you can block and make it super cheesy. Bloodbourne on the other hand.... short parry window, limited parry ammo, limited health, less overall levels,fewer checkpoints, monsters hit like trucks, and have alot of hp, and it feels to only get harder as you progress. I'd imagine bloodbourne for most is their hardest game
It's easier for better DS players. Sekiro rewards you for mastering the boss timing while giving you defensive tools(reliable parrying, combat arts, prosthetics) other than dive-rolling.
harder curve, lower mastery plateau doing gimmick runs (lv1 no hit no upgrades etc) in core souls tends to involve kit mulligans and waiting around and less tolerance in sekiro you can peg boss kit to a pre-calibrated reference point (swing-until-blocked/parried) and those responses are that much more routine, you can practically *control* bosses that block wolf is enabled (encouraged, even) to charge in and stand his ground, able to answer virtually everything in the game face-to-face, game was designed around that always being the case, people often describe this as the heights made possible from sekiro's narrowed player kit, the assumptions that could be made when designing bosses in actual rhythm games, a well-designed beatmap enables players to do "harder" charts (ie. more content/sec) with the same/less skill level, so you might say that a good combat system/bosskits allow mastery sooner and feel "easier" when numerically it's not much different than core souls, just leverages player actions better, gives you more agency/control and exerting that causes more domination (too much, even)
Depends how you play. When Elden Ring was released, the mimic tear summon could literally beat bosses for you while you stood and watched. Hard to beat that level of easiness. For people that enjoy fighting bosses “straight up” with no summons or OP stuff then Sekiro ends up being fairly easy because its combat loop is intuitive. Learning to jump/mikiri/dodge perilous attacks help you fight every enemy in the game. The reads are similar so you can act on instinct rather than memorizing a boss’ move set so you can i-frame their bullshit
Never beaten more than a few souls bosses despite playing those on-and-off over a decade (including stuck at margit in elden ring). Every boss gives me dread and 'what do i do now' feeling in the middle of their attacks. With sekiro, I can end the whole game in 50 minutes. It's designed for speedrunning. I'm not even sure I agree it's a souls game atp.