Bonfireside Chat 136: The Hirata Estate
Added 2019-05-19 16:00:02 +0000 UTCThis episode covers the entirety of the first visit to the Hirata Estate. Stay tuned next week for our first off week episode featuring your responses to the Sekiro early game.
Comments
Definitely, I agree! I have a hypothesis about this. I think From has good intentions, and wants to make a fair game, but also likes to appeal to their "git gud" fans and up the ante. I think they inflated the damage numbers unnecessarily and threw in too many enemies in certain encounters. However, I'm conflicted on this. Shockingly, you can make the game even harder than it already is (not just through NG+) by the Kuro Charm and Bell Demon options. Also, you can resurrect. None of these are excuses to make a tiresome, frustrating first playthrough of the game. But they are excuses to fucking with difficulty all the way to Hell. I think enemies two-shotting you is part with the course for this game because you can just ramp up the challenge ridiculously. I don't know what to think of any of it (difficulty was never the point, apparently!).
John Nelson
2019-05-21 22:22:42 +0000 UTCI think I touch on this in the response episode coming up, but I've come around on the idea that Sekiro isn't as difficult as I thought it was, it's more that I don't think it's' a very good teacher. There's sort of a couple different aspects of difficulty at play. One is "What you have to execute." To your point, animations are generally well telegraphed in Sekiro and outside of a couple of bosses, you don't end up with the visual noise of something like bloodborne. I don't think they land this across the board or anything, but mostly it's pretty good. It's not easy, it's just consistent, which are two different things. The reaction times involved are still very quick. The issue that makes Sekiro hard, however, and one thing that I think makes it a shitty teacher is the consequence for failure to execute, which remains very punishing for the entire game. The game enforces this mostly numerically through having the player do chip damage against most bosses, and just about every boss having a 90% damage grab attack, etc. This is an aspect of difficulty, and it's not tuned super well, imo. My experience playing the game the 2nd time *has* been much easier, but I don't think that's getting to know the true Sekiro. I don't think that experience really exists until you've played through the excessively harsh Sekiro along the way. Some people love that, and some people think that it means the game was never difficult and that they just didn't get it, but your first experience playing through the game counts as well. -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2019-05-21 18:26:37 +0000 UTCI appreciate how stalwart you guys are being on the difficulty subject. You have cleared up a lot of my personal thoughts on it. I completely agree with what a lot of what you guys have said. However, after playing the game multiple times and earning the Platinum trophy, a lot of the assumptions I made about the difficulty of the game after completing my first playthrough have completely fell apart. It turns out that the game us inarguably easy now. The stress chemicals in my brain don't initiate the same way playing Sekiro again as they do when I replay Bloodborne. I think Sekiro has a difficulty that doesn't scale or has a lasting effect on multiple play throughs. Bloodborne can still be hard for me because the enemies don't have as clear windups for their attacks and the combat design is more open-ended. Sekiro has a more procedural combat system that has clarity to its attack animations and more well thought-out battle approaches. I can play Sekiro again and enjoy knowing all incoming attacks and what responses to carry out, but Bloodborne and Dark Souls are less predictable in this regard. What do you think?
John Nelson
2019-05-21 08:05:43 +0000 UTCWeird! I was wondering if you could take that guy out. Bummer that he respawns.
Duckfeed.tv
2019-05-21 07:47:29 +0000 UTCDrunkard; before initiating dialog with Nogami Gensai I was taking out the other adversaries in the area when an errant sword swing aggravated the above mentioned thereby turning them into a foe - not for that run (for there has been many others), but for each encounter subsequent …. Basically just adding another combatant to the fold, because Santa finally got all my Wish Letters and gifted me the extra challenges I was so lacking
Murder She Rothenberger (Wrote In Burger)
2019-05-21 04:47:46 +0000 UTCActually I think you guys missed the area in Hirata that has the two Shinobi hunters right after the mid boss one. It’s right before the tunnel that takes you to owl. Oh and if I haven’t said this yet......anyama the peddler is a bit of an Easter egg. So he’s a thief. Then he’s a merchant. He has an eye patch. And what are his clothes made out of?? PATCHES
Jessie joy
2019-05-20 11:30:32 +0000 UTCBonfire side chat - So you guys are talking about timey wimey. I’m almost positive this is just straight up time travel being covered up as memories. So you go 3 years into the past but as your present self//You can take things to and from this “memory” // if you kill anyama the peddler here, he will be dead in the present// there’s a reason ppl talk to you about “that night” and yet wolf doesn’t remember it at all. It’s because wolf hasn’t experienced it yet. He’s literally experiencing it at the same time as the player. It’s not a memory, for wolf it somehow just hasn’t happened yet. Sort of like in ds2 giant “memories” we are the one who kills the giant king and he recognizes us in the present. - the sculptor mentions the golden Buddha was made by the true sculptor. Wonder who that is. Bet they made the SCULPTORS idols too. That’s a lot of power in architecture from one guy/girl - The carp merchant guy has an interesting dialogue I’ll talk about later connected to Tomoe most ppl miss out on - I WAS WRONG PREVIOUSLY.....hanbei actually is not wearing the bandit armor. He’s wearing the Ashina grunt armor. - These bandits are seen elsewhere later in game - Their armor has a golden wheat symbol on it. This wheat symbol is also seen in Ashina Reservoir around the first red eye ogre fight. Strange. - The area with the flame thrower has some neat little things to it. Like the bandits there each have their own actions they do and they’re actually funny. One guy is literally sleeping against the wall of a hut. There’s 3 guys around the flame thrower bonfire right...well the one sitting on the ground is literally so drunk you can fight and kill everyone around him and he won’t even notice, or it will at least take him forever. I love it lol. And then!! There’s a guy pissing! You can kill him while he’s peeing hahah. It’s great. - The flame thrower prosthetic can be really helpful (no upgrades needed) on a lot of bosses and mid bosses. You keep oil in your hot bar, switch to it, throw one at your enemy, the use the prosthetic on them and many MANY enemies will be completely lit on fire and freaking out for long enough to get multiple hits on them. - THIS WORKS ON......... Juzou the Drunkard whenever he takes a sip (and all his re skins) // anything with red eyes// any of the purple ninjas// any of the Ashina generals// and the guardian ape. Probably others I’m forgetting. It’s very nice for beginners - The axe is another amazing prosthetic. This one though you need at least the first upgrade, all the rest just make it even better. But with the upgraded axe you hold down the prosthetic attack button and you do 3 very heavy attack swings in a row that cannot be interrupted (usually) for some vitality damage and HEAVY posture damage. This is my favorite and most used prosthetic of the game. It works on just about everyone and is a major life saver. - As I said I agree with you guys about the final bosses. But I’m afraid when it comes to the prosthetics I wholly disagree. I got quite a bit of use out of most of the prosthetics. Maybe because I was willing to sacrifice and experiment when you guys were not? But most have many uses and others only have certain uses but those uses can be extremely rewarding. - But again I do agree with you guys in that I had an extremely hard time with the Shinobi Hunter! He killed me a lot. Although stealth killing the enemies around him didn’t bother me nearly as much as I’m sure it did you. But yeah very hard boss. Although unlike the ogre , when I beat him I did feel very accomplished and was able to then slaughter the rest I found in game. - One thing that I did find terrible and great at the same time is immediately finding the TWO Shinobi hunters after having such a hard time with the one. - I also didn’t usually have to wait for the hunter to de-agro. Somehow I had a rhythm in stealth killing everyone before hand. - Again with Juzou I would throw an oil, then when he would sip I’d light his ass on fire. I also cleared all the guys out then went to ask the samurai for help so it was two on one. I enjoyed fighting him. He killed me around 6 times. - TRIVIA the headless are the same body type and weapon as Juzou - Lady butterfly only killed me twice but the fight that I won took way too long as I attempted to avoid her buddies. - So Kuro is under her illusion technique when you see him. Wolf them tells him to “do what must be done” Kuro will repeat this ALOT throughout the rest of the game. It’s very odd. - So the phantom kunai upgrade says lady butterfly trained in a misty forest. We find a misty forest later in this game! Her kunai has these bright butterflies following it. You find these butterflies hanging around in the misty forest we visit later! She uses illusions. The misty forest we visit later has illusions as well!! And the illusions in the forest look an awful lot like the bandits from Hirata Estate. Just some food for thought(:
Jessie joy
2019-05-20 11:29:03 +0000 UTCAye you can't deathblow O'rin anymore before initiating the fight. You can definitely deathblow true monk on the second phase from the trees
Nick Hunter
2019-05-20 02:03:07 +0000 UTCI had heard that patched it out, along with the first phase on O'rin? I haven't made it to either yet on my replay, but I will be there soon. -GB
Duckfeed.tv
2019-05-19 20:25:00 +0000 UTCLast I checked you can still do the second phase deathblow on that one three phase boss, it's just you can't do it on phase one.
Michael McCormick
2019-05-19 19:10:42 +0000 UTC
