Video Game / Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Take revenge. Restore your honor. Kill ingeniously.

"Your death won't come easily..."

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is an Action-Adventure game developed by FromSoftware and published by Activision. The game released on March 22nd, 2019 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. It is directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls fame.

The game is set in the last years of Japan's Sengoku Era, in the fictional province of Ashina.^note While there was an actual Ashina clan, the similarities end with the name. As the whole country was plagued by war, Isshin Ashina staged a coup against the previous lord and managed to wrest control of the province after a key battle against General Tamura. Incidentally, a shinobi named Owl crossed paths with a young boy roaming the battlefield. Impressed by his composure, Owl then offered the boy to join him.

Twenty years later, the boy has grown and become the Wolf, a shinobi of the Ashina clan. He is tasked with a critical assignment in the face of the shogunate's attempts to centralize power: protecting Kuro, the Divine Heir to the Dragon's Heritage, which makes him and those of his choosing immortal. The pair are captured by a radical faction within the clan led by Genichiro Ashina, who hopes the Dragon's Heritage can turn the tide in the otherwise unwinnable war against the Interior Ministry ^note heavily implied to be the Tokugawa Shogunate, which conquered and united Japan at the end of the Sengoku Period. Wolf, whose oath is to Kuro and not the clan at large, attempts to engineer an escape, but this goes awry when Genichiro intercepts them and severs Wolf's left arm in battle, leaving the shinobi unable to resist as Genichiro carries Kuro back into the fortress.

Some time later, Wolf awakes in a dilapidated temple to learn he has been nursed to health and given a prosthetic arm hiding an array of weapons by a mysterious Sculptor of wooden Buddhas. Bound by the Iron Code of the Shinobi, Wolf must now assault Ashina Castle to bring back Kuro at any cost — and thanks to the Dragon's Heritage, death is only a minor obstacle.

The gameplay of Sekiro has shifted in several ways from the normal template of the Souls-like RPG, letting go most of the RPG elements such as weapon and armor customization or stat builds. In exchange, it adds the movement options and stealth of Tenchu, and Wolf's prosthetic left arm also serves as a combination of trick weapons and a grappling hook, enabling him to use a selection of special tools which add unique spins to combat. The game's combat system is also much more developed than in past titles, allowing Wolf to attack directly, deflect strikes, dodge out of grabs, jump above sweeping attacks and either deplete the enemy health bar or fill a Posture bar to perform a Shinobi Deathblow, killing the foe instantly. However, Souls-like fans will still recognize the brutal difficulty, dynamic enemies, and very frequent deaths common to the genre.

Emphasis on the last point. Out of all of FromSoft's games, Sekiro may very well be their hardest, and is considered by many as the most difficult game in The Eighth Generation of Console Video Games, standing out from even other Nintendo Hard titles made by the company.

In May 2019, FromSoft's parent company Kadokawa began publishing Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying, a free online prequel manga by Shin Yamamoto, with the English localization available on Yen Press's website.

In 2020, due to the game's massive success, a huge free update was announced for October 29th, which includes; a new option to customize the Wolf's appearance with unlockable skins, a boss rush challenge gauntlet, three new bosses, and the return of the "message" and "phantom" multiplayer system found in previous Souls games, alongside a host of smaller tweaks and fixes. Alongside it, a "Game of the Year" edition was announced, bundling the new update, an artbook and the game's soundtrack.

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Tropes in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

A-C

• Achilles' Heel: A core element of the game's combat design is using the Shinobi Prosthetic to exploit these. Reading the lore descriptions for each attachement gives hints on where they can be used, and putting them into practice can make certain enemies much easier to deal with. As a basic example, the shuriken attachment can knock enemies out of the air, while the axe can be used to destroy shields. More specialized examples include using the Sabimaru to induce poisoning on Ookami women and the soldiers of the Fountainhead Palace.
• A.I. Breaker: A lot of the bosses have quirks in their AI that can be exploited to cheese them out. One of the more egregious examples is the Snake Eyes boss in the poison pit, who can be tricked into standing in the pool of poison and shooting at you behind cover while her health slowly degrades.
• All for Nothing:
  • When the Ministry begins their invasion, several Ashina soldiers undergo the Deadly Upgrade of acquiring red eyes… Only for the Ministry forces to use fire, the red eyes' only weakness, as their weapons.
  • Ultimately this applies to Ashina in general. Every morally dubious length Genichiro stooped to in order to try and protect Ashina from outside encroachment comes up short — the aforementioned power gained from red eyes is easily subdued by fire (which the Ministry employs heavily), Kuro's power is never able to be exploited before Wolf puts a stop to it, and even Genichiro's own choice to forsake his humanity for more power doesn't save him from meeting his demise no matter what ending occurs. Indeed, Genichiro's decision to kidnap Kuro and get Wolf involved in the conflict winds up crippling Ashina's forces even more because Wolf wipes out many of the Ashina army's toughest fighters in pursuit of Kuro, but even if he'd left Kuro alone, the downfall of Ashina was likely inevitable.
• Almost Dead Guy: Several of the NPCs you encounter will live just long enough to tell you something important before dying from their wounds; they include a samurai at the Hirata Eastate, a Senpou assassin outside the Gun Fort, a Sunken Valley clansman near the second fight with the Guardian Ape, and several Ashina soldiers during the Interior Ministry's assaults on Ashina Castle (including a Nightjar who's likely the same one who accompanied Genichiro during the prologue). Downplayed with Inosuke Nogami, who's also near death, but won't die until after you complete the first Hirata Estate memory, which will most likely happen well after you first meet him. Amusingly, many of these characters revive with the rest of the enemies when you rest at a Sculptor's Idol, meaning you can listen to their "last words" over and over.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Some of the best loot are hidden in missable coves, hidden walls, and other out-of-reach places that requires the player to explore every nook and cranny to find them.
• Amazon Brigade: The Snake Eyes found in the Sunken Valley and Ashina Depths, and the Okami found in the Fountainhead Palace. The former are even descendants of the latter.
• And the Adventure Continues: It happens for the Dragon's Homecoming ending. The Divine Child absorbs Kuro into her own body, and Wolf decides to accompany them on their journey west, to return the Dragon Heritage to the Divine Dragon's birthplace.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: It is said that those who kill many in battle are at risk of becoming a Shura, an unstoppable monstrosity that will slay anyone in its path. The Sculptor eventually succumbs to his hatred, but he fails to become a Shura, instead turning into the Demon of Hatred. In one ending, Sekiro does the same, but unlike the Sculptor, he successfully becomes a Shura.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: If you beat the Shura and Severance boss gauntlets, all you get are some new costumes.
• Angry Guard Dog: Enemy patrols are sometimes accompanied by mangy, wolf-like hounds. Quick and fragile, they aren't that dangerous in open combat… but are excellent at detecting Wolf when he's sneaking around.
• Animal Motifs:
  • All shinobi associated with the Ashina Clan have an animal thematically attached to them. For starters, they all are referred to by animal names such as "Wolf", "Owl", and "Lady Butterfly", and their fighting styles are inspired by their respective namesakes. In fact, the Ashina's own shinobi are called "Nightjars" (after the real-life bird), and are acrobatic fighters who wear feather cloaks. This also applies to the Sculptor himself, as he was formerly a shinobi known as "Orangutan" who fought with a ferocity and agility acquired from training among the monkeys of the Sunken Valley.
  • The Fountainhead waters are worshipped by all the inhabitants of Ashina. As such, the Ashina Sword Style has two fundamental moves stated to be inspired by how a carp moves through a waterfall.
• Animate Dead: The Puppeteer Ninjutsu allows Wolf to turn an enemy he just backstabbed into a temporary undead ally. This ability is needed if you want to fulfill the requirements for the "Return" ending.
• Anonymous Ringer: The faction menacing Ashina is referred to simply as "the Interior Ministry" and "Central Forces". However, given that the game takes place in the final years of the Sengoku period, it can be inferred that the Ministry is part of the Tokugawa clan. In fact, the Interior Ministry soldiers who appear in the final assault on Ashina Castle wear emblems◊ with floral designs suspiciously similar to those on the Tokugawa family crest.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • While direct combat has become more difficult, a number of mechanics have been implemented to soothe the player's frustration. Perilous Attacks, which require specific counters, are signaled by bright red "danger" kanji flaring up above the hero's head. Opening the menu now freezes time, allowing the player to consider what items to use at their leisure. Enemies will not attack Wolf while he's performing a Deathblow (most likely due to invulnerability frames he gains during the animation), waiting until he's done to strike again.
  • If Wolf falls from mortal heights, he will just respawn from where he fell from with some damage (around 45%) to his overall health (meaning if you fell under this threshold, you die and bypass Resurrection) instead of being instantly killed, Zelda-style. Wolf is also incapable of falling off ledges unless you jump, allowing you to walk along precarious branches with a surprising amount of ease, and limiting how often you'll fall into pits.
  • Like the Bonfires of Dark Souls, Sculptor's Idols can restore Wolf's vitality and Healing Gourd uses, but will also respawn enemies. Unlike Bonfires, which apply all three effects automatically, at Idols you must specifically select "Rest" from the menu, meaning you can safely access the Idol's other features without refreshing enemies.
  • You start with the infinite-use Homeward Bone Expy (with no penalty for using it like the Darksign has) already in your inventory, rather than it showing up near the end of the game when you'd be rolling in enough cash to buy a never-ending supply of regular ones anyways like in Dark Souls II and III. It does take a few seconds to activate, during which Wolf is vulnerable, so it can't be abused to escape a bad combat situation without risk.
  • Merchants stock limited numbers of 100, 500, and 1000 Sen pouches in their inventory as a means of letting you safeguard money so that you don't lose it upon death in case Unseen Aid doesn't activate. About the only downside is "buying" these pouches costs the equivalent of the amount of Sen they carry plus 10%.
  • Most of the Mini-Bosses do not lock the player into their arena with fog gates, and those that do tend to only block the route past them, not the way you came in. This allows for a quick getaway to heal and recover if things go badly. The only downside is that if the boss loses aggro, it recovers all its health.
  • Late in the game, you receive an item from killing the True Corrupted Monk called the Dragon's Tally Board. This makes it so that all consumables are able to be purchased an infinite amount of times from every single merchant, including Divine Confetti. This dramatically reduces the stress of fighting Apparition-type mini-bosses, since Divine Confetti is otherwise very rare.
  • When Sculptor becomes the Demon of Hatred and leaves the Dilapidated Temple, a workshop will be left at the spot he was, allowing you to fit and upgrade your prosthetic weapons without him.
  • In contrast to the extremely demanding parry-frame system of previous games, Wolf can block all damage by guarding, and deflection — the equivalent of a perfect parry in earlier titles — is only dependent on when you block, meaning that timing is all you need to worry about, rather than matching up parry-frames with the attack landing. This is averted in New Game Plus, however, where the player has the option of allowing damage through non-deflection blocks, in addition to making the game substantially harder.
  • If the player dies and resurrects during the first fight with Genichiro, then when he reveals his surprise second form and starts the fight again, the player gets their resurrection back for free.
  • Choosing to obey Owl's Iron Code will cause the game to reach straight to the Shura Ending where you fight two bosses before the game abruptly ends, leaving the endgame permanently locked out until the next New Game Cycle. To prevent the player from accidentally picking the option when they didn't intend to, Owl will then ask again to confirm Wolf's decision if the player initially chose the "Obey the Iron Code. Forsake Kuro" option.
  • Like Dark Souls II, New Game Plus doesn't begin until the player chooses to activate it, allowing you to explore the world and wrap up any loose ends before formally ending the game.
  • The Inner versions of the Gauntlet bosses unlock their Reflections upon reaching them the first time, allowing you to practice against them instead of dying to them at the end of the Gauntlet in practice runs.
  • In a shockingly merciful touch, it is impossible to fall off cliffs by accident, i.e. by running or dodging towards the edge. If the player does so, an invisible wall will stop them, and this even applies to knockback from enemy attacks, meaning you can't be killed via Ring Out, which is a very common cause of death in other From games. Only deliberate jumps and a few notable enemies like the Chained Ogre's throws and Armored Warrior's attacks (which is a side effect of the victory condition) can bypass this.
• Anti-Hero: From the subtext of a lot of the story, and many of the numerous hints in the game regarding Shura, Wolf easily is one. He's killing because his lord was taken and it's his duty to get him back, no matter the cost. How far this goes is entirely up to the player and the choices they ultimately make.
• Anti-Villain: The Ashina military aren't evil, just desperate. Constant assaults on their territory are causing them to slowly become exhausted and overstretched, with even their main castle slowly becoming a deteriorating wreck. The outskirts of their castle are a desolate war zone, and most of their army seems to have been reduced to dispirited recruits who are nowhere near the skill of an average samurai. As a result, they believe that sacrificing Kuro in a dark ritual and using his blood to make themselves unkillable will be the only thing capable of saving them.
  • Genichiro outright states that he does everything he does for the sake of his adopted homeland, Ashina. His motives are sympathetic; his methods, considerably less so.
  • To a lesser extent, the Interior Ministry, who are heavily implied to be the Tokugawa Shogunate that conquered Japan at the end of the Sengoku Period. When they invade, they mercilessly slaughter the people of Ashina, including soldiers trying to surrender and children. However, considering the greater historical context, they're on the cusp of ending a century-long civil war, which makes their actions understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic.
• Arc Words: "Do what must be done" and to a lesser extent "Hesitation is defeat".
• Arm Cannon: Wolf's prosthetic arm has a little spool-like wheel that is primarily used to reel in his grappling hook — but it can be loaded with classic ninja weapons like shuriken, effectively making it this trope.
• Armor Is Useless: Zig Zagged. In the game, armor is portrayed with relative accuracy. You can't cut through armor like a hot knife through butter, though you can stab where there isn't any, like the armpit or the throat in most deathblows. Certain armor like those worn by specific Taro Troops need to be pulled off by the Loaded Spear, otherwise those enemies are immune to frontal damage. A massive aversion would be the Armored Warrior, whose Western full plate and mail underneath prevent Wolf from even piercing through the gaps, requiring him to use a more creative approach. Wolf is also equipped with a few bits of armor as well, though not nearly enough to be protected like the samurai.
• Armor of Invincibility: The Armored Warrior mini-boss is a large European man covered head to toe in heavy plate armor that makes him completely invincible to Wolf's arsenal of lightweight Stock Ninja Weaponry. Even depleting his Posture and performing a Deathblow on him doesn't hurt him even slightly… although it does knock him backwards a little bit, and you fight him on top of a bridge…
• Arrows on Fire: Most archer bandits in Hirata Estate will shoot flaming arrows.
• Artifact of Death: The Mortal Blade, whose real name is Gracious Gift of Tears, as well as its counterpart, Open Gate. It is said to be able to kill even immortal beings, but is also cursed and anyone who draws it from its sheath dies on the spot. Lucky for Wolf, the curse apparently can't kill immortals, so he just immediately resurrects after dying from it the first time, and can draw the sword with no problems after that, though he still continues to use Kusabimaru primarily and only uses the Mortal Blade for finishing blows against immortal foes, the Combat Arts "Mortal Draw" and its upgraded version "Empowered Mortal Draw", and to either kill Kuro or himself depending on your chosen ending, which was the whole reason he got it in the first place. Genichiro managed the same feat through reckless consumption of the Rejuvenating Sediment, mimicking Wolf's Immortal Oath, and was able to use roughly the same skill.
• Artificial Stupidity: The enemy AI is quite stupid whenever the player uses stealth. Enemies may jump off ledges trying to pursue Wolf, their pathfinding can lead them to get stuck on objects, and so on and so forth…
• Artistic License – History:
  • Sen being used as currency in-game which takes place in the tail-end of the Sengoku Period. Historically, Sen was first minted in the Meiji period some 300 years after this game takes place. During the time period of the game, there wasn't really a single currency for Japan, with a mixture of Chinese bronze coins, locally minted imitations called mon, and an array of different coins minted by a couple of clans (including some that were the precursors to the Tokugawa coinage) being used.
  • The real-life Ashina Clan didn't last long enough to be conquered by the Interior Ministry, which is heavily implied to be the Tokugawa Shoganate. They already fell in battle against the Date Clan in the Battle of Suriagehara, at least a decade before the Tokugawa Shoganate even came into power. Tamura being one of their local generals and Isshin wresting Ashina from the Tokugawa Shoganate is a very unlikely scenario.
• Ascended Extra: In the game, Hanbei mostly serves as the player's trainer, schooling him on the basics of combat and defence. His backstory was, however, expounded upon in the prequel manga Sekiro Side Story: Hanbei the Undying.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: When resurrected by the Black Mortal Blade, Isshin Ashina is not only returned to the peak of his strength, but seemingly inherits Genichiro's and/or Kuro's immortality in the process, making him more akin to a supreme fighting spirit than a mere man.
• Ascended Glitch: Though not actually a glitch, Dark Souls players using Dung Pies to deliberately give themselves Toxic and become immune to the Blowdart Snipers's Toxic effect can hardly be considered a developer-intended use of the item. This game introduces Contact Medicine, an item with the express purpose of protecting you from Poison by giving you a weaker form of it.
• Assassination Sidequest: When you meet the Tengu of Ashina, he asks you to kill Senpou Assassins in the vicinity of the Ashina Castle gate. As a reward, he gives you the ability to develop in the Ashina Skill tree.
• Atrocious Arthropods: In the Senpou Temple area, some of the Buddhist monks have become infested with centipedes as part of their pursuit of immortality. They will always resurrect when "killed" unless they are given a death blow via the Mortal Blade.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Many of the higher-tier Prosthetic Tools can be quite powerful, but often come with downsides that their lower-tier versions might lack, such as greater Spirit Emblem consumption, longer wind-up times, or advantages that are very narrowly situational. Fortunately, even after unlocking higher-tier versions, the game still allows the player to equip the lower-tier (and more generally applicable) versions of Prosthetic Tools they have already unlocked.
  • The Golden Vortex causes enemies to drop extra items and sen. Awesome...but it costs four spirit emblems per use, shares the same issue as the other forms of Divine Abduction, and by the time you can unlock Golden Vortex, you're probably drowning in Mibu Balloons of Wealth/Possession.
  • The Divine Abduction as a whole suffers from this. It turns enemies around when used, opening them up for a backstab, and it insta-kills the Seekers in Senpou Temple (including the Taro Troops). However, it has to be charged before unleashing. Unfortunately, the charge animation is very long, the charge itself dissipates very quickly if not unleashed, and Wolf can easily be knocked out of both the charging and unleashing animations. Making things worse, the spirit emblems are deducted when charging the fan, so if the charge dissipates before you can unleash it, you've just wasted spirit emblems. Outside of Senpou Temple, it's mostly useless.
  • The Malcontent can stun apparitions, causing them to be vulnerable for several seconds. However, it only works three times per fight, costs four spirit emblems to use, and the item needed to upgrade it (the Kingfisher's Ring) is easy to miss. It's dropped from a Shichimen Warrior in Ashina Depths, after the rematch with the Guardian Ape.
  • Phantom Kunai are similar to the basic shuriken, except they launch phantom butterflies that home in on the target and ignore blocks, and can be charged to fire more butterflies. However, the butterflies do absolutely miserable damage, and since it costs two spirit emblems per shot, they can't really be effectively spammed.
  • The Lazulite Sacred Flame is an upgrade to the Flame Vent that allows the flame to burn apparitions; however, it no longer inflicts the Burn status ailment. By the time you've got enough lapis lazuli to earn this upgrade, you've obtained the Dragon Tally Board, which lets you buy unlimited amounts of Divine Confetti, as well as having unlocked the Phoenix Lilac Umbrella, which is much more useful against apparitions. Finally, chances are, by the time you unlock it, the only apparition remaining is the Headless in the Fountainhead Palace...which is underwater.
• Back from the Dead: One of the game's main gimmicks, justified by Dragon's Heritage allowing the Divine Heir to bless one person of his choosing with eternal life. Once you die, you can activate a limited-use ability to resurrect on the spot and continue the fight, although the resurrection is on a cooldown and Wolf only gets half his health bar. Smart players can use this to their advantage - enemies and even some bosses will resume their usual patrol after killing you, creating openings for nasty sneak attacks.
• Back Stab:
  • As a shinobi, Wolf can sneak up on enemies and backstab them with his katana, automatically killing them (although the noise may attract nearby enemies). It works exceptionally well against mini-bosses, who can be sneaked upon and backstabbed to instantly eliminate an entire health bar.
  • Happened to Wolf himself in the finale of his first memory of Hirata Estate, forcing Kuro to bind him to the Immortal Oath.
• Badass Army: The Interior Ministry's armed forces are spoken of with dread by Ashina's soldiers. You see exactly why near the end of the game, when Isshin succumbs to his illness and they invade Ashina in force, curbstomping everything they encounter other than Wolf and the Demon of Hatred.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In every ending except the Shura ending, the Interior Ministry (based on the real-life Tokugawa Shogunate) successfully invades Ashina and burns it to the ground.
• Balancing Death's Books: Wolf cheats death by involuntarily sucking portions of life force from those around him to restore his own, which manifests in his victims as the illness called Dragonrot.
• The Battle Didn't Count: It happens for the second boss battle against Genichiro. Thanks to the rejuvenating waters, he survives the battle against Wolf and gets away.
  • The battle with Genichiro at the end of the tutorial, should you manage to defeat him. At this point in the story, Genichiro is still a normal human, and it's implied that Wolf may have the ability to resurrect at this point. Despite being dealt two Deathblows, the cutscene plays out in almost roughly the same manner, with Genichiro slicing off Wolf's arm and standing strong as if he hadn't taken any damage.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Happens frequently. The duels against Lady Butterfly, and later Great Shinobi Owl in the same room, take place in the burning secret room underneath the Hirata Estates. The battle against the Demon of Hatred takes place in front of the Ashina Castle Gate, surrounded by the burning wreckage of the Outskirts. Wolf can also get into several fights with invading Red Guard forces during their final assault on Ashina Castle, by which point the whole place is on fire.
• Battle in the Rain: The final battle against Sword Saint Isshin takes place during a thunderstorm.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: In trying to seek immortality for themselves by experimenting on hundreds of children instead of accepting the impermanence of life, the Buddhist monks of Senpou Temple became monsters whose appearances are as rotten as their desires, their emaciated, mummified bodies being overrun with horrifying vermin like centipedes. Sekiro can find a man-made hole where multiple statues of Buddha, still in pristine condition, were discarded by the monks like trash, symbolizing their utter rejection of Buddha.
• Beneath the Earth: Wolf can visit several caverns in the mountains, although they are home to monsters of all sorts. For instance, there is the Serpent Cave hidden at the bottom of the Sunken Valley, which is the lair of the Great Serpent and some other abominations. There are also several iron mines that are the property of the Ashina.
• BFS:
  • The massive, hideous warrior Juzou the Drunkard wields a suitably-sized poison-coated Ōdachi.
  • The Armored Warrior weilds a massive European greatsword that's easily the largest sword seen in the game, being longer than he is tall.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While Genichiro is your Arch-Enemy throughout the game, he's only doing what he feels is necessary to stop the Interior Ministry from razing Ashina to the ground. Meanwhile, Great Shinobi Owl is still alive and playing both sides against each other so he can claim the Dragon's Heritage for himself and become God-Emperor of Japan.
• Big Fancy Castle: Ashina Castle definitely qualifies.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies:
  • Large exploding crickets can be found in areas associated with infested people or creatures.
  • The infested themselves are hosts to huge Creepy Centipedes, allowing them to come back to life indefinitely after death. The monks of Senpou Temple are all infested, as is Hanbei the Undying and the Guardian Ape.
• Bishōnen Line: True Shura appear to play this trope razor straight — at least, assuming Wolf's Shura skin is a represention of what they look like. The Demon Of Hatred is the closest thing to a true Shura that Wolf can fight, but it's one of the smallest non-human bosses in the game.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Immortal Severance. Wolf and Kuro are able to end the Dragon Heritage, ensuring there's no more conflict over obtaining the immortality it grants. But it involves sacrificing Kuro, which Wolf reluctantly carries out.
  • Purification. Instead of killing Kuro, Wolf sacrifices his own life to ensure Kuro lives.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: At the core of the game is the conflict between the Ashina Clan and the Interior Ministry, which is very nuanced.
  • The former are losing the war against the latter, which is causing them to resort to increasingly more desperate measures that are not only highly immoral, but ultimately self-destructive, up to and including seizing the Divine Heir to use his powers of immortality to bolster their forces.
  • This puts them into conflict with Wolf, who is sworn to save, protect, and serve the Divine Heir. For his part, Kuro is one of the few people that understand the corrupting influence his powers bring and sets his bodyguard off on a mission to bring them to an end. Wolf carries out his tasks loyally, but without considering how his actions affect the world as a whole and leaves a trail of bodies everywhere he goes, which inevitably puts him in danger of becoming a Shura.
  • Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry is a ruthlessly destructive force that kills all it sees, takes no prisoners, and on the surface comes across as irredeemably evil. However, when taking the greater historical context into account, it serves as a branch of the Tokugawa clan, which is on the cusp of ending a century of civil war and uniting the fractured lands of Japan once and for all, which can put it in a modestly more sympathetic light.
  • However, by far the most malevolent player on the board is Owl, who has played the Ashina Clan and Interior Ministry against one another to attain the gift of immortality for himself, and with it, dominion over all of Japan.
• Blade Lock: In spite of the emphasis on sword fights, Sekiro only features this sparingly. One of the most notable moments happens if the Wolf chooses to disavow the Owl — he tries a sneak attack on Wolf, who sniffs it out and blocks the blade fast enough to impress his old man. A brief blade lock happens too when Wolf performs a Deathblow on Isshin, who resists a bit and blocks the blade briefly.
• Blade Run: In a very Shadow of the Colossus-esque moment, you will mostly likely finish off the Divine Dragon by running up the blade of its skyscraper-sized BFS while it's downed and then stabbing it in the eye. Even if you choose to simply grapple to its eye instead, you'll still have to stand on its sword in order to deliver the final blow.
• Blade Spam: The "One Mind" ability used by Isshin Ashina and usable by Wolf after defeating them. It creates a sphere of blade slashes around the user that are stated to be so fast that the swordsman looks like they're not even moving.
• Blinded by the Light: One of many prosthetic tools at Wolf's disposal is the Shinobi Firecracker, which launches a handful of exploding firecrackers, meant to destabilize enemies with sudden light and sound. It allows him to interrupt some otherwise unstoppable attacks and is particularly effective against beast-type enemies, which are easily frightened by it.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Wolf losing his arm in grisly detail at the game's start certainly sets a tone. Stealth kills and visceral attacks cause vast waves of blood to erupt from enemies — this game somehow manages to out-gore Bloodborne. One of the visual options is to have blood effects mild (read: realistic amounts of blood) or the default of On, which means everyone has High-Pressure Blood.
• Body Horror: The Centipede Men have metal legs sticking out of their limbs and backs, mimicking a centipede's appendages. The sight is even more horrifying with their chieftains, the Long Arm Centipedes Sen-Un and Giraffe, who have their mangled bodies scaled up.
• Body Motifs: A missing left arm. Some key characters and even supernatural creatures have had their left arm severed for various reasons. The Lone Shadows hide their left arms under a long cloak, mimicking this effect, and only unleash it when Wolf's careless and open to either poison or projectile attacks. The left arm (and especially the left hand) is typically associated with death, evil, and violence, referring to the violence gripping Ashina. A few characters also lose their left arms, like Wolf and the Sculptor. The Sculptor was a former shinobi who abandoned his violent life to become a sculptor, and had his left arm cut off to stop him from becoming a Shura, but his rage accumulated until he transformed anyway. If certain actions are taken, this can happen to Wolf, too, whether by taking up the Sculptor's lifestye or killing people wantonly.
• Book Ends:
  • If Wolf makes choices that will benefit Kuro, the first and last boss battles in the game will happen on the same field just outside of Ashina's outskirts. Both will feature Genichiro as well.
  • The first "real" boss of the game (as in, it gives a Memory rather than a Prayer Bead) has the Red Baron nickname of "Gyoubu the Demon". At the end of the game, an optional Superboss can be fought in the same place you fought Gyoubu... and it's an actual demon.
  • When Isshin is revived as the Final Boss, he eventually summons a recreation of the strongest spear he ever used, which is the same spear Gyoubu used as the first boss.
  • The first cutscene after the prologue had a background sound of wood being chipped and carved rhythmically. In one of the endings, it also starts with the exact same background sound, but made by a different person.
  • The game begins with Wolf captured and despairing over failure to protect Kuro. Should he achieve the Immortal Severence ending, he returns to the Dilapidated Temple to carve Buddha due to the same feeling of despair for killing Kuro and "failing" to protect him.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Wolf can unlock many flashy Combat Arts such as a Spin Attack and some high-flying martial arts moves, but the one most players find to be by far the most useful is Ichimonji, a.k.a. "a hard bonk on the head", and its upgraded version, "two hard bonks on the head". It does respectable damage to both health and Posture, recovers your own Posture on use, and can even be charged. Anything stronger tends to suffer from the Awesome, but Impractical caveat of costing Spirit Emblems to use.
  • While the various Prosthetic Tools all have their uses, the Shuriken will end up your go to general purpose tool. It's the first one you acquire, cheap to use, easily upgraded gaining a charge attack that costs no extra emblems, can pick off various weak enemies like gun-packing lookouts or dogs while keeping you at a stealth friendly distance, and even in New Game+, where the enemies become stronger, the charged version will continue to serve you well against them. To top it off, upgrading it to Lazulite form requires less of the exceedingly rare material than the others and will ease any fall-off the previous versions suffer from in NG+.
  • Fistfuls of Ash are… well, fistfuls of ash. When tossed at a human enemy, they will be briefly stunned, letting Wolf get in a couple of cheap hits, similar to the effects of the Shinobi Firecrackers. This works on just about any human enemy, including the Final Boss.
• Boss Rush:
  • In the early Ashina Outskirts, the Chained Ogre, General Tenzen Yamauchi, the Great Serpent, and Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa all immediately follow each other with nary a couple minutes between them. There's some normal areas afterwards, but they're quickly followed by the three more miniboss fights that aren't even separated by a single room.
  • The GOTY update adds four of these to the game, but you'll need to play through a New Game Plus with at least one Shura ending to unlock all of them. In each gauntlet, you'll fight through a series of bosses themed after the beginning of the game, the Shura ending, or the regular endings, with certain final bosses being modified "Inner" versions who have some new moves. Luckily, the game allows you to rest up and restock between each boss, and beating the first three gauntlets will unlock either one of the "Inner" bosses' move or a costume. The last gauntlet makes you go through every single boss in the game, but you get no prize for beating it.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Genichiro Ashina wields both a bow and a katana, easily switching between the two on the fly.
• Break Meter: One of the main gameplay mechanics. Wolf and all his enemies have what is called a Posture gauge, defining how much their guard has been broken. One way for Wolf to defeat enemies is to fill out their Posture bar with perfect deflects, attacks or other abilities, at which point they enter a special animation, leaving them vulnerable to a Finishing Move. Likewise, Wolf will be staggered for a sizable amount of time if his Posture is broken.
• Broken Bridge: Literally; several prominent bridges leading into Ashina Castle proper have been destroyed, forcing Wolf to take a circuitous route through the Sunken Valley to get in. Since there are still Ashina ashigaru on both sides, it's implied they did it themselves to stymie any would-be invaders. In the finale of the game, the Interior Ministry fixes the main bridge and launches an all-out attack on Ashina Castle. Consequently, they end up breaking even more metaphorical bridges, forcing Wolf to have to take even more circuitous routes to get around, or rendering whole swathes of the game world inaccessible.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Sekiro and Emma are this, as to be expected of their occupations. There are times when Emma teases Sekiro for being so serious, but he doesn't even know that she's telling a joke. Her battle moniker is even "Emma, the Gentle Blade".
• Brown Note: The Finger Whistle prosthetic tool lets you unleash one in battle. When animals hear the whistle, they go mad and start attacking everything around them in blind rage. When apparitions hear the Malcontent, it causes them to writhe around in pain, giving you an opening to attack.
• Brutish Bulls: Two of the bosses in this game, the Blazing Bull and the Sakura Bull, are bulls with fiery hay attached to their horns.
• Bullfight Boss: Both the Blazing Bull and Sakura Bull are best fought by dodging their charge and hitting them in the side or rear, especially since they'll be momentarily stunned if they hit their head against a wall.
• But Thou Must!: This game has a roundabout example of this trope. When you reunite with Kuro, he will refuse Wolf's request to come with him and instead asks the shinobi to help him sever his immortality. You'll be given a choice to either help Kuro or uphold the Iron Code and get him to safety. Choosing the former just has Wolf say he cannot break the Iron Code and brings you back to the choice until you choose the latter. However, upon picking it, Kuro will then convince Wolf to help him sever his immortality anyway, so that's what you end up doing regardless.
• Call-Back: Once again in a FromSoft title, you face an opponent in a beautiful field under the moonlight.
• Cannon Fodder: The ashigaru that make up the rank-and-file of the Ashina clan's forces and serve as the basic mooks of the game. When the Shogunate finally attacks, they barely even present a speed bump for the Ministry soldiers.
• Cardboard Prison: Wolf starts off imprisoned in an underground cavern which he could have easily gotten out of if he wanted to, since the entrance is not sealed. The only reason why he already didn't escape long before Emma gives him the letter is that he had lost his will to live, as remarked on by surrounding guards and the Long Shadow Longswordsman.
• Cast from Hit Points: If Wolf is low on Spirit Emblems, a special item named the Ceremonial Tanto allows him to convert part of his health into supplementary Spirit Emblems just like blood bullets.
• Central Theme:
  • Death in various shades. While death is always a theme in From Software's games, Sekiro displays it most prominently; Kuro's immortality is ruining more lives than it saves: those who desire it goes to inhuman lengths in obtaining it, while the mechanics of actual resurrection create a horrible, painful plague. Various characters find themselves tempted by the prospect of violence; even the gentle Emma mentions that killing a demon excites her. Wolf himself is shown to have little in his life beyond killing, and acquiring any of the good endings requires him to rediscover his innocence and kindness.
  • Another recurring theme is the Buddhist concept of karma. First, there's the resurrection mechanic. Using the Divine Heritage to resurrect requires the life force of another to work, which is how dragonrot is spread. Spreading dragonrot means your chances of receiving Unseen Aid is reduced. Also, as mentioned above, the worst endings seem to be a result of Wolf being cruel and selfish at pivotal moments, while the best endings are brought about by him being kind. Another example of karma would be the Sculptor, who, after decades of being a ninja, succumbs to his rage and guilt and turns into a Shura.
  • Power and people's desperation to have and keep it. In addition to people gunning for Kuro's bloodline, there's the side plot of the Interior Ministry slowly taking over Ashina. Meanwhile, Genichiro Ashina is desperately trying to keep his lands safe by resorting to cruel methods. And let's not get started on the monks of Senpou Temple experimenting on children to replicate the Divine Heritage.
• Character Title: Sort of. The game is named after the protagonist Sekiro (whose name means "one-armed wolf") while the subtitle refers to the shinobi and the revival system.
• Checkpoint: The Sculptor's Idols are scattered across the world, serving as resting points for Wolf where he replenishes his Healing Gourd, manages his skill tree, and travel from idol to idol. Their presence everywhere is another hint toward Sculptor's real identity.
• Chekhov's Gun: During the rematch with Genichiro, you learn that if you're struck by his lightning-enhanced swipes while in midair, you can direct it back at him by the time you hit the floor. This is the major mechanic in damaging the Divine Dragon, as well as a smaller mechanic in Sword Saint Isshin's final phase.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Combined with Boss Area Idiocy in the final battle with Sword Saint Isshin: on his third health bar, lightning starts raining from the sky, allowing him to use electric attacks. The issue is that these attacks are so choreographed and easy to redirect it's simple to counter him, and doing so will deal massive damage to both Isshin's health and posture, making his third phase quite a bit easier than his first two.
• Cocky Rooster: One of the enemies Wolf can face are large black roosters that will attack on sight and also crow, alerting enemies to his presence.
• Combat Hand Fan: Divine Abduction is a Prosthetic Tool made from a large fan. While it isn't a conventional weapon, the gust of wind it releases when Wolf uses it is so strong it can turn an enemy on his back. The Double Abduction and Golden Vortex upgrades can even make certain enemies disappear on the spot.
• Combat Pragmatist: In contrast to traditional depictions of samurai being excessively honorable, the samurai enemies that are fought in this game have no qualms with ganging up on the player, shooting him in the back, setting him on fire, or ambushing him. Indeed, both the Ashina and Interior Ministry troops in general will gladly use bombs, poison, trained yokai, and any other means available to them to kill their foes.
  • Wolf himself is one, par excellence; as a Shinobi, you are expected to fight dirty at virtually every turn — most fights, while not outright unwinnable if you choose to engage directly, are far more difficult, and there are numerous opportunities to quietly assassinate enemies before the fight begins properly. This isn't even getting into the various Shinobi tools you can have fitted to your prosthetic, allowing you to take things to a whole new level.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard:
  • The Bestowal Ninjutsu only states that it extends your sword's reach. What it doesn't tell you is that it greatly increases your attack power and pierces through enemy defenses.
  • The game explains that Dragonrot is inflicted due to the recipient of the Dragon's Heritage forcibly draining the life energy of those around them in order to come back to life, with repeated deaths drawing power from more victims. However, the wording is ambiguous enough that some players chose to instantly die instead of reviving out of fear of acquiring additional Rot Essence. That is the opposite of what the game actually wants you to do; the revival mechanic is considered Wolf's own life energy (give or take the enemies he killed to restore a Resurrection node), so he can revive mid-battle as much as he wants. It is actually dying and being sent back to a Buddha statue that risks harming NPCs.
  • As described in the entry for Guide Dang It!, Divine Confetti is not just a requisite for fighting Apparition-type enemies; it is a legitimate damage buff in the same vein as the various Resins and Papers from the previous FROM games.
  • In what is likely a translation error, the Dragon's Blood Droplet item is rather vague with its ability to "slightly increase Resurrective Power". What it actually means is that you can consume it to get rid of the black line preventing additional resurrections post-revival, which normally requires performing a Deathblow to erase. This gives it surprising utility in some situations, such as the final phase of a boss fight.
• Continuing is Painful: If Wolf dies "for good", he loses half of his money and current experience. Moreover, a plague named the Dragonrot will eventually spread to almost every NPC he's met if he keeps dying too many times. The Dragonrot itself mechanically punishes Wolf by lowering his chances of keeping his experience and money upon death, and halts NPC quest lines as long as it's not cured. This is substantially downplayed from most other From Software games; there's a chance you won't lose anything when you die (the "Unseen Aid" visible in your stats screen), and Dragonrot is fairly easy to cure.
• Cool Sword:
  • Kusabimaru is an heirloom of the Hirata family, but is otherwise a normal katana. Except... it can block nearly any attack without taking damage, including many that should logically shatter the blade.
  • The Mortal Blade is an ōdachi (an older, longer style of sword than a katana) that can kill anything, even beings that are normally immortal. The catch is, it also kills anyone who draws it, so only one with a means to resurrect can use it.
• Corrupt Church: The monks from Senpou Temple have strayed from Buddha's teachings and indulged in horrible experimentation to unlock the secret of immortality. Said experiments usually involve Creepy Centipedes and fusing them with various, often unwilling subjects. Wolf can pay them a visit and discover for himself how corrupt they have become, as some of the monks have become immortal abominations, host to various centipedes and crickets; he can also come across several semi-feral Centipede Men abominations (whom the monks may have been responsible for creating), and the Divine Child of Rejuvenation reveals that she is the only survivor of many children who have been experimented upon. How many? Look at those pinwheels. Those thousands and thousands of pinwheels. THAT many.
• Cosmic Plaything: Poor Inosuke can't catch a break. The first time you meet him in contuity is during the Hirata Estate memory where he just finished fighting Lady Butterfly. Judging by his dialogue, he actually did well against her until he realized that she used illusions and he didn't have any snap seeds to counter it. Without them, he ends up with eyes gouged out either to escape the illusions or by Lady Butterfly herself. He then rested for a bit, found his practically catatonic with fear mother and escaped through the burning keep, down a 50 foot well with no ladder, and escaped with his life. However, he is disgraced for not protecting his liege, Kuro. He then spends the next three years in Ashina with his increasingly senile mother who was partially driven insane by Lady Butterfly's illusions. She starts thinking that other men are her, still very much alive son, which is kinda heartwarming, but also kinda depressing. Their house is then presumably hit by a siege weapon, destroying it and Inosuke is left grievously wounded either by whatever destroyed the house (probably the Interior Ministry's doing) or by the Ashina themselves (for being loyal to Kuro). He is left just out of reach of his mother who is too senile to realize her son is dying nearby. He refuses Wolf to bring him to a doctor and instead asks him to watch over his mother. Then, late game, his mother dies and he crawls his way into her house and dies miserably next to her corpse. Worse is that while Wolf will certainly remember him, he's not the type to spread the word out about him so Inosuke will have died forgotten probably without leaving any heirs to his family as he and his mother lived alone. Worse still if they catch dragon rot. If she catches it, he will hear her in misery and he will be absolutely distraught as he can't do anything about it as his legs have stopped working. If he catches it, his mother will hear him, but still not recognize her son to go help him and he will be in horrible agony from both his wounds and the disease. Either way, he will be in tears.
• Crapsack World: While nowhere near the extent of From Soft’s other games, Ashina is still not a very nice place to live. The country’s infrastructure is in shambles from war, various monsters and demons roam the lands freely, the local monks partake in depraved experiments in pursuit of immortality, and the immortality provided by the Dragon’s Heritage is liable to cause a plague of fatal disease. That’s not even getting into the looming invasion of the Interior Ministry, whose soldiers are keen to get in on that whole Rape, Pillage, and Burn craze. It honestly makes you wonder why Genichiro was willing to go to such great lengths to defend Ashina in the first place.
• Crapsaccharine World: Fountainhead Palace is beautiful, heavenly, and run by depraved and decadent nobles who attack Wolf on sight.
• Curbstomp Battle: The Ministry invasion of Ashina at the end of the game is an utterly one-sided affair where most of Ashina's remaining troops are either cut down or burned to death with ease. Ashina was in dire straits already, but Wolf cutting a swathe through its best warriors and leaders beforehand probably didn’t help matters.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: Despite this, a few characters manage to kill large numbers of Ministry soldiers, namely Shume Masaji Oniwa, the Demon of Hatred, and, of course, Wolf.

D-L

• Dance Battler: Lady Butterfly fights with grace for her age and uses dance-like moves and twirls when Wolf fights her. However, the most literal examples of this are the Okami Warriors, whose combat techniques seem to be directly inspired by traditional Japanese dances.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In contrast to Souls titles, rolling is not the end-all, be-all to dodging attacks, due to extremely limited I-frames (unless you have the Mikiri counter, in the latter case, but then you have to remember to dodge toward them). To put in numbers, Wolf's dodge step always has 6 invincibility frames at 30 FPS (and obviously twice that at 60 FPS); meanwhile the dodge in Bloodborne has 11, and the medium roll in Dark Souls 3 (the immediately preceding game) has 13 (carried over into Elden Ring). You can dodge most enemy attack that way, but it's much more difficulty than doing so to equivalently-fast moves in those games. Your damage output, especially against bosses, is also considerably lower since they can block attacks typically, necessitating a careful battle of attrition until you can wear them down to the point of inflicting Deathblows. At the same time, parrying has returned to being more predictive than reactive.
  • Sekiro does not use a stamina system like the Souls games do, meaning Wolf can run, jump, and attack infinitely with no downtime. This can take some getting used to, and it's not uncommon to hear about experienced "Soulsborne" veterans during the early game habitually backing off after dealing a few hits, and thus failing to keep the pressure on to break the enemy's posture.
• Dark Fantasy: Just like past FromSoftware games, with some horror elements thrown in. Unlike previous settings though, it's set in a fantastical version of actual feudal Japan rather than a Constructed World based on European countries.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: This is essentially what succumbing to Shura entails. Killing so many people with little rhyme or reason causes one to lose their sense of self and drives them to kill blindly and endlessly for no other reason than just because they can. This is what happens to Sekiro in the Shura ending. After betraying his lord and his friends for the express purpose of obeying the Iron Code, he then violates the Code to kill his father unprovoked, showing how he has completely lost himself.
• Deader than Dead: What the Mortal Blade is used for, as it can permanently kill Immortal creatures, such as the Infested Monks and the Headless Ape.
• Death as Game Mechanic: One of the core mechanics of is Sekiro's Resurrection ability, which lets him come back to life moments after his death. That isn't enough to qualify for the trope, except that being a corpse has strategic value. Enemies will stop being aggressive and go back to their routines once you do, so dying can be a great way to sneak past a group of enemies or to catch them in a surprise attack.
• Death Is Cheap: Mechanics-wise, it is defied with a vengeance. Upon each death, the Dragonrot will continue to spread and get worse, affecting many characters and preventing the advancement of their sidequests.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: To perform a deathblow on enemies, Wolf has to deplete their Posture gauge, which recovers if the attack isn't pressed. However, damaging their Vitality meter will make the recovery of Posture slower. The end result being that a fight is typically won after dozens of small hits that manage to slip past the opponent's defenses, gradually weakening them before they're finally finished off.
• Death or Glory Attack: Lightning attacks used by enemies can't be blocked or deflected and have massive damage and reach. But Wolf can use the Lightning Reversal to Catch and Return them for easy damage, if the player is ready for it.
• Decadent Court: The Fountainhead Palace, home of the Divine Dragon and coveted font of immortality, turns out to be one of these. The place is beautiful, but its "nobles" are hideous monsters that either devour or enslave any humans who actually arrive there.
• Decomposite Character: This game's Big Bad Genichiro Ashina and his grandfather Isshin Ashina act as this to Gwyn from Dark Souls series. Just like Gwyn, Isshin Ashina is a lord of great renown and power who carved up a mighty kingdom, only for it to fall apart in his twilight years. Just like Gwyn, Genichiro Ashina goes to extreme measures to stave off that fall.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • After reviving, the player's first instinct is probably to get some distance from the thing that killed them, and use a healing item to get back to full health. The thing is, Genichiro Ashina seems to know this, and if you try it, will line up an extra-powerful arrow shot. If the player knows that Genichiro Ashina knows this, they'll most likely be hammering the deflect button during the heal animation in a desperate attempt to avoid getting hit. The devs, knowing that the player knows that Genichiro knows, created a unique animation for when the player successfully deflects the arrow.
  • Somehow winning the first fight against Genchiro triggers a special cutscene where a hidden Nightjar will toss a shuriken at Wolf, distracting him long enough for Genchiro to still cut off his arm. Instead of his normal dialogue, he will instead say that a shinobi should understand the difference between honor and victory.
  • If you kill a merchant who happens to sell an important item, like skill texts or upgrades for the Prosthetic Arm, the item will find its way to the offering box at the Dilapidated Shrine for the same price.
  • Normally, the Armored Warrior can only be killed by falling off from his boss arena. If the armored warrior is killed through other means using mods, he has a death animation.
  • Normally, Wolf can purchase information from Anayama about the Flame Vent that hints at searching for it at the Hirata Estate. Should Wolf already possess it (likely if the player is going through NG+), then Wolf will growl that he's already got the Flame Vent. Anayama will laugh it off and give you a jar of oil for your trouble, seeing how you paid 20 sen for info that's useless to you.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Mikiri Counter is one of Wolf's strongest moves. If an enemy is going for a thrust-type Perilous Attack, Wolf can dodge into it to stomp on his enemy's weapon and deal massive damage to their Posture. This move is so strong that successfully mastering it can turn deadly engagements into child's play, especially since breaking an enemy's Posture allows you to perform a Shinobi Deathblow on them, shaving off a health bar or outright killing them instantly.
• Disability Immunity: The powdered medicine known as Contact Poison can inflict a weak poison effect on Wolf. While it may seems useless, it is preferable to the stronger version some enemies or hazards will inflict, making Contact Poison situationally useful.
• Discount Card: The Promissory Note, obtainable at the end of Anayama the Peddler's sidequest, gives a 10% discount at all shops.
• Doomed Hometown: The Hirata Estate, former home of Kuro. Alas, it was pillaged and burned down by bandits, at which point Wolf witnessed the death of his father, the Owl, and was granted Resurrective Immortality by Kuro for his loyalty. Wolf can revisit a memory of the Estate while it was burning into cinders.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • Yashariku's Sugar and Yashariku's Spiritfall temporarily increase the damage Wolf does at the cost of decreasing his Vitality and Posture.
  • Red Lumps prevent flinching from enemy attacks but also prevent the use of Resurrection while they're active.
• Double-Meaning Title: The "Shadows Die Twice" part of the game's title can refer to either the in-game mechanics of Resurrective Immortality, granted to Wolf by Kuro's Dragon's Heritage, or the overarching fear of being forgotten after death, as shown by the various Immortality Seekers who resort to extreme measures to avoid dying like the Senpou Temple monks or the Ashina clan.
• Downer Ending: The Shura ending, where Wolf is corrupted by the Dragon Heritage and his own bloodlust and becomes the demon Shura, mercilessly slaughtering anybody who steps foot in Ashina.
• Dramatic Thunder:
  • During the second boss fight against Genichiro, a thunderstorm starts. Genichiro takes advantage of its lighting to imbue his weapons with the element.
  • The final boss battle also happens during a storm, Isshin using the lightning of Tomoe to power up his katana and halberd, while Wolf is forced to consider the lightning as a stage hazard.
• The Dreaded:
  • A few times throughout the story, players learn about "Shura". In Buddhism, it is one of the alternate names for Ashura, the demigod of war. For Japanese folklore, the war god is often used to refer to individuals who are fighting in a seemingly endless battle and must do so with brutal and inhuman means. You don't get to see the Shura (at least not without getting the Shura costume from beating the Shura boss gauntlet), but you do get a glimpse of those who "become" Shura in the Downer Ending, in which Wolf, having been forced to follow his father's order to kill Kuro after spending nearly the entire game trying to save him and killing one of his own allies as a result, snaps, goes on a mindless killing spree, and commits what's considered to be the most tragic massacre in the entire Sengoku period. To put it in simpler terms, the Shura is a demon that cannot be allowed to manifest. Even Isshin Ashina is wary of the damn thing and has more or less made it his life goal to kill anyone who is on the verge of being consumed by Shura before it's allowed to manifest.
  • On a more human scale, the Interior Ministry's encroaching presence is talked about with a lot of fear. When they do show up, several Ashina soldiers can be seen fleeing in terror from them.
  • During the Ministry's invasion of Ashina, Wolf becomes this to them, acquiring a reputation as an unkillable demon. Even worse than him is the Demon of Hatred, and it isn't hard to see why, since by the time you encounter it, it's just finished effortlessly butchering an entire contingent of Red Guard elites.
• Dual Boss: After defeating the Guardian Ape the first time, Wolf can find it in a new location and fight it again. After depleting its first health bar, it calls in its wife for backup, and Wolf will then have to deal with two giant, murderous apes at the same time.
• The Dung Ages: Conspicuously present in most lower-class areas, where garbage, crudely-made furniture, and low-quality items are the norm. Hirata Estate is a good early example, but it continues to be noticeable in the areas of Ashina where the lower classes live and work.
• Dung Fu: The Guardian Ape can leap into the air and hurl a massive boulder of its own crap at Wolf that inflicts Poison.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Wolf can kill the same Great Serpent who harasses you near the beginning of the game, despite it being revered as a god by the people of Ashina. Doing so is necessary to get the "Return" ending.
  • Another example happens late in the game: through his journey, Wolf fights and defeats the Divine Dragon itself. Although defeated, the Divine Dragon doesn't actually die; although presumably Wolf could have killed it, it was unnecessary, as he only needed his tears.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Just after defeating Gyoubu Oniwa, Wolf can come across a tall masked man presenting himself as the Tengu of Ashina, said man having just defeated some unknown shinobi in purple garb. It turns out that the Tengu of Ashina is none other than Isshin himself, who meets Wolf before the shinobi even hears about him. The scene also foreshadows the invasion of Ashina Castle by forces of the Shogun, and Tengu is retroactively revealed to have been slaying their scouts.
• Early Game Hell: Used to great extent to punish players who rely on Dark Souls tactics to get by. Your Estus equivalent only carries one charge at the start, it will take a while for you to get it up to three, and you can only carry around three of the Lifegem equivalent at a time. The only way to get stronger is to defeat bosses, which cannot be purely stealth affairs either. And to top it all off, your stealth isn't even all that useful until you get a couple of upgrades for it.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Navigating areas is much easier compared to prior From Software games due to Wolf's expanded moveset, which enables him to avoid direct combat by stealth-killing enemies, running away from them, or avoiding them entirely. Checkpoints are frequent and are often placed right next to the boss arena. This is counter-balanced by the bosses being much harder and more aggressive. Mandatory bosses block progress to the next area until defeated, and you're incentivized to kill optional bosses, as they hold most of the prayer beads needed to increase your Vitality.
• Easy Level Trick: Notably, Sekiro features many ways to make its most difficult encounters far easier, and the game rewards experimentation and logical thinking a great deal. One of the best examples of this is that many of the bosses are vulnerable to stealth Deathblows, which can shave off an entire life bar with one well-planned attack. Even then, many of the consumable items can tear bosses to pieces, such as Snap Seeds making Lady Butterfly's illusions go away or Divine Confetti shaving off the health of Apparitions.
• Edge Gravity: Unlike its predecessors, this game has a jump button, which means you won't go off a ledge without jumping over it deliberately.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Besides the miniboss versions, there are also several "regular" Ashina samurai who are fierce fighters in their own right, in both the armored and unarmored variety.
  • The Spear Adepts of Senpou Temple are highly agile fighters with a large HP pool and a variety of unblockable attacks.
  • At the end of the game, the Interior Ministry invades Ashina Castle with a force of highly skilled Red Guard warriors. They are clad in distinct red armor and all armed with dual katanas, with some also carrying flamethrowers or powerful guns that shoot flaming rockets. They are also backed up by the deadly purple-clad Lone Shadow ninjas, as well as red-clad dwarf assassins.
• End of an Era: The game is set in the closing years of the Sengoku Period. The province of Ashina is one of the last to be subdued by the victorious Tokugawa clan as they unify Japan, a goal they ultimately achieve.
• Enemy Chatter: Wolf can eavesdrop on his foes, allowing him to learn useful hints for dealing with an upcoming foe or area. It also tends to reveal bits of the lore or even just the enemies' feelings and general mindset. For instance, he can hear a Ashina footsoldier weeping over his dead horse — his lamentations will provide a hint on defeating the area's boss.
• Enemy Civil War: After Wolf acquires the Shelter Stone from Mibu Village, he will revisit Ashina Castle under assault from the Interior Ministry's forces. These new enemies will also battle the Ashina soldiers, creating some three-way battles.
• Equipment Upgrade: Wolf can collect various objects scattered across the map to unlock new Prosthetic Tools for his left arm. He can also gather other materials such as ore or chemicals to further upgrade said tools.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: Played straight with every projectile round used by Wolf's enemies, including Sword Saint Isshin's pistol. Justified since it would be asking too much for the player to dodge incoming invisible fire in a game that's as already Nintendo Hard as it is.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Though initially seeming unconnected, many of the characters you encounter turn out to have a shared past, which becomes apparent when you give sake to the Sculptor, Emma, or Isshin Ashina.
• Escape Rope: The Homeward Idol allows Wolf to teleport to either the Dilapidated Shrine or the last Sculptor's Idol used, as long as he is not hit while doing so.
• Evil Is Bigger: Even putting aside the demons and mutated animals, Wolf is often dwarfed by his human opponents as well. This is likely a gameplay consideration for players to be able to read the enemies' movements better. Also, while the Ashina ashigaru are Wolf's height, the Interior Ministry's mooks are all a head taller than he is.
• Evil Is Easy: The Shura ending is the easiest ending to get, simply requiring you to obey Owl when he reappears in Ashina Castle and then win two fights. Doing so skips the entire last act of the game, and the final battles against Emma and Isshin are significantly easier than the final boss battle against Genichiro followed by Sword Saint Isshin in the other endings. It's also deliberately anticlimactic (well, aside from the Nightmare Fuel) as a way of saying "You Bastard!" to the player, offering no resolution for any of the plot threads up to that point.
• Faceless Goons: The Ashina Clan's army subverts this trope; enemies of the same class may look identical to one another, but they are still plainly human soldiers who aren't wearing any face-obscuring equipment. Even after Wolf kills them, they don't die instantly as most Mooks do; most deathblows leave them gasping on the ground and clutching their throats or chests as they bleed out for at least a few seconds. The Interior Ministry's armies play this trope straight, as most of them are wearing menpo or other masks that obscure their faces and downplay their humanity; this helps to enforce their status as The Dreaded.
• Faking the Dead:
  • Wolf can use a drug named Bite Down, which usually was a Cyanide Pill of a sort for captured shinobi. However, due to his resurrective powers, he can use it to "fake" his death without consuming one of his resurrections. You can even get an infinite use version in the form of a Hidden Tooth, obtained after using the Mortal Blade to permanently kill Hanbei the Undying.
  • Wolf discovers that Great Shinobi Owl has been faking his death too, setting events in motion so that he could take the Dragon's Heritage for himself at the right moment.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Averted, reflecting the increased use of firearms brought about during the Sengoku Period. The Ashina clan has access to firearms and they make liberal use of them against you, with many of their Ashigaru using tanegashima matchlock muskets. Even Isshin Ashina, the clan patriarch renowned primarily as an unmatched swordsman, has no qualms about pulling out a gun in the middle of a duel. There's also the Sunken Valley clan, whose weapon is a more primitive but no less deadly hand cannon; some of them even carry around full-sized cannons without a sweat.
• Fantasy World Map: A wall scroll-style map of Ashina can be accessed from the fast travel screen. It's not very useful for navigation, but it does show you where places like Fountainhead Palace and Sunken Valley are in relation to the rest of the world.
• Fartillery: The Guardian Ape will sometimes attempt to run away and get some distance between itself and Wolf, leaving behind a fart cloud that inflicts Poison.
• Fat Bastard:
  • The Headless minibosses, who all resemble bloated, waterlogged corpses. They are former heroes of Ashina, their corpses having all ended up in wet areas.
  • Human examples give Juzou the Drunkard, Tokujiro the Glutton, and Shigekichi of the Red Guard. All three are basically palette swaps of each other, but are huge, fat men with huge swords and who also use sake in battle with you, either by using it to poison or burn Wolf.
• Fetch Quest:
  • To have his ties to immortality severed, Lord Kuro needs several exceptional ingredients. It's up to Wolf to travel the country and gather them.
  • The Divine Child of the Resurrection has her own quest to unlock the Return ending, all requiring certain items to be collected and returned to her. Some of the subquests also require fetching an item in exchange for the one you're trying to get.
• Fighting for a Homeland: Genichiro ultimately wants to save Ashina from being conquered by the Interior Ministry.
• Fighting Your Friend: Whatever path you take in the game, the last boss you'll face will be a version of Isshin Ashina, the only member of the Ashina who is explicitly against Genichiro's plan to sacrifice Kuro. However, in the "Shura" ending, your decision to betray Kuro will for all intents and purposes turn you into a bloodthirsty demon, forcing Isshin to try to strike you down to save Ashina from you the carnage you would otherwise cause. In all the other endings, Isshin will be dead by the time the game enters its last phase; however, Genichiro will use the Black Mortal Blade and sacrifice his own life to bring his grandfather back from the dead in his prime, as a desperate last attempt to defeat Wolf and seize Kuro. Isshin is still implied to disagree with Genichiro's plans even after that, but will decide to honor his last wish nonetheless and fight Wolf to the death.
• Finishing Move: One of the game's core mechanics is that to kill an enemy, the player can fill out a Posture gauge (representing how much the enemy's guard has been broken) before performing a Shinobi Deathblow on them. Incidentally, depleting the enemy's health bar also creates a Deathblow opportunity, but failing to take it results in the Posture of the enemy recovering a bit. The Deathblow immediately kills a normal enemy and depletes a single health bar from a boss. However, it should be noted that the Posture gauge tends to recover quickly if the enemy has a lot of health left, and bosses usually require multiple Deathblows to put down.
• Flash Step: The Mist Raven prosthetic tool allows Wolf to perform one, leaving in his wake a dark trail and raven feathers. It is used to perform invulnerable dodges in order to get away from troublesome situations. It can be further upgraded to the Aged Feather Mist Raven to perform the dodge even more rapidly, or the Great Feather Mist Raven to create a fiery trail that hurts enemies.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: The Divine Realm that Wolf can visit to battle the Divine Dragon that resides within it. It is mostly a grey plane whose floor is made of clouds, making it difficult to judge perspective.
• Flunky Boss: On her second phase, Lady Butterfly will occasionally retreat and summon illusory enemies to fight you.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: By taking a secret passage back at the Ashina Outskirts to the Senpou Temple, Wolf can toll the Iron Bell of Senpou, calling the demon sealed within which brings misfortune. It mostly serves to increase the difficulty of the game in exchange for better loot, and the demon can be warded away by an item.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Upon killing Owl, Wolf will remark, "Death of a shadow." Since the game is called "Shadows Die Twice", this line is probably meant as a hint to the player that there is an optional second encounter with this boss.
  • There's a subtle, but two-fold one at the very beginning of the game when you get your sword from Kuro. The Kusabimaru's mantra found in its description, 'A shinobi's role is to kill, but even a shinobi must not forget mercy', provides a hint towards the first major story branch. By forsaking mercy and abandoning Kuro, Wolf becomes a Shura that ravages all of Ashina. By showing mercy, Wolf stays on his lord's path to sever the Dragon's Heritage. Additionally, the most optimistic ending comes from finding a way to avoid having to sacrifice either Kuro or Wolf to sever the Dragon's Heritage.
  • After defeating Genichiro and reuniting with Kuro, the boy then asks Wolf to help him with severing his immortality, and the game gives you the choice to either help him with his wish or adhere to the Iron Code regardless of his request. While the game refuses to allow you to disobey the Iron Code, Kuro still talks Wolf into helping him. The whole scene foreshadows your later confrontation with Owl, where you will have to make a permanent choice on one side or the other.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Most games treat player deaths as non-canon and go back in time a few minutes to a previous save so you can try again, but here the player's many deaths and revivals have an in-story explanation, carrying on the tradition of the Soulsborne franchise. In this game, you have been imbued by your master with the Dragon's Heritage, which confers Resurrective Immortality at the cost of spreading the Dragonrot sickness, as you sap the life energy from those around you to fuel your resurrections.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The two final bosses of the non-Shura endings both wield the second Mortal Blade, which (as shown in its effects on Kuro) should nullify Wolf's Resurrection ability. However, the player can still revive themselves should they be cut down by said bosses. Most likely because it would make said bosses unfair if they were able to.
• Gang Up on the Human: During the war sequence at the end of the game, it's not uncommon for the warring Ashina and Interior Ministry troops to set aside their differences just to kick your ass if you intervene in their fights. Specifically, enemies will generally prioritize whoever most recently attacked them during multi-sided melees.
• Gargle Blaster: Monkey Booze, made by chance out of fermented fruits that were hidden in tree trunks by monkeys. Its flavour is described as being exceptionally strong, enough to knock experienced boozehounds like the Sculptor and Isshin on their ass. It also goes by another nickname more indicative of its strength: Shura's Wine, implying it's strong enough to get even a demon drunk.
• Glass Cannon: Wolf. As a shinobi, he mixes acrobatic movement with quick, decisive attacks, but his light armor means he can't take too many hits.
• Godzilla Threshold: With the Ashina clan on its last legs against the Interior Ministry, Genichiro and his followers are willing to commit countless heresies and atrocities just for a chance at victory.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The "Praying Strikes" Combat Art allows Wolf to unleash a series of rapid attacks with his arms and elbows, dealing unblockable Posture damage.
• Goomba Stomp: Wolf can perform a Jump Kick which lets him stomp on enemies' heads. Normally, it doesn't do much except stun the enemy momentarily, but if the enemy is in the process of doing a sweep attack, it will do significant Posture damage.
• Golden Ending: Surprisingly, it is possible to circumvent Kuro's or Wolf's Heroic Sacrifice by having The Divine Child absorb Kuro's soul and journey west to return the Dragon Heritage to the Divine Dragon's birthplace. Reaching that ending, however...
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: A key gameplay feature is Wolf's prosthetic grappling hook, which adds a vertical element to exploration and can be used to zip toward enemies. This is probably the biggest artifact revealing this game's Tenchu roots. The grappling hook can be used on specific anchor points of trees or roofs, allowing Wolf to reach vantage points, and several parts of the game will require multiple well-timed uses of the grappling hook on these anchor points to navigate through the mountains and not fall to his death.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Interior Ministry is a constant, menacing presence in the background; their impending invasion of Ashina drives the plot, as their army's overwhelming superiority compared to Ashina's is the driving force behind Genichiro's plot.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Due to a big case of Artificial Stupidity, guards get out of alert state after Wolf disappears from view for a bit, and can easily miss a ninja in an orange haori hiding in tall green grass. Come across a group of dangerous enemies? It's a perfectly reasonable strategy to stealth kill one, alert the group, flee in terror, wait a bit, watch every enemy's alert status return to normal, sneak back in, kill another guard, and then repeat the process over and over again.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The "Purification" ending requires getting the Aromatic Flower, the path to which only opens if you eavesdrop during specific times on Kuro, Emma, and the Sculptor. While the eavesdropping mechanic itself is explained very early on, some people might not expect that you can also eavesdrop on friendly NPCs, and it's tricky to figure exactly which characters you need to eavesdrop on, and when.
  • Getting the "Return" ending is a doozy. For one thing, you have to get the Divine Child of Rejuvenation to produce rice enough times that she falls asleep, then you'll need to get rice from her one more time, after which she asks you for a persimmon. The game doesn't mention that she only produces rice when you have none in your inventory, as her dialogue seems to instead imply that it's produced based on the passage of in-game time, so if you're not one to use consumable items, this ending is very easy to miss. It's also easy to miss a key item that starts the questline, as it can be only obtained by either talking to a monk in Senpou Temple who will permanently disappear if you talk to Kuro after defeating Genichiro, or (if said monk has disappeared) diving in the pond near the Temple Grounds Idol.
  • One very helpful thing the game never tells you? Divine Confetti does extra damage to every enemy, not just Apparitions.
  • There are some hidden passageways located all around Ashina, with no indication where they are aside from the obvious one in Kuro's room. Locating them all is nearly impossible without accidentally stumbling on them or with a guide.
  • After the Poison Pool in Ashina Depths, you pass through a large, open cavern with bloodstains on the floor. It looks like a boss area, but there's no boss at first. Once you defeat the Guardian Ape, he relocates here with his mate. If you've activated an idol past the cavern, then you can warp past it, but if you haven't, you'll have to win one of the hardest boss fights in the game.
  • The Gauntlets actually rewards memories to boost your attack power on top of skins upon completion. Not only does the game not tell you this, the memories themselves can only be obtained once per playthrough and set to that playthrough alone. So if you missed completing them before starting your next playthrough, tough luck.
• Guns Are Worthless: Averted. The setting features primitive, inaccurate matchlocks that deal little damage (unless you're in the air), but they can stun Wolf and leave him open to more dangerous attacks. Gunners of the Sunken Valley clan wield surprisingly powerful hand cannons that deal heavy damage from afar, which is quite a pain when several snipers are set on each side of a valley with steep cliffs and few hiding spots. The gunmen of Interior Ministry carry matchlocks that fire powerful flaming rockets.
• The Gunslinger: The Sunken Valley clan. Having fortified an iron mine into their personal fort, they are sitting on a literal mountain's worth of ammunition. All of them use firearms of some variety: most use archaic but powerful one-shot hand cannons, with some bundling them together like a primitive shotgun, while a few (mostly those working for the Ashina) even carry literal cannons. The most redoubtable of them are the Snake Eyes Shirahagi and Shirafuji, who are so skilled with their hand cannons, they can mix up their shots with melee strikes.
• Hack and Slash: An unorthodox take that could best be described as a "parry 'n' slash".
• Halfway Plot Switch: The first third of the game is based around breaking into Ashina Castle to rescue Kuro. The last two thirds deal with Sekiro trying to find a way to break his lord's immortality.
• A Handful for an Eye: Wolf can keep a fistful of ash in his inventory, throwing it at an enemy to temporarily blind them.
• Healing Potion: The Healing Gourd, a special item given to you by Lord Kuro. It was invented by Emma, who discovered the Gourd Seeds that constantly leak the Rejuvenating Waters, and Wolf can take a sip of the water inside the gourd to heal. It is similar to the Estus Flasks of Dark Souls, in that it has a set number of uses that replenishes at checkpoints. The Healing Gourd can be upgraded with Gourd Seeds that magically replenish the supply of rejuvenating water in the gourd, and the more seeds one finds, the more sips Wolf can take from the Gourd before it runs out.
• Heel–Face Turn: Subtle, but present since you don't quite know that you're doing it. If you give Monkey Booze to Isshin, Wolf will ask what a Shura is, and Isshin explains that it's a person who's killed so many that they've not only gotten used to it, but have basically fallen into a neverending bloodlust from it. If you have not confronted Owl atop Ashina Castle, Isshin will state that he sees the shadow of Shura in Wolf's eyes, and promises to cut him down if he becomes one. If you have already dueled and defeated Owl, he will instead say that he thought he saw the shadow of Shura, but that he must have been mistaken. Prior to agreeing to help Kuro with Immortal Severence, you've basically been murdering anyone and everyone in your way, treading a very thin and very dangerous line story-wise. Choosing to help Kuro shows that Wolf is still fighting for Kuro, rather than killing for its own sake.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Kuro wishes to get rid of the Dragon's Heritage so that no one will murder for it anymore. However, it will either require Wolf to kill Kuro, which the boy readily accepts, or Wolf to kill himself with another ingredient in hand to free Kuro from immortality.
• High-Pressure Blood: Executing enemies results in a glorious splash of blood flowing as Wolf takes out his blade. There's even a perk that allows him to use enemy's blood for creating a smokescreen.
• Hint System: Eavesdropping is largely meant for this (though it also lets you solve some sidequests). A man crying over his dead horse (an accident involving a loud explosion spooking the beast) is your clue that someone else on a horse coming up might not like loud noises...
• Historical Fantasy: It might be a fantasy story with magic, giant monsters and ninja prosthetics, but according to the game's intro, Sekiro is set in the later stages of Japan's Sengoku period, and further examination into the subject reveals that much of the game takes inspiration from the real-life Ashina clan.
• History Repeats: Heavily implied, since many hints point toward the Sculptor being a former shinobi, with Wolf taking up his mantle if he completes the Immortal Severance route, waiting for a future shinobi to rescue another lord blessed with the Dragon's Heritage.
• Holy Is Not Safe: Many of the things associated with the Fountainhead Palace are referred to as divine, such as the Divine Confetti that allows you to damage supernatural enemies. But water from the palace turns people into monsters, while the Dragon's Heritage itself can corrupt men into bloodthirsty demons.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The tutorial boss fight against Genichiro is lost as soon as he breaks your posture once. It's possible (though difficult, especially on a first playthrough) to win, but all that nets you is a slight variation of the followup cutscene, where Genichiro is slightly more wounded and winded and needs a distraction (courtesy of a shuriken tossed by a nearby Nightjar) before he's able to slice off Wolf's arm.
• Hopeless War: The Ashina clan are engaged in one against the Shogunate. While they've managed to fend off several attacks by the Interior Ministry (as shown by the massive field of corpses outside Ashina Castle), they're steadily losing ground and are running low on resources and manpower. The vast majority of their remaining troops are relatively unskilled ashigaru, their collective morale is almost at its breaking point, and their fortifications are largely in ruins. This has driven them to desperate measures, from training ogres and giant bulls to fight for them, all the way to kidnapping the Divine Heir to make themselves unkillable. And when the Interior Ministry finally attacks, it all ends up being fruitless, with Ashina's forces being utterly crushed in a brutal Curbstomp Battle. In fact, the trope is employed twice. Had Wolf been let in on the plan from the beginning, he might have been able to hold off the Shogunate. Instead, he softens their target up for them without even realizing it, making the whole game explicitly this.
• Hub Level: The Dilapidated Shrine serves as this in the same way as the Firelink Shrine in Dark Souls III, connecting to the Ashina Outskirts and Kuro's room after you unlock the shortcut.
• Humanoid Abomination: The GOTY update reveals the true form of a Shura to be this. When you equip the Shura costume to Wolf, he looks mostly the same except more haggard and unkempt, plus fiery cracks on his body glowing with an unearthly light. Despite looking normal next to the Demon of Hatred, the true Shura is even more monstrous and powerful than its failed counterpart.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Both Ashina Elites, Jinsuke Saze and Ujinari Mizuo, are this. In their case, the technique Ashina Cross serves as their primary attack and, if not flawlessly parried, can shave off up to 70% of your health even on block. Parrying the attack will ruin their stamina, however, making it a Death or Glory Attack. Other bosses trained in the Ashina Arts like Emma and Isshin will use Ashina Cross, and Wolf himself can use it as well after spending enough skill points.
• Immortal Breaker: The Mortal Blade can kill otherwise immortal beings. Problem is that everyone who's ever tried to draw the sword from its sheath has immediately died. Fortunately for Wolf, death is not permanent for him.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: There are normal humans who are skilled with the katana (Wolf himself able to parry bullets if the player has the necessary reflexes), but then there is Isshin Ashina, the Sword Saint. When you happen to fight him, he demonstrates supreme swordfighting skill, using Blade Spam to create an impenetrable sphere around him or casually making shockwaves with a slash of his katana. Wolf can learn these too after he defeats him.
• Incoming Ham: Gyobuou Masataka Oniwa announces his arrival by shouting out his name at the top of his lungs.
  MY NAAAAMEE!!! IS GYOUBOU MASATAKA ONIWA!!! AS I BREATHE! YOU WILL NOT PASS THE CASTLE GATE!
• In the Back: At the end of the Hirata Estate memory, Wolf is stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant. However, a sharp-viewed player can recognize the Owl's large katana.
• Invulnerable Civilians: Attacks to NPCs simply phase through them with a visual indicator that they're taking no damage.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Or Infinity +1 Prosthetic. The four final-tier prosthetics are among the strongest in the game, with each eliminating a core weakness of the normal versions, turning them into a downright deadly way to circumvent enemy weaknesses. The main downside is that the only way to craft them is with Lapis Lazuli, of which only six can be found in per playthrough. This means you can only craft two of them if you're not on New Game Plus.
  • The Lazulite Axe punches through guards to deal chip damage, and will also function as a Snap Seed by dispelling illusions upon hit.
  • The Lazulite Shuriken does damage through guard, allowing the user to deal respectable damage at range. It can also punch through enemies if charged up all the way, making it an effective tool for dealing with crowds.
  • The Lazulite Sacred Flame trades out fire damage for holy damage, allowing it to be effective against Apparitions.
  • The Lazulite Sabimaru causes poison clouds to seep out of every hit, ensuring that enemies won't be able to guard against the poison.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Of the plot-induced advancement variety. May reach over into Extremely Short Timespan if you take the mechanic literally, as it implies that the entirety of the game's plot plays out within the span of 24 hours.
  • The tutorial segment takes place at night, following Wolf as he rescues Kuro from the Moonview Tower and ending in his dismemberment at the hands of Genichiro.
  • The first act proper starts in the morning, as Wolf wakes up at the Dilapidated Temple with a new prosthetic arm courtesy of the Sculptor.
  • From there, you make up your way to the Ashina Castle, at which point the game world branches. You can go straight for a rematch with Genichiro at the top of the castle, or explore the Ashina Depths, at the end of which you'll get to fight the illusory Corrupted Monk. Defeating Genichiro will also give you access to the second half of the Sunken Valley, where you'll find the Guardian Ape. Each time you defeat one of these three bosses, the time of day advances: to noon, then late afternoon, and finally to dusk. The last one triggers the first invasion of Ashina Castle by Ministry Forces and introduces some gameplay changes, as new enemies and loot (including some Vengeful Spirits) begin to appear across the game world.
  • Reaching the Fountainhead Palace turns the time of day to night, awakening even more Vengeful Spirits in previously visited areas.
  • Finally, winning the showdown against the Divine Dragon will trigger the final invasion of Ashina by Ministry forces, changing the enemy makeup across Ashina Castle and Outskirts and putting you in the endgame.
  • As an addendum, exploring the Senpou Temple region will not advance the time of day.
• I Surrender, Suckers:
  • Reviving mid-battle can be used strategically to surprise attack enemies when their back is turned.
  • Owl will do this in his boss fight, begging for mercy after the first death blow. Waiting too long will have him pounce on Wolf and do massive damage. Attacking him while he's talking will cause Owl to resume the fight and compliment Wolf for seeing through the bluff.
• In Vino Veritas: Wolf can acquire four types of sake and give them to either Tengu, Emma or the Sculptor, who all gladly have a cup and will in their relaxed state of mind reveal specific pieces of their past, as well as bits of lore.
• Jidaigeki: The setting is feudal Japan with fantasy elements.
• Kaiju: The, for lack of a better word, rope golem that takes you to Fountainhead Palace near the end of the game. Its waist is literally above the cloudline.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Since the setting is Sengoku Era Japan, katanas and assorted blades are common weapons, wielded by Wolf and the many enemies he faces during the course of the game.
• Kill It with Fire: All red-eyed enemies and those corrupted by waters of the Fountain fear fire, and inflicting fire damage will stun them for a moment as they get terrified by it. Thus, it is recommended to equip the Flame Vent when expecting to face such enemies, and even better to douse them in oil before setting them on fire, upon which they'll spend several seconds panicking and leaving themselves open for you to wail on without risk.
• Kite Riding: The roofs of Ashina castle are guarded by Nightjar ninjas, who sometimes ride kites and can spot Wolf from afar thanks to their "vantage point". They also happen to let themselves fall and rapidly glide toward Wolf for a violent Dynamic Entry.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: At one point, Kuro asks Wolf and by extension the player how many times he's died, before musing to himself that the number might be too high to count.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Thanks to the war between Ashina and the Interior Ministry, upon the invasion of Ashina Castle you can get the various enemies to fight each other after they lose aggro/sight of you, leaving you finish off the lone winner.
• Level in Boss Clothing: The Folding Screen Monkeys barely attack you. Instead you have to track them down and take each of them out using the tricks available in the Hall of Illusions.
• Life Drain: Wolf can learn a skill where he regenerates part of his health after dealing a Deathblow to enemies.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to Hidetaka Miyazaki's previous titles, thematically Sekiro is borderline sunny. While there's a ton of bloodshed, the characters who die at the end of their quest lines typically Go Out with a Smile, having fulfilled some form of unfinished business. The Historical Fantasy setting at least ensures the world isn't on the brink of dying anytime soon. And most unexpectedly of all, it's possible to Earn Your Happy Ending (depending on how you interpret the "Return" ending, anyways).
• Lightning Bruiser: Many of the bosses and minibosses are larger than Wolf, but move with grace and agility. A prime example is Great Shinobi Owl, who appears hunched and bulky, but can rapidly maneuver around the battlefield.
• Lightning/Fire Juxtaposition: These are the two major offensive elements used in the game, and happen to occur the most on opposing sides of the overall conflicts:
  • Fire is associated with humanity, accessible through both technological advancements and magical means. Wolf himself has many fiery gadgets at his disposal, the most obvious being his Flame Vent prosthetic tool, while the Interior Ministry is packing alchemical rockets and flamethrowers used for burning Ashina to the ground. Sculptor mutates into a flaming demon powered by resentment and the lingering grudges of the dead. The Great Shinobi Owl was once capable of summoning an owl familiar that can transform into a divebombing firebird.
  • Lightning is associated with divinity; a part of Ashina was supposedly blessed by the gods, and the Fountainhead Palace was eventually built there. Those who call it home (or those whose ancestors descended from there, including Genichiro and Isshin), are capable of channeling electricity into their attacks. The presence of the Divine Dragon itself can be felt through the constant thunderclouds enveloping Fountainhead Spiral.
• Logical Weakness: The game thrives on you being able to exploit this, be it in-game or in-story.
  • No matter how skilled Wolf is, getting into a direct fight with more than one gun-wielding enemy will typically end with him being extremely well-ventilated. You need to exploit I-frames during Deathblows and quickly be on the run or on guard to avoid being target practice.
  • The unarmed Senpou monks can deflect some blows, but they have incredibly low posture, and two or three blows will break through their guards and leave them open to a Deathblow; turns out taking on a Katana-wielding opponent with no weapon of your own is a losing proposition.
  • As a Shinobi, Wolf's skillset is poorly-suited to fighting large groups of enemies at once, and you will usually find yourself on the losing end of any such engagement. Inversely, those same enemies are not well-equipped or well-trained to handle an infiltrator of Wolf's caliber, meaning that you can usually take them out without ever being seen, or at least even the odds before the fight starts.
  • Wolf is trained well enough to fight swordsmen, riflemen, monsters, and even apparitions, but against the Armored Warrior, a European knight and explorer clad in full plate mail, his light katana and shinobi tools can't even scratch him. You'll need to find another way... like, say, knocking him off a bridge...
• Loot Command: You can push a single button to remotely collect everything slain enemies can drop, skipping the tedium tediousness of collecting loot from one foe at a time.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The most obvious instance of this trope is probably the meaning behind "Sekiro", the game's title and the nickname that Tengu of Ashina gives Wolf upon their first meeting. The word is made up of the kanji 隻 ("one half" (of a pair)) and 狼 ("wolf"), obviously referencing Wolf's lost arm.
  • The architecture of the Fountainhead Palace and the appearance of its inhabitants are a throwback to the classical Heian era of Japanese history. This is reflected by the fact that the area is named Minamoto (源, "source-of-the-water") in Japanese, a reference that ends up obscured in the English localization.
  • The Divine Dragon is referred to in Japanese/Chinese as "櫻龍", literally meaning "Sakura Dragon".
  • The titles of two of the Long Shadow agents — namely Longswordsman and Masanaga the Spear-Bearer — would probably be more accurately translated as "Swordfeet" (太刀足, "Tachiashi") and "Masanaga the Spearfoot" (槍足の正長, "Yariashi no Masanaga") respectively, referencing the deadliness of their kicks.
  • In the original Japanese, O'Rin refers to Jinzaemon as "あの子" (ano ko), roughly meaning "that boy" when used to refer to an adult male, often in a parental sense.
  • The names of the Sugars/Spiritfalls directly describe their effects; for example, "Gokan" (吽護) roughly means "sturdy body", fitting for an item that reduces the amount of Posture damage taken. However, these are left untranslated in the localizations.
  • The original Japanese names of Juzou the Drunkard (うわばみの重蔵, "Uwabami no Juzō") and Tokujiro the Glutton (牛飲の徳次郎, "Gyūin no Tokujirō") would be more literally translated as "Juzou the (Great) Serpent" and "Tokujiro Who Drinks Like a Cow". In this case however, the English translators did manage to mostly convey the intended meaning of these titles, as "Uwabami" is indeed used as a common term for "Drunkard" in Japanese, while "Gyūin" is generally used to mean something akin to "Drinks Gluttonously".
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: One of the Prosthetic Tools you can use is the Loaded Umbrella, a foldable metal umbrella that serves a shield against all attacks, ranging from projectiles to Perilous Attacks, but costs Spirit Emblems to use. Upgrading it allows the Umbrella to protect Wolf completely from certain status effects, specific types of attacks, or be used as an Attack Reflector.

M-Z

• Magical Flutist: Some of the Palace Nobles can be found playing flutes, which they use to perform sorcery. The first of them, the "Mist Noble", can be found in a valley conjuring an Ominous Fog and illusions of enemies within it. Others can be found in the Fountainhead Palace.
• Magitek: The Shinobi Prosthetic appears entirely mechanical, but the Universal Ammunition it uses are paper talismans born of regret, and later upgrades to its gadgets impart mystical abilities to it like flame that burns apparitions or that use alchemy, so it clearly runs off of more than science as we know it.
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • The black-caped samurai of the Interior Ministry wear fearsome red masks.
  • The Okami warriors in the Fountainhead Palace are all masked to hide their inhuman nature. However, their abnormal blue limbs already expose their monstrosity.
• Mana: How Spirit Emblems work — these paper totems infused with souls and negative karma are what is used to power Wolf's Shinobi Prosthetic, advanced Combat Arts, Ninjutsu Techniques, and Spiritfall items. Because Wolf can only hold a limited amount at a time before needing to rest at an idol, players must be considerate about how they allocate resources and expend Spirit Emblems most effectively.
• Marathon Boss: Both final boss fights have you fight against two different bosses in quick succession. The Shura ending has a one-phase battle against Emma followed by a two-phase fight against Lord Isshin, while the other endings have a one-phase fight against Genichiro followed by a three-phase fight against Sword Saint Isshin. In both cases, dying at any point will force you to repeat the entire battle from the beginning, just like the Nameless King in Dark Souls III.
  • The Superboss fight against the Demon of Hatred also has three deathblow markers. Unlike most bosses, the Demon has an utterly absurd amount of posture, meaning that you'll have to drain his vitality to land a deathblow.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The memory of Hirata Estate that you travel to might just be Sekiro reminiscing, but there seems to be more to it than that, since you gain items and experience for going there (even retrieving key items from there that you can't find in the present). It's not straight Mental Time Travel either, as, late game, you have the option of getting someone else's memento of that time and events and enemies shuffle around. It's subjective and completely real at the same time.
• Menu Time Lockout: Unlike FromSoftware's previous titles, Sekiro plays it straight — when you access the menu, time stops completely.
• Mercy Kill:
  • You can give a mercy kill to Hanbei the Undying and grant his wish to finally end his life. This loses you a training partner, but it gives you an item that lets you fake your death.
  • In the Immortal Severance ending, Wolf gives one to the dying Kuro in order to fulfill the latter's wish of severing the Dragon's Heritage.
  • Finding hidden dialogue reveals that killing the Demon of Hatred is giving one of these to the Sculptor.
• Mind Manipulation: Wolf can learn the Puppeteer Technique, allowing him to mind control enemies he's backstabbed and turn them into temporary allies before they die. This technique is actually the key to unlocking a few secret paths.
• Mini-Boss: The game features a large variety of mid-bosses who, like regular bosses, tend to have multiple health bars and must be taken down by depleting their poise meter and using visceral attacks. Usually, they are particularly skilled human warriors.
• Minus World: As demonstrated by this video, there is a big Minus World hidden in Sekiro that allows you, among other things to fight the Folding Screen Monkeys without the need to fight Genichiro first and, after obtaining the Mibu Breathing Technique, to reach the Fountainhead Palace by messing with the walls of the arena in which you fight the Guardian Ape, skipping it, all the bosses in between and some bosses thereafter. Accessing it, however, comes with the risk of breaking your save.
• Mirror Boss: The Great Shinobi Owl is a shinobi who uses some of the same tools that Wolf has in conjunction with his katana, making his fighting style very reminiscent of Wolf himself. He even imitates Wolf's revive ability, offering a fake surrender after being downed, hoping to retaliate when his opponent thinks they've won.
• Money Mauling: One of the upgrades for the Loaded Shuriken you can get is the "Sen Throw", which lets you chuck handfuls of coins at enemies — it costs money as well as Spirit Emblems to use.
• Money Multiplier: The Mibu Balloons of Wealth increases the amount of sen Wolf gets upon a kill. Other Mibu items improve item drops, Spirit Emblem gain, and the speed at which your Resurrective Power refills.
• Mook Maker: Some of the priests of Senpou Temple act like hosts for locusts and can produce them indefinitely. Locusts can swarm Wolf and prevent him from locking on more dangerous enemies.
• Mooks: Local ashigaru (semi-professional foot soldiers) swell the ranks of the Ashina, and are led by the far more dangerous samurai. Individual ashigaru can be killed with ease, but they can be a surprising challenge in groups — and they are almost never stationed alone, so stealth is the best option to thin their ranks before engaging.
• Morton's Fork: Played with in that the game tries to somewhat nudge you into one about halfway through the game. Once Owl is encountered at Ashina Castle, the player has the choice to "Follow the Iron Code", which betrays Kuro and your other friends, resulting in the deaths of Emma, Isshin, Genichiro, and Owl as Wolf becomes a Shura, resulting in the worst ending. On the other hand, "Defy the Iron Code and Remain Loyal to Kuro" carries its own rough choice, as Wolf is unaware that achieving Immortal Sevrance involves killing Kuro. As a result, either choice will ultimately end in Wolf failing to protect Kuro. Averted entirely, however, in that if Wolf is careful, catches subtle clues, and listens to even his friends through eavesdropping, he can find other ways to keep Kuro alive, resulting in a Bittersweet Ending or a possible Golden Ending.
• Motifs:
  • Immortality is the story's central focal point in terms of themes and messages, and much of the game is spent exploring this concept and its potential pitfalls. The absence of death is represented in-game in one of two ways — the first is to become "infested", which causes a centipede to burrow itself inside its host and reanimate it from within upon death. Those who know about Shintoism will pick up on the fact that centipedes are a symbol of kegare, a concept that relates to moral/spiritual decay. The other is to become associated with the Divine Dragon and its blood, which carries its own baggage — if it doesn't mutate you into a horrific Half-Human Hybrid of man and carp, then it will still age you to the point where you're forced into a symbiotic relationship with the Dragon itself. Either way, Immortality is treated as a bad prospect despite the benefits within the narrative, as even those blessed with the Dragon Heritage still run the risk of either killing those around them or having their blood be used to make men into literal demons. It's telling that in three of the four endings, Kuro and Wolf reject Immortality, as both see it as far too dangerous for any one man to have.
  • Adoptive familial bonds, which affects three characters in different ways and levels. Wolf, Emma, and Genichiro were all taken in after being orphaned by war, inheriting most of their foster family's skills and knowledge. Yet, they each find a different way to confront their familial responsiblity in their adulthood.
    • Rejection: Wolf, despite being trained extensively as a shinobi by Owl and Butterfly, ends up refusing to follow their paths and desires. He fights and kills the latter, despite then not knowing her motives, and he betrays Owl's expectations of him in all four endings to varying degrees.
    • Balanced: Raised by Dogen and the Sculptor, Emma had a strict but fulfilling childhood, maturing into an intelligent, just, and kind woman who holds great affection for those who raised her, but is not blind enough to avoid chastising them for their mistakes.
    • Acceptance: Genichiro was taken into an esteemed samurai family with tremendous wealth and influence, and adjusted well. Yet, it could be argued he loved his family and clan too much, as he openly admits that he'll resort to any immoral and inhuman means necessary to protect and preserve the Ashina Clan.
  • Marriage is also a recurring theme, though not as strongly enforced throughout the game. Several bridal palanquins are scattered throughout the world, with some clearly meant for 'brides' (sacrifices) for deified creatures. One boss in particular is mourning his 'mate' when you arrived, and later will resurrect her in a latter encounter. There's plenty of Ship Tease around as well; for instance, Lord Takeru and Lady Tomoe's relationship being hinted as more than a normal master-retainer one, and Kuro and the Divine Child of Rejuvenating Waters literally sharing their bodies, thoughts, and feelings in the secret ending.
  • Emotional stability is another major motif. The Sculptor is consumed by hatred, just barely able to keep it reined in and ultimately fails once the Interior Ministry invades at the end of the game, becoming the Demon of Hatred. Wolf himself ruthlessly cuts down anyone and everyone in his path to get Kuro back, the brutality and viciousness of his rampage noted to give him "the shadow of Shura", as Isshin puts it, with Shura being a creature so consumed by hate and bloodshed that it can no longer remember why it kills. The Demon of Hatred is a clear metaphor of what Wolf himself could have become if his overwhelming violence got out of hand. Only by showing kindness to others and having a clear goal that involves trying to save the life of someone he cares for does Wolf even stand a chance of attaining a happier ending^note it should be noted that Wolf won't ever get the chance to see the Demon of Hatred if he becomes a Shura, as the game will end prior to the Interior Ministry's invasion.
  • Oddly enough, individuality is yet another. Wolf seems to limit himself to what he is oathbound to do. Obeying the rigid Iron Code leads to the worst ending, but also blindly following the path of Immortal Severance does him no better. Making choices for himself, despite Kuro's dedication to sacrificing himself for the "greater good", is the only way to save the boy.
• Muggles Do It Better: Throughout the game, you'll be fighting all manner of supernatural and inhuman creatures that are capable of feats no human could ever pull off. Ashina itself is dabbling in all kinds of sorcery, from creating Red-Eyed super soldiers, unlocking the secret of immortality, and wielding lightning itself. However, the toughest enemies in the game are the rank-and-file soldiers and shinobi of the Interior Ministry. They don't use magic; they just have superior training, state-of-the-art equipment, sheer numbers, and genius strategy on their side, and they completely trounce Ashina's forces.
• Multiple Endings: Given that it's a game by FromSoftware, multiple endings shouldn't be too surprising.
  • Shura: One of the earliest to obtain. Wolf agrees to Owl's orders to kill the Divine Heir. In response to this, Emma and Lord Isshin battle Wolf, though the latter does so to prevent Wolf from becoming Shura. They both fall, and Owl gloats that the country is now theirs for the taking... until Wolf drives a blade through his chest and kills him. The Divine Heir arrives to witness Wolf picking up the Owl's blade and realizes in horror that his once loyal vassal has now become a demon. Wolf, immortal and armed with the Mortal Blade, goes on to slaughter everyone in Ashina, haunting the land as an Ax-Crazy murderer for decades to come.
  • Immortal Severance: Wolf refuses to go along with the Owl's orders to kill the Divine Heir. He then obtains the ingredients for Dragon's Tears in order to prevent the Dragon's Heritage from falling into the wrong hands. However, Wolf arrives to find Genichiro having dealt a mortal blow to the Divine Heir, leading to a final confrontation with him and a newly revived Isshin Ashina. After both are slain, Wolf delivers a Mercy Kill to his former lord. He is last seen taking up the profession of the Sculptor with Emma, who returns his prosthetic to him, believing that a shinobi will seek strength, just as he once did.
  • Purification: The events play similarly to Immortal Severance, except instead of killing Kuro, Wolf sacrifices his own life to achieve Immortal Severance, thus sparing Kuro. Now mortal, Kuro pays his respects to Wolf's grave before leaving on his own journey.
  • Dragon's Homecoming: If Wolf performed an extra quest to assist the Divine Child and obtain a Frozen Dragon Tear from her, Kuro instead is absorbed into the Divine Child's heart. Carrying Kuro's soul inside her, the Divine Child decides to travel west to the Divine Dragon's birthplace and return the Dragon Heritage rather than sever it. Wolf decides to accompany them on their journey.
• Multiple Life Bars: Most bosses require two or three Deathblows to finish them off, and their health bars refill every time you do.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Some Samurai characters will begin the fight by announcing loudly who they are and what are their greatest deeds, true to samurai tradition.
• Mythology Gag: Although this game is not part of the Soulsborne franchise, FromSoftware was bound to include several references to it.
  • The beginning of the game mirrors the beginning of Dark Souls, with the Player Character slumped against a wall, only to stand up when a mysterious benefactor drops something for them from above. Wolf is even sitting in the exact same position that the Chosen Undead was.
  • A unique upgrade material for the Flame Vent is a piece of pine resin that continually burns with faint embers long after it should, i.e. Charcoal Pine Resin.
  • Contact Medicine protects Wolf against Poison by giving him a weaker version of it — a reference to how Dark Souls players would protect themselves from the Toxic-enducing Blowdart Snipers of Blighttown by using Dung Pies to give themselves a weaker version of the condition.
  • One miniboss is a towering man in impenetrable heavy armor, who can only be defeated by making him fall off the edge of the arena. The Iron Golem of Dark Souls I was a giant suit of Animated Armor, and making it fall off the edge of its arena was the most efficient method of defeating it.
  • A giant snake is One-Hit Killed by plunging down on it from above, much like another giant reptilian creature — the Ancient Wyvern of Dark Souls III.
  • Like in Bloodborne, it's possible to send certain NPCs to meet their doom at the hands of a Mad Doctor.
  • Two endgame bosses are a gigantic white dragon wielding a magical green sword that fires energy waves out with slashes, and a monstrous, ape-like demon with an oversized left hand. In short — Seath, Moonlight Greatsword, and Manus equivalents.
  • The Demon of Hatred (a.k.a. the Sculptor) is stunned by the Malcontent (an upgrade for the Finger Whistle), like how Father Gascoigne is stunned by the Tiny Music Box. Like with Gascoigne, it will only stun the boss a few times before it stops working. To further drive the comparison home, the Tiny Music Box was something Gascoigne and his wife shared, while the Finger Whistle and Malcontent's Ring both originally belonged to the Sculptor's old shinobi training partner. Both items stun their respective bosses because their sound triggers memories of loved ones, which momentarily allow them to Resist the Beast.
  • Wolf can unlock the ability to coat his katana in an enemy's blood, extending its range. Lady Maria could do the same thing with her own katana and her own blood. Furthermore, Sir Alonne's Zanbatō had similar properties — from one's own blood when you get your hands on it, from an enemy's while he still wields it (namely, yours.)
  • Speaking of Lady Maria, an accidental Mythology Gag arises when giving Monkey Booze to the Sculptor. He reminisces about his former shinobi partner, who would play "his" Finger Whistle whenever the two of them took a break from training to drink Monkey Booze. Except once you find the Slender Finger used to create the Finger Whistle (which the Sculptor recognizes as being his old partner's finger), its description says it belonged to a woman. Looks like the translators once again goofed as they previously did with the Old Hunter Bone^note The English description says it belonged to a man, but the Japanese description is gender-neutral and it's heavily implied the Bone actually belonged to Lady Maria. and Pharis's equipment.^note Pharis is referred to as a man in the English item descriptions, but the Japanese descriptions are gender-neutral, and the sole NPC in the game using the equipment is a woman whose name is actually Pharis in the Japanese version (the English version changes her name to the generic "Forest Hunter Archer").
• Never Trust a Trailer: The demo level for Ashina Outskirts is a mismatch of different levels in their final designs, all pieced together to offer the most diverse experience. In the game proper, the enemies and set pieces of the demo are much more scattered. For instance, the Corrupted Monk isn't fought in the Ashina Outskirts at all but near the Fountainhead Palace.
• Never Mess with Granny: Lady Butterfly looks as if she has to be in her late sixties at the minimum, but if you underestimate her, you will quickly learn that she hasn't lived this long by being a pushover.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Genichiro wanted to use Kuro's blood to make himself and the rest of the Ashina military immortal; however, by kidnapping him, he ensured that Wolf would carve his way through virtually all of Ashina's remaining military assets to get him back.
• Ninja: Besides our protagonist, there are various other shinobi lurking about, who tend to be the most agile and tricksy foes in the game; the tengu-masked Nightjars patrol the roofs of Ashina Castle, short dwarven assassins do the dirty work for Senpou Temple, and the Lone Shadows spy upon Ashina for their shogunate masters. And that's not getting into Wolf's former mentor Lady Butterfly and adoptive father Owl, aged master shinobi who are some of the dirtiest fighters in all of Ashina.
• Noiseless Walker: What Wolf can become if he unlocks the Suppress Sound skill, allowing him to make no noises when moving and making him even better at stealth.
• Non-Dubbed Grunts: In the English voice language, most of the grunts enemies make still use the ones made by their Japanese voice actors. This even applies to bosses, such as Owl and Isshin.
• Nothing Is Scarier: You keep hearing about something called "Shura" throughout the game, the force of bloodlust and violence that turns warriors into unstoppable demons. As much as it's talked up, you never actually get to see what a fully formed Shura looks like. The closest you get is the Demon of Hatred who, as bad as he is, is evidently a failed Shura. Wolf becomes one in the worst ending of the game, but the screen cuts to black before we see him actually transform, and the narration tells us that he went on to indiscriminately kill thousands of people. The GOTY update finally reveals what a Shura looks like by giving you the costume provided you go beat the Shura boss gauntlet.
• Notice This: Most out-of-the-way ledges Wolf can climb up or sidle along are cracked and chipped, creating clear white streaks on dark stone.
• Obvious Rule Patch: The boss rush, added quite a while after the game released, nips many AI exploits and cheating strategies in the bud to make sure you fight them fair and square. One of the most obvious being the boss rush version of Lady Butterfly; normally, you can trap her in a stun loop that lets you simply chip her health away in both lifebars, try that in the boss rush and she'll counterattack with a new attack that will kill you no matter your health and disables resurrecting so you fail the boss rush set.
• Off with His Head!: A unique Finishing Move that Wolf can perform on the Guardian Ape, twisting the ōdachi that's already stuck in its throat. Seconds after, the Guardian Ape comes back to life, grabs his head and the sword, and continues to fight you.
  • This is also a "finishing move" Wolf performs on himself should you choose the Purification ending.
• Ominous Fog:
  • As usual for FromSoftware titles, a barrier of fog will lock you into boss battles.
  • The path leading to Mibu Village is heavily shrouded in fog, and ghostly illusion enemies roam around within it, endlessly respawning until the source of the fog is dealt with.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The Senpou Monks constantly repeat Buddhist prayers when idle, lending a sinister air to the temple.
• Open-Ended Boss Battle: The first fight with Genichiro is a Hopeless Boss Fight, and the new player is expected to lose very quickly. However, if you're persistent enough, once you deplete Genichiro's health, one of his mooks distracts you in a cutscene, making Wolf lose regardless.
• Optional Stealth: As a ninja, one of Wolf's best tools is stealth. Nothing prevents him from walking at ground level in the middle of the road to openly confront the Samurai and monsters on his way; on the other hand, Wolf can scale walls, hide in bushes, and attack from stealth, allowing him to even the odds a bit before showing himself. It's ultimately up to the player to decide how sneaky of a shinobi they want to be.
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • Some supernatural foes are described as "Apparition type". They are incredibly resistant to all attacks, to the point where applying Divine Confetti to the sword is basically the only way to reliably deal damage to them, and their attacks inflict a special Terror status effect that can kill Wolf outright.
  • Beginning at duskfall, certain isolated areas such as the Sunken Valley or Mibu Village will be populated with the vengeful spirits of dead mooks, only manifesting when you get close enough to them. While they don't require Divine Confetti to damage, they can really mess with your sense of enemy placement. Since these 'ghosts' are dependent on which area you've visited previously, it's likely Wolf's 'karmic debt', which was insinuated by the Sculptor's conversations, literal remnants of the people Wolf has killed.
• Palette Swap: Several miniboss and boss types are recycled throughout the game, generally with slightly different appearances, but largely identical mechanics. For example, the Blazing Bull is recycled into the Sakura Bull, and Juzou the Drunkard has two other doppelgangers that can be fought after he's dealt with.
• Paper Talisman: "White Spirit Emblems" — small paper effigies used in Onmyōdō — can be found in the environment or picked up from slain enemies to fuel Wolf's Shinobi Prosthetic (other than the free-use Grappling-Hook Pistol).
• Parrot Exposition: Whenever someone introduces a new concept to Wolf, he has the habit of repeating the term in an interrogative manner, just so the game can drive home that it will be important.
• Pet the Dog: The Sake line of items exists purely to do this; you can give them to Emma, the Sculptor, and Isshin Ashina. There is no mechanical reason to do so, but it gives you a glimpse of a more relaxed, positive side of each of them, and offers hints about the lore that you wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
• Poisoned Weapons: Wolf can attach the poisoned blade Sabimaru to his prosthetic arm, using it in quick slashes to build up a Poison status on enemies. It can be even further upgraded for added lethality.
• Portal Network: The Sculptor's Idols act the same way as the bonfires in Dark Souls, allowing Wolf to fast travel between any activated Idol on the map. They also serve as a way for Wolf to acquire skills and increase his stats.
• Power-Up Food: A number of consumables that can make Wolf stronger for a short time.
  • Red Ako sugars increase attack power.
  • Blue Ungo sugars decrease Vitality damage received.
  • Yellow Gokan sugars reduce Posture damage taken.
  • Green Gachiin sugars boost stealthiness.
  • Dark red Yashariku sugars greatly increase attack power, at the cost of halving one's maximum Vitality and Posture.
  • The Divine Child can also give out a magical rice that restores Vitality. Kuro can use this rice to make an even more powerful buff item.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Ashina's military. They stand between Wolf and his goal, but they're fighting for their kingdom and their lord, just like Wolf is fighting for Kuro.
• Rain of Blood: In a bit of an homage to Bloodborne, there's a small one after Wolf kills the Great Serpent by stabbing it in the eye.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: This is played completely straight. The bandits raiding Hirata Estate are led by the massive Juzou the Drunkard, the Ashina Clan's generals are some of their toughest fighters, and the Sunken Valley clansmen are led by the deadly Snake Eyes. Isshin Ashina, the patriarch of the Ashina Clan, is said to be the greatest swordsman alive and you learn the hard way that his reputatation is Not Hyperbole.
• Real Men Hate Sugar: Discussed. Kuro is mildly surprised to hear Wolf describe the rice of the Divine Child as tasting sweet, and asks him if he likes sweets. When Wolf affirms that he'll eat anything, Kuro takes that to mean he doesn't hate them, and decides that's as good an excuse as he'll need to make some sticky rice balls for the shinobi.
• Recurring Boss:
  • Genichiro Ashina serves as Wolf's greatest rival during the course of the game, as the shinobi may have to fight him up to three times, all battles marking the end of an act in the storyline.
  • Since it is infested by a centipede and thusly is Undying, The Guardian Ape has to be fought twice, the second time giving it the true death thanks to Wolf's recently acquired Mortal Blade.
• Recurring Element: Sekiro features several mechanics from Dark Souls and Bloodborne, but tweaked and tailored to fit the setting:
  • The Healing Gourd is an Estus Flask in all but name: you have a set but upgradable number of heals that replenish at checkpoints.
  • Pellets are essentially Lifegems, although you can only hold up to 3 at a time.
  • Sculptor's Idols are similar to bonfires: they serve as checkpoints, heal the Player Character and refresh the Healing Gourd, but will respawn every regular enemy in the area.
  • The Shinobi Prothestic is an evolution of Bloodborne's trick weapons: a tool that augments the player's moveset and grants special attacks.
  • The Ceremonial Tanto damages you for a percentage of your max HP in exchange for giving you five extra Spirit Emblems. In other words, it works just like Blood Bullets. The differences are that the Tanto damages you for 50% of your max HP instead of 30% and only has three uses, which replenish at checkpoints.
  • The Five-Color Rice is essentially a jug of Prism Stones/Shining Coins, except instead of being able to carry 99 at once, it only has 5 uses before needing to be replenished at checkpoints.
  • Owl, when fought at Ashina Castle, throws smoke bombs that prevent you from healing for a short time, just like Lloyd's Talismans and Undead Hunter Charms.
  • Lady Emma fills the Mysterious Waif role of the Fire Keepers, the Doll, the Maiden in Black and the Emerald Herald. She stands out by being rather more proactive than her predecessors, working actively to aid Sekiro rather than simply waiting for him to return to the temple. She's also unique in that she's the penultimate boss of a Shura run.
• Resources Management Gameplay: As with the "Soulsborne" games, Wolf only has access to a limited number of healing items and spirit emblems between Sculptor's Idols.
• Remixed Level: Ashina Castle and Ashina Outskirts, after the Ministry invasion. Powerful new enemies and minibosses appear, certain areas are blocked off by fires and barricades, and siege towers with snipers are set up everywhere, providing a large difficulty spike. Overlaps with Remilitarized Zone.
• Resurrection Sickness: An interesting case, in that it isn't Wolf who gets the sickness. Every time he dies "for good" and resurrects, it strains the lifeforce of people around him — and when the strain becomes too strong, its victims develop a disease called Dragonrot. The more Wolf dies, the wider the infection spreads, severely limiting your NPC interactions unless you go through the loops necessary to cure it. Thankfully, doing so heals all affected characters at once.
• The Reveal: New dynamics and layers regarding lore, character, and story dynamics are unveiled to the players the further they progress, explore, and interact with other characters.
  • The Sculptor served under Isshin Ashina as a shinobi and had his arm severed by the latter. To prevent his transformation into a full Shura.
  • Inosuke Nogami became blind as a result of a confrontation with Lady Butterfly.
  • Emma was rescued from a battlefield by the Sculptor when she was a child.
  • Lady Butterfly, one of Wolf’s childhood mentors, was the ringleader on the siege of the Hirata Estate.
  • Isshin Ashina tasked Emma with delivering the letter to Wolf in the Ashina Reservoir. He opposes his grandson Genichiro, wanting to end the Dragon Heritage’s impact on Japan once and for all.
  • Genichiro was a former peasant child adopted by the Ashina clan.
  • In Ashina’s past, there was a Dragonrot epidemic.
  • The Guardian Ape was cursed with immortality as there is a giant centipede nestled within him. And he has a mate.
  • Owl, Wolf’s adopted shinobi father is alive and his endgame has been to obtain the Dragon Heritage for himself; wanting to rule all of Japan. He was also in possession of the last Everblossom branch.
  • There are two Great Serpents. Each of their hearts are imperative to the creation of the Frozen Tears (through the Divine Child’s consumption of them) in order to unlock the game's Golden Ending, Return.
  • Isshin Ashina was the Tengu of Ashina.
  • The Corrupted Monk’s true name is Priestess Yao. Presumably referring to Yaobikuni of Japanese folklore - the immortal Buddhist nun. However, in consistency with the game’s critique on immortality - this is portrayed in a negative context as her body is infested with a giant centipede.
  • The Dragon Heritage did not originate from Japan. Its native homeland is somewhere in the West (presumably China).
• Roofhopping: Whether to sneak around enemies or just to get to your next destination, you will most definitely be jumping from rooftop to rooftop throughout the course of the game, usually with the help of your grappling hook. But be warned — enemy shinobi can traverse the rooftops just as easily as you.
• Rule of Cool: In Real Life, katanas were extremely brittle due to the low quality of iron in Japan, making the parry-focused battle system historically and physically inaccurate. But the battle system is really cool, so it's fine.
• Samurai: Unsurprisingly, samurai feature predominantly among the Ashina's best warriors, with even the lowliest of them far superior to common foot soldiers. When the Interior Ministry invades, they bring in their own master samurai, some of whom even have guns!
• Samurai Shinobi: Sekiro / The Wolf is openly called a shinobi, utilizing stealth techniques when facing hordes of enemies and many of the game's antagonists being Samurai lords, a lot of his characteristics makes him more like a samurai. While stealth-based combat is an option, the game encourages more aggressive styles of gameplay that real-life shinobi tended to avoid. His mode of dress (bright orange and yellow) clashes with the environment, which is counter-intuitive to traditional shinobi attire, and his philosophy in life is based around protecting and serving a master (though this is more due to the machinations of his adopted father Owl).
• Scenery Porn: The game is full of gorgeous mountain-scapes, home to beautiful fortresses, temples, and monuments to Buddha. Wolf gets to navigate through them all.
• Schmuck Bait: The large iron bell in the Bell Demon's Temple has a note explicitly telling you not to ring it. Naturally, the rope is dangling right there, just begging to be pulled. Ringing it will increase enemy health, damage, and posture, but improve drop rates.
• Secret Underground Passage: A secret underground passage connects the Ashina Castle to the Dilapidated Temple. Unlocked at the end of the first act, the passage allows Wolf to meet rapidly with both the Sculptor and Kuro.
• Self-Recovery Surprise: Some bosses harbour a centipede parasite that will trigger a surprise resurrection after the boss is seemingly killed. Both the Guardian Ape and Corrupted Monk battles have the boss in question receiving what should be an indisputable mortal blow, yet coming back from death to resume the fight.
• Sequential Boss: Several bosses are like this. There is Genichiro Ashina, who during his second boss fight will shed his armor and begin using the Lightning of Tomoe, becoming much more agile and adding lightning attacks to his arsenal. There is also the Guardian Ape, which gets beheaded by Wolf, but comes back to life as a headless body wielding the very sword that decapitated it. Both versions of the Final Boss also fit into this trope, with Isshin being fought directly after either Emma or Genichiro, depending on whether or not you're going for the Shura ending.
• Sequel Hook: The Dragon's Homecoming opens this up as a possibility. Having decided to return the Dragon's Heritage to its birthplace instead of cutting it outright, Wolf takes Kuro to the Divine Child of Rejuvenation so she can be a shelter to his soul. She leaves Senpou Temple and Ashina in monk garb, with Wolf accompanying her as they journey westward. A Journey to the West, if you will.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: There are multiple types of enemies equipped with shields, such as the bandits raiding Hirata Estate, some of the Taro Troops, and Senpou assassins wearing massive armored hats that protect their entire body from the front. Attacking such foes head-on is a difficult and slow process at best; as such, the only efficient way of killing them in a direct fight is to use the Loaded Axe to instantly break their shields.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Fulminated Mercury upgrade material goes for the obvious one: its Flavor Text describes it as a "tweak of chemistry".
  • The cutscene where Wolf is carried into Fountainhead Palace by a gigantic Shimenawa effigy resembles a similar scene in Princess Mononoke of the Great Forest Spirit moving through the forest in its "nightwalker" form during the night.
  • The most blatant Princess Mononoke reference is probably the Sunken Valley Clan, who seem to be based on the inhabitants of Irontown; not only are both groups primarily armed with hand cannons and led by tough women, but the Sunken Valley clansmen have a similar Bandage Mummy-esque appearance to Irontown's leper gunsmiths.
  • The "Sen Throw" shinobi prosthetic tool is one to fictional detective Heiji Zenigata, who used coins as a tool to help him catch criminals.
  • One in the The Dragon's Homecoming ending, where Wolf and the Divine Child take a Journey to the West to the home of the Dragon's Heritage.
  • There seems to be a fair few references to the samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa; Wolf himself looks a lot like his frequent star actor Toshiro Mifune, while the appearance and animation of the bandits seems to be based directly on those from The Seven Samurai.
  • The Blazing Bull is probably a reference to 13 Assassins, where charging bulls with burning bails of hay tied to their heads were used by the outnumbered protagonists to clear out large numbers of mooks; quite similar to how the desperate Ashina clan is resorting to extreme tactics to hold the Interior Ministry at bay.
  • The sculptor is a Composite Character of Jyukai from Dororo (gives disabled swordsman Artificial Limbs so he can fight demons) and Saruta from Phoenix (specifically the version from the Karma and Civil War arcs, a Buddhist sculptor who becomes an impossibly old hermit), both Jidaigeki stories created by Osamu Tezuka.
  • The Centipedes are Expies of Voldo from the Soul Series.
  • The plot's basic premise — a trained swordsman named "Wolf" protecting a child from a Samurai Lord and his army that wish them both harm — sounds an awful lot like Lone Wolf and Cub. The fact that Wolf's code is very Bushido-esque despite being a shinobi certainly helps.
  • Mibu Village, a Japanese village shrouded by fog and and inhabited by people that turned into undead monsters after drinking water said to grant immortality that originated from a white deity, is very reminiscent of Hanuda from Siren.
  • The Bandits designs are pretty much ripped wholesale from Akira Kurosawa Seven Samurai.
• Shown Their Work: Fantastical elements aside, the game's backstory is largely based on historical fact, and at least some of the game's characters, namely the Ashina clan, were either (loosely) based off real-life members or are a composite thereof.
• Signature Move: The Ashina sword style's most recognizable move is the practitioner performing a short jump before making a vertical downward slash. It deals heavy vitality and posture damage, and most major members of the Ashina clan wielding the sword can use it. There is also the Ashina Cross, a special move involving unsheathing one's sword at high speed to perform a dual horizontal then vertical slash, which the most powerful practitioners of the style perform.
  • As you advance throughout the game, several enemies' initially unique movesets become available to you. For example, Genichiro's 'Floating Passage', learned from Lady Tomoe, can later be purchased from a merchant. Isshin's 'One Mind' and 'Dragon Flash' become available once you defeat both his young and old self in the final battles.
  • Shadowrush is stated to be Owl's signature technique. Unsurprisingly, he uses it in his Hirata Estate boss fight.
• Simple, yet Awesome: The Mikiri Counter. It's not the flashiest move in Sekiro's arsenal since all it involves is him stomping on the enemy's weapon when they attempt to do a thrust attack, but it's one of the most effective and you'll be using it a lot. It cancels many powerful moves over the course of the game, does a lot of posture damage, is cheap to buy, available early on, and looks just plain badass.
• Skill Scores and Perks: The game leans toward perks. Set amount of experiences are converted into skill points that can be invested to unlock unique passive perks or special moves rather than continuously upgrading stats. However, a less visible skill score also applies, as Wolf performs specific actions and becomes better at them with practice. There are five specific skill trees focusing on one type of gameplay each.
  • The Shinobi Art tree focuses on making Wolf an all-around better ninja. One set of these skills allows him to be even more agile during combat by unlocking dashes and somesaults and multiplying the ways he can deflect, another lightly enhances his stealth, and a few skills increase the amount of Spirit Emblems he can hold.
  • The Ashina Art tree makes Wolf a better Master Swordsman. The skills unlock some of the Ashina sword style moves, increase the Posture damage he can deal, and decrease the Posture damage he takes.
  • The Prosthetic Art skill tree focuses on enhancing the use of the Prosthetic Arm during combat, unlocking useful properties for each Prosthetic Tool, combinations of prosthetic tools with close-combat moves, and a couple more increases to Spirit emblem capacity. It also contains two skills that boost the effectiveness of healing items.
  • The Temple Art skill tree makes Wolf somewhat of a Bare-Fisted Monk, unlocking hand-to-hand combat moves. Moreover, it can unlock passive perks that will support him, such as increasing the duration of the buffs provided by the sugars or increasing the amount of money and frequency of items dropped from enemies.
  • The Mushin Art skill tree combines the final skills from the other trees into powerful new Combat Arts.
• Soft Water: Averted. Wolf must fall from an extreme height to take damage, but if he does, he will take the same amount of damage regardless of whether he lands in water or not.
• Smoke Out: One unlockable ability allows Wolf to turn the blood of fallen enemies into bloodsmoke, creating a large cloud of red mist that temporarily blinds all nearby enemies, allowing him to either escape or commence backstabbing.
• Something Only They Would Say: Wolf realizes that Isshin Ashina is the same guy in the Tengu getup that he met earlier after being called "Sekiro"; the name that the Tengu gave him.
• Spell Blade: Living Force, the final skill of the Prosthetic skill tree, allows Wolf to imbue his sword with the effect of certain Prosthetic Tools. For example, the Flame Vent will create a Flaming Sword.
• Spiritual Antithesis: The game is very much this to Dark Souls, FromSoftware's most well-known series, both aesthetically and mechanically.
  • While Dark Souls takes place in a Medieval European Fantasy setting, heavily inspired by Berserk and The Lord of the Rings, and features prominent RPG elements, Sekiro is more of a straight stealth-action title, set in a heavily fictionalized version of feudal Japan in the Sengoku period with more influence from Jidaigeki fiction such as Blade of the Immortal (though the game is also influenced by Berserk to a certain extent, particularly in regards to its protagonist Sekiro, who is quite similar to Guts).
  • Dark Souls is known for its prominent RPG mechanics and a wide variety of weapons, armor, and spells, which lead to a massive number of different playstyles. Sekiro has a set protagonist, features almost no unique equipment aside from the Shinobi Prosthetic, and demands the player master the core mechanics to succeed, with almost none of Dark Souls' traditional crutches such as over-leveling oneself or summoning helpers.
  • There's no multiplayer aspect at all. Sekiro is a solitary experience the whole way through, meaning there are no summons to help you with boss fights and no messages to warn you of traps or tell you where to go next. Conversely, there are no invaders either.
  • Dark Souls is famous for its cryptic story and lore, while Sekiro has a more straightforward plot told primarily through exposition and cutscenes. The protagonist, while stoic, has a defined backstory, personality, and motivation, and he even undergoes some Character Development over the course of the game.
  • Dark Souls featured Super Drowning Skills, famously awkward jumping mechanics, and even the occasional Insurmountable Waist-High Fence. Sekiro, on the other hand, is designed around verticality; you can grapple and jump almost anywhere, and are encouraged to do so to get the drop on enemies. Wolf can also swim and is even capable of fighting in water, and a later buff grants him the ability to dive underwater indefinitely, giving him Super Not -Drowning Skills. Falling into a Bottomless Pit isn't even an instant death anymore — it just takes away half your health before respawning you where you fell off instead.
  • Most importantly of all, combat in the Souls series is primarily slow and defensive in nature; you are encouraged to block or dodge most attacks, wait for openings to retaliate, and keep an eye on your stamina at all times. Sekiro is exactly the opposite. This game lacks a stamina gauge, instead having a Posture bar that regenerates faster if you keep your guard up, and the focus of most combat encounters is to wear down your enemy's Posture through a mix of relentless attacks and well-timed parrying, which allows you to perform a Shinobi Deathblow. The enemy's actual health bar is almost an afterthought, and using Hit-and-Run Tactics, as was optimal in the Soulsborne games, is exactly the wrong thing to do since it just lets the enemy regenerate their posture.
• Spiritual Successor: Sekiro at one point was planned to be a Tenchu title; it still shares the focus on vertical acrobatic movement, stealth elements, and the feudal Japanese setting.
• Status Effects: There are five, called Status Abnormalities. Just like in past titles, a bar needs to be filled before the status can trigger.
  • The Burn status effect is triggered when hit with too many fire-based attacks. When Wolf is burning, he cannot regenerate Posture and his health is slowly chipped away by the fire damage. It can be cured with Dousing Powder.
  • The Poison status effect triggered when hit with too many poison-based attacks. When poisoned, Wolf's health is slowly chipped away by poison damage. It can be cured with Antidote Powder.
  • The Shock status effect is triggered when hit with too many lightning-based attacks. Once shocked, a huge part of the health bar is drained and Wolf is paralyzed for a few moments. This can be avoided by taking the initial electrical attack while airborne, and attacking, which will redirect the lightning with minimal damage to Wolf; he will only be affected by the Shock status if he touches the ground.
  • The Terror status effect is triggered when hit by apparition-type enemies or other unnerving attacks. It causes instant death if fully applied. Its buildup can be prevented with Fearlessness Powder or Pacifying Agent.
  • The Enfeeblement status effect is uniquely applied by the inhuman nobles of the Fountainhead Palace and causes Wolf to temporarily age into an old man, dramatically reducing his health, preventing resurrection, and limiting his abilities to a slow walk, a pitiful hop, and a single weak slash. Any enemy can easily finish him off while he's in this state, though he can regain his youth by killing the noble that Enfeebled him.
• Stealth-Based Mission: The Fountainhead Palace is filled with enemies that will quickly inflict a devastatingly crippling status effect on Wolf upon spotting him, making stealth practically mandatory to get through it.
• Storming the Castle: After the prologue, this is essentially Wolf's main goal for the first half of the game; Lord Kuro has been taken by Genichiro Ashina and is currently held prisoner at Ashina Castle, forcing Wolf to fight his way up from the outskirts to the central tower.
• Surpassed the Teacher: Wolf duels Lady Butterfly as the boss of the Hirata Estates memory; her Remnant states that she was one of Wolf's mentors during his training, making it a clear case of this. She even lampshades the trope in her death quote. Beating Owl in either of his fights also makes it clear Wolf has surpassed him; the achievement for beating him at the Hirata Estate is even called "Father Surpassed."
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: After killing the illusory Corrupted Monk at the end of Mibu Village, Wolf learns Mibu Breathing Techniques, which let him swim underwater as long as he likes.
• Supernatural Martial Arts:
  • Wolf can learn some rather unnatural fighting techniques such as Dragon Flash, in addition to more mundane abilities. They're so supernatural, Wolf must use White Spirit Emblems to activate them. A lot of enemies use the same techniques.
  • This is also implicitly the reason that so many characters are blatantly superhuman — obtaining superhuman physicality via martial arts training being nigh-ubiquitous in the genre. For example, some of the enemies Wolf can fight are martial artist monks who can block Wolf's katana swings with their bare hands, and hurt Wolf more with a punch than a regular soldier does with a heavy swing of a battleaxe.
  • Genichiro in particular uses numerous explicitly-paranormal techniques as part of his regular combat style, especially the Lightning of Tomoe. This is partially-explained by his mentor, Tomoe herself, having come from the Fountainhead Palace.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Enemies in the Abandoned Dungeon frequently drop Pacifying Agents, which reduce Terror buildup and increase Terror resistance. Very generous, considering a Shichimen Warrior, which wields Terror as a weapon, appears there.
  • Wolf can learn the Lightning Reversal skill from a wall scroll in Ashina Dojo, just after defeating Ashina Elite Jinsuke Saze. Almost immediately afterwards, you meet Genichiro Ashina, who is the first lightning user you'll face.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: Genichiro performs this gesture after cutting off Wolf's arm.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: Wolf's Shinobi Prosthetic holds various tools for him to use alongside his sword.
• Sword Lines: Some attacks leave luminous trails. Sometimes, these result from elemental power or a supernatural weapon such as the Mortal Blade. Sometimes, the effect is there to signal that the strike is just that powerful; in particular, certain attacks that leave bright white trails, such as the Ashina Elites' double iaijutsu slash or some of Isshin's more powerful strikes, will deal chip damage if your deflection timing isn't on point.
• Sword Sparks: Parrying enemy attacks is a core mechanic of the game, so the sight of seeing two blades grinding each other with bright sparks flying is a regular occurrence.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: One of the key tools to severing Kuro's ties of immortality is the Fushigiri ("Mortal Blade") — a famed cursed sword that kills anyone who unsheathes it, powerful enough to destroy even what can be considered immortal.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Perilous Attacks will ignore Wolf's blocks. Luckily, the game forecasts this by having a massive red kanji appear over Wolf's head just before they use it. The player can counter them in different ways, but crucially, Perilous Attacks always belong to one of four attack types. The player must choose the right way to dodge the attack, as countering the attack generally deals more Posture or Vitality damage than simply deflecting it.
  • Thrusts must be either Mikiri Countered or deflected. Dodging is possible too, but thrusts often have tracking, making it possible for enemies to redirect their attack to where you're dodging to and get you anyways.
  • Sweeps must be jumped over, since they go under your deflection and are difficult to dodge out of.
  • Grabs need to be dodged away from. Notably, grabs can also come in the form of sweeps, in which case they need to be jumped over instead.
  • Lightning attacks can be either dodged or redirected with the Lightning Reversal skill.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Downplayed with Perilous Attacks. Each can backfire and give Wolf an upper hand when countered (whether in the form of large posture damage or leaving bosses wide open), not that that stops bosses from using them no matter how often they’re countered. However doing so requires decent skill to pull off consistently.
• Take a Third Option: Done in incremental ways, at that.
  • If Wolf decides to stay loyal to Kuro, then he is faced with the cruel choice of either killing his lord to sever the ties of immortality or disobeying his master's will. Instead, if Wolf does specific actions at specific times to trigger special dialog options with Emma, then he can learn there is a way to kill himself instead to make Kuro a normal human. It requires him to acquire the Everblossom flowers from the Owl from the memory of the Hirata Estate.
  • Alternatively, Wolf can also start a quest with the Divine Child of Rejuvenation for her to give Frozen Tears. That way, Wolf can instead have Kuro be absorbed into the Divine Child, at which point both travel west to the birthplace of the Divine Dragon in order to give back the Heritage.
• Teleport Spam: If Wolf is taking constant damage from burning or poison, he can spam teleport with the Mist Raven. This is especially useful when using the mildly poisonous Contact Medicine. It is not a glitch or an oversight — the game encourages you to do this with the following hint:
  Mist Raven's description: "Some shinobi also use this medicine for a specific technique. Poison is said to expand the mind."
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Katana-wielding monkeys will sometimes throw their sword at Wolf if he is far enough away. Whether it works or not is essentially up to the player's skills.
• Title Drop: The protagonist is usually just called "Wolf" ("Ōkami") by everyone who knows him. It's only a little ways into the game when an NPC wearing a Tengu mask interrogates him and, being given no name, decides that this wolfish, one-armed man should be called "Sekiro."
• Touch the Intangible: Wolf sprinkles his blade with Divine Confetti in order to kill ghosts/apparitions.
• Truth in Television: Even though it's obvious that FromSoftware took many creative liberties when it comes to the Sengoku period, there are some interesting references to that time:
  • For instance, there actually was a clan called Ashina. One Reddit user revealed that it goes much deeper than that. Two historical clan leaders were even named Isshin and Genichiro, though those two died three hundred years after the time period which this game is set in.
• Unbreakable Weapons: As per usual for FromSoft's games, though particularly egregious here, as real Japanese swords were very brittle.
• Undead Abomination:
  • The Buddhist Monks of the Senpou Temple on Mount Kongo rejected Buddha's teachings of accepting the impermanence of life in favor of seeking eternal life through immortality. Experimenting with the Rejuvenating Waters, the monks have since gained emaciated mummified forms (similar to the real life sokushinbutsu), overrun with centipedes and other horrifying vermin. Those in the more advanced stages of corruption have massive centipedes sprouting from a hole in their abdomens.
  • Pretty much every Apparition applies. It's not enough that they're undead, but they exude an aura or even a physical touch that can cause mortals to die out of sheer terror, implying something fundamentally wrong about them in ways that aren't broached by even other undead entities. Such creatures include the Headless, which are former heroes who died in tragic and undignified ways and the Guardian Ape after it gets its head cut off.
• Underwater Ruins: Parts of the Fountainhead Palace's are completely flooded, and Wolf can swim a bit amidst the underwater ruins of the building. However, a Great Colored Carp that resides in these waters will attempt to kill him.
• The Unfettered: The Iron Code demands this of all shinobi. A samurai is bound by a code of honor, greatly limiting his strategic options; a shinobi must simply accomplish the mission at any cost, no matter the methods.
• Universal Ammunition: The usage of all the various Prosthetic Tools cost Spirit Emblems — paper dolls that hold souls of the dead.
• Vampiric Draining: How the immortality bestowed by the Dragon's Heritage ultimately functions. Wolf must draw upon the life force of others in order to power his resurrections — this, unfortunately, leads to stagnation in the victims, eventually infecting them with Dragonrot. To worsen the matter, he cannot choose who'll eventually succumb to the illness (if anything, those closest to him are the most likely to become afflicted). The enemies Wolf faces throughout the game can also supply him with the necessary life force, but even then he'll have to keep on killing and surrounding himself in death.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Outside of halting certain NPC questlines and reducing chances for Unseen Aid (which one shouldn't be dependent on), inflicting Dragonrot on the people Wolf meets does not significantly affect gameplay or the overall story in the long run; you are free to go through the entire game in the wake of a Dragonrot epidemic of your own doing. At the same time, the game still encourages you to cure victims anyway. The item description on the Dragon's Blood Droplet says it best for the reason why: "The incessant coughing must cease."
  • Wolf can treat certain NPCs to different drinks he can find throughout the game.
  • Once the Interior Ministry infiltrates Ashina Castle, Wolf has the option of stepping in to help the Ashina forces fight back against the Ministry soldiers, and can even save certain non-aggressive Ashina soldiers from getting killed. It doesn't earn you anything, nor will anyone thank Wolf for doing so, but it's your choice to make. Of course, Wolf can also step in to help kill the Ashina forces as well...
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • A sidequest allows you to send either the witless Gentle Giant Kotaro or the friendly samurai Jinzaemon Kumano to the "care" of Mad Doctor Doujun to be experimented on. The Memorial Mob near the Abandoned Dungeon will even comment on how cruel this is.
  • During the Interior Ministry's initial and all-out assaults on Ashina Castle, you may encounter Ashina soldiers who're too injured, frightened, or demoralized to fight, and won't even attack Wolf when they see him. You can still attack and slaughter them if you so choose.
• Villainous Underdog: The Ashina Clan are just fighting for survival against the much more powerful Interior Ministry.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Lady Butterfly is this for players who go through the Hirata Estate immediately after it unlocks, which makes her the first true boss encountered. She's fast, aggressive, has a second phase that's a lot more difficult without some rare items, and the player won't have much in the way of healing to fall back on.
• War Is Hell: Sekiro does not paint a glamorous picture of war. Piles of corpses, both human and animal, litter the ground everywhere, and the Ashina clan has been forced to resort to desperate tactics that even some of their own feel conflicted about (to the point where tying a flaming bale of hay to a big bull that they intend to send stampeding into enemy lines is just the tip of the iceberg). Indeed, almost every single sympathetic character in the game is a tragic victim of the previous war in one way or another.
• Warrior Monk:
  • There are a handful of spear-wielding monks, the most dangerous of whom is the Shinobi Hunter Enshin of Misen — a mini-boss found in the Hirata Estate. The description for Gokan's Sugar and Enshin's title imply they are all sōhei hailing from Misen Temple.
  • There's also a boss called the Corrupted Monk, a Humanoid Abomination Warrior Nun.
  • The monks of Senpou Temple are all capable fighters, with the aptly named Spear Adepts in particular being some of the toughest enemies in the entire game.
• Was Once a Man: Quite a few enemies are corrupted or mutated humans.
  • The Headless are the restless ghosts of warriors who died for their country.
  • The villagers of Mibu are normal people mutated into zombie-like monsters by the corrupted waters of the Fountainhead Palace.
  • The Demon of Hatred is the Sculptor, mutated into a grotesque monster by his own rage, hatred, murderous intentions, and heavy karmic debt.
• Water Source Tampering: The origin of Mibu Village's plight. Their river has been polluted with water from the Fountainhead Palace, slowly turning them into monsters.
• Weapon Stomp: The skill named Mikiri Counter allows Wolf to step on the blade or shaft of a thrusting attack and deflect it downward, heavily damaging a foe's Posture in the process. It looks really great, and because it allows Wolf to easily counter thrust attacks, it is recommended to obtain the skill as soon as possible.
• Wham Line:
  • During the boss fight against the Demon of Hatred, Wolf recognizes who it was...^note Only if Wolf has given several types of sake to Sculptor and Emma, eavesdropped on them when Emma visited the Sculptor during the Interior Ministry's first invasion, and talked to the Sculptor afterwards.
  Wolf: Sculptor...
  • Genichiro Ashina: “Behold. The second Mortal Blade”.
• Wham Shot:
  • The recently decapitated body of the Great Ape reviving and wielding the giant sword pulled from his neck; making unnerving puppet-like movements and carrying its severed head.
  • The second trip to the Hirata Estate, entering the Hidden Temple where, instead of Lady Butterfly standing there, it is Owl.
  • The entire trek to and through the fabled Mibu Village revealing it to be an unnerving, undead-infested and ghost-infested Japanese equivalent to an Überwald.
  • Genichiro near the end of the three non-Shura endings, slitting his trapezius (area between neck and shoulder) open with the second Mortal Blade, followed by an arm emerging out of the wound, grabbing the sword from Genichiro, with the recently-deceased Isshin Ashina crawling out; completely clothed and restored to his prime.
• Where It All Began: The final area is Ashina Outskirts/Ashina Castle, the first two areas in the game that are now fully under siege by the Interior Ministry. The Final Boss even takes place in the same field as the Hopeless Boss Fight against Genichiro at the very start of the game.
• While Rome Burns: The Fountainhead Palace is a crumbling ruin, with most of the buildings in a state of decay, and the well of human sacrifices needed to keep it going has long dried up as Mibu Village itself has fallen to ruin. And what are the nobles and their guards doing? Playing music on their flutes or playing kemari.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Kuro is smart enough to realize that most of the game's conflict can be traced back to the Dragon's Heritage; as such, he wants to end it, forever. Each of the endings revolves around doing so in a different way, other than the Shura ending.
• The Worf Effect: The first time you see the Demon of Hatred, it is in the middle of effortlessly slaughtering a large group of the Red Guard. This comes at the tail end of a level filled with evidence of their overwhelming superiority in the face of Ashina's military, and they will have probably given the Player more than a few deaths by this point as well.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: A central theme of the game, but for different reasons than most works that tackle this issue.
  • Kuro is immortal due to his Dragon Heritage, but he wants nothing more than to be rid of it, having come to view its mere existence as a corrupting influence on mankind, since it turns out a lot of people really want to live forever and don't care what kinds of unspeakable acts they have to commit to achieve it. This is what forms the bulk of the conflict in the game, as if not for people wanting Kuro's immortality for themselves much of it wouldn't have happened.
  • Hanbei is immortal due to being "infested", but he wants to be rid of it so he can die to atone for failing to protect his master like a samurai is expected to.
  • The most recurring theme of the game is that the very pursuit of immortality itself not only leads you to hurt other people, but also ends up defiling and twisting you in the process for something you likely won't be able to obtain anyway. This is applicable to Genichiro and Owl, but is most visible with the Senpou Temple monks and the nobles in the Fountainhead Palace. The monks have completely abandoned the teachings of the Buddha in their twisted pursuit of immortality, performing immoral experiments on dozens of children in an attempt to replicate the Divine Heir's immortal blood (leading to their deaths), but also letting themselves be consumed by wicked parasitic centipedes. The nobles have drank so much of the corrupted water that they are turning into grotesque fish monsters who steal other people's youth and deceive them with false promises. The fact the Nobles worship it and its own appearance implies the Great Colored Carp was once human as well and simply has come closer to becoming an immortal Dragon than the others. The Pot Nobles' attempts to replace it by killing it and using the carp scales fail completely, leaving them as disturbing red-eyed carps who will never be anything else.
• Wrestler in All of Us: The Chained Ogre enemy has an array of wrestling-inspired moves, including dropkicks, elbow drops, and suplex-like throws.

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