YMMV / Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

• Accidental Innuendo: When you defeat Hanbei the Undying upon your first meeting, he tells you to make use of his immortality as a punching bag. The way he worded it, however, sounds like something else instead:
  Hanbei: A warm body that can't die might prove useful to you. I volunteer mine.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A black samurai is more likely than you think.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • While it appears players must contend with the Great Colored Carp underwater, no Boss Battle is ever triggered. Instead, players must simply navigate through its domain without being spotted to reach the rear building of Fountainhead Palace safely. Furthermore, to kill the Carp requires feeding it a specific type of bait, after which it dies off-screen and can be found in a previous, mandatory location.
  • Despite being a Physical God with divine powers, the Divine Dragon is brought down to a strictly mechanic-based puzzle boss with Boss-Arena Idiocy, the player will have to shoot 5 lightning bolts at the dragon by using the lightning splashed roots that conveniently grow around the dragon and then walking up on its sword to finish the fight with a Deathblow to its eye. Though this is downplayed, as the fight certainly feels epic.
  • The Great Serpent, despite being another Physical God, goes down to a QTE after a pretty short stealth sequence.
  • Shigekichi of the Red Guard. He is the only named Interior Ministry officer in the game and thus presumably a figure of great importance lore-wise. A whole stage leads up to him with you cleaving through many tough enemies on the way to his camp at the request of the dying Ashina troops who are being curb-stomped. Despite all that build-up, he's pretty trivial. He's functionally identical to Juzou the Drunkard, just with a different model and with poison replaced with fire. His slow and lumbering swings are very easy to dodge, he's very vulnerable to stealth Deathblows, and his armor can be yanked off with the Loaded Spear, which does a lot of posture damage. The only challenge is that he hits like a train, and if he does kill you, you'll have to clear out his minions again.
  • The Mist Noble in Ashina Depths is simply pathetic - its two Deathblow markers are easily removed by first doing a drop attack on it (which is really hard not to do, since you approach it from above without it being aware of your presence) and then slashing it with a normal sword attack a few times. It poses no threat at all to any even partially competent player; to die from it, you'd have to deliberately stand still and let it attack you without retaliating or defending at all. The Fextralife Wiki page for the boss doesn't even bother listing attack patterns for it and notes that "all you'll ever see it do is take hits from you".
  • Okami Leader Shizu starts as a huge nuisance, sniping you with devastating lightning bolts every time you enter the lake in Fountainhead Palace. Once you actually get to her, though, she's functionally just a slightly tougher Okami Warrior, complete with weakness to the Sabimaru.
• Awesome Art: The game is very much living up to the precedent set by previous games, with feudal Japan looking absolutely stunning thanks to the art direction.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack greatly deepens the beauty of the game's visual design, particularly with the background music outside of boss battles, which frequently features rich chords flecked with percussion.
• Best Boss Ever: FromSoftware are no strangers to making awesome bosses from the Souls games and Bloodborne, and Sekiro brings its own contenders into the fray.
• Broken Base:
  • The removal and/or heavy de-emphasis of RPG Elements compared to the Souls games and Bloodborne. Some players like how it makes the game much more skill-based and that the skill tree system serves as an effective-enough source of customization, while others lament the loss of the ability to experiment with different builds and play-styles, which they argue also makes the game less accessible to different types of players and reduces replay value.
  • Opinions on the game’s resident Superboss, The Demon of Hatred, are heavily mixed. Some think it’s an intense, challenging, and emotional battle that’s a fitting sendoff to the sculptor and one of the game’s highlights. Others think it’s one of the worst battles in the series due to the Demon being a Damage-Sponge Boss to absurd degrees that punishes you for fighting the way the game taught you to the entire time.
• Camera Screw: If Sekiro's back is against the wall especially when using the lock-on, the camera by default would shift into positions that often block you from seeing either you or the enemy. During boss fights, this is often the difference between victory and defeat.
• Cheese Strategy: With three Deathblow markers, a massive health pool, and a devastating moveset, the Demon of Hatred is a contender for That One Boss. But by executing a very precise jump its possible to get to the rooftops on the edge of his arena, where he can't reach you. From there, make your way to the end near the cliff's edge, and he will fall to his death attempting to follow.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Many players will end up using Double Ichimonji throughout the whole game without ever equipping another Combat Art. It inflicts heavy Vitality and Posture damage, recovers your own Posture on hit, charges up relatively quickly, and costs no Spirit Emblems, making it one of the most effective Combat Arts in the game. The only downsides are the very noticeable wind-up and recovery periods which will leave you unable to deflect or even move.
  • Before that, expect many to use the Whirlwind Slash; Easily spammable, good Area of Effect, and free, not to mention the very first combat art you'll probably find. Unlike the Ichimonji however, it does relatively low damage and falls closer towards Boring, but Practical.
  • The Mortal Draw is also a very popular choice; even without upgrading it to its Empowered version, it comes out relatively quickly, has good range, does a good amount of posture and vitality damage, and it chips enemies who are blocking. While it does cost 3 spirit emblems and becomes weaker once you run out, even this weaker version is still very strong, to the point that many players opt to just forego prosthetics in certain fights in lieu of just using this.
  • As mentioned below under Game-Breaker, many players don't use any shinobi tool other than the Firecrackers, simply because stunning enemies and attacking them while they are stunned is the epitome of Boring, but Practical and if they don't have another weakness it's potentially just the most efficient means of killing them.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The dwarf assassins may not be particularly durable, but their tiny limbs make it difficult to effectively anticipate their attacks; combined with their agility and poison attacks, it means that even just a pair of them can quickly shred any careless player. In addition, several of them wear large hats that double as shields but are still far faster than normal shield-bearing enemies, which means that hitting them with the Loaded Axe is much tougher.
  • The fire-wielding Nightjar Shinobi. They're about as much of a Fragile Speedster as the normal variant, but the burn debuff they apply can stack very quickly if you aren't careful.
  • For the majority of the game, Lone Shadows are rare enemies that appear only on a singular basis in out-of-the-way areas, usually as a mini-boss. And for good reason — they hit like a truck, have long combos, are as disgustingly quick as they are acrobatic, and can easily parry Wolf's attacks from affecting their generous health pool. What makes them so awful is that halfway into the game's second act, during the Ministry's first invasion of Ashina, they become a common sight in Ashina Castle. Good luck fending off as many as four Lone Shadows at once!
  • Fencers, the blue shirted swordsman that like to do that thrusting stab with little warning are certainly a force to be reckoned with if you haven't mastered the Mikiri counter, they inflict massive damage and come in numbers, fortunately you can backstab most of them.
  • The Shotgun wielders at the Sunken Valley Gun Fort. Huge damage, high posture bar, and low probability chances of being flinched. One is bad enough, but two of them, or at least one backed up by the not-as-bad normal riflemen are a recipe for disaster.
  • Senpou Temple's Spear Adept. Those elite monk warriors with double-glaive spear will give you a very bad day: high damage, huge vitality and posture and unpredictable attack patterns. They can be easily defeated if you have Anti-Air Deathblow skill text, but if not, then be prepared for a long and frustrating fight.
  • The Palace Nobles are essentially a slightly less annoying variant of the Jailers from Dark Souls III. When they see you, they will start to cast Enfeeblement. If you stay in their line of sight for too long, Wolf will turn into an old man, losing all but a sliver of health and all his shinobi abilities. At this point, the Nobles will rush you, along with everything else in the area, and since Enfeeblement disables Wolf's resurrection, you will probably be going back to the last Idol you used.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: From the moment he showed up in the preview material, General Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa caught people's attention. His grandiose performance combined with a fun (if not especially difficult) boss fight made for a memorable and popular character.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Fans have already taken a liking to referring to the game as "Ninja Souls" or "Samurai Souls".
  • "LMAO 2Ape" for the rematch against the Guardian Ape where it calls in a second Ape for backup.
  • "Voldo" for the Long Arm Centipede enemies, due to their similar fighting styles.
  • The Fistful of Ash is often called "pocket sand" after a famous scene from King of the Hill.
  • "Glock Saint Isshin" or "Isshin the Glock Saint" for Isshin Ashina, who is infamous for using a gun in his boss fight.
  • "Shrekiro" for Chained Ogre, due to a popular mod which changes the Chained Ogre into another famous ogre.
  • "Woo Guy" for the skydiving Nightjar enemies, after their battle cry.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: A lot of fans ship Sekiro and Emma due to having a similar relationship to the Fire Keeper and the Ashen One.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Dororo (2019). This is due to the fact that not only are their settings being nearly identical, but both have protagonists that have prosthetic limbs who are accompanied by a Tagalong Kid.
• Fountain of Memes: Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa, due to having the most memorable performance in the entire game. Pretty much every one of his battle cries has become a meme at this point.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Loaded Umbrella is one of the most useful Prosthetic Tools, since it blocks both HP and Posture damage while also having a larger timing window for deflection. Its two elemental versions, Phoenix's Lilac Umbrella and Suzaku's Lotus Umbrella, also allow you to No-Sell all Terror and Burn buildup respectively. The Lilac Umbrella turns apparition-type minibosses like Headless and Shichimen Warriors into complete jokes, especially since its Fang and Blade follow-up attack deals holy damage, eliminating the need to use Divine Confetti (which is pretty rare) to deal more than pitiful Scratch Damage. It's also pretty handy against the Headless Ape's scream attack if you accidentally get caught in it. Meanwhile, the Lotus Umbrella is extremely useful against the Demon of Hatred, whose attacks are mostly fire-based.
  • The Shinobi Firecracker is highly useful in situations where the player is surrounded by multiple enemies and prove to be quite effective against bosses by interrupting their attacks and leaving them open to counterattack. Many players have gone through the game rarely, if ever, using any other tool, finding nothing else to be as effective as just spamming firecrackers and attacking the stunned enemies.
  • Empowered Mortal Draw, while time-consuming to unlock due to the sheer amount of skill points needed to even have it available to acquire, deals absolutely ridiculous damage even on higher New Game Plus cycles on top of being quite fast and having a very long attack range.
  • High Monk, the final skill in the Temple Arts skill tree. Not only is it fast, but the posture damage it deals stacks up very quickly. It can also be used in lieu of a mid-air kick against a sweeping attack, essentially making it a Mikiri Counter for sweeps, if Mikiri Counter damaged vitality on top of posture.
  • The Puppeteer Ninjutsu allows you to possess mooks, especially the giant ones and get them to fight for you. This can turn various challenging areas and certain minibosses into cakewalks, especially because you can possess multiple enemies at the same time.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The use of centipedes as an Immortality device — those with a passing knowledge of Shintoism will know this arthropod symbolizes kegare, the concept of spiritual defilement. Those who willingly infest themselves with a centipede to become undying, like the monks of Senpou Temple, do so at the cost of decaying both physically and spiritually.
  • History buffs and Sengoku period enthusiasts will get a kick out of the game's period-correct architecture, armor design, and sociopolitical background, especially the Heian period architecture of the Fountainhead Palace.
  • While FromSoftware's Soulsborne entries are no strangers to analysis on the cycle of death and rebirth from a Buddhist perspective, the setting in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice outright showcases Buddhism's influence on the game's themes and storytelling which reaches all the way to its multiple endings. In general, a working knowledge of Buddhism (such as references to Sokushinbutsu) can make playing through and analyzing the game very rewarding.
  • Throughout its boss fight, the Demon of Hatred repeatedly strikes a kabuki pose known as a genroku mie, which in traditional kabuki theatre is meant to indicate heightened emotion, usually anger. Quite appropriate for a creature literally created by wrath.
  • The rope golem that transports you to Fountainhead Palace is, in fact, a massive shimenawa, which in Shintoism is a rope meant to mark the border between this world and the spirit world.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • The crickets in the Abandoned Dungeon and Senpou Temple. They barely do anything, they just harass you with annoying jump attacks that do almost no damage and make it difficult to lock on to the actually dangerous enemies because there's usually about a dozen of them on screen at the same time.
  • Guard dogs wherever they appear in numbers. They go down easily and deal comparitively little damage, but are agile and often accompanied by stronger enemies who are typically alerted to your presence by the dogs and become far more difficult to defeat with the dogs leaping at you.
  • Maneater Carps aren't very dangerous, but they often appear in groups to harass you in the water. They can be particularly infuriating when found near Treasure Carps, as they can make it more difficult to catch up with the former and kill it for its precious scale before it disappears.
• Good Bad Bugs: You're supposed to fight Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa — but you can also just climb out of the arena. Follow that up by hanging out on a roof near a ledge, and he'll steer his horse right off a cliff trying to get to you. The exact same strategy works on the Demon of Hatred.
  • Before it was patched, it was possible to enter a swimming state out of bounds by clipping into a wall near the Guardian Ape and then swim across the game's extensive Minus World into Fountainhead Palace. This allowed the player the skip over half the game's content and finish it in under an hour.
  • One that hasn't been patch is a Sequence Break involving clipping out of bounds via a misplaced hitbox in a wall in Senpou Temple to clip out of bounds, and drop across the void into the arena for the Folding Screen Monkeys before fighting Genichiro.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Back in 2017, Ubisoft created a game that takes inspiration from Dark Souls. Now, FromSoftware created a game that takes some inspiration from Assassin's Creed.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Some people have criticized the game for being too hard — be it due to the punishing difficulty, the Dragonrot making continuing even worse, and the absolute hell that is early game. A few even criticize it as being Fake Difficulty. Others dislike the emphasis on parrying and strict timing windows, especially since the game doesn't offer other methods of combat the way similar titles do. Many of these complaints come from streamers attempting to play the game like a ''Souls'' title and encountering problems due to incompatible styles. Another thing to note is that Sekiro lacks some of the difficulty mitigating features the Souls series has, such as being able to grind levels to brute force your way past difficult bosses and summoning co-op partners, as well as boss fights that often limit outside-the-box tactics and force the player to instead win difficult swordfights with few, if any, "shortcuts."
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Usui Ukonzaemon, better known as The Great shinobi "Owl", is a talented ninja who once stood alongside the Ashina Clan. Betraying the clan to hunt the Dragon Heritage manifest in Lord Kuro, Owl directs the Interior Ministry and bandits to assault the Hirata Estate while faking his death. Suspecting his partner, Lady Butterfly of treachery, Owl has his adoptive son Wolf deal with her while disappearing so he can play all sides against one another. Returning to claim Kuro, Owl plans to seize all Japan with the dragon heritage and even upon his defeat, uses his final breath to express his pride in the ninja Wolf has become.
  • Isshin Ashina, the Sword Saint, was a brilliant combatant and general whose strategies and martial skill brought about a revolution that saw the Ashina domain restored to glory. Now in his twilight years, it is only the fear of Isshin that keeps the Ministry of the Interior out of Ashina. Disagreeing with his grandson Genichiro's warlike desires, Isshin sends his student Emma to assist the shinobi Wolf and acts as a secret mentor to him behind the scenes. Even when revived by Genichiro's sacrifice in his prime, Isshin honors his wishes to battle Wolf, who he names "Sekiro" to the end in a final battle and faces his end with stoic honor.
  • Lady Butterfly is the partner of the Great Shinobi Owl and one of Wolf's own mentors. A talented shinobi despite her advanced age, Lady Butterfly helps to lead the attack on Lord Kuro's estate to kidnap the Divine Heir and place him under an illusion. Confronted by Wolf, Lady Butterfly first faces him with an illusion to gauge his skill before entering combat herself and incorporates her illusions into her fighting style before facing her death with a final congratulations to Wolf's skill.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Isshin Ashina, The Sword Saint, since the man embodies being a Combat Pragmatist, right down to bringing a gun to a sword fight. Helps that he's also considered to be one of the hardest bosses From has ever made, and for good reason.
  • Since he is so easy to beat, fans have taken to jokingly treat the Mist Noble miniboss in Ashina Depths as the game's biggest That One Boss, collectively coming up with various reasons why he's so difficult, like having a ridiculous amount of deathblow markers.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Mist Noble has already gained infamy as the easiest miniboss in the whole game, making even previous pushovers like Pinwheel and the Witches of Hemwick look Nintendo Hard in comparison. The Fextralife Wiki page sums it up by writing that "[i]t's more than likely you'll never see it do anything other than take hits from you."
  • Despite being a reasonably challenging enemy, Genichiro Ashina himself is often jokingly considered a perpetual loser, as he tries to kill Wolf on up to three separate occasions and fails each time, with him committing suicide in order to summon Isshin after his final battle when he realizes that he'll never be able to defeat Wolf. Adding fuel to the fire, it is possible to actually "beat" him during his first encounter, which also forces him to resort to outside aid in order to win, thus furthering the meme. Furthermore, he's unceremoniously killed offscreen by Owl in the Shura ending. Fans like to contrast him with his Memetic Badass grandfather, leading to fan art such as this.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Dark Souls, but everything is a dex build. ^ExplanationAfter it was revealed that Sekiro would be set in feudal Japan, many a joke was made as a result of katana being dexterity-based.
  • "MY NAAAAAAAAAAAME! IS GYOUBU MASATAKA ONIWA! AS I BREATHE, YOU WILL NOT PASS THE CASTLE GATE!" ^ExplanationAs explained in Best Boss Ever above, the Large Ham tendency of Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa proved to be endearing to a lot of fans.
  • Calling the game Sekiro: Shadows Die A Lot.
  • Woo Guy ^ExplanationAt the top of Ashina Castle, a nightjar ninja launches himself from a kite at the player, typically killing them while yelling "WOOOOOO". Players found this hilarious.
  • Sekiro needs to respect its players by adding an easy mode. ^ExplanationA complaint made by multiple gaming journalists is that Sekiro is so incredibly difficult it requires an easy mode, asserting that not doing so is somehow "disrespectful" to players, especially players with physical disabilities, and how those playing would lose nothing with the addition of an easy mode. A good number of players criticized and mocked this notion, citing how adding an easy mode would clash with Miyazaki's vision for the game and how players with debilitating physical disabilities still can and have beaten the game without a need for an easy mode; some further accusing the journalists in question of just hiding behind claims of standing up for the disabled so they can get an easy mode for themselves.
  • You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference. ^ExplanationRelated to the above controversy, in a PC Gamer article, the writer recounts beating the game's final boss using a cheat mod. A Twitter user who had not played the game opposed him with that melodramatic quote. His speech is jokingly juxtaposed with popular tricks and skips as well as instances of Easy-Mode Mockery through video game history, and many have made video edits where the speech is inserted into a video directly after demonstration of said tricks (such as using a cannon in the first Koopa the Quick race in Super Mario 64, Gelato Skip from Super Mario Sunshine, Marble Zone 2 Skip from Sonic the Hedgehog, the Hadouken one-hit kill of Sigma from Mega Man X, skipping Mermaid Man's slide challenge in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and setting "Baba is Win" in Baba is You). Cam Clarke also joins the fun with him reciting the phrase using his Liquid Snake voice.
  • "ROBERTOOOOOOOOO!"^ExplanationThe Armored Warrior's cry in the Japanese voiceover as he falls from the bridge, which many fans found to be an example of Narm Charm.
  • "Hesitation is defeat!"^ExplanationSaid by Sword Saint Isshin every time he kills you, which means you'll be hearing it a lot.
  • "Mada mada..."^ExplanationRoughly means "Not good enough" in Japanese, commonly said in response to deaths and failures in the game. The phrase is said by Lady Butterfly every time she kills you (the full line being "mada mada koinu yo") but can also be said by Hanbei The Undying when you perform a deathblow on him.
  • Anagrams of Sekiro in different languages, such as "Eroski" (Spanish supermarket chain) or "Sokeri" (Finnish word for sugar).
  • A shinobi would know the difference between honor and victory.^ExplanationIf the player actually manages to "beat" Genichiro during their first battle, a hidden Nightjar will ambush Sekiro and distract him for just long enough for Genichiro to still cut his arm off, after which he says this line. This is often jokingly used by players to justify Cheese Strategies like killing the Corrupted Monk by spamming ash at her, tricking the Demon of Hatred into running off a cliff, or getting the Corrupted Monk stuck in a cliff by baiting a combo that ends in a jump attack that would have her fall off a cliff if the programming allowed it.
  • The Parry Dance^ExplanationParrying is an essential part of the game's combat, but if you can't read the timing on the enemy's strike, you can fall back on spamming the deflect button. This makes Sekiro guard and drop his sword in rapid succession, and thus it's been dubbed "The Parry Dance" because of how silly it makes him look.
  • 危[[labelnote:Explanation]]The kanji for "danger", it flashes on the screen whenever Seikiro is in danger of a strike that will kill him unless he dodges, parries, or counters; frequently used to refer to not just mortally dangerous situations, but social awkwardness as well
• Moral Event Horizon: The moment Wolf kills Emma in the Shura ending marks the point where all humanity is lost in him, and his transformation into a Shura is inevitable. He is even shown cracking a Psychotic Smirk after completing the deed, proving there is indeed no trace of goodness left in him.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Deflecting the big overhead slam during the second phase of the Guardian Ape boss battle produces a noticeably louder deflect sound, signaling that you just opened a brief window to deal some serious damage as it lays down stunned.
• Nintendo Hard: Compared to other games by FromSoftware, Sekiro is considered the hardest game made by the company, with the game's head-on combat being difficult for slightly different reasons than in Dark Souls or Bloodborne. Wolf is a shinobi who has little health, no armor, no shield, and limited healing items — but the enemies are still just as tough, requiring only a couple of hits to kill him. The main line of defense is its game's parry system. Wolf can block all damage regardless of his timing, and a successful deflection only depends on when the player blocks; parry frames are no longer an issue for this game. The grappling hook considerably diminishes the dangers the environment can present and allows Wolf to flee from normal fights. Similar to Demon's Souls and Dark Souls II, the game punishes you for dying repeatedly by having a terminal, incurable plague called Dragonrot spread to various NPCs.
• Player Punch:
  • An intended mechanical example by the developers, given how Dragonrot works on a narrative level. The game guilt-trips you for your numerous deaths by dropping Rot Essence of infected NPCs into your inventory, complete with item descriptions describing a bit of their background and how they are struggling with their newfound illness. When Wolf speaks with the victims, they can barely manage their words in-between bouts of sickly coughing.
  • Fighting Emma in the Shura ending is considered to be one of the game's most effective gut punches.
  • The Reveal that the Demon of Hatred is the Sculptor.
• Quicksand Box: A large number of players seem to put off fighting Genichiro for as long as humanly possible, when he is intended to be fought fairly early as the third "real" boss of the game. They assumed that he was the final boss and that the game would end after beating him, not realizing he was merely the Disc-One Final Boss, so they end up exploring everywhere else it's possible to go and even clearing out some mid-to-late-game areas — getting many Skill Points, Gourd Seeds, Prayer Beads, and possibly even a Battle Memory or two in the process — before finally coming back and curb-stomping him with an overpowered character.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Players who found out that Divine Confetti does extra damage vs everything rather than just to apparitions such as the headless are not amused by the fact that the Loaded Umbrella slash technique removes the buff immediately. This wouldn't be an issue, however, if not for that fact that said slash is easy to do, and is often done by muscle memory.
  • The Dragonrot mechanic penalizes you for dying by making it impossible to progress the questlines of the afflicted characters and reducing the chance that you won't lose XP and money upon death. It also makes the afflicted characters visibly and audibly suffer. You can cure this using a rare and expensive item... but the cure doesn't prevent any characters from being afflicted again, meaning that the cures become Too Awesome to Use unless you look up a guide to know when it's actually important to progress a character's questline (and where to find the rare item). This is a particularly bizarre mechanic for FROM, since they've always given the player an easy way to mitigate or strictly limit the degree of penalty for dying in their games, but no such thing exists in this game.
  • For the endings, you have no option to get one ending, quickly reload afterwards before that point and obtain another one even if you fulfilled the conditions for multiple endings. You need to replay the whole game at least four times just to obtain 100% Completion. This is very prevalent if you want to get the Shura ending, where after obtaining the ending and achievement, there is no option to reload before you made your decision to Owl to continue your playthrough and get another ending instead of going straight to New Game Plus.
  • Save files in Sekiro are known to be very fragile. They get corrupted very easily for various reasons, ranging from crashes to BSODs. They are also known to be very hard to transfer over, making players who want to transfer their saves from other devices a chore and making backups practically pointless. To get an idea about how hard transferring a save file over is, this guide has 11 tedious steps.
  • Unseen Aid, the anti-Continuing is Painful mechanic is capped at a measly 30% chance of occurring and will be lowered to 15% and below when Dragonrot hits any of your NPCs. The low base chance makes it so unreliable that players put off curing Dragonrot until they are past a boss fight (to prevent death accumulation) or have to advance a questline. And when it does trigger, there is usually little to no money and exp left to save by then which makes it practically pointless.
  • Due to Combat Arts being activated pressing the attack and deflect buttons simultaneously, it is very common for players in high-speed fights to trigger their equipped Combat Art by accident when trying to attack after deflecting or vice versa, usually leaving them wide open for hits and breaking their momentum. Not surprisingly, this is another reason why pro players go without Combat Arts equipped at all in challenge runs and/or boss fights.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • There are two in-game methods that allow the player increase the game's difficulty if they so choose to aside from going without items, prosthetics and/or Combat Arts:
    • There is a location in Mt. Kongou that can be accessed as early as Ashina Outskirts known as Bell Demon's Temple. There, Wolf can ring an iron bell and be possessed by a Bell Demon that boosts enemy health, posture, and damage (likely simulating the next NG+ cycle). In exchange, foes have improved drop rates. Wolf can opt out of the sinister burden by dispelling the demon from his inventory.
    • Going into New Game+ will reveal that Wolf was possessing a key item called Kuro's Charm by default, preventing all damage from going through his blocks. Giving the charm back to Kuro at the beginning of the game will remove that effect; Wolf must maintain consistently perfect deflections to avoid taking damage, while holding the block button and spam-blocking become riskier to perform. If it proves too much, Wolf can ask for the charm back by talking to Sculptor.
  • The ultimate challenge is stacking all known handicaps (Demon bell/Charmless/no items/no arts/no prosthetics/hitless/base attack/base vitality) on top of being at NG+7 (7th playthrough and beyond) in boss fights, which is the highest difficulty cap possible.
• Signature Scene:
  • The first duel between Wolf and Genichiro, both for the Scenery Porn and for perfectly showcasing the "Soulsborne meets Jidaigeki" aesthetic of the game.
  • The fight with the Guardian Ape, specifically the surprise of it standing right up after being beheaded.
  • The Final Boss fight against Sword Saint Isshin, primarily for being one of the hardest fights to ever appear in a FromSoftware game.
• Squick: It just wouldn't be a Hidetaka Miyazaki game without some.
  • The Headless' grab attack; it teleports behind Wolf and then literally tears part of his soul out through his anus before shoving it up their own.
  • The Guardian Ape spends much of its first phase farting massive clouds of noxious gas and pelting you with lumps of shit the size of a station wagon.
  • The Senpou Assassins and Taro Troops are, respectively, hideous little dwarf men and hulking babyfaced ogres who both prefer to go around in little more than loincloths.
  • Sword Saint Isshin introduces himself by literally crawling out of the lifeless body of his grandson like a crab shedding its shell. It's almost as bad as the Orphan of Kos's intro.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • A lot of fans became very apprehensive when it was revealed that Activision would be publishing the game, given Activision's reputation as a big AAA publisher that meddles with games, pushes for aggressive monetization and is relatively quick to delist games that aren't Call of Duty from the digital distribution stores, as happened with the James Bond games, Guitar Hero series, and Transformers: Devastation. However, FromSoft has insisted they have full creative control over the final game and, according to the Steam page, it was self-published in Japan and published by Cube Joy in Asia.
  • Sekiro and its lack of character customization and Role-Playing Game elements has turned off some players more accustomed to the Soulsborne experience.
• That One Achievement: Height of Technique requires you to buy all available skills. Considering how expensive each cumulative skill point gets, it will be necessary to finish several playthroughs just to get this achievement. That, or grind.
• That One Attack: Both the Guardian Ape's grab attacks make the boss extremely difficult on their own. His first is a sweeping grab attack that, while easy to simply jump over, comes out so fast you often won't have the reaction time to avoid it. The other is a leaping grab that, while heavily telegraphed and slow compared to the other grab, has an absolutely massive hitbox (larger than it looks, even) that is almost impossible to avoid if you don't see it coming well ahead of time. Both grabs do a huge amount of damage, easily enough to kill you if you are at anything less than full health. and if you haven't been keeping up with your prayer beads or are in NG+, then they can kill you even at full health. The constant possibility of the grabs coming out necessitates the player to constantly keep aware and ready to dodge, making an already challenging boss a lot harder.
• That One Boss: Has its own page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: There is a trend where some hardcore Soulsborne fans have a somewhat sour opinion on the game due to it not having the features that drew them into the series in the first place (weapon variety, character customization, number-crunching, etc.), and consider what Sekiro brings (posture system, narrative focus, freedom of movement, etc.) to be insufficient.
• Toy Ship: Kuro with the Divine Child of Rejuvenation. This one is almost canon, since they literally merge souls in one ending.
• Ugly Cute:
  • The Taro Troops, particularly Kotaro, can come across as this due to their babyish faces and childlike personalities.
  • The Okami warriors are murderous, deformed Fish People, but can appear endearing at a distance when they're playing kemari or performing dances.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Sekiro has a few under-utilized mechanics.
  • There's a few secret shinobi doors located throughout the world, the most obvious one being the secret passage between the Dilapidated Temple and Kuro's Room due to its human-outline. Aside from a few hidden rooms that edge on Guide Dang It! since the secret doors are never elaborated on, the mechanic's not very widely used throughout the game.
  • Related to this, wall jumping provides an interesting way to get around the environment, but there are few places where it is essential and it's not usually integrated with combat.
  • Minor environment destruction is present in the game, where Wolf can slash at boxes, stacks of books, etc. and even bumping into these objects can create noise that alerts nearby enemies of your presence. However, aside from a handful of instances that can lead to a few treasures, environment destruction is almost largely cosmetic.
  • Lightning Reversal is a technique that alows the player to redirect lightning if it is blocked while in mid-air. It is powerful, unique, demands precise timing and spacing, and feels incredibly satisfying to pull off, but only two bosses (Sword Saint Isshin and Genichiro at the top of Ahina Castle) in their last phases and two types of enemies (both of them located at Fountainhead Palace) use lightning attacks.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: A lot of players thought that Kuro was a girl the first time they saw him. It doesn't help that he is voiced in both Japanese and English by a woman. To be fair, he is rather young.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: FromSoftware's decision to center a game around parrying requires crisp animations and creative ways to telegraph attacks without trivializing its combat. The result? Sekiro is the studio's most intricately-animated title to date, having warriors transition seamlessly into their next attack, beasts swing with realistically wild abandon, and etc. Once again, FromSoftware has set a new animation standard for future titles to overcome.

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