Parry is not worth the risk IMO

[Eagle]

So most of my playtime I have been focusing on parring enemies but its just not worth it. Devs and the game tools tips claim it does Lots of posture damage, but in my experience its not very much at all(outside of the Special ones like the thrust one you get early on). It pretty much only works well on the trash mobs, which lets be honest you can just spam attack for most of them and kill them without trouble.The deflection windows are pretty tough to nail down regularly and the punishment for failing is near death or outright death. 95% of enemies I end up deathblowing because there hp runs out Far before there posture bar does. So killing enemies and bosses just seems more like jump and dodge attacks then hit a time or 2 then repeat as a more efficient method. Which makes the combat playout more boring :/

[Cpt.P1mp]

Yes, came to same conclusion, atm your bit is how i am playing the game, makes it real boring.

[Efesell]

I will not choose a boring option for the sake efficiency. Not in games and rarely in life.

[Toni's Bizzare Adventure]

Honestly once you git gud the fight is way too easy, you can end bosses in less than a minute if you deflect everything and attack when they recover.

[nu1x]

Originally posted by Eagle:

So most of my playtime I have been focusing on parring enemies but its just not worth it. Devs and the game tools tips claim it does Lots of posture damage, but in my experience its not very much at all(outside of the Special ones like the thrust one you get early on). It pretty much only works well on the trash mobs, which lets be honest you can just spam attack for most of them and kill them without trouble.The deflection windows are pretty tough to nail down regularly and the punishment for failing is near death or outright death. 95% of enemies I end up deathblowing because there hp runs out Far before there posture bar does. So killing enemies and bosses just seems more like jump and dodge attacks then hit a time or 2 then repeat as a more efficient method. Which makes the combat playout more boring :/

Yeah basically Sekiro is like Souls fist-only run damage wise.

[Jauder le Bonette]

Originally posted by Efesell:

I will not choose a boring option for the sake efficiency. Not in games and rarely in life.

Clearing out same enemies over and over is such a more fun solution, yeah.

[Infevo]

I agree. It might work against predictable movements that look intuitive. But dying over and over to oneshot moves that have no physical logic to them is not worth the reward if you can just do it in a different way. also the kanji mechanic for throws, thrusts and heavy blows is just plain bad since they all look alike.

[Krono]

You won’t be able to get very far without parrying

[Efesell]

Originally posted by That's way better.:

Originally posted by Efesell:

I will not choose a boring option for the sake efficiency. Not in games and rarely in life.

Clearing out same enemies over and over is such a more fun solution, yeah.

I have more fun engaging with the games mechanics than not.

This ain't a judgment on you.

[gamertaboo]

https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/21/sekiro-shadows-die-twice-beating-the-tutorial-boss-youre-supposed-to-die-to

You need to parry in this game. This guy is pretty damn good.

[Multihog]

Yeah, parrying is incredibly risky in this game. I mostly just wait for the enemies to miss their attacks, then poke in with a couple of hits, then jump back. Rinse and repeat. Pretty lame, but so much safer and ultimately more effective. I think enemies perhaps deal too much damage which encourages this sort of playstyle.

I tried some parrying tactics against the Drunkard mini-boss, but I ended up abandoning it and just ended up jumping back and forth because one failed parry basically meant 90% of my HP bar being erased.

Originally posted by Infevo:

also the kanji mechanic for throws, thrusts and heavy blows is just plain bad since they all look alike.

I personally think it's good because you need to pay attention to the 3D/character animation, not just to the symbol on screen. If each attack type had a different symbol, then it would mostly be about the symbol, not actually paying attention to the enemy.

[Eagle]

Originally posted by xsword:

you are playing it wrong. i think you are too used to dark souls, but this is not dark souls. if you don't learn to block perfectly, you will have trouble later on.

This is not the issue, I Can parry and have been, but most of the time its faster, easier, and safer to just jump out of the way and counter. parry doesn't give enough Posture damage to make it worth while or risk. Most of the time when I focus on parries the enemy dies due to hp loss from the counter slashes, or is extremely close to dying due to hp loss before the posture bar breaks. is just more efficient/safe to not bother.

[Hunkulees]

Practice on the unkillable samurai trainer. You’ll get the rhythm down pretty quick. Trust me. Once you get effective at parrying this whole game changes and becomes way easier. You’ll go from panic to competence very quickly

[Artillery Horse]

$70 for a dark souls game, nope ridiculous

[Krono]

Originally posted by Artillery Horse:

$70 for a dark souls game, nope ridiculous

Wut

[Karsk]

Originally posted by Eagle:

So most of my playtime I have been focusing on parring enemies but its just not worth it. Devs and the game tools tips claim it does Lots of posture damage, but in my experience its not very much at all(outside of the Special ones like the thrust one you get early on). It pretty much only works well on the trash mobs, which lets be honest you can just spam attack for most of them and kill them without trouble.The deflection windows are pretty tough to nail down regularly and the punishment for failing is near death or outright death. 95% of enemies I end up deathblowing because there hp runs out Far before there posture bar does. So killing enemies and bosses just seems more like jump and dodge attacks then hit a time or 2 then repeat as a more efficient method. Which makes the combat playout more boring :/

Imo they went a bit too overboard with how fast these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses attack. I have NEVER had this much trouble managing to parry in any game.

Dodging timing- very fair, still difficult but fair.

Here's my theory. They may have cranked the difficulty up on the parries bc they flew all those youtubers out there.

Kinda like what happened with Xcom 2 but dialed up to 15? Where they made balance changes based on people who were already the best xcom players.

Not everyone is as good as lobos.

The issue is precisely that. There's just one method that seems to work on bosses bc this game is built around parries, but parrying is almost impossible with the timing.

I know people tend to exaggerate on the internet but I'm bein super cereal here. It really requires perfect timing to be able to parry most boss attacks.

So therefore the only thing to do is dodge and jump around, hit them once or twice when you know they are vulnerable then retreat.

Any other way is asking to be massacred unless you're just that good.

This really is one of those cases where they need to give the parries a bigger window for people to hit them.

Without being able to parry major enemies, bosses etc. It makes nearly every encounter turn out the same bc you MUST use the most conservative drawn out boring style in order to simply have a chance.

So a slight adjustment to make parries easier is absolutely a must, and maybe turning down the speed and aggression a smidge wouldn't hurt either.

As is it feels balanced around fighting the other enemies. I think the closest to a true one on one fair boss fight in terms of being between two human opponents is with the samurai generals.

Dark Souls and Bloodborne were tough but fair difficulty, Sekiro bosses feel like a ♥♥♥♥ YOU difficulty.

It's not that fun. Which is the massive disappointment.