After journeying through Elden Ring, I had the itch to get back into Sekiro. I played it several times through on console but now that I have a nice PC rig, I wanted to enjoy it at a much higher frame rate with an ultrawide mod/fix. And of course, it rocks.
I go back and forth in my head often about where I would rank the FromSoft/Souls games and it almost depends on whichever one I'm playing or played most recently. But for a while, it was pretty consistently Demon's Souls, Dark Souls III, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and then DS2 and DS1 (I know, it's heresy to rank DS2 higher than DS1 but my truth is my truth!).
Now, I feel pretty strongly that the order would be something more like Sekiro, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, DS3, Demon's Souls, DS2, and DS1. I really love the Souls formula but it's starting to feel overdone or worn out. I do think these games are timeless, so I don't mean to say they're aging or anything; I'm more saying that it feels like FromSoft can't really do much else with it that they haven't already done.
Sekiro, to me, represents where or what FromSoft should go/do next: a tighter narrative with a lot of replay value. It seems like they agree, since Armored Core has several different missions based on the number of playthrough you're on. Different endings that unlock through different mission and story choices, that kind of thing. Sekiro does that really well. There are four distinct endings and one of them, for me, is the best ending to any story FromSoft has done, maybe with one of Bloodborne's endings being the exception.
FromSoftware's games comprise the games I feel most passionately and devoted to, no matter what. I'm on board for whatever they throw at us next. Part of me really wants another game like Sekiro versus Elden Dark Souls Ring 4. It's a meme as well as a near certainty at this point that we're not getting another Bloodborne so we have to count that one out.
I also just fucking love the swordplay of Sekiro, so I certainly want another dose of that in the future.
If I could change some things about Sekiro that would make it the strongest version of itself, I would:
- make the areas larger and denser, with more corners to check, more things to look at, more exploration. Sekiro doesn't really want you to spend a lot of time dilly-dalling about because you've got shit to do. But as an appreciator of the art design of Sekiro, I would love to have had a little more to look at. What's there is fantastic; on replays, I just feel this hunger for MORE of it.
- More NPC's and more optional and meaningful dialogue. I would apply this to just about all the FromSoft games, though. Conversations, dialogue, feeling like a resident in the world, I think the worlds Miyazaki and company design would be made stronger by having it feel more alive through more vibrant and active NPCs. I understand with certain games that it's a deliberate choice not to do that, since the world needs to feel oppressive and lonely, but the point stands.
- More leeway with items and consumables. Sekiro is heavily based on reaction time. I appreciate that. But not everyone has the same reaction time and reaction time gets worse with age. I'm not saying we need to make the games easier, but just as we have items that buff Vitality, Posture, and Attack Power, it would be cool to have an item that increases the leniency of time for perfect guarding/deflecting or causes an enemy's attacks to slow by just .04 seconds for a short period of time or something like that. It would make the world feel more magical, which Sekiro's fantastical Japanese setting endeavors to do already in many ways.
All of these things aside, I fucking love Sekiro. I have two tattoos referencing the game and would like more at some point. I liked it from the moment I put my hands on the controller and started playing it and I've only come to appreciate it more and more as the years go by and I revisit it. I don't really care to replay Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls anymore at this point. I've spent hundreds of hours on those games. But I've also spend hundreds on Sekiro. I think I will probably always come back to Sekiro, if for no other reason than to whoop Genichiro's ass up and down Ashina Castle.
