Gamescom 2018: First impressions of Seriko

Fans of From Software have been waiting for them to move on from the souls series and try new ideas, even more, different than 2015s Bloodborne. Sekiro is that next step; it takes the souls DNA but adds new concepts, resulting in an experience that still has that same style, but enough to differentiate it.

Sekiro lets you control a samurai, who can utilise a grappling hook to manoeuver across the land. The demo begins with the player character copiously standing on a tree and with the press of a button, launches himself at a nearby tree or rooftop.

Basic combat has undergone a couple of changes. It feels faster like bloodborne but one big change is that there were no shields to equip. In addition to a dodge, there is now a dedicated jump button which makes the character flip around acrobatically. So Mobility is a big focus for Sekiro and the kind of gameplay it encourages

Movement and dodging all felt a lot faster, and extremely similar to Team Ninja’s Nioh. RB was still used for the standard attack, but RT would now be utilised for one of your weapon enhancements. In the demo, I had an extra axe, a projectile attack and a fire attack; and my character would utilise them when pressed RT, before going back to his standard weapon. The animations were also similar to the trick weapon switching from bloodborne.

There is now a crouch button. You can hide in tall grass, like most modern action games and stealthily take out enemies. Target indicators will let you know the general direction of enemies that are about to spot you and how likely you are to be detected. While this may sound like too radical a change from the core ideas of the souls game, we have to remember that this is a new IP and should not adhere to those requirements.

Make no mistake, the game is still radically hard and it takes a while to get used to its extremely fast pace. Once you completely break down an enemy’s posture, you can finish them off with a bloody execution move. Naturally, the tougher enemies won’t get killed with this move but you can massively deplete their hp. One of the bigger samurais and a troll were the two toughest mini-bosses I fought.

Sekiro feels like an expansion of the same blueprint, with a more mainstream audience in mind, without sacrificing the difficulty of the game. I don’t know how souls fans or newcomers will approach the game, but from my perspective, the gameplay is excellent, and the rest doesn’t matter as much.

By: Parth Bagaria