Note: Couldn't figure out spoiler tags; I thought there was a way to do the inline spoilers with the black hover text. Anyways, if you have made it to the second "important place" the spoilers won't be spoilers.
Haven't posted in here since the launch night (IIRC). I'm enjoying the hell out of Sekiro. It fits in the Souls family of games very nicely. It would have been nice if there was some form of multiplayer, but perhaps they tried and it just didn't seem to work well in this one.
Either way, this game is really fun. For a little while I was having a hard time keeping track of all the areas available for me to explore. I've managed to lower that count, but it's still a concern (I don't want to miss anything). I've beaten three major bosses so far, and I'm starting to feel pretty powerful as I don't think I've missed any upgrades along the path to this point. Don't get me wrong; I've died a ton:
Oniwa: This was the first boss I actually beat, and I beat him second try. I felt pretty good beating this guy quickly because the butterfly boss made me question my skill level. I have English voice turned on, so I don't know how it sounded for Japanese, but damn, when this guy approached he really pumped me up, screaming at me, "I AM LORD GYOUBU ONIWA!!!", or something like that. Gave me the goosebumps, no joke.
Kenichiro: This guy took about 45 minutes of attempts, and I was actually at the point where I needed to head out with my daughter to go run some errands, and I had declared to myself that if I didn't beat him on that attempt, I would pick it up again later. By the end of those 45 minutes I got very good at the fight, and this is how I think all bosses should be balanced. After you beat a boss, you should be good enough at the fight to beat him again and again, and that's how it felt with this one. First couple attempts I died real quick, but I made consistent progress until I felt that I mastered the fight.
But holy crap, these games are so much freaking fun to play, damn it! The stealth mechanic is a welcome change, although it makes for some cheese (can't tell if it was developer intended or not in some situations). Despite this game having a lower number of major boss fights than other Soulsborne games, it seems like they made up for that with a very large number of a mini-bosses.
And damn, anyone else (spoiler if you haven't made it to third boss)