saying onimusha has nothing on nioh or sekiro really does nothing to change my stance but whatever. AlsoI generally do not find most "hard" games to be hard or tougher just more annoying. I will likely get it at a discounted price but I fear my time being wasted doing something I already did because of a checkpoint system

These game being "hard" is that it needs some skill to overcome but thats the fun of the souls games for its userbase,games that give challenge like this one gives are very rare and thank god they do not give in to the people that do not enjoy that because there are allready tons of easy games on the market for them.

I never had my time wasted on these games,you keep every item you get and i also split areas into little sidemissions till only the boss is left that is most of the times easy to reach.

Onimusha is good yes and i hope that franchise gets rebooted again.

Yeah, you're talkin about the purple dude at the three story pagoda. I managed to beat him early on. I was very persistent and it took maybe a dozen tries.

@John: I explore pretty thoroughly so I don't think I've missed very many things along the way so far. Although I suppose that if I missed something I wouldn't know it, so... Instead, I'll say that I'd be very surprised if I found out that I missed more than a few items along the way.

I played for a couple more hours last night and finished Senpou Temple, getting my fourth memory. I have four prayer necklaces as well, putting me at 5 attack power and 14 vitality (IIRC). I have 8 sips of rejuvenating water and some pretty convenient consumables now (Ako's re-usable item).

Since I am playing through the game in the order the areas appear in my travel long, that means that next available is Sunken Temple. So everything "before" that I consider to be cleared. I also finally got my first ultimate skill, Shadowrush.

I'm really liking the amount of organic growth as a player that I'm feeling with this game. Health and damage upgrades aside, I feel like I am consistently getting better and more confident at this game. Each new enemy is a fun set of mechanics to try and learn the timing of, and it's very satisfying to play this game.

Slant is an absolute shit site and should be removed from the MC listing.

I agree, some Media should be removed, as they often do it(troll, Clickbait, etc).

The attitude of some media should be monitored, and measures should be taken, just my opinion.

They must be getting DDoS'd because I can't even pull up the review. But my thoughts on the matter are that as long as all games are treated the same, it is what it is, and that seems to be the case. There will always be some source that has a questionable opinion about a game. So while I would probably give Sekiro a 95 based on my experiences so far, if it's score ends up at an 89, then that's just what it is.

But an 89 is pretty solid score for a game so punishing that less-skilled people may not enjoy it at all.

Edit: And damn, still the same droning/humming ambience (reminds me of the "oohm" sound that a monk might make while meditating) that I am constantly hearing now. I can't get this game out of my head!

Oh man, I just finished the fight with the Guardian Ape. Hot damn, what a fight. Took me at least an hour, maybe longer, but damn, I would have beaten him sooner but I misunderstood a mechanic. After using a resurrect, a black "swish" wipes over the circles on the HUD, and up until this point I have understood that black "swish" to mean that I couldn't resurrect.

During the fight, I resurrected once, deathblow, and then the swish went away. I strategically didn't heal when I was low on health as I had only a couple sips left of my rejuvenating water. I swear he was down to one hit. Okay, I feel like I'm making excuses. Anyways, damn, the game really fooled me when he came back to life. The attempt that I was victorious was also an epic battle and I played it really safe. At this point I have 14 vitality (four necklaces) and 6 attack power (5 memory upgrades).

I also have 7 skill points saved up as I truly cannot decide what to pick. I'm still missing one healing potency upgrade so I'm leaning towards that.

Gonna happen with troll sites like Slant. 

I sorta bake in an expectation that some publications are gonna whine about the game being too hard so I have a very hard time expecting anything like this to stay above 90 despite it being a phenomenal game. 

Beat Genichiro last night. Hell of an amazing fight. Easily up there with some of the best fights in all of Soulsborne.

I reached a point last night shortly after fighting the Guardian Ape (found a couple more pearls and got another necklace) where I'm overlooking into a cave which what appears to be perhaps the male version of the ape boss?

@John: I was a little confused when you said the "first two deathblows", because the boss that I fought only had two total deathblows total. And are you saying that you beat his second phase on the first try? That's pretty awesome. It took me three tries before even getting to the second phase, and then maybe a dozen or more tries before finally beating him. The longer a fight takes the greater that feeling of adrenaline. When I beat the Ape it was like 10 o'clock at night and my wife yelled at me from downstairs to be quiet like three times during the fight.

So yeah, now I'm in the Ashina Depths. I hope there is a lot more game left, but I can't help but think that I might be closing in on the end of the game soon. I'm going to try and enjoy it a little more sparingly if I can help myself. I may replay through the Souls games again. Usually when I replay through a game there is a good chance that that plan falls apart and I never follow through with it, but a couple years ago I replayed through all the Soulsborne games from start to finish over a three month period of time roughly. Each of the games I thoroughly completed, fighting every single boss. Although come to think of it I still have not played any of the DS3 DLC yet.