Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice may be the friendliest FromSoftware game, but friendlier doesn’t mean friendly. It won’t hold your hand. Like Dark Souls and Bloodborne before it, there’s a ton to figure out. In Polygon’s Sekiro guides, we’ll fill in the gaps to help you understand the game. Sunken Valley Passage- After performing a finishing deathblow on the Great Serpent, you will land on the other side of the hanging bridge that the serpent broke earlier where 1x can be looted from the path ahead.

Using a Bundled Jizo Statue (alternatively, any type of a Mibu baloon) next to the Old Hag triggers a dialogue prompt where she compliments you on your proper prayer and then rewards you with an Ungo's Sugar (tested at Bodhisattva Valley). This works up to three times, rewarding you different sugars. After the third time, the Old Hag will complain about Senpou monks driving her away and wish someone like you would visit the Divine Child. This is a departure from what I expected based on FromSoftware’s last decade of development — games in which the stories and characters were often obscure and required deep dives into the lore to understand. The story in Sekiro is grounded in relatable details, and I know from the start how I’m connected to it: I’m trying to right a wrong from years ago and fulfill my vow as a bodyguard. The clear focus of the narrative gives me something — and someone — to care about. When you speak with him at the beginning of the game, the Sculptor mentions how carving statues of Buddha reflect those who carve them. He then immediately and constantly lamentshow the only Buddha he can carve, no matter how many times he tries, are those with wrathful faces rather than serene ones.That same feeling extends to sneaking and battling through the mist-covered forests of the Ashina Depths, and the sheer frozen cliff faces of the Sunken Valley, that make up a small part of the journey through Sekiro. With this freedom, complex environments like these take on an almost platformer-like carefree fun rather than the familiar sense of imposing dread that these places are yet another obstacle in your way. Sure, they’re still loaded with things that want to kill you, but your liberating movement helps to expose the world as a place that isn’t maliciously adding to the pain of getting from one point to the next. I have to put in a lot of work and effort to meet Sekiro on its own terms, but what might feel ponderous in a lesser game becomes rewarding in one created with this much care. Sekiro meets me with just as much effort and enthusiasm as I’ve put into it. It lets me know I’m capable and skilled, and that I can figure it out. Fire spreads to his entire body. Everything will be brighter. He will crouch down to ready the jump. Absolutely despised this boss on my first playthrough, to the point where I just wanted the game to be over by the time I beat him and went to fight Sword Saint.

Additionally, the DX edition includes the Loaded Axe, Loaded Spear and Loaded Umbrella Shinobi Prosthetic Tools along with a Sculptor's Idol and Death Effect Sheet. Even though it can take hours of controller-throwing frustration to defeat seemingly insurmountable odds, perseverance begets pleasure. I won that battle because it could be done. I solved the puzzle. I am a shinobi god.A less direct connection, however,lies in what the Sculptor divulges about the ring his partner wore throughout their time training in the Sunken Valley. ("Whistling through that ring… would fill the valley with a somber melody. Strangely enough, I enjoyed that sound. I listened to it so often.") Though the Slender Finger upgrade material implies this partner onlyusedtheir finger to create a whistling sound: the Sculptor specifying how whistling through the ring his partner wore"would fill the valley with a somber melody," implieshis partner also possessed the Malcontent's Ring. I play as Wolf, a shinobi bodyguard to a royal child. I’m skilled and capable. I have a past and a place in the world.

Fujioka the Info Broker offers the following explanation as to why the Sculptor is suddenly missing from the Dilapidated Temple:"Oh, if you're looking for the Sculptor, he's gone. He stumbled off muttering something about 'the flames...' I think he was heading towards the battlefield. But where he went and why he went there's none of my business."Dialogue offered by Isshin after you've given him Monkey Booze explicitlystates that he once faced a Shura in battle ("...or something like it,") and killed it, with the implicationbeing that he believes cutting off the Sculptor's arm--and thus robbing him of his ability to kill--was enough to put an end to his bloodlust and prevent him from becoming a Shura. Isshin also explains that Monkey Booze, which the Sculptor admits he drank much of during his time training in the Sunken Valley, also goes by another name: Shura's Wine. It’s an effective reminder that there are still consequences for dying, but because there are ways to bank your money and you don’t lose experience once you’ve reached certain thresholds that convert experience into skill points, the danger is relatively slim. Early on, I just accepted that dying meant losing half my unbanked experience and currency and so I was never bothered by the penalty. To me, the forgiving nature of Sekiro that allows you to usually get out of a bad situation meant that if I let myself die, I probably could have avoided it, and losing my resources was mostly my fault. And in the event Unseen Aid triggered, well, it was just a nice surprise. Since Sekiro is less about managing your resources than it is about raw skill with a sword, I can appreciate the penalty keeping me honest, while also appreciating that I wasn’t truly hamstrung by zigging when I should have zagged.

The particular miedone by the Demon of Hatred is known as the Genroku mie, one of the famous and well-known of the mieused in Kabuki, wherein the actor's "right hand is held flat, perpendicular to the ground, while his left hand is pointed upwards, elbow bent. At the same time, the actor stamps the floor powerfully with his left foot,". One of your first clues comes when afflicted the Sculptor is affected by Dragonrot, wherein he is adamant about being unable to die from it, hinting that he is aware of his humanity slipping away from him.In spite of dodge & poke most people use, this boss still a Sekiro boss. Learning the move pattern & deflecting is still key, since it builds posture faster than whittling his health down to zero. The Demon of Hatred is what becomes of a specific NPC once he is consumed by the immense wrath and bloodlustburning withinhim. Though the NPC failed to become the Shura of legend due to Isshin's intervention, he has transformed into a powerful Demon (鬼, Oni). For the sake of Ashina and its people, it must be dealt with. Before defeating the Divine Dragon, if you speak to the Old Priestesslocated in thebuildingwhere you first encounter Tengu of Ashina(near the battlefield arena and the Battlefield Memorial Mob)she will mention that she is certain the war will give birth to a demon, foreshadowing this encounter. If spoken to before this, she will ominously ask: "Do you want to see a demon?" and nothing more. That said, I do at times miss the small notes left by others in the world alerting me to imminent threats or hidden secrets, or that vague sense that danger lurks behind me in the form of an invading player. But Sekiro is a more streamlined experience, and more direct, meaning the value of player-placed clues would already be mitigated, so the loss isn’t felt as strongly as I’d feared it would be.