'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' breaks the 'Dark Souls' tradition with one of the best action combat systems ever made. It still holds up five years later.
I’ve come to realize that I like the idea of Dark Souls and other FromSoft games, they have interesting stories and worlds.
But dear god for the life of me I can’t get into them. I bought Elden Ring thinking I would find it more forgiving than Dark Souls. Nope. I got Sekiro thinking that I could just practice and git gud. Nope, the game actively punishes you for dying too many times.
And I know there are ways to counteract the Dragon Curse/Rot, but imo it’s too far into the story (when I can’t even get past the flashback portion in the burning castle) to make it worthwhile for me to play.
I was in a similar position. I’ve at least tried almost all of the games since Demon’s Souls on PS3 (plus a few other Soulslikes like Surge 2 & Last Remnant [edit: Last Remnant is something else entirely, i dunno. It was something like that]) and I could never get into them. Elden Ring especially is exactly the kind of world I love in games and I wanted so much to enioy it. It took a handful of 10-15-hour attempts over nearly two years before it finally clicked with me and I started really getting into it back in December. I got the platinum last week and then started Sekiro for the first time a few days ago, so let’s see how that goes.
My advice, if you can’t get into it give it a few months then take another honest crack at it. If you don’t enjoy yourself that’s fine, just try again next time you start thinking about the game, but if that switch finally flicks on you can clear your schedule for the next fortnight.
I’ve come to realize that I like the idea of Dark Souls and other FromSoft games, they have interesting stories and worlds.
But dear god for the life of me I can’t get into them. I bought Elden Ring thinking I would find it more forgiving than Dark Souls. Nope. I got Sekiro thinking that I could just practice and git gud. Nope, the game actively punishes you for dying too many times.
And I know there are ways to counteract the Dragon Curse/Rot, but imo it’s too far into the story (when I can’t even get past the flashback portion in the burning castle) to make it worthwhile for me to play.
Note that the flashback portion is actually the game’s DLC, and can be tackled at any point.
Its difficulty is higher than the area you’re at in the main game, when you first unlock it.
It’s not DLC (though you can do it whenever you want).
I was in a similar position. I’ve at least tried almost all of the games since Demon’s Souls on PS3 (plus a few other Soulslikes like Surge 2 & Last Remnant [edit: Last Remnant is something else entirely, i dunno. It was something like that]) and I could never get into them. Elden Ring especially is exactly the kind of world I love in games and I wanted so much to enioy it. It took a handful of 10-15-hour attempts over nearly two years before it finally clicked with me and I started really getting into it back in December. I got the platinum last week and then started Sekiro for the first time a few days ago, so let’s see how that goes.
My advice, if you can’t get into it give it a few months then take another honest crack at it. If you don’t enjoy yourself that’s fine, just try again next time you start thinking about the game, but if that switch finally flicks on you can clear your schedule for the next fortnight.
The dragon rot doesn’t actually matter. You get less dialogue but it doesn’t really affect your ability to finish the game.
You can also clear all the bosses, then cure the dragon rot, and go talk to everyone with little risk.
It feels like a bigger problem than it is.