This is a great way to ease players in – particularly if you aren’t a Souls or Bloodborne veteran – and especially as a way to get to grips with Sekiro’s combat mechanics. However the game remains fairly linear until about mid-way through, opening up after this point and allowing you to essentially wander at your leisure and take on segments as and when you see fit. Blood, sweat and more bloodĪs expected from FromSoftware titles, you are given little to no direction about where to go or what to do. She also proves useful in finding a cure for Dragonrot – the frustrating disease which causes NPCs to wheeze uncontrollably (and halts their questlines) and lowers your chance of Unseen Aid (which we will come back to later). The final resident of the temple is the physician, who can improve the efficiency of your healing gourds if you bring her gourd seeds. It’s a great way to work on your timing – especially if you struggle like myself. He proves particularly helpful as the game’s difficulty ramps up, and you find yourself wanting to practise parrying or new moves/upgrades you have unlocked. While it’s perhaps an annoyance for him to be immortal, it serves you well in that he is the perfect trainer, allowing you to practise blocking, attacks and other combat without any moral dilemma.

If you wish to test these new abilities, then it’s beneficial to pay a visit to the unkillable samurai who resides in the temple – imagine Mortal Kombat’s Raiden has crawled his way out of the grave. Sculptor’s statues, which serve as save and rest points, allow you to fast travel back to the sculptor quickly as well as between the statues you have already prayed at – however, much like the Souls series, resting will cause some defeated enemies to return. While you can find these upgrades scattered throughout the world, they can only be added to your prosthetic by the sculptor. As you progress, you will find (or purchase) upgrades such as the Shuriken Wheel which, when brought to the hairy mentor, becomes a Spinning Shuriken add-on for your prosthetic.

This also provides excellent diversity when it comes to combat strategy, but we will come back to that later. The Shinobi prosthetic initially comes with just the grappling hook ability, which allows you to transverse to higher ground and move seamlessly through the mountainous regions populated by ancient trees and temples.

Seikoro die twice