(this has Sekiro spoilers if you still care about those)
I like FromSoftware games just fine. I'm not a crazy fanatic about them or anything, but they're fun. I've finished Dark Souls 1 and 3, with 3 being one of my favourite games of all time. I like Bloodborne but for whatever reason I bounce off of it relatively early every time I try to play (the furthest I've ever made it is Vicar Amelia which obviously is not very far). So when Sekiro was announced I was excited for it and bought it when it was released.
I played about 10 or so hours of Sekiro at launch at it's regular default difficulty. It took me awhile to click with the combat but I eventually did and was slowly progressing. I made it about a third of the way through before I fell off. While I 'got' the combat, I just didn't like it that much. I always played Souls games rolling around being active in combat without ever bothering to learn to parry, so to go to a game where parrying wasn't only overtly encouraged but integral to the way the game is played it wasn't really too appealing to me.
About I week ago I was on Nexus Mods getting some stuff for the first Witcher game and thought I would just look at the popular games to see what people were making and downloading mods for. I saw Sekiro had a fairly high download rate and browsed through the mods and saw that one of the top files was something called Sekiro The Easy with the description 'You can play the Sekiro happily.'
Here is a list of changes the mod makes:
In practice the thing that really makes the biggest differences are you do a lot of damage. Like A LOT of damage, making encounters faster and obviously easier. The other thing is that, when you're hit, your posture replenishes itself immediately while enemies' posture replenishes *very* slowly. Also you don't really spend spirit emblems when using prosthetic tools from what I could tell.
All of these changes obviously make the game much, much easier and, honestly, it's super fun! I'm not going to say that I had an equal experience to all of the people who got through the game as it was intended, but the difficulty didn't entirely rob me of what the Sekiro experience has to offer. It's significantly easier, but you still need to engage with the systems and strategies of the game. There are times when you still need to parry, you obviously will still need to lightening dodge and dodge in general. You're not invincible and, while I only died a handful of times, you can still definitely die.
It felt more like I was a tourist through the world of Sekiro, getting to not only see the locations but the enemies and bosses of that world. It was like playing Sekiro: The Ride.
Even though I still felt like I had to engage with the game's systems on some level, I still went a really, *really* long time without dying. The first time I died was in the second Guardian Ape fight because the second Ape that shows up in the second phase took me by surprise.
There was a thread recently called 'Sekiro's final boss is a magnificent test of will' with people discussing the difficulty and satisfaction of learning to get through the final boss encounter. I beat the final boss on my first time (though I came very close to dying) just sort of bumbling my way through. This is a video of my fight with him that I think displays how easy the easy mode makes it:
It's very obviously not the oppressive fight everyone else endured, but it's not like I just blindly mashed my way through it either.
When Sekiro was released the 'FromSoft games should have an easy mode' discourse spun up again. Especially because this game doesn't have any real online components. There's not co-op or invasions, so why *isn't* it there? After playing through the game with this mod I feel even more convinced that those modes *should* be there.
Sure my experience wasn't the experience that FromSoft intended, it wasn't the difficult experience that these games are known and loved for. My experience isn't entirely equal to others' I guess. But without this mode I just wouldn't have had that experience at all, and I'm glad that I did.
I like FromSoftware games just fine. I'm not a crazy fanatic about them or anything, but they're fun. I've finished Dark Souls 1 and 3, with 3 being one of my favourite games of all time. I like Bloodborne but for whatever reason I bounce off of it relatively early every time I try to play (the furthest I've ever made it is Vicar Amelia which obviously is not very far). So when Sekiro was announced I was excited for it and bought it when it was released.
I played about 10 or so hours of Sekiro at launch at it's regular default difficulty. It took me awhile to click with the combat but I eventually did and was slowly progressing. I made it about a third of the way through before I fell off. While I 'got' the combat, I just didn't like it that much. I always played Souls games rolling around being active in combat without ever bothering to learn to parry, so to go to a game where parrying wasn't only overtly encouraged but integral to the way the game is played it wasn't really too appealing to me.
About I week ago I was on Nexus Mods getting some stuff for the first Witcher game and thought I would just look at the popular games to see what people were making and downloading mods for. I saw Sekiro had a fairly high download rate and browsed through the mods and saw that one of the top files was something called Sekiro The Easy with the description 'You can play the Sekiro happily.'
Here is a list of changes the mod makes:
In practice the thing that really makes the biggest differences are you do a lot of damage. Like A LOT of damage, making encounters faster and obviously easier. The other thing is that, when you're hit, your posture replenishes itself immediately while enemies' posture replenishes *very* slowly. Also you don't really spend spirit emblems when using prosthetic tools from what I could tell.
All of these changes obviously make the game much, much easier and, honestly, it's super fun! I'm not going to say that I had an equal experience to all of the people who got through the game as it was intended, but the difficulty didn't entirely rob me of what the Sekiro experience has to offer. It's significantly easier, but you still need to engage with the systems and strategies of the game. There are times when you still need to parry, you obviously will still need to lightening dodge and dodge in general. You're not invincible and, while I only died a handful of times, you can still definitely die.
It felt more like I was a tourist through the world of Sekiro, getting to not only see the locations but the enemies and bosses of that world. It was like playing Sekiro: The Ride.
Even though I still felt like I had to engage with the game's systems on some level, I still went a really, *really* long time without dying. The first time I died was in the second Guardian Ape fight because the second Ape that shows up in the second phase took me by surprise.
There was a thread recently called 'Sekiro's final boss is a magnificent test of will' with people discussing the difficulty and satisfaction of learning to get through the final boss encounter. I beat the final boss on my first time (though I came very close to dying) just sort of bumbling my way through. This is a video of my fight with him that I think displays how easy the easy mode makes it:
It's very obviously not the oppressive fight everyone else endured, but it's not like I just blindly mashed my way through it either.
When Sekiro was released the 'FromSoft games should have an easy mode' discourse spun up again. Especially because this game doesn't have any real online components. There's not co-op or invasions, so why *isn't* it there? After playing through the game with this mod I feel even more convinced that those modes *should* be there.
Sure my experience wasn't the experience that FromSoft intended, it wasn't the difficult experience that these games are known and loved for. My experience isn't entirely equal to others' I guess. But without this mode I just wouldn't have had that experience at all, and I'm glad that I did.
