100% Trophy Get. I forgot to look at my save file, but at the end of NG I was on 92 hours, so I'd probably say another 10-15 on top of that to go through NG+ to get the LL and then save scum back to get the Shura ending.
Scraped through on the thinest of threads at the end of NG+ - Used all heals, Fine Snow, Rice Ball, first time ever using a Juzo statue - I fucking hate how spammy the last boss is with
his fire attacks once you start getting their HP down. It was literally just a constant string of them, I actually killed him by mashing parry to the
big burst of slashes after the all-screen fire attack, half HP, backed in a corner, just put on some confetti so I thought I didn't have time to block, out of heals, there was nothing I could do but mash L1 and hope to get out of it alive.
When I killed SSI at the end of NG I felt relief and a little bit of accomplishment, but here I just felt glad it was over mixed with a little resentment at all the dropped inputs I suppose I can now attribute to being a console peasant. I'm fascinated to see how different it is on PC, maybe I'll get the
'true' experience remastered on PS5 one day(!)
With previous From Soft titles right about now, I'd be continuing on in NG+ or planning new builds. With nothing to gain by doing so other than gimping myself on hardcore challenge runs, I think I'm done until the DLC comes out - which I'm kind of dreading, given how previous DLCs have tended to use the game as the baseline difficulty and go up from there.
Fantastic game, a little bit out of my league in terms of difficulty (how much of that was me sucking and how much was console performance, I've no idea). The stress (exhileration?) of the boss combat wasn't always to my taste - you just have to be constantly mindful and quicker on the draw than any of the previous games, and it's not something that I always enjoyed - I prefer the paced combat of Souls, where the boss will perform an attack and like here you are learning those attacks, but you dodge and then the boss has recovery animation where your successful dodge allows you to get hits in - Here it's
kind of the same thing, but it's so much more relentless, there's virtually no downtime in boss fights and I found it exhausting. When it clicked it was amazing, when it didn't, I was frustrated and befuddled.
My favourite bosses were
Owl (Father), Guardian Ape, Corrupted Monk, Demon of Hate - largely the bosses I liked were bigger enemies with clear attack patterns.
Actually feel like playing some Demon's or Dark Souls now tbh - I've been thinking about a spear build in DS3 since I started to dig them in DS1 recently. Or maybe just a nice, comfy stroll through Lordran. Maybe an SL1 run with base equipment and no healing, you know something nice and easy compared to Sekiro!! :p
