Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice takes players to a fantastical version of Japan at the end of the Sengoku period, where a one-armed shinobi serves a young lord whose cursed blood grants immortality. When the boy is kidnapped, the hero sets out to find him, journeying through a mountain temple, a fortified town, a flooded village, and a place that has little left in common with reality. The storytelling is more direct than in the studio's earlier games, the hero speaks and has a clear motivation, but the world is still explained mainly through environment, short conversations, and item descriptions.

Combat is the biggest change. It isn't about dodging or stats, but about holding your ground: every successful parry right before a blow lands chips away at the opponent's posture, and once their gauge fills, a lethal finishing blow follows. Combat therefore feels like a rhythmic exchange of strikes, in which the player must read the types of attacks and respond with a jump, a parry, or a counterattack. Add to that the grappling hook, which completely changes movement through the levels, allowing quick traversal across rooftops and full-fledged stealth with silent kills. Death, moreover, is not final — the hero can rise once, right in the middle of combat, though this has consequences for the surrounding world.

Technically the game runs very well on PC, and its visual side ranks among the best the studio has ever produced; mist over a valley, snow, red autumn foliage, and thunderstorms give every location its own mood. The music builds on Japanese instruments and shifts into fierce drumming during boss fights. Critics received the game superbly, praising above all the courage to abandon a proven formula. Sekiro is demanding and uncompromising, with no difficulty options and no way to sidestep combat through stats, but that is precisely why mastering it is one of the strongest feelings today's action games can offer. Anyone able to unlearn reflexes from other action RPGs and accept that the only way forward is through deflecting the opponent's blow will find one of the best-tuned combat systems of recent years.