In march 2019 i bought the game day 1 but i had my hands full with a baby, just out of university, a new job and a new home. I was also playing this on a less than decent PC with a Ryzen 1600 and a 1060.
Anyway, back then i got up to Papa Owl at the castle and i just couldn't get past this boss. Work and family related stuffs took over and when i came back weeks later, it was even worse. Mind you, boss rush was not added in yet so even practicing with older bosses was out of question. I had killed the guy at the training area. I felt like this is insurmountable, i had lost all reflexes needed to advance in this game.
A full replay was needed...
Well i did that since a few weeks ago. On PC with a much better setup. I don't know if it helps with latency but it felt really different this time.
When i got to Owl and died a couple of times i was like..
This bastard doesn't fight like any other sword enemies in the game. He has no perilous attacks. No Mikiri counter openings or to goomba his head when there's a sweep opportunity. It's a complete relearning compared to Genichiro. But anyway
I fucking won
I went on a rampage of all the rest of the bosses and mini bosses, i killed them all. Demon of hatred, Ape duo, not a single one skipped (outside of shura path bosses). I then got all the health upgrades and all the prosthetics i could get outside of the 2 last ones that require crystals that are not given in enough quantities on first play-through.
I just beat Isshin the Sword tonight.
What a masterful game
Top 5 tier of all time for me. Best From's game, by far. I appreciated my 2nd play-through a lot more and not just because i won against great shinobi owl, but something simply clicked this time. I did not want to cheese any bosses, because i was enjoying learning the game mechanics so much and it was a
NECESSARY obstacle for the end boss further down the line i was telling myself. Kudos to FightingCowboy's youtube channel for all his legit "git gud" videos. It helped me immensely.
I loved Tenchu back in the days and this feels like the spiritual successor. I'm now sad that basically From will be an Elden ring machine from now on problably because of cash. I can't imagine a Shinobi/Ninja game beating this masterpiece any time soon. The way the character moves in this game, the enemies movesets...
The parry window
Not a lot of games have even come close to nailing that window of opportunity to parry, counter, etc. None i can think of comes close.
10/10 game, everything about it is BADASS. The dialogues feel right at home, the lore is amazing and creative with the folklore of Japan. The gameplay is so tightly tune to a specific way to play, that it feels like Dark souls' class system is ace of everything, master of none. I loved it so much i might even do NG+.
