You don't understand. The camera is the real boss.
This game has the worst hit boxes I have ever seen. I would have to go back to the Commodore 64 days for finding something similar. It's a shame and really crosses the line between challenging and frustrating. When bad hit boxes and terrible camara combine on a tight boss fight the experience completely goes under. Genichiro was difficult but fair. However, the monkey is terribly designed. His moveset is fairly easy to read but the game insists on fucking you up with this cunt spamming grab after grab, it feels so cheap.
I feel extremely tempted to kick this game to the bottom of my huge backlog.
I agree, the main problem this game has it that it feels and plays by the rules of an advanced ps2 game. It actually uses would have been seen as mistakes back then, as gameplay.
For example:
Animations that reset your character to the position the animation needs to work.
Fire that can't be put out by walking in water.
Enemies that can see through walls.
Instantly refilling energy bars.
Bad Camera (lone swordman fight)
Bad hitboxes.
Spamming bosses to win.
I see almost nothing new in Sekiro apart from the story (which is great). But what I do see is the developer playing around a lot with last gen tricks and using them to wrongfoot the player. It's deliberate trolling. The water not putting out fires being the most obvious example of this as it plays against logic. Try 50 times to beat a boss using skill, fail. Spam him with fireworks to win, you feel cheap.
I'm really not down with that. Not down with getting 'hard lessons' from a game for not paying attention to it's janky mechanics that's it's made into a 'feature'.
I don't care for this sort of trickery as it's a deliberate waste of time, and lazy programming.
The game is really good, but I am disappointed. Dissapointed that From haven't stepped up since Bloodborne, just gone 'bigger and faster'. Dissapointed techincally. I'm disappointed that they aren't finding new ways around the problems that stealth / swordplay gameplay poses. It feels like a step back to me purely because the gameplay simply isn't as tight as it could be.