Caved and bought Sekiro and after spending a couple of hours with it I can say I should have waited. The parrying gets real old real fast, especially during the boss fights which are beyond tedious with endless back and forth raising ones posture so you can get the deathblow. The setting is boring, checking off all the usual feudal Japanese locations that´s been in every single game about samurais and shinobis. It feels unoriginal and done to death. All the enemies look nearly the same, kinda like Nioh, with simple skins telling them apart and the occasional weird monster that looks about as uninspiring as something from a PG-13 horror flick (chained ogre, really?) and the story is so far uninteresting and cliched. It has a few instances where the gameplay does excel and the combat feels fun but those are far and few between. The death mechanic is annoying and hasn´t really added anything except you get a new turn if you die.
So far the game has been 100% linear, with no compelling exploration, no fun items, no weapons and the two prosthetics I found so far are useless and not worth using except in one or two instances. There is no customization, nothing. The healing items are ludicrously sparse, only found three and they are usually empty when the second phase of the boss begins, mostly because they hit like a fucking truck. Two or three strikes and your done. And the fucking parrying makes my hands cramp after a while. I haven´t gotten far, only at that Gouzu Demon or whatever his name is, so things can change, but the game is so barebones it´s ridiculous. The grappling is the only fun part so far. The sneaking is shallow, the killing is repetitive, no fun grind, nothing to go back to and explore. And now I´m stuck between two bosses with no items, trying to figure out how to kill them.
I appreciate Miyazaki trying different things and not be stuck in the same old song and dance, creating new gameplay systems that he can apply to his Souls-formula, but as things are right now, I feel Sekiro is not for me. It might get better, I very much hope so, but the first five hours has been incredibly disappointing when I compare to his past work. I hope Sekiro delivers in the end, Miyazakis games can take some time to evolve and show their true face, so fingers crossed for a more enjoyable trip going forward.