Aside from the game's story and ending, for most players who have already finished it.
The most anticipated aspect is the new gameplay mode that will be updated for "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" after completion.
This mode is called Despair Mode.
Unlike "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne" which have PVP content.
"Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" does not have online multiplayer functionality. Players can basically only interact through the phantom remnant mechanic.
Therefore, for many players, "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" doesn't have much content to grind for, as there aren't many different playstyles or builds for players to develop their characters.
However, this doesn't mean that "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" has no other content to play after finishing the game.
It can be said that in "Dark Souls" and "Bloodborne," after completing the first playthrough of the story, players were primarily playing for the RPG character development elements.
And with the first playthrough difficulty maintained, subsequent playthroughs are not as difficult as one might imagine.
After all, in the first playthrough, most players have already upgraded their weapons and leveled up their characters.
Compared to Sekiro, the RPG stat elements in Bloodborne and Dark Souls have a very significant impact on the game's difficulty.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be said that in the prequel, once you obtain the Grave Lord Sword early on or can fully utilize the Halberd with its stat scaling, the game becomes a cakewalk.
But in "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice," the second and subsequent playthroughs are different from what most players expect.
In Sekiro, there are two ways to increase the difficulty: either by giving away Kuro's Charm, or by ringing the bell in the Bell Demon statue within the Senpou Temple, Mt. Kongo.
And these two modes can be stacked.
The Gauntlet of Strength mode can be unlocked by players after completing the corresponding story content, which Lucas has already added to the game in advance.
As for Despair Mode, it's not yet available to players. It will be released in a future update after some bugs are fixed.
Although in Lucas's VR version, tricky bugs like phasing through the map or swimming underground are no longer present, the assassinations of Genichiro's Ashina Cross and the Broken Monk's jump attack are considered backdoors he specifically left in.
However, no game can be completely bug-free. At most, some less severe bugs can be turned into game features.
But there are also some numerical aspects that need balancing, so patches, big or small, are inevitable.
And this Despair Mode, unlike the regular Gauntlet of Strength, is quite demanding for casual players. It requires players to complete a second playthrough of the "Great Shinobi Owl" encounter, meaning two playthroughs with stacked difficulty, before it can be unlocked.
Regarding Despair Mode, in the previous life, some players created corresponding Despair mods that significantly altered the move sets and aggression of bosses like Isshin, increasing the difficulty by more than one level, and even adding corresponding debuffs.
Lucas has now directly incorporated this into the game as a built-in mode. In addition to this mode itself, the upcoming update will also include a dedicated speedrun leaderboard for players to challenge, constantly refreshing their time records. This can be considered a form of competitive PVP.
In the Despair Mode created by Lucas, in addition to strengthening basic attributes like enemy and boss attack power and health, some modifications have also been made to the startup and recovery animations of their moves.
For example, if Genichiro's Ashina Cross originally had a 1-second attack animation, in Despair Mode, this time might be reduced by another third.
In addition, the game's boss AI has also been significantly enhanced. Previously, bosses were rather predictable and would attack first, allowing players to counter and find openings.
But now, bosses might not initiate attacks first and could instead confront the player, looking for openings.
This is similar to facing the Unseen Mother and the player stubbornly attempting to use a thrust attack.
Of course, there's also one major enhancement: unblockable attacks will no longer have the peril prompt.
Whether to time a Mikiri Counter or dodge with a step-dodge or jump depends entirely on the player's mastery of the boss's moves.
And there's more. Because Despair Mode follows the same game progression as the normal game.
This means from leaving Ashina, to completing the game, and then the Gauntlet of Strength.
These all incorporate Despair Mode. Furthermore, in this mode, the moves of some combat arts have also been altered. This means that players' previous experience will be insufficient for Despair Mode. Beyond basic skills, they will need to re-examine the game's mechanics. It can be said that apart from the monsters looking the same, these are two distinctly different games.
In the Nebula Games office, Hector climbed out of the Cosmos VR game pod, looking annoyed as he watched Lucas working on numerical checks.
"Boss Lucas, isn't the difficulty of this Despair Mode a little too high?"
He had no idea why he volunteered to test it. He hadn't even defeated the Blazing Bull after half an hour.
"How could it be too high? Although it's Despair Mode, you can think of it as a new game flow. And since it's called Despair Mode, it's naturally supposed to bring despair to players! Otherwise, how could it live up to the wishes of players who expect greater and harder challenges?"
"Imagine the disappointment when players, expecting to face stronger and more terrifying enemies, suddenly find them incredibly weak!" Lucas said with a smile.
Therefore, to make players feel his sincerity, Lucas issued another directive for Despair Mode: "Increase the intensity."
As for being too difficult?
Will players suffer?
What a joke!
Isn't the point of players playing this game to suffer?
...
Whether Despair Mode will actually cause despair, players are not yet aware.
However, for those players who were anticipating Despair Mode and took action to start challenging the second playthrough of the "Great Shinobi Owl" encounter, they understood one thing.
That is, even without mentioning the yet-to-be-updated Despair Mode, the difficulty of the second playthrough is already enough to make them despair.
Three years ago, in the secret room of the Hirata Estate, Ben, embarking on a new challenge, looked at the familiar "Death" screen and the Butterfly Lady's familiar line, "Just a little dog," and silently chose to close the game.
Having defeated Isshin in his first playthrough like most players, he was filled with ambition.
Then, he successfully defeated Genichiro Ashina in the Gauntlet of Strength and felt that the only thing he could look forward to was Despair Mode.
Until he started the second playthrough, the Bloodborne and Dark Souls second playthroughs could only be described as relaxed and effortless.
But this Sekiro second playthrough completely surpassed his imagination.
The Prayer Beads and Combat Memories were inherited, and the health bars looked long.
But unlike Dark Souls and Bloodborne, where long health bars are a huge advantage in the second playthrough, in Sekiro, he found that enemy attacks dealt damage based on a percentage of his health.
This meant that if it took three hits before, it still took three hits now.
And although Combat Memories increased attack power, the health bars of bosses and regular enemies also increased.
The most crucial issue is that under increased difficulty.
Non-perfect deflections not only increased the posture bar but also dealt damage!
He had previously relied on a combat art called "Sword-Whipping Technique" a lot to help him pass the first playthrough.
Facing Genichiro Ashina's "Floating Passage," Butterfly Lady's charging shuriken and sweeping attacks, and the Father's flurries, he used his sword-whipping playstyle.
But now?
Non-perfect blocks caused damage, which completely threw him off!
He had lost count of how many times he had taken damage from not perfectly blocking and died to the Butterfly Lady's phantom orbs.
"You should take this charm back. After all, it's Kuro's token, and it's better for me, a ninja, to keep it safe."
Seeing Wolf revive after dying, Ben silently returned to the Sculptor and took back the charm.
(End of this chapter)
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