Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I died more than twice

the only game where I can beat an ancient dragon god on my first try, and yet some middle aged dude in his bath robe can make me regret being born. 10/10

I died more than twice. False advertising.

Honestly guys, I wanna smash everything in my room, I wanna smash absolutely everything in my room

Guys i am going to be honest with you... i died more than twice.

you don't lose when you die, you lose when you quit

Hesitation is defeat...
When I first tried this game a few years back fresh from Dark Souls and Bloodborne, I like many others assumed that this game just wasn't for me. I was never good at parrying in the other games, and I often played more defensively with a shield or in the case of Bloodborne, used a big enough weapon to stagger enemies to death so that they couldn't even get a chance to hit me.
Sekiro beat me to death too many times to count, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Try aggressive play, die. Try defensive play and dodging, die. Try focusing on parrying/deflecting, die. I put the game down and decided it was a strange outlier in From Soft's library, a failed attempt that due to never receiving DLC I felt justified in feeling that it was just a bad game that nobody really liked except the super hardcore "git gud" brigade that put themselves through this punishment on a daily basis just to inflate their ego and impress other random nerds on the internet that they would never actually meet in real life.
After playing Elden Ring and feeling very frustrated with the endgame due to its focus on summoning spirits and other players just to stand a chance, I was craving a more linear and solo focused From Soft game to give me the satisfaction Elden Ring denied me towards the end, but unfortunately the Dark Souls PC servers are offline and I refuse to play the games without the many messages about "but holes" around the world as they are a mandatory part of the experience of course. So I thought well, I'll play the first half of Sekiro and quit where I faceplanted the wall again just for a bit of fun.
I don't know exactly what happened, or when it happened... but it happened... and it felt amazing.
Sekiro clicked, this elusive click I read about online when I was at my most frustrated and searching threads about how shit Sekiro was to make myself feel better about sucking at it, finally happened for me, and when it happened I realised something. Sekiro is the easiest From Soft game. No, I really mean that. The game is actually incredibly easy compared to Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring.
This obviously won't be the case for everybody, some people have an advantage with tactical and chess like gameplay, they will enjoy their turn based games and strategies etc. Some people prefer fast paced action, honing incredible reaction times and blowing the minds of us slow brained peasants when we watch them, adamant they must be on some hardcore stimulant drugs to ever achieve such states of focus and reaction. I believe they will also struggle with Sekiro. So who is good at Sekiro? What kind of player can actually stand a chance against this onslaught?
Did you ever beat the Batman Arhkam games? You can beat Sekiro.
Ever beat guitar hero? You can do it.
Ever bop your head or tap your foot to music? Sekiro EZ gg.
Sekiro in a strange way is like a Rhythm game, once it clicks you realise that the way to beat Sekiro isn't through aggressive gameplay, or defensive calculating strategy, but much like the Shinobi and Samurai of the era this game is set in who spent a lot of their time in meditation and preaching Taoist principles of the flow state, this is the kind of mental state required to beat Sekiro.
Stop overthinking it, stop planning, stop being overly aggressive, take a deep breath and enter the flow state. Once you achieve this state of mind, you will feel like Neo when he finally sees The Matrix, and you will realise that not only is Sekiro really possible, it's actually ten times slower and easier than Elden Ring endgame. There is no Melana queen of unbalanced rushed Endgame here, only the gateway to a better state of mind... and badass shinobi executions. Once in this state, you will feel the Rhythm of attacking, deflecting, jumping and Mikiri counters and it will feel as simple as hitting that Y button to counter an enemy in the Arkham games, or hitting that green button on Guitar Hero easy mode. Once it clicks, you will realise that maybe other things in life are also actually easy if you just stop thinking about them and just do them.. and that's when you realise that these OG Asians had it right from the start.
Enjoy.