Ever since the launch of Demon Souls FromSoftware has maintained a trademark. Their games are hard, and they have a bunch of challenging bosses, and players can level up by defeating more and more enemies. This continued with Dark Souls, and it has remained as it is to this very day. There were a couple of exceptions too, though: Sekiro and Armored Core 6.
These games required much more skill than any other games from this developer. While the usual soulslike title allows gamers to grind as much as they like and make their characters powerful enough to push through any hurdles, Sekiro does not allow that. This makes Sekiro one of the hardest games they have made.
Hidetaka Miyazaki reveals why their games have become so challenging
There are people all over nowadays who keep on asking developers to give them an easy mode in games. This was a big issue when Sekiro was launched back in 2019. This thing, starting with the launch of Sekiro, made sense too; the developers had introduced something drastically different with that game.\
Previously, FromSoftware made soulslike games, which basically allowed players to grind. They could go back, kill the same enemies again and again, and eventually level up to become overpowered when facing those hard bosses. Sekiro, on the other hand, was a whole different deal; it did not allow for grinding.
In Sekiro, players had to defeat bosses and minibosses to earn new abilities and increase the protagonist’s attack power. If they refused to learn to defeat a boss, they would keep on dying again and again. This new mechanic made Sekiro significantly more challenging than previous FromSoftware games.
Moreover, players did not have access to numerous weapons and equipment to choose from. They did not have better, more powerful swords and axes. They even did not have those heavy protective armor pieces to equip. To protect their character, they just had to block, and if the timing was right, they would even stagger the enemy.
One would wonder why they decided to make their games more challenging over time. It appears game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has a very interesting response to this question. He suggests that they just wanted to make their games “spicier.”
Demon’s Souls was known for its incredible difficulty. With Dark Souls, there is no intention to decrease the difficulty at all. Actually, we intend to increase the difficulty of the game, but not simply by making the game more difficult but by giving players the freedom to strategise freely and conquer that difficulty, and to be rewarded accordingly.
This is an analogy we often use: we are trying to create a game that is spicy and we want to make it as spicy as possible, but still edible and also to make it taste good that leaves you wanting more.
This is an interesting way of going about making games. One can say that they have been making games harder, but another way of saying it is that FromSoftware and Hidetaka Miyazaki are just catering to a crowd that prefers playing hard games.
It remains to be seen how hard they will make their next game. It goes without saying they maintained this attitude with Elden Ring too, a game that was full of hard-as-nails bosses.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is going Sekiro’s way
It has been revealed that the upcoming DLC for Elden Ring will also adopt the level-up mechanics of Sekiro. This means players would be able to level up only when killing some particular minibosses and bosses.
It is supposedly being done to make sure everyone who starts the DLC starts it on the same stand. Developers suggested that this would ensure that players explore the map in search of more enemies to be able to kill them and level up.
