This is a departure from what I expected based on FromSoftware’s last decade of development - games in which the stories and characters were often obscure and required deep dives into the lore to understand. I play as Wolf, a shinobi bodyguard to a royal child. If you want curated lists of our favorite media, check out What to Play and What to Watch. When we award the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the recipient is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule.

Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games, movies, TV shows, comics, tabletop books, and entertainment experiences. It’s something new, something intriguing - and a brutal and definitive statement refuting the idea that FromSoftware is a one-trick pony. It’s full of masochistic challenges, but it’s also definitely not a Soulsborne game. It’s a company known for making notoriously difficult games like the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne, and Sekiro shares that lineage. This is the joy and agony of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, developer FromSoftware’s new game. I panic and turn away, running toward what I hope will be safety. He turns to me and, as he charges, I notice the flaming tubes of hay where his horns should be. He roars and stomps and headbutts everything around him in rage. I crouch and approach.Ī bull the size of a school bus shreds the structure into a hundred shards before I can reach them. In the distance, maybe 20 yards away, two more enemies chat near a small wooden building. I sneak up behind him, run him through, and he’s gone. My adrenaline surges as I see the next few seconds of my life with absolute clarity. Past a large door, there’s another enemy. I feel like a shinobi god as I collect my loot and move on. His neck sprays blood like a pierced garden hose as he falls to his knees.

My next move is a one-hit-kill Deathblow. His strength fails him after my second attack. I swing, but he blocks my attack with his rifle. I land on an enemy grunt, piercing him with my sword and rolling out of my attack in a seamless and deadly ballet. In Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I am a bird of prey, and my sword is my talon. I jump from my perch on a roof, diving down to my target.

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