decisions
Member
In Souls combat, most enemies and bosses have simple patterns that, once figured out, can be defeated by a simple strategy. There are relatively few ways to defend (walk left, roll, walk back, shield), and relatively few ways to attack (repeatedly light attack, heavy attack, cast a spell). Usually you can just defeat a boss by alternating the offense/defense for that boss. The real problem lies in the fact that several of these simple strategies can be applied to different enemies and bosses. Which means that, against bosses that are vulnerable to the same strategy, the player can act very similarly. Dark Souls III especially suffers from this issue where many bosses are defeated by using the same strategy of walking left, rolling for some attacks, and then attacking after the enemy has. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls have some more quirks/gimmicks thrown into the mix that serve in those game's favor, but the problem is still there to an extent.Could you elaborate how Souls combat is repetitive while Sekiro's is not?
In Sekiro, you cannot, literally not once in the game, act the same against any boss or enemy type. This is not to be confused with mechanics, since of course you use the same mechanics against every enemy. You must always watch the enemy, pay attention to their actions, and perform well enough to defeat them. You cannot apply the same strategy you did against the previous enemy, you cannot identify a new, simpler strategy based on excessive item usage or some sort of ranged attack "cheese", you must learn this enemy's animations and patterns, and perform accordingly.
I guess to sum this up, I could say that Souls games offer more movesets, but each moveset confronts many enemies in the same way. Whereas in Sekiro, you use only one moveset, but never fight a single enemy in the exact same way using that moveset. So you must always adapt to the current enemy, rather than classifying them as vulnerable to a strategy you developed in the first third of the game.