after your defeat to Lord Ganesha no of
the escena clan you awaken in the
dilapidated temple a place that's so
tranquil you even put your sword away as
you head inside so no longer will you
accidentally are to your only friends to
death here you can rest upgrade your
prosthetic arm improve your healing and
if you need an ego boost you can even
kill this guy over and over again to
practice your abilities and honestly
you're going to want that practice
courtesy of Activision I was flown out
to From Software's office in Tokyo with
a bunch of people who are all really
good at souls games and every single
person I talked to
agreed Sakhi Row is tough tougher we
think than the souls born games that
came before it and your skills don't
translate as easily as they have in the
past
the most difficult thing by far is
weaning yourself off the Dodge button
because in addition to movement there
are now three avoidance buttons you have
to be mindful of at all times jump over
sweeps - away from perilous attacks and
most importantly deflect deflect
everything else by tapping block at the
perfect moment this will result in a
high pitch that deals poster damage to
your enemies case in point
the first mini boss you face general
nail mori will test whether you're still
playing this like it's a Souls game as
you can probably tell from my Dodgers I
forgot this isn't ninja Souls it's
something else entirely if you were
there playing with us in Tokyo and if
you looked around the room about one
hour into our play session you would
have seen what people were going through
with the chained ogre
actually since we all shared our footage
let me give you a perfect idea what
people were going through with the chain
Doga turns out the best thing to do here
is to take a step back and listen since
you don't have any fire at your disposal
at this point it follows logically that
you should be able to keep exploring
this area and find some so you double
back you look around and you end up
honoring the dying wish of a fallen
soldier
caution oh no honey in escape
you know dr. tocar sokolova Berea no no
borrow yours
yeah see there a dog cannot so Joe fauna
Nani parks or Waqas a monocot ong good
decision offer this young Lords bail to
the Great Buddha and he will stir your
thoughts awakening old memories from
their slumber and so you awaken at the
Hirata estates three years ago it's the
year of the dragon spring pilgrimage and
thieves have abducted your divine prince
herein lies the first split path in
cicchitto something that occurs
surprisingly early actually the paths
are difficult in either direction and
it's good from a design perspective to
offer these two paths early because it
means that players can go a different
way when they're struggling with the
other the Hirata estates are a sprawling
maze of corridors and short walls
it's an incredibly horizontal area
without too many vertical high spaces to
traverse so this presents an interesting
design problem for the devs because
unlike in previous games
ceccato can just hop over all of these
walls meaning it's difficult for them to
design a consistent linear experience
here because every single one of you is
going to go a different way when you
play this as a result it's super easy to
get lost but they've thought about this
because there are new ways to get your
bearings
you can eavesdrop there are plentiful
NPCs to talk to and even enemies just
exhibit more human-like behavior like
huddling around the fire and drinking
the level quickly becomes memorable as a
result of all this and the more you
remember the more difficult encounters
you can avoid eavesdropping also gives
you goals and objectives that aren't
just kill enemy move forward no
cicchitto is about discovering enemy
weaknesses and
static weapons are the tools by which
you get to do that so you begin to
eavesdrop for clues the injured man who
is talking is scared for us for a reason
because the shinobi hunter is no joke
I'd say this fight and the sequence
leading up to him was the hardest thing
I managed to overcome in my playthrough
this is the fight that made me realize
that the shoot economy is a great
prosthetic as they allow you to
interrupt the deadly combos of fast
agile enemies and they allow you to get
your own attacks in instead and this is
why discovering prosthetic weapons is
genuinely exciting because they're
actually genuinely useful and it's wrong
to think of them as just simple combat
aids instead they're utility items they
help you take down enemies that have
certain weaknesses take the shielded
enemies for example died rather commit
sudoku than fight them without the
loaded axe seriously look at this and
once you discover the flame cannon you
now have the advantage over that ogre
that was blocking our original path the
chained ogre the shinobi hunter the
general they're all minibosses and all
minibosses drop prayer beads take full
prayer beads to a checkpoint and you can
boost your health and your posture so
the fact that this is how you increase
your health significantly punishes
players who don't engage with the
enemies in a level so it's not advisable
to just run past all the enemies in a
level and die and resurrect and keep
going you shouldn't do that a
surprisingly good perk of dying twice
though is if you're caught off-guard by
something that's kind of cheesy like for
example hearing a cannon fire at you and
only having a second to react
then the cheesiness of this death is
kind of forgotten instantaneously as you
can rise again to take revenge on your
second life you can grapple up there get
in this guy's face and get smacked in
the face with his cannon what was my
point again so let's talk death penalty
when you die you lose half your
experience and gold and you have a 30%
chance of receiving unseen aid which
reduces the amount you lose but there's
so much more to it something called
dragon rot and it goes beyond gameplay
to hit you straight in the fields
[Music]
just as we predicted in an earlier video
the more you die in sukira the more this
mysterious disease spreads throughout
the world afflicting those you meet
right now we've afflicted the sculptor
and ascared made with rot essence and
even Emma the prince's healer has little
idea of how to treat it so nor do you
dragon rot is just one aspect of why the
story presentation in cicchitto is on
another level it's incredible and I
really want to talk about it in a
separate video so subscribe for that the
Pahadi video channel survives another
year so in order to prevent yourself
from dying and corrupting those around
you you'd better use every tool at your
disposal and the one that's available to
everyone from the very beginning is
stealth terrifying snake sequins aside
which i won't spoil you never really get
the sense that stealth is mandatory
there's never an instant fail state if
you're spotted for example instead you
just miss out on the opportunity to get
a free kill or two that said one
criticism I had was that killing a
sequence of enemies one after the other
in a group using stealth was pretty
tough because your kills aren't exactly
silent what you're seeing here was one
of my many failed attempts to take out
Jews oh the drunkard and his incredibly
annoying band of warriors Jews oh and
his troupe in fact is so difficult that
from software actually sees fit to give
you an NPC assistant during the finally
[Applause]
I was like one hit from killing this
boss dude you guys agree we can blame
the camera on this one right juzo got a
little bit too close for comfort here
but twitch streamer Lobos did manage to
kill him and he did it by splitting up
the troop of enemies and re-establishing
stealth by hiding for a little while
after he killed one this is evidence
that it is possible but clunky to
re-establish stealth and to take out
enemies one by one one thing that gives
me hope for stealth though is that there
are options for improving your passive
stealth and there's even an ability that
allows you to re-establish stealth when
you execute from behind blood smoke just
look at how sick this looks
so the stealth experience probably gets
a lot better if you spec into it which
brings us briefly to skill trees after
reliving the past in the ashiness States
you recall the shinobi you once were
this is the shinobi esoteric text and it
unlocks the shinobi skill tree there's
two more trees that we know of one
called prosthetic and one called
Samurai and these helped to shape the
way that you want to play there's so
much to dive into honestly regarding the
systems of Sakura so honestly you should
keep an eye out for this video where we
explore the upgrade systems and the hub
of Shadows die twice as we wrap up I
think if there's anything to take away
from this video it's that there has been
a fundamental shifting of skill flaws
and skill ceilings a skill flaw is the
minimum skill you can exhibit and still
get through the game in souls games for
example you can summon help you can look
up overpowered weapons like the Drake
sword or you can just flat-out grind for
more stats these things lower the skill
floor and they make the game more
accessible and secure Oh has none of
them okay sure you can grind out
experience and level up your skill tree
but your skill trees just give you a
wider range of options they don't just
flat-out make you stronger like leveling
strength or vitality wood insoles from
what I can tell if you're bad at the
core mechanics of Cecotto then you will
not have an easy time a skill ceiling on
the other hand is the height of skill
that the game allows you to exhibit and
that you can be rewarded for Sakura
skill ceiling seems incredibly high
because in addition to complex movement
and attacking options there are now
three avoidance buttons that you have to
be mindful of what you're seeing now is
my final run through the gamescom demo
something I practiced the hell out of
and in the end I had managed to defeat
the boss in just 60 seconds blocking and
dodging almost perfectly so my point is
that cicchitto seems to reward practice
a ton
and seeing how well this practice
translates to the gameplay and how good
good gameplay looks makes me really
excited I'll leave you guys with what
was probably the most exciting
satisfying experience for me yogi Boo is
cinnamon makes full use of this enormous
arena while also managing to be solid
from a gameplay perspective and usually
it's really difficult to strike a
balance between these two things if this
was a Souls boss making use of a giant
arena him charging towards you would
strictly be about rolling out of the way
in your full played armor and then you
would have to take a year to close the
distance between you so you could attack
think of medea which is one of the most
tedious bosses in the souls series for
this very reason instead the genius of
the deflect system is that Joe boos
offensive charge is an opportunity by
deflecting it properly you don't just
avoid damage you deal posture damage and
I'm realizing how clever deflect is it's
created of tighter more engaging
fighting experience than ever before
it's a clashing of swords that is
intensely personal for every enemy you
fight because their attacks aren't
something you mindlessly move away from
anymore there's something you lean into
you're not your opponent's weakness
their predictability is sukira is a
blast and it comes out so so soon so
prepare yourself by watching this video
which breaks down the skill systems in
cicchitto
and I think that's a really good thing
for you to watch because it means you
can spend more time playing the game and
less time figuring out how to play on
day one so keep an eye out for that I'll
probably do a Q&A about circuito on my
stream on Twitch soon so click the link
in the description to follow me
over there but until next time guys I'll
catch you later
[Music]