This mod has literately resurrected my experience of the game with all of its new content and enhanced AI, it almost feels like playing Sekiro for the first time all over again.
The new miniboss ai are a refreshing hit, the improved ai now makes a lot of the easy mini-bosses respectful enemy with their own styles and makes their movement a lot less video-gamey. Samurai Generals with names now actually feels like a general-rank enemy instead of a brute in armor that probably can't defeat an Ashina fencer. Snake eyes absolutely wreck me with those grab faint that always feels too intentionally slow in vanilla game. The weaker 1-deathblow elite variations of the minibosses are also good ideas: Ashina cross fencer in Ashina castle, Lone Shadow in Hirata and the General Samurai before ogre. It makes the world feels more varied in that there isn't a bunch of super beefed-up bosses and mini-bosses while all other enemies are fodders with no gap in between.
Adding new enemies in maps is a great way to revamp stealth experiences, but some scenes kinda feel overcrowded as a result, in particular, the Samurai General arena after Ogre. The lone shadow helps even the fight, but the place just feels very crowded visually. It might be a good idea to reposition some enemy, or replace them with stronger ones like the Samura General before Ogre, either way, the direction is good and I'm looking forward to more map revamp in the future.
Posture recovery on successful Mikiri is something I never thought of but definitely makes sense, It's a powerful tool that I might not be able to beat the game without it, but it does feel bit too overpowered at the time against thrust-happy enemies, your posture would never break even without charm and bell unless you blocked or got hit. This is especially true in the inner Isshin fight, where I was able to block multiple attacks and survive, something that would never happen in normal Isshin where my posture bar is always full. Continue from Mikiri, there seems to be good potential in addition/changing existing skills to change the gameplay greatly. Some CA can benefit from these changes to be more viable, having a more specialized use, or synergize with other changes/addition of skills, CA, and possible new items. And if you feel like some of these changes might be too OP for their own good, you can always add a "hard mode" to this mod similar to the charmless mode to reduce/disable the changes for those seeking challenges.
Overall, I really like the direction this mod is going and there's potential for it to become a giant, well-made revamp mod in the future. I look forward to its official release and any future updates.
Now for some issue reports. Some of the following might be done with intention, but they do feel off IMO for various reasons, so I'll report them all as potential issues that need to be resolved.
1. Great Shinobi Owl's stomp execution move upon posture break happens so quickly that the move actually does not stomp on wolf when he's completely posture broken and triggers the kill animation, instead, the stomp counts as a normal hit that deals very little damage and knocks the wolf out of the stagger, allow the player to roll out of a kill move. If this is intended, the double-stomp move definitely looks very clumsy IMO.
2. Owl Father does not have the mist raven teleportation animation. I've already mentioned it in another thread, but I just noticed recently that the ground-to-air teleportation Owl performs when wolf is far away from him to perform a top-down strike doe shave its mist raven animation shown correctly, you might want to look into that.
3. Sword saint Isshin can occasionally be observed to run away from the player in the direction of front-left from the player's pov, or from Isshin's pov, moving towards his back-right direction. Isshin's posture bar usually goes down while he does this, but it does not looks like a retreating move but rather mistargeting on Isshin's AI.
4. Isshin Ashina phase 1's Ichimonji to fire slash faint does not have a variation where he actually performs Ichimonji, making this super long windup attack easy to interrupt with the player's own Ichimonji and deals tons of damage without repercussions. With all the faint variation attacks in the mod, it feels like this is a case where the author forgot to add the normal Ichimonji variation.
5. Some of Isshin Ashina's attack effect is also not showing in his phase 2: One mind's "thousand blade cut" attack does not have any effect animation, so is the final cut afterward. The Ichmonji follow by fire slash also does not have the spreading flame on the floor effect on the second slash
Thank you for the comments. The issues listed are mostly bugs that will be figured out later. Isshin Ashina is unfinished and Owl Father's mist raven is a bug from the programs I used. By the time I'm writing this, most of this will be fixed by the next update. Thanks for playing!
Give Feedback
Mod feedback and issue report (2 comments)
The new miniboss ai are a refreshing hit, the improved ai now makes a lot of the easy mini-bosses respectful enemy with their own styles and makes their movement a lot less video-gamey. Samurai Generals with names now actually feels like a general-rank enemy instead of a brute in armor that probably can't defeat an Ashina fencer. Snake eyes absolutely wreck me with those grab faint that always feels too intentionally slow in vanilla game. The weaker 1-deathblow elite variations of the minibosses are also good ideas: Ashina cross fencer in Ashina castle, Lone Shadow in Hirata and the General Samurai before ogre. It makes the world feels more varied in that there isn't a bunch of super beefed-up bosses and mini-bosses while all other enemies are fodders with no gap in between.
Adding new enemies in maps is a great way to revamp stealth experiences, but some scenes kinda feel overcrowded as a result, in particular, the Samurai General arena after Ogre. The lone shadow helps even the fight, but the place just feels very crowded visually. It might be a good idea to reposition some enemy, or replace them with stronger ones like the Samura General before Ogre, either way, the direction is good and I'm looking forward to more map revamp in the future.
Posture recovery on successful Mikiri is something I never thought of but definitely makes sense, It's a powerful tool that I might not be able to beat the game without it, but it does feel bit too overpowered at the time against thrust-happy enemies, your posture would never break even without charm and bell unless you blocked or got hit. This is especially true in the inner Isshin fight, where I was able to block multiple attacks and survive, something that would never happen in normal Isshin where my posture bar is always full. Continue from Mikiri, there seems to be good potential in addition/changing existing skills to change the gameplay greatly. Some CA can benefit from these changes to be more viable, having a more specialized use, or synergize with other changes/addition of skills, CA, and possible new items. And if you feel like some of these changes might be too OP for their own good, you can always add a "hard mode" to this mod similar to the charmless mode to reduce/disable the changes for those seeking challenges.
Overall, I really like the direction this mod is going and there's potential for it to become a giant, well-made revamp mod in the future. I look forward to its official release and any future updates.
Now for some issue reports. Some of the following might be done with intention, but they do feel off IMO for various reasons, so I'll report them all as potential issues that need to be resolved.
1. Great Shinobi Owl's stomp execution move upon posture break happens so quickly that the move actually does not stomp on wolf when he's completely posture broken and triggers the kill animation, instead, the stomp counts as a normal hit that deals very little damage and knocks the wolf out of the stagger, allow the player to roll out of a kill move. If this is intended, the double-stomp move definitely looks very clumsy IMO.
2. Owl Father does not have the mist raven teleportation animation. I've already mentioned it in another thread, but I just noticed recently that the ground-to-air teleportation Owl performs when wolf is far away from him to perform a top-down strike doe shave its mist raven animation shown correctly, you might want to look into that.
3. Sword saint Isshin can occasionally be observed to run away from the player in the direction of front-left from the player's pov, or from Isshin's pov, moving towards his back-right direction. Isshin's posture bar usually goes down while he does this, but it does not looks like a retreating move but rather mistargeting on Isshin's AI.
4. Isshin Ashina phase 1's Ichimonji to fire slash faint does not have a variation where he actually performs Ichimonji, making this super long windup attack easy to interrupt with the player's own Ichimonji and deals tons of damage without repercussions. With all the faint variation attacks in the mod, it feels like this is a case where the author forgot to add the normal Ichimonji variation.
5. Some of Isshin Ashina's attack effect is also not showing in his phase 2: One mind's "thousand blade cut" attack does not have any effect animation, so is the final cut afterward. The Ichmonji follow by fire slash also does not have the spreading flame on the floor effect on the second slash