I was at a wall with isshin on my first playthrough for 5 WHOLE YEARS and after playing through elden ring and ds3 again I decided I’d finally give sekiro another shot and i BEAT THAT FUCKERS ASS WITH NO SPIRIT EMBLEMS,NO BUFFS,NO CHEESE NONE OF IT. I FEEL LIKE A LIBERATED FUCKING GOD RN
I tried it, but I kept getting my ass kicked.
In ER I learned to dodge, and was enough to beat it. I tried parrying in ER, to absolutetely no avail.
So I guess I have to learn to parry next.
Thank you for encouragement, I will try it as my next game again.
For the record the beginning of the game is way harder than it probably should be and some early bosses are actually annoying. The chained ogre comes to mind.
However once you go through with it and finish the game I shit you not, you can start from scratch and wipe the main bosses so hard it’s not even a contest. This is what I mean about the lack of significant grinding. Yes you get more heal potions and a bit more damage/HP but the biggest thing you get is skill and knowledge of the game, and if you play it right you get that even if you are dying to the same boss.
As a game it also very much encourages thoughtful actions, i.e. it heavily punishes button mash/spamming. For some bosses you will also need to be quite bold and agressive.
When you get stuck on a boss check YouTube for the get good guide on that boss and you’ll see it’s not that hard, especially once you have the formula. Then you just have to execute but that was the fun bit.