So, FINALLY beat the game last night! I played it at launch last year and liked it but found the combat very frustrating and lost interest half-way through the game. Decided to give the game another shot and glad I did----found myself enjoying it a lot more now. Really a great game and easily my favorite From Software game this gen (I'm not a big Soulsborne fan overall). BUT, I still largely have a love/hate relationship with the combat design. Some things are awesome, but other aspects of the design are maddeningly frustrating/off the mark. It makes me really hope they do a Sekiro 2 someday as the potential is there for something amazing.
I have been pondering all day what makes Sekiro combat still not top tier IMO (as much as I love the game now, I still can't believe how many people seem to prop up Sekiro as having the best combat design ever). In my opinion it has been way over-hyped as being somehow the pinnacle of action design.
Here are in my view some of the key flaws in Sekiro's combat design:
The combat system is basically built almost entirely around parrying and filling up the enemy's posture meter. For what it is, it does it well but it is a very restrictive and rigid system that basically forces players to always play the game a certain way. Like Royta has so well said, the combat is more about just learning enemy attack patterns and not really experimenting with the combat options. Yes, there are various prosthetic tools but honestly many of them are useless or really only useful in very specific situations so there is not much reward or incentive to be creative in combat. It ultimately just comes down to parrying successfully again, and again, and again...CLANG, CLANG, CLANG....
Which leads to the next issue---there is no intrinsic reward/satisfaction in pulling off most attacks, a parry or counter move in Sekiro. Yes, it can certainly feel good to do (love the deathblow animations). But, given you have to do it SO much it takes a lot of the reward out of doing the action/technique itself in that moment. Since the focus is so much on the posture meter, and not on the strengths, weaknesses, and rewards of the combat techniques/moves themselves, it can end up feeling tedious as you slog away to get the posture meter up. Clang, clang, clang, clang..... There is also often very little response in the enemy animations if you successfully pull off a parry, counter, counterstrike, etc....they will just keep swinging away at you as if you have done nothing. This again just kills the sense of reward within the gameplay itself in doing a certain move.
In general, Sekiro has very odd animations both Wolf's and enemy hit response animations (or lack thereof). There is often as I said very little enemy animation/response to Wolf's attacks. Wolf's animations/sword swings are also imo overly large and slow/sluggish swings with these big wind ups. The animations are well done but they are just not crisp and fast, which is key in good sword combat. Also, it is just a personal preference, but I really dislike the sound/feel of the katana in Sekiro....when Wolf strikes enemies it sounds like a baseball bat with no sense of the cutting power of a katana.
Anyway, those are just a few of my issues with Sekiro. From a fundamental design perspective, the game could not decide if it wanted to be Tenchu or a Soulsborne game, and it suffered from that imo. Still an excellent game though!