General Sekiro

I highly recommend giving Ongbal a watch, he's got some great experimental fights against modded bosses: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdGyaKUgO9hM2C0cH-Xe8LQ

He really opened my eyes to some funky sub-weapon applications. Downside generally being that the sub-weapons are kind of sub-optimal compared to just playing normally, but it looks really sweet and it's fun to see all the abilities put to use.

I really love the boss-fights, I the later boss-rush additions really played well into that as well.

>Ongbal
Wow, they're good haha. I hadn't even equipped the umbrella yet, neat usage against a flurry of sword strikes. Thanks for the link...I will certainly check some of this stuff out!

Definitely give him a look yeah! You can also check out SBK's vids for more 'optimal' routes.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzGRD0m3lv6hCfDqdgwYPag/search?query=sekiro

When I watch those kinds of modded Sekiro playthrough videos, I always wonder if there's a way to modify the player controller options while adjusting small features of the enemies because I think the ingredients are ready.

Even though the optimal playstyle is pressing normal R1 or L1 at right time, there ARE skillsets that can be useful for crowd-controlling. (The mortal blade skill and the spinny spin move that was added with the boss rush mode) They just cost the resource that doesn't replenish in the fast phase (the paper doll thing) and there are only three prosthetics and one sword skill available at a time. If I can make a mod for it, I would add additional inputs (like L1+R2 or L1 + Y or L1 + B) to allocate more weapon skills, and remove the cost. (of course, the damage of the skills would be reduced alongside with it for the balance)

I would also like to make iframe of dodge (both dash and jump) stay last longer so that players don't get punished for mistimed positioning while fighting multiple enemies.  
 
For the enemies, I think the animation sets are already alright. When you think about it, every enemies have much much larger movesets than the normal enemies in earlier FROM games. The problems are that they block too much and they ALWAYS track horizontally (sometimes even vertically) while attacking. Meaning that every enemy attack is designed to be blocked, and every player's attack inputs are destined to be stuck after the first strike so that aggressive approaches to the group fight will always lead to the demise of Wolf. That's why 99% of the players go defensive.

But I think, if FROM did the development rightly, there should be properties that determine the power of movement tracking or the rate of blocking movement. Imagine the Guardian Ape or Samurai duo boss fights where you don't get rumbled by constant tracking or combo cuts. Those fights would have remained as interesting crowd control challenges rather than the piles of frustration we got in the end.

That was just my rambling.

Interesting you bring up Sekiro, a friend and me were discussing it again the other day. I think the boss-fights are the highlight since they're deep encounters where (especially post patch) you can tinker with all sorts of combat options. Sure you can just go the typical Parry+Punish style, but there's multiple uses for the fan-shield and poison dagger, or other setups like using Butterfly to nuke Isshin etc.

The big thing holding it back I agree is the lack of multiple options - there's a mod out in the wild IIRC that allows you to 'style switch' akin to DMC, giving Wolf access to most of his tools on the fly.

Regarding cost, perhaps they could've changed it that you can do two types of inputs. I.e. tapping the input gives you the 0-cost version, which barely deals damage or loses some functionality (like hyper armour on Mortal Blade), while holding the button drains the resource. Or perhaps the other way around, holding it down doesn't drain the resource, but forces Wolf in a buildup animation etc.

Having the regeneration be so random never sat right with me either looking back. This isn't like Ninpo in Ninja Gaiden where it's a "super" resource, these are points used for basic abilities. So you'd want them to constantly regenerate, perhaps just have them cost more, but each block gives you 1 back and each parry gives you 2 etc.