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have been on hinge before with almost the same profile for 4 months with zero likes/matches. tried to change photos and prompts, but all in vain. decided to switch apps 3 days ago, reusing all the photos and prompts from the old profile, yet no results. any reviews and/or suggestions are welcome (might be time to get off the app i presume (please excuse the bad cropping)).
i know this game has been out for years and everyone has already said everything but i don't care. i just sat through the purification ending again and i'm not okay so you're all getting a post.
first, the world. i don't think people talk about how genuinely beautiful this game is enough. like yes the combat, yes the bosses, we'll get there. but the setting? ashina in autumn with the red maples and the mist sitting in the valleys and the old stone statues half-buried in moss? i would walk around in this game just to look at it. there's a moment early on where you're jumping across rooftops at dawn and the whole castle is laid out below you and the light is doing something insane and i just stopped. held still for like a full minute. in a fromsoft game. where things are actively trying to kill me.
genichiro. i need to talk about genichiro because i think he's one of the best written characters in any game i've played and nobody gives him his flowers.
this man gave up everything for ashina, in such a human way. ashina took him in when he was nothing. he learned war. he became the best warrior they had. and then he watched it all start to crumble anyway and he just kept going. kept finding new terrible things he was willing to do. by the time you fight him properly he's used up his ethics, his body, probably his belief in himself, all of it, just feeding it into the furnace of "maybe ashina survives this." and it doesn't even work. it was never going to work. he knew that. he did it anyway.
when he kills himself at the end to summon his grandfather i wasn't even mad at him. i was just sad. i till to this date, never skip any cutscenes, especially this one, just to sit and appreciate him. he found one last thing he could sacrifice and he used it. that's the whole character. that's all he ever did.
and then there's gyoubu. ONIWA GYOBU MASATAKAAAA!!!!!. who the game tells you, if you read the lore, which you absolutely should, has been fighting the interior ministry's soldiers for days before you get there. maybe weeks. alone. on horseback. charging down armies by himself because someone has to hold the gate and everyone else is dead or gone.
and when you finally get to him he comes SCREAMING. announcing his own name to the hills. full gallop. completely spent, completely alone, and still so loud. that detail broke me. he's not defending a position that can be held. he just refuses to let it end quietly. the last stand deserves noise. i think about him more than i think about most boss fights in any game.
the combat i don't even need to explain to anyone here, you know what it is. but what i'll say is that it's the first time i've ever felt like i was actually sword fighting instead of just outlasting someone. the deflect system changes something in your brain. you stop thinking about your health bar and start listening. there's a rhythm to every boss and when you finally find it it feels like you earned something real.
okay, the purification ending. my favorite ending in any game. full stop.
every other ending in sekiro is about wolf surviving or transcending or being rewarded in some way. the purification ending is wolf figuring out on his own, because kuro would never ask this of him. that he can sever the dragon's heritage without kuro having to die for it. but wolf has to die instead. and he just does it. no speech. he finds the way and he takes it and that's it.
that IS wolf. that's who he is the entire game. he doesn't talk much. he doesn't monologue about loyalty or sacrifice. he just finds out what needs to happen and makes it happen, no matter what it costs him. the whole game you're fighting to survive, defying death twice, refusing to stay down and then in the ending that feels most true to him, he chooses to go so kuro doesn't carry the weight of a cursed immortal life.
it's not a tragic ending to me. it feels complete. wolf as a character is complete.
anyway i've been thinking about this for three days and needed to put it somewhere. if you've been on the fence about playing it just go. the first few hours are rough and genichiro will kill you approximately forty seven times but it's worth everything.