u/cezannesdoubt

Not hopeful there'll be a solution, but asking just in case. I was in the midst of stepping through the portal to the final area when the game crashed. When I re-loaded, I was back in the Theatre. I can run around and talk to NPCs, and even see the final area in the knot's fast travel menu, but there's no prompt to travel there. Am I fucked, or is there a way to fix this? (I'm on PS5, so re-loading past saves doesn't seem to be an option.)

I'm so angry - I just spent a couple of hours wrapping up the side quests and had actually unlocked the true ending (this is my 1st playthrough). The game has issues, but I persisted because I did really enjoy it for the most part and thought there was a vision here worth. Fuck it, I guess.

I'd heard so much about this bossfight for years that it feels surreal to have actually played through this myself. It really lives up to the hype - especially because it was so much fun! Not something I ever thought I'd say about a four-phase fight where each stage brings out fancy new moves and weapons.

I can't stop thinking about how effective the fight is at using combat as a mode of storytelling - something the whole game as been great at, to be honest. Gameplay itself contributes as much to our understanding of the world and the characters as any moment of dialogue or written piece of lore we find. All of the enemies, especially the bosses, have so much personality in their fighting style.

That really reached a new height at the end. There was always a sense of melancholy and determination to Genichiro's fighting style, but now there was desperation, too. The black mortal blade not only never could have helped him, but was a part of his downfall - in the story and the combat, where using it made him vulnerable to attack; his single-minded focus on the wrong solution meant he wasn't watching his back. I'm so glad I got to face him one last time at this point (yes, he's an annoying checkpoint in some ways, but by that point it's really just a quick skillcheck and dance).

And there's so much character in Isshin's fighting style. His first phase was so entertaining. I loved the humour that came through - the cheeky walk to the side that ended with a perilous thrust (which was so satisfying to mikiri). The new moves in his second phase show that, as he says, his blood is boiling; this is the closest we get to seeing the Isshin who was so fearsome and revered that even him hanging on to life by a thread was enough to make the invasion forces wait. The final phase sees him lose himself in the fight. Like Genichiro, his power here is his undoing; the lightning attacks make him immensely vulnerable. (He pulled that on me three times in quick succession and pretty much took himself out without me needing to do much beyond redirect.) This phase also shows, again, the futility of Genichiro's plan: the thing he resurrected is not ultimately Isshin at his full might, but a ghost of his former self, an entity that lives to serve a single function - one that it can't fulfil because of the very terms of Genichiro's sacrifice; a version of Isshin that fights Sekiro at all costs is going to destroy itself in the process. Breathtaking, and so well-constructed from both a gameplay and narrative standpoint.

This is the first time I've finished the main story of a From Software game, so naturally I've just re-downloaded Bloodborne to give that another shot... although I do still have one thing left to do in Sekiro first. Gotta go meet an old friend (fittingly, in his old armor) and take on the DoH.