Bloodborne vs Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Combat
Both Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice put a spin on Souls-style combat, although Sekiro to a much larger degree. Both games are focused on intense high-speed action, but Sekiro gives you far more defensive options than Bloodborne.
In Sekiro, the bread and butter of your moveset is the deflection technique, allowing you to time your block just right to deflect an attack and cause massive damage to the enemy’s posture.
The entire Posture mechanic heavily plays into everything, and although you have a dodge button in Sekiro, parrying and attacking at the right time is used far more. At the same time, Sekiro only gives you one main weapon to use, but a variety of different Shinobi Prosthetics that have varying uses, like throwing a shuriken or blasting a cone of flame straight ahead.
Meanwhile, Bloodborne sticks closer to the tried and true Souls-style of combat, but puts almost all of the emphasis on offense. With no guard button you have to rely on dodging and using keyframes, but Bloodborne’s most brilliant mechanic is the Rally system.
Whenever you’re damaged by an enemy your health will deplete with a grey bar, and you can gain back a portion of the health you’ve lost by jumping right back in and attacking the enemy. Basically, you can minimize the amount of damage you take by attacking, but therein open yourself up to more damage.
It’s a brilliant system that makes Bloodborne’s already nail-biting combat even tenser. Combine that with the various different weapons and guns, stats, and multiplayer systems, and you’ve got one of the best action-RPGs ever made.
Don’t get us wrong, Sekiro’s combat is amazing, but Bloodborne’s tense risk-reward system just barely manages to keep it on top.
Advantage: Bloodborne
