Rise of the Ronin

In Yokohama. After you meet the Samurai Rebel Alliance one of them tells you to trot off and meet this guy at his dojo.

I’ve merrily fought my way through everything else that’s come my way, but I’ve just had to leave this. I’m lvl 12 and his mission is listed as lvl 7 and he still completely kicks my ass. Guy doesn’t take a breath!

I had a major plot boss fight last night. Literally kicked my arse.. I couldn't parry for shit. I managed to just squeeze through, because they give you two additional characters haha.

I'm enjoying this a lot, initially I knocked it down to easy to avoid frustration while I found my feet, but back up on the middle difficulty now and it's fine.
However I have just parked it after getting nailed a few times in the dojo mentioned above.

I'm guessing there's going to be some romance options later, with all the bamboo sheaths I'm picking up.

Starting to think this may actually have to be my next game after DD2. You guys are really selling it. I should have trusted more in Team Ninja.

And bamboo sheaths to romance with!

(blame trafford for that one)

You weren't kidding about this, just finally checked it out. I beat him but only because I happened to have a good technique against him on my Odachi and somehow I found enough time to scarf medicinal pills after every barrage - it took me all nine pills I had available and I beat him with a sliver of health left 

Definitely the hardest battle so far, quite out of the blue.

Anyway, I then tried to relax by taking photos of lost dogs.

I may have to go back and read the tutorial about effective and ineffective weapons. I think I remember something popping up, but paid little attention to it.

Its more to do with the combat styles than the actual weapons. You can assign 3 styles to each weapon once you unlock them. Most enemies will be weaker to one of the styles. When you're locked onto an enemy hold RB and you'll see the little style thing to the right. Each style will have either an up, down or sideways arrow to tell the effectiveness of each style (it shows on their health bar as well).

Can make a pretty huge difference if you use an effective style, the parrys and martial skills are a lot more powerful.

The boss fight at the end of the US Consulate is a pretty huge skill check. Kind of a "so you haven't mastered parry yet? Well fuck you"

Yeah, I gave her a couple of goes the other night. It’s either her or dojo guy now :’(

The timing of parries in her fight is insane though. And then they throw in a Gatling gun half way through.

Urgh, I may have broke the game a little.
I too created a foxy side kick. Then I may not have been paying attention when she went missing.

Later on, back at the Long House I was messing with the face changing tools and went full Trans, damn I looked hot.

Obviously a bit uncomfortable when we met up at the embassy again.

Patch has improved things quite a bit. No more frame rate drops in performance mode and looks like its running at a higher resolution. It's kind of a nice looking game now.

14 hours in, I'm enjoying this a lot. I feel like I'm picking up the parry timing for enemies quite well and now I'm accustomed to the second red flash, seeing an enemy charge up an unblockable attack has gone from 'oh no' to a Nioh 2 style 'now you fucked up'. My favourite weapon right now is probably the dao, the two styles I have are so good for pressuring enemies and I really like the uppercut attack.

I did the consulate battle first go, but then I was also swapping between characters constantly to deflect aggro and make sure I'm always on someone with lots of stamina left.