Sekiro isn't a souls-like but close enough that people lump it in with From's other titles. I suck at this game and I love it.
This game takes time to learn, not mentally, you can know exactly what to do but you won't get the feel for it until somewhere around half-way in. This game is actually much more fun on the second playthrough.
Looking at the game based on specific categories
Visuals
This game feels colorful compared to most Fromsoft games but still dark enough to give excellent vibes. The game is nearly 8 years old and still looks excellent. The animations are top notch and the art direction is excellent. The white snake is an example of all of these. Firstly, someone actually looked at a snake when designing this one, it's well modeled and well animated. It's got front fangs reminiscent of a viper but looks almost pythonish, but it's a fantasy creature so I can forgive the weird anatomy, that said it still looks like a scaled up actual snake. This attention to detail is just a great example of From's art design.
Difficulty
Somewhere between trivial and impossible. Early on it feels more like the latter, later the latter then the former again. It's not that the difficulty is all over the place really, a second playthrough confirms that, more that there is a learning curve to understand the combat.
Bosses
Generally excellent with let's say 1 really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ (optional) one and 1 that's just not very good. The only complaint you might have is that most of the bosses are some variation of "Dude with a sword." But, well, it's a Samurai game, of course that's the case.
Level Design
Honestly, excellent. It has a near perfect balance of linearity to open exploration. Areas feel rewarding to explore but still feel as though you might stumble upon a secret. It's not quite as interconnected as say DS1's first half, but is very consistently good.
Controls
Amazing once you get to grips with them. Don't play it like a souls game and you'll like it a lot more.
Story
The easiest to follow Fromsoft story in recent memory. You can actually figure it out on your own, especially on a second playthrough. It's well written, well voice acted (At least in JP with Eng subs) and there's enough here to get genuinely invested without reading every item description.
Performance
Good, though I did have some issues with exclusive fullscreen on windows where it would have weird lag spikes, running it borderless solved this. In Linux borderless had issues but exclusive worked fine. It's a solid PC port even if it won't go over 60fps.
Overall ->
Looks 9/10
Level Design 10/10
Story 9/10
Difficulty 7/10 (in terms of pacing, curve and feel)
Bosses 8/10
Performance 6/10 (Performed fine but had some issues running on PC)
