Sektori

I plan to review Sektori twice, once now when it's my current obsession and I'm starting to connect all the reasons it works so well, and again, an update, when I 100% it. I don't typically achievement hunt due to burnout platinum hunting during the pandemic, but if I care enough about how it feels to take the journey, I'll give it my all. It's a really special thing to experience a game that actively hates you but is simultaneously inviting you to succeed; to push for the win with the promise of incremental development of skills and finesse. Much has been made of Sektori's difficulty, almost to the point of flat-out submission to not recommend it. I don't think this is a weak opinion: Sektori is hard. Very hard. It's common to see celebrations of passing the easiest difficulty in a relative time frame of between 20-40 hours. On easy difficulty. Instances like this remind me that difficulty is an arbitration; how the measure of challenge actually has very little to do with player estimation. This is why I think the Dark Souls games get the treatment of "It's hard until you make it." The difference is that Sektori continues to be hard even after you make it, and I think that's one of the most refreshing qualities about it. I, too, have yet to pass the elusive final boss, but I came very close just now and even though I felt I needed to put it down, the gears are still whirring in my mind as to how I'll do better next time. Because contrary to the ridiculous amount of visual stimuli, the key to improvement-and by that metric self satisfaction-is to become intimately familiar with strategy. I might be waxing poetic, but Sektori is war, and you are the commander of a hopeless starship pitted against odds that are only in your favour so much as you are willing to burn the code of combat into your prefrontal cortex. Effective positioning, strafing and utilisation of a seemingly simple but rich upgrade pool that is only accessible to a reasonable degree if you take calculated risks will be the difference between a quick death and the welcoming of a flow state that is dangerously euphoric (This is one of those "do this instead of crack" games, and one of the few I've felt it so completely in). Still, you WILL get your ass handed to you, but it doesn't matter. Sektori offers a bevy of exciting variety modes alongside it's campaign to extend the punishment, and they are all very good, taking those afforementioned upgrades and making them the focus of modes that will actually help improve your proper use of them when you try to take on the campaign once more. I recommend every mode Sektori offers for both diversity of play style and continued development of the skills it demands. On top of that excellently emasculating/emovariating core gameplay, the crazy visuals that feel like an acid trip on Fremont Street are passionately hooking up with the most deliciously aggressive psytrance/hardstyle/rave n' bass electronic score you could imagine, creating a trifecta of engaging qualities that actually make you want to put devoted time into breaking down the intricacies of how to survive in Sektori. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, the bosses demand so much of you that it can become demoralising to the point of sometimes souring a run, but I also can't wait to get better at fighting them cleanly. For what it's worth now, nearly 14 hours in, I have seen everything Sektori offers, and yet I've barely scratched the surface of what I can offer it: that's what makes me want to stick around. I'll see you in a couple hundred hours when I've finished everything.