I know this wild observation comes almost exactly a year after its release date, but hear me out: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a hard game. I know. After struggling for what felt like days against the damn Guardian Ape, I never got further than the fight against two of the blasted monkeys. But what if every enemy I faced suddenly turned into the game’s final boss, Isshin Ashina?
Honestly, just the question brings me down in nervous sweats, but it’s what Redditor Kahei_X decided to create for masochistic reasons known only to themselves. And every enemy really means every enemy. A room full of bugs and poisonous lizards that only posed a minor annoyance before are transformed into some of the hardest sections of the game. The congregation of monkeys in the area just before the Guardian Ape fight is just a mess of ultra-hard foes, all requiring three death blows and extraordinary crowd-control skills to down. Understandably Kahei_X mostly charges and cheeses their way through these extremely tough sections in the video above.
On the other hand, the infamous boss fights for which FromSoftware are well known are actually quite easy. Well, easy in a context of a mode where every last hostile represents the biggest test the game has to offer. Now fights against Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa and the Guardian Ape give you the space to tackle the powerful final boss. What’s more, this smaller, horseless replacement is a little less intimidating at first, as ‘Sword Saint Isshin Oniwa’ can just be found chilling near the grey mist, rather than charging in as he bellows his name.
This stupidly tough mode was created using the Sekiro Enemy and Item Randomizer available on Nexus Mods. Considering how far I still have left to go in the game I think I’ll wait until I’ve finished it normally, but it sounds a like a fun and surprising means of freshening up subsequent runs. Swapping all enemies for the endgame boss would increase the difficulty of any game profoundly, but doing it in Sekiro is just silly.
There are easier Sekiro mods to try, of course. For instance there’s a Sekiro easy mod if you’re having as much trouble with the Wolf’s adventure as I am, but you can also tackle a boss-only playthrough with the Sekiro Boss Rush mod. But when I think about the game being full of enemies I wasn’t even skilled enough to reach normally, my struggles against two monkeys suddenly pale in comparison.