No matter what side you landed on when discussing the difficulty of FromSoftware’s action RPG Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the creators of the game left it pretty clear that gamers would have to come up with their own solution if they wanted something easier. If you were one such gamer, the time is now. A modder has created “Sekiro The Easy” and it is available for download.
Twisted Voxel reported on the mod, which changes the player’s abilities, enemy stats, how the world impacts the player, and items. The report says that Sekiro has become the fastest-selling new IP by FromSoftware and, potentially, this new mod will open up the door for players that purchased the game and gave up or have yet to try it out. Here’s the full list of changes the mod puts in place:
FromSoftware is the game developer behind the Souls games, which are the inspiration for the “souls-like” genre of games. Demon’s Souls and the Dark Souls series are all notorious for their challenging, skill-based action and Sekiro is an original spin on the formula like the PlayStation exclusive Bloodborne from the same developers. Sekiro is significantly faster paced than the other games and requires aggressive gameplay along with quick reaction speeds, which led to discussions about difficulty and accessibility.
This mod addresses one of the topics that sprung up around Sekiro but the other is something that would be tough for a modder to do versus the developers themselves. In one of our previous reports, AbleGamers COO and “Trending Gamer” award nominee Steve Spohn broke down why Sekiro needed an equal mode and not simply something that dials down the difficulty.
Spohn stated that Sekiro and Dark Souls both can be made more accessible without harming the creator’s intent. A higher degree of difficulty has essentially become a feature in FromSoftware’s Souls games, so the studio’s president, Hidetaka Miyazaki responded by expressing that the studio didn’t want to add an easy mode “because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment.”
Creating an equal mode gives players with different input needs a way to experience Sekiro as intended and, hopefully, will be something FromSoftware considered in future games, potentially even in Elden Ring.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?