It wasn't all smooth sailing. I even took a month break thinking I might not come back to it, but boy I'm glad I did.
I'm new to souls like, only having played Elden Ring before this (which was amazing). Sekiro was a game that I picked up afterwards, and struggled with early on. It felt like a departure to everything I'd learned in gaming to this point. You don't want to dodge, you want to deflect. Holding block helps you recover. Parrying will beat a boss quicker than trying to drive down their health. Once these things start to click, defeating bosses feels like a true accomplishment.
Fighting the end game bosses had my heart rate going like no other boss battles I can remember. Elden Ring had some memorable and awe inspiring bosses, but the feeling in Sekiro when you're about to break the posture of a boss for a final deathblow was indescribable.
If there's anyone left who hasn't given Sekiro a go, do yourself a favour. It takes some time for it to click, but when it does, it's something special.
Which Owl? I spent a lot of time on a couple bosses, sometimes it clicks and sometimes it doesn't. If you keep at it you'll eventually get into a pattern.
Pretty sure it's the first one. When he asks if you want to side with him or the child, and he attacks if you choose the child. If there's an earlier encounter, I must've missed it.
No that's the first encounter. He's hard, but it's just a matter of learning the move set. You can do it!
I spent over an hour on one of the other bosses. I'm not good. I still managed to do it haha.
You can also look up some guides. Not to cheese him, but to help you get a look at the move sets so you aren't in the thick of it while you're trying to learn them.
I just spent a couple of hours, maybe more, on one boss. I'm not used to this genre in general (souls or any combat games really) and I'm determined to do it without looking up any guides or videos or anything.
It is so damn satisfying to go from "What?? I can't even get close, I dont seem to be able to deflect or dodge these attacks and I can't tell one move from the other seemingly infinite amount of moves wtf" to just flowing through the first phase on the way to just barely getting through the rest alive
Owl took me a while too. The main thing that helped for me was going back to the drawing board on a lot of his moves, and experimenting - I won't go into specifics unless you ask me to, but there are a lot more openings for attacking him than I initially thought