Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

FromSoftware's 2019 game looks like Dark Souls and plays almost nothing like it. There are no builds, no weapon choice and no summoning help: there is one katana, and the only real mechanic is posture. Blocking at the wrong time drains your guard, deflecting at the right moment drains theirs, and fights are won by staying inside an enemy's rhythm rather than by rolling out of it and waiting. That single change makes it the studio's most demanding game and its most learnable, because failure is almost always legible — you were early, or you tried to retreat. The Sengoku-era setting gives it a specific identity after a decade of dark fantasy, and the grappling hook makes traversal fast and vertical in a way the Souls games never were. Resurrection lets you stand back up mid-fight at a cost, which sounds forgiving and mostly functions as a way to punish panic. It won Game of the Year in 2019 and remains the hardest recommendation in the studio's catalogue to make casually.