Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a solitary experience by design. The combat is at its best when facing a foe one-on-one, trading blows and parries while trying to throw each other off balance. But if you thought it was missing something by forgoing the asynchronous multiplayer of From Software siblings like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, an enterprising modder has just the thing for you.
Independent developer Luke Yui yesterday released Sekiro Online, a mod that allows up to six players to join up for samurai-based hijinks. This includes both player vs. player combat by way of Dark Souls-esque invasions and summoning friends as phantoms for cooperative play. Yui is quick to note, however, that this isn’t an “identical online experience” to previous From Software games, likening the mod to “playing Dark Souls with 5000 ping.”
The mod also has an interesting method of handling disparities in player levels. Invaders and phantoms will always scale to the local player’s level to ensure as wide a matchmaking pool as possible. “For example, if you have 40 attack power and your opponent has 1 attack power, they will hit you as if they have 40 and you’ll hit them as if you have 1,” Yui explained. While this may sound strange at first, it’s currently the best compromise Yui’s found to balance this extremely PVE-oriented game for multiplayer.
Sekiro Online only works with the Steam version of the original game at this point, and will likely be pretty buggy for the foreseeable future. That said, Yui plans to release regular updates and patches to improve the experience. It took months to get this far, so bear with them!
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