There are no games that actually comes close to the parry system in Sekiro. There are many games that try to do it but fail. This one I really thought won't be able to do it until I met the end boss in the game. There the game started to shine and a game to get when it comes out for people yearning for the parry system from Sekiro.
Also, it has the Black Myth Wukong's perfect dodge thing too so that is also a good thing. A lot of the things about the stamina are later fixed with skill upgrades and when you get those upgrades it will start to make more sense why the stamina feels low atleast in the beginning areas of the game.

Good:

1. No chip damage when guard but the stagger when stamina breaks is brutal so it sort of balances it out.
   
2. No need to grind for a boss for better stats, you can just keep fighting the boss again and again and still earn points towards upgrades.
   
3. No losing your points when dying inside a boss arena. It gets taken outside for you to pick up.

Neutral and subject to change:

1. I found out I was running way too often and that was the cause of stamina depletion. Also later skill upgrades add a lot of functionality of recovering stamina.
   The stamina break is brutal. Even though I put a lot of points in stamina in the boss fight it felt like I was always out of stamina even after parrying continuously for a long time so much so that every time the boss was down I had no stamina to attack him at all and I was just watching the screen. Soon the battle moved from fighting the boss to fighting the stamina bar.
   I am fine with stamina. In both Elden Ring and Lies of P where it had to be managed just like here but due to the absolute stop the game puts you in, it’s much much more punishing here and so yeah it becomes a battle with the stamina bar a lot more.
   
2. Parry Timings are fine. It just takes a bit of practice to figure it out but I found it easier to learn than Sekiro.
   
   Due to the stop animation thing and since no game can be as good as Sekiro in terms of parrying(stop wishing that) the parries feel easier to do on heavy slow attack but can miss on lighter attacks.
   I am wondering did it also copy Lies of P where you have to wait for the parry animation to finish to parry quickly however even tapping guard parries so I am torn here. Will require more playing to confirm this.

Personal Dislikes but my review isn’t incorporating it. I am trying to not let these aspects bother me. Hopefully they don’t and I buy the game:

1. Stop animation: I don’t like stop animation in fighting games like you have seen in God Of War or Street Fighter where the animation just briefly stops(Not the same as delayed attacks in Elden Ring) before something is done. I like fluidity and that breaks it.
   
2. Comic Outlines: The black comic outline outside everyone like it was in The Walking Dead games is something I don’t personally like. I like it being as realistic as it can be but it wasn’t like that.
   
3. Game doesn’t pause.
   
   

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   Everything is in a playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9ovcBb781416ep3cwmbNnAwf4rCWxw8X
   All my reviews can be found on https://ni6hant.com/game-reviews/

Play this game not as a game but as a movie because that's what it is. Pick up a controller, keep the difficulty low and enable aim-assist. Because if you start to approach this game as anything but a movie, you will have the following experience:

This game made me question what a game really should be. If I have to keep tapping something for an animation to play on screen, is it gaming? I don't think so. Gaming is freedom, not just a narrative store. If we strip away the story and the character development or in short what makes a movie good, we are left with a very mediocre game.

Climbing Uncharted vs. Assassins Creed's climbing:

Yes, it's better than Assassins' Creed, or is it?

People love to complain about Assassins Creed including me because they changed their formula from a stealth based ninja type assassin to an RPG game to appeal to the masses and sell a ♥♥♥♥ load of things but remembering the first and second Assassins' Creed game I do miss that freedom on how I want to approach climbing. Check the section below in case you think I am saying that the climbing in Assassins game is any good, it's not. But what I mean to say it at least with AC there was some form of freedom. Here, everything is so so scripted that it felt more like a movie than actual game.

Lack-luster Climbing in games in general:

My major problem with this is there isn't much game to play actually is there? A big part of the game is climbing and it's nothing more than glorified animations. There is no skill involved. Every jump from one place to other isn't timed. It doesn't feel like climbing at all. If climbing was its core it should have been so much more.

Of the top of my head even just jumping from one ledge to the another should involve very precise timings. There should be multiple paths on how one can approach the climb and how things play out because that's what gaming is, isn't it?

Grappling rope should be so much more precise and so much more difficult then just pressing one button on your controller. I was on the highest available difficulty mind you

Lack of skill:

Sekiro is a perfect example of this. If you master the core of that game no matter what situation you're in, you are sort of ready with what to do and you develop that skill as you play the game. That's right, a game. Here, I could have started any level with zero experience and I still would have to sweat tear and blood if I wanted to lose. 

It feels like it's impossible to lose in this game. Every bad paths are blocked. You can't climb certain areas which aren't narrative drives. Everything is so so linear. The more I played this game the more I wanted to play Tomb Raider, not the newer reboots but the original 1,2,3,4 ones which don't look as great by today's standards but are great games.

The more I played this game the more I wanted to play games which were actually games.

Difficulty is a joke:

Also, I think in the name of difficulty every enemy's health was just increased by a lot. It used to take me six rifle shots to take down an unarmored enemy.

And don't even let me get started on armored enemies. I expected enemies to actually get smarter or handicap you someway so that you have to think or shoot better but all the higher difficulty does is add a lot more health to the enemies. This doesn't make sense.

Higher difficulty should also make climbing and shooting a lot more difficult but a lot more free too. 

Cutscenes disguised as button mashers:

Every so often I would have to move something or pick a heavy object and there was just one button prompt on the screen. What's the point of this? There is no punishment if you don't press it quickly enough. And I see a pattern with games targeted for console.

Console primary games vs. PC games:

I have seen this with many Sony Games that will show some cool looking scene where my only job would be QTEs and such things. Earlier I pretty much took console gaming to be as competitive as PC gaming, or even if not so competitive, then at least a sense of freedom and what one can do with it. The more and more games which were primarily made for consoles I play, the more I realize there is a certain beauty to PC-first games. I just got strongly reminded of IGI. You know what, I am going to stick to games with skill now. I am done with these story rich games that aren't really games in the first place.