CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

I'm pretty sure I mentioned on the podcast the other day that MorningLord has returned to Penny Arcade.  MorningLord was a regular member of the forum community there for years, always sharing tips and tricks on the actual rules of combat games, from Hulk: Ultimate Destruction to Devil May Cry to Bloodborne - and it turns out he left his post for a while to go off and help write the official guide to Sekiro.  

Well he's back, and yesterday he posted a video showing him defeating the Duel in the Drowning Marsh on hard mode and lethal mode, both attempting to showcase the entirety of the Straw Hat's move list, and both without ever taking any damage.

So I watched that video yesterday and was like "what the fuck."  And then, in my current lethal-difficulty run of Ghost of Tsushima, last night, I came across the duel and thought... well I can try, right?  Challenge myself, right?  Unlike MorningLord, I would handicap myself a bit further by never using any of Jin's more-powerful mythic arts like Heavenly Strike or Dance of Wrath.  

It took at least a half hour - and I succeeded several times before this example, but I wanted to have a video that showed both a perfect dodge and a perfect parry - and here it is ^.^

As soon as I managed that, I rode across the crimson fields to the sea of red lilies, and did the exact same thing for the Duel Among The Spider Lilies - but the Drowning Marsh practice had clearly paid off, because this took no more than 15 minutes.

It's okay.  It's okay to be amazed at how awesome I am.