I played Elden Ring for the first time last year and fell in love. I played a few other FromSoft titles and life got in the way early in my Sekiro journey. I just picked it back up about 2 weeks ago and played it every spare minute I had. I eventually got to Sword Saint Isshin and almost gave up.I tried to work through this boss fight in small play sessions as to avoid getting frustrated. I did it with no prosthetics because I was too lazy to farm for spirit emblems and I parried through the last 2 phases. I saw some videos about kiting and baiting thrusts or using the umbrella and that just felt cheesy and I didn’t even have the umbrella unlocked. I was eventually no-hitting phases 1 & 2 and often entering phase 4 with 7-8 gourd charges. Phase 4 was sloppy as I only made it there a handful of times. It was harder than any other boss I’ve fought by a good margin, including Malenia.What a journey. Easily landing in my top 5 games of all time list.