Stamina is the most common of the three beneath a wide umbrella cast across FromSoftware games. Posture and poise are more modern iterations of stamina, and have been expanded to meet the contemporary expectations of a new IP. Players love Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne variably, and each game is different in many ways. But whether a FromSoftware game centers on stamina, posture, or poise, it is one of the most important features in the player’s UI to micromanage. If posture was expanded in any way, it would need to still adhere to its respective game’s identity.
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Sekiro’s Posture is Nearly Perfect for its Combat
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice does a lot to break away from FromSoftware’s Souls-like mold and create emergent gameplay. Originally a successor to the Tenchu IP, Sekiro was always intended to be different in terms of its narrative and which mythologies would be featured.
But its changes to basic combat systems were the most significant, such as its newly revamped posture system. Posture is Sekiro’s definitive gameplay feature, supplanting stamina completely and only regarding the precision and mastery of thoughtful katana strikes and deflections. Because there is no stamina bar, players can sprint, jump, grapple, or attack endlessly, which creates phenomenal momentum throughout the game.
Instead, the player and their opponent enemies are given posture bars, similar to the recent Sifu’s own Structure bar, that are affected when deflecting or parrying incoming attacks. The posture bar rises and lowers based on these actions, which tempers aggression while also rewarding it since players can deplete the enemy’s posture bar faster by standing toe-to-toe with them and masterfully parrying consecutive attacks.
Mini-bosses and bosses all have representative lives as Deathblow icons near their health bar to illustrate how many times the player will need to perform a deathblow on them in order to kill them. Killing a boss can be achieved if players either deplete their health bar, as is the traditional method, or by first maxing out their posture bar and leaving them vulnerable to a critical blow. This makes for satisfying combat that is unique from other FromSoftware games, but it is unlikely that FromSoftware would return to such a stark system in its traditional Souls-like titles.
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Posture in FromSoftware Games Has Become More Lenient
Early Dark Souls installments are a clear demonstration of how ruinous stamina can be, and how a hit-and-run mentality is embraced due to only being able to land a singular hit on most enemies or bosses before the player needs to evade an attack. Having the stamina bar depleted in the middle of a mob ambush or during a boss fight is devastating and often leads to a stance- or guard-break, where the player-character will lose balance and be left open to attacks. This affects PvP as well as ordinary PvE.
If players are trying out Dark Souls games after having played Elden Ring, for instance, this degradation of stamina systems will be made even more alarming. Poise, as it is called in Elden Ring, is not a perfect system.
But it presents many options within gameplay that may have hidden values players are unaware of, and players have likely been taking advantage of posture and poise damage while they were unbeknownst to it being referred to as that. Gigantic, ancient Golems typically have glowing weak points on their hands and feet that cause them to stagger if players strike them enough times or with enough damage.
Further, certain Ashes of War in Elden Ring such as Flame of the Redmanes deal poise damage and make it easier for enemies to stagger, opening them up to critical ripostes. Stamina is also not depleted when players are outside combat and freely roaming Elden Ring’s Lands Between.
If stamina management is considered, Elden Ring has found a way to still make encounters treacherous if players make a wrong move, but there are more options than there were before for players to also use the enemy’s posture or poise against them. Options are all players want in action-RPGs such as Elden Ring, and it truly opens up the possibility for players to explore different builds and not feel hobbled by a severe lack of stamina.
How FromSoftware Could Expand Upon its Posture System
If FromSoftware was to expand upon its already nuanced posture systems, it could perhaps attempt a blend of posture, poise, and stamina systems from Sekiro and Elden Ring. This way, players would be responsible for managing stamina at the same time as posture, and one could affect the other to determine a balance in combat.
Regardless of how posture is expanded in a new title, it must feel unique to that game’s identity. It could be argued that future FromSoftware games should implement the posture bar system from Sekiro, but stamina is likely always going to be a part of FromSoftware’s Souls-like formula, and so if it follows its Souls-like genre it will almost assuredly feature stamina, no matter how refined it is.
Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring would admittedly not feel like the same games without a fundamental stamina bar or posture bar to keep players’ actions and decisions in combat in check. Stamina is a constant reminder that players are far inferior to the enemies they face, at least early on, and dictates precisely what players will do from moment-to-moment in combat.
Drinking an Estus flask to replenish health rather than evading or attacking is also an example of an action that players must integrate into their split-second decision-making, and all of these systems come together to create a combat system that is at times infuriating and at times gratifying. It may depend entirely on what kind of game FromSoftware makes next; indeed, nobody might have anticipated Sekiro and the gameplay changes it made, so it is just as plausible that FromSoftware comes up with another emergent system for a new IP in the future.
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