Watch Sekiro beaten in under an hour by an absolute madman

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, you may have heard, is a very hard game. We said as much in our Sekiro review, and anyone who's played it will tell you it can be teeth-grindingly, toe-curlingly, eye-twitchingly brutal. But just as surely as the sun rises in the east, where there's a game kicking everyone's ass, there's a speedrunner who can make it look easy. Today that speedrunner is danflesh111, who recently beat Sekiro in just 50 minutes and 52 seconds. 

Dan was gunning for any Any% record, so he only had to clear the minimum requisite bosses and the final boss, but it's still a staggeringly impressive run. Hell, if you take Dan's completion time of 50:52 and stick a comma in there, you get 5,052, also known as the average number of times most players will die while playing Sekiro. Death animations take a couple of seconds apiece, so with some quick napkin math, we can deduce that most players will spend more time dying than Dan spent beating the game. Speedrunners, man. 

The really scary thing is that speedrunners will undoubtedly shave minutes off Dan's already impressive time in the near future. The great Sekiro speedrunning race has only just begun, after all. According to Speedrun.com, Dan holds the current Any% record, with German player OddBod roughly 30 minutes behind at 1:19:38. And that's just Any% - who knows what glitches and tools speedrunners will come up with to create wild new brackets.

I can't guarantee that our Sekiro tips will lead you to a one-hour run, but I can guarantee they'll help you stay alive and get the most out of this immaculate action RPG. 

Sekiro walkthrough | Sekiro tips | Sekiro Dragon rot | Sekiro Prayer Beads | Sekiro Gourd seeds | Sekiro bosses| Sekiro endings| Sekiro Snap Seeds | Sekiro Shinobi Prosthetic tools

Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

Latest in Action
Tomb Raider
5 years after Avengers, 2 years after its last layoffs, and who knows how long before Perfect Dark and Tomb Raider return, Crystal Dynamics announces another round of layoffs
Naoe looks over at a dense, lush, green forest in Assassin's Creed Shadows from a viewpoint
Getting Assassin's Creed Shadows on PS5 and Xbox Series X was all about adding "dynamism" to the open world, but the devs seem most proud about the trees
Naoe and Yasuke walk in the sunset in a screenshot from Assassin's Creed Shadows
Following Assassin's Creed Shadows controversy, Baldur's Gate 3 publishing director says "every big AAA game could be better," but players shouldn't be mad "just because some dude told you to"
Assassin's Creed Shadows Wanted Status
How to remove Wanted status in Assassin's Creed Shadows
Naoe kills a target with a black and white filter over the camera highlighting the red of blood spray in Assassin's Creed Shadows, with an On The Radar orange frame
Assassin's Creed Shadows "has a little bit of Tarantino flavor", but its real secret ingredient is intrigue: "It's almost like you're watching an episode of Shogun"
God of War
20 years later, God of War's original monster art has been revealed: behold this army of stick figures slapped on a whiteboard, no clue Kratos is coming for them
Latest in News
Pillars of Eternity
10 years later, in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 and Avowed world, Obsidian is giving its own throwback CRPG Pillars of Eternity a turn-based combat mode
Destiny 2 Lightfall
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
Velma, Daphne, Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo looking at a giant key which is also a clue
Netflix is rebooting Scooby-Doo as a live-action series from the producer of Supergirl and The Flash centered around a "supernatural murder" at a summer camp
Astro Bot
Astro Bot went through 23 pitch iterations before its director promised PlayStation "happy gameplay" and "overflowing charm," though it did once end with robot decapitation that made "some people really upset"
Tomb Raider
5 years after Avengers, 2 years after its last layoffs, and who knows how long before Perfect Dark and Tomb Raider return, Crystal Dynamics announces another round of layoffs
AI Limit
"AI is not as effective as it might appear": Dev of AI-focused Soulslike RPG says they didn't use any AI-generated content and it can't match "genuine creativity"