New Player Looking for Guidance

[Attempt_NP1]

Hey there Steam's Hellish Quart community,

Long story short, I'm looking for some help with this game. Please scroll below the row of dashes if you want to jump directly into my questions; otherwise, keep reading to get an understanding of a) my in-game experience so far, and b) what I think I understand about Hellish Quart's combat.

So I picked up this game a few days ago and played it for a decent chunk of time. I beat all of the story chapters, arcade with every character (most of these runs were on the second easiest difficulty, but I also beat it on the easiest and middle difficulties), got all the character-related achievements (win X matches with character Y), fought 10 or so duels in the "history" mode, and played some survival (furthest streak was 10 wins, which unlocked first-person mode). I turned ducat unlocks on and bought all the stages, every costume except one, and all of the cheapest stage decorations.

Through all of this, I think I gleaned bits and pieces about how to play the game. I tried to group what I learned into categories below, but if any of these points are mistaken, please let me know:

1) Attacks: There are four attack buttons, two for high attacks, and two for low. The lows and highs are split into right-to-left and left-to-right attacks.

2) Movement: You can move your character forward, backward, left and right, but not diagonally. Outside of certain attacks (for example, one of Yendrek's) you cannot jump in this game. Dashes can be performed by pressing the respective direction twice in a row quickly.

3) Stamina: The more you swing your weapon within a certain period of time, the whiter the side of your screen will turn, which indicates that your stamina has depleted to some degree. When your stamina is low, your attacks and character movement become slower. If you take damage that doesn't end the round, this may affect your stamina gauge. If it does, your screen will also turn white, but unlike the former type of stamina drain, this is permanent for the rest of the round. Refraining from attacking can help you regain stamina as long as it has not been lost from inflicted wounds.

4) Guarding: Guarding in this game is automatic. Insofar as you haven't committed to an attack, you should be able to block strikes from your opponent. If your stamina is reduced, your ability to guard decreases. Weapon strikes cannot be blocked if you are too close to your opponent.

5) Moves and Combos: There's a command list that can be accessed when a duel is paused. All of your standard attacks (see part 1) are the same while moving (e.g. sidestepping or forward/backward) unless the command lists states that a direction + attack does a different move. The other type of "command normal" in this game usually comes in the form of double-tapping forward/backward before attacking or by either pressing down, forward, attack or down, back, attack. There may also be some command normals that are activated by just pressing up or down. As for combos, they mostly consist of two or three attacks, and the timing for the next input seems to be sometime during the recovery of the previous attack.

6) Stances: There's a lunge stance that can be activated by holding down a button (in my case, a shoulder button) and this allows you to attack further in front and "clashes" your weapon with an opponent who is also in a lunge stance. There also seems to be another stance where your character's footing is swapped, but I only know about this from the command list.

7) Feints: During any attack, you can feint by pressing back, but it needs to be done early on during the attack animation.

8) Melee, grabs, and pushing: If you attack when close enough to your opponent, you will either punch or kick them. Punches correspond to high strikes, and kicks to low ones. Landing a melee attack temporarily stuns the opponent and creates an opening for you to strike with your weapon. Grabs, which are executed with RB in my case, automatically win the round if they land. Pushing is executed with RT, but I've never landed one so I am not sure what they do.

9) Parries and Ripostes: I have no background in fencing, so I am not sure what is meant by these terms in-game, but I assume parrying is blocking an attack and riposting is striking soon after. In one of the tutorials, I believe it said you can press back right after your attack is blocked to quickly block your opponent's counterattack, and then you can press attack right after blocking their strike to counterattack their counterattack.

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Alright, in short, I feel like I have hit a wall with the game and don't really know how to improve. My goals are to clear survival and beat arcade on the hardest difficulty. While I am open to input from anyone, I mostly want guidance/feedback from players who have cleared both or either of my stated goals.

I feel stuck because duels either feel like a coin toss between me and my opponent, which isn't good enough to clear survival or the harder arcade difficulties, or they feel like an unending back and forth of attack, get blocked, quickly pull back to guard, block the opponent, and then attack again, which draws out the duel but doesn't seem to give me an advantage/opening.

I have some specific questions below, but, generally speaking, what should I focus on improving to increase my win rate and how should I go about practicing it? Also, which character(s) do you recommend for reaching my goals? I'm open to almost anyone, although I'd prefer to avoid Yendrek, Father Zera, Marta, and Marie because I really didn't like how they felt. Lastly, how many ducats do you need for the Rich! achievement, and is it cumulative or at one time? I know that the more I possess, the more I lose, so I am reluctant to save them because I am not good enough to earn more than I lose.

As for my specific questions:

Q1: Is autoguard janky? I feel like there are times when my stamina is at max and I am not currently doing an attack, but I still get hit by my opponent's strike. When I have control over guard options in a game, e.g. back/down-back or a block button, it's intuitive and makes sense, which means I can identify how I messed up on defense. But with autoguard, I feel like I can't make heads or tails of my mistakes.

Q2: How does decreased stamina affect my ability to block? Is it just that lower stamina = lower block chance (e.g when stamina is at max my autoguard chance is 100%, and anything lower will drop my guard chance to something below 100%)? If so, does this essentially mean that guarding at anything less than max stamina is inevitably a gamble?

Q3: Since autoguard works against all attacks, what's the point of using high/low/right/left attacks? I can understand using attacks of different speeds and ranges depending on the situation, but why does high/low/left/right matter? The only thing I can think of is attacking at the same time as your opponent but using something in the opposite direction of their strike. For example, if they attack high and from right to left, you would use a low attack from left to right. FYI, I'm just hypothesizing here though, I've never actually tried this in a duel. Also, is whiff-punishing a thing in this game?

Q4: While I've played other "3d fighters", like Tekken and SC, it was always mindlessly. I noticed that while I played this game, I almost always moved forward and backward (the fighting games I've played more seriously are all 2d fighters), and rarely to the side. Is sidestepping a crucial part of upping your game? And if so, how should I, basically a beginner with respect to this mechanic, use it to my advantage?

Q5: Do backdashes have any invulnerability and are forward dashes always unsafe? What are the best times to use them?

Q6: One thing I remember hearing about Tekken is that, while the game does have intimidating movelists, they're kind of a red herring. What matters is finding a few effective moves/strings from your command list and incorporating them into your gameplan. While this game has nowhere near as many moves, does this approach apply to Hellish Quart as well? i.e. most moves aren't very useful and there are just a few that you should use.

Q7: Are combos actually useful, or is it best to focus on winning with single strikes?

Q8: Same as Q7, but for stances (lunges and opposite foot stance). When I used lunge stance, it felt like that the AI at higher difficulties didn't really fall for it. It'd either backdash or block.

Q9: Sometimes two duelists' blades "clash" when they are both in lunge stance (the tips of their blades clanging against each other). Is this just a cosmetic addition or does it actually affect the gameplay?

Q10: Feints, grabs, and pushes: against better AI, they all seem to be completely ineffective. Grabs are broken, pushes don't land (to be honest, I don't think I've ever landed this), and feints don't throw the opponent off. Has anyone found ways to make these mechanics useful against AI at higher difficulties?

Q11: I alluded to this in one of the sections above, but what exactly are parries and ripostes in this game? In other words, how are they executed, and when/how should I use them?

Alright, sorry for all the text, but hopefully I included enough information to give anyone reading an idea of where I stand and what I need to focus on.

Thanks in advance for any and all help!

[roedeer]

Let's try answering, might be more informed people on this forum who can correct me.

Q1: It's unreliable yes, and you have to identify which groups of attacks it works reliably for. It has problem against leg attacks, feints, close range attacks, strong attacks and attak from an angle. Note that merely not attacking isn't enough to trigger it, you also have to not be dashing and not moving sideways or forward.

Q2: I think there are 3 levels of endurance... if I recall correctly... at least the last one (at zero stamina) like disables parrying.

Q3: Mostly to pick an attack with the right speed/windup, range and ability to bypass blocking. But also to choose how high up on the opponent you attack, where higher up attack have a higher chance of being fight-ending and leg attack are harder to parry. And thrust to the head are harder to hit than to the chest. Also, the autoparry is locked while moving, which cretes a directional opening. And ripostes typically only work in three directions, since the opponent's blades blocks the fourth.

Q4: Sidestepping is for bypassing autoparry. Plus sidestepping to the right gives you a bigger target to hit while making your own character a smaller target.

Q5: No invulnerability. Both disable autoparry. Dash back to reset an exchagne that's going bad. Forward dash should be combined with an attack button, unless your really far apart.

Q6: Learning a few good moves of a character is a good strategy. Separate between initiating attacks, wherw windup and sidesteping is ok, and rispostes, where you typically want a quick cut to the head or minipoke to the chest.

Q7: They're not that important.

Q8. Stances are important. The extended "lunge" (long/ox) guard has some of the longest range attacks, the high stances have big attacks that can be hard to parry, and the low stances generally have attacks that keep you safe from thrusts.

Q9. This contact between blades causes a duration of reduced thrust accuracy.

Q10. Some characters (Barabasz and Samuel come to mind) have excellent feints that go past AIs defences. Pushing requires proper distance, and is a counter to an aggressive close-range opponent.

Q11. In a two-tempo defence and attack, parry is the first action and riposte is the second action. In a parry (block might be a better word) the attacker loses a bit of stamina and has a recovery period (less than for an unblocked atttack for both) while the defender loses more stamina but does not need time to pull back the blade. Fast attacks can use that opening as a riposte.

[Big Marky]

i dont know how to do stances, going to try it

[Attempt_NP1]

roedeer

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Much appreciated! I have some follow-up questions. Hopefully you or someone else can answer them:

Q1: To clarify, all movement except walking backward disables it? Also, I am not sure what strong attacks, attacks at an angle, or feints are in the game. If I had to guess, attacks at an angle are strikes done during a sidestep or special moves like Jan's Feint Sidestep (up, up, X), and feints are moves where your character moves backward before striking, like Jan's Revenge (down, back, X)?

Q3: In Q1, it seemed like you were saying that autoparry isn't enabled when moving in most directions, but here you state that moving locks it in place. I'm a little confused on this point. Could you clarify?

Q4: If sidestepping increases the chance of my attack getting past autoparry and it makes my hurtbox smaller while simultaneously making my opponent's larger, should this be my main method of attack? Or is it a high risk, high reward scenario because I can't guard (or I am less able; not sure what exactly is the case here) an attack from my opponent?

I also had some general questions from before

1) What are say 3 or 4 fundamentals I should prioritize practicing and are there any exercises or drilling I can do in training mode to improve them?

2) Which character(s) do you recommend for reaching my goals (beating arcade on hardest and clearing survival)? I'm open to almost anyone, although I'd prefer to avoid Yendrek, Father Zera, Marta, and Marie because I really didn't like how they felt.

3) How many ducats do you need for the Rich! achievement, and is it cumulative or at one time?

[roedeer]

Q1:
Strong attacks: some fencers (the longsword ones at least) have this attribute where certain attack where they can push through a block and deal partial damage.
Attacks at an angle: I meant attacks when the opponent isn't looking straight at you. Characters only reorient themselves toward the opponent when moving, so if you move to the side and the opponent is not moving, they aren't facing straight towards you anymore. So you can take a side step without attacking, then make an attack at them before they move.
Feints: these are listed in the move list (although there's also ways to create feints by attack canceling, but that's difficult).

Q3. In thet autoparry the fencer moves their weapon to a new position for a duration, and if they take a step duringing that duration the weapon is still and that position but doesn't move to another position in response to the opponent during the step.

Q4. Circling right is low-risk low-reward. Only useful against opponents that aren't constantly moving. And yes, you lose a bit of defense while doing it.

1) There's a sport fencing drill where one person is constantly stepping forward and the other fencer is timing an lunge attack that lands towards the end of a step (or was it mid-step? this is like remembeing a door code wher you've learnt a finger movement not a list of numbers... but you notice when you do it right). The AI opponents can very obliging at constantly stepping forward, allowing you to practice it. Works at least with Marie. Teaches distance and timing, as mid-step is when blocking is the least effective.

[Attempt_NP1]

roedeer

Thanks for all the help you've provided so far. It's a lot for me to take in, and if I'm being frank, there are points I'm still confused about, but overall I understand the game a bit better thanks to you. I gave you a profile award to show my appreciation

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For anyone else reading, I learned a few things during my last few sessions:

1) The Rich! achievement is not cumulative, meaning that if you spend ducats on skins/stages/decorations, these will not count toward the total. The target total seemed to be 10,000 ducats, but it didn't unlock when I reached 10k. Once I hit the target, I had to play in arcade for the achievement to pop, although I assume playing in other modes will unlock it as well.

As an aside, I think the maximum amount of money you hold at one time is tied to one of your ranks (which can be seen by selecting the Fight option on the main menu). FYI, this isn't the rank in the upper right corner (which is in the format Number + Word, e.g. 7 Master), but the one in the bottom right of the screen (a word plus an icon). I could be wrong, but I think if you get the Starosta rank, it means you hit the monetary total required to unlock Rich!, but you'll still have to play arcade or some other mode to get it to unlock.

You may have noticed that the more money you have, the more you lose when you're defeated. While this is true, it'll never go beyond -100 ducats, so even if you are bad at the game / don't know how to play (like me), you should be able to reach 10k by repeatedly beating arcade on normal. Clearly, if you can consistently beat it on higher difficulties or make it far in / complete survival, you should do so as you're awarded many more ducats. But if you can't, just know that it's possible to get Rich! (it's a bit grindy though).

2) Stamina:

If you go to Options > Gameplay, you can toggle on "Visible health bars." This will display every part of the body that can take damage (11 total) as well as you and your opponent's stamina gauge.

What I learned from this is that a) whiffing attacks drains more stamina than when they are blocked, b) dashing in any direction drains stamina, c) melee attacks (punches/kicks) drain your opponent's stamina in addition to temporarily stunning them, d) the amount of stamina drained by an attack differs depending on the attack you used, and e) generally speaking a blocked attack will drain more stamina from the defender than the attacker (however, this isn't always the case)

I'm sure there's more to stamina than just that, but hopefully this information proves useful to someone. If you want to learn more, toggle this option on, go to Training and select "Standing Opponent," and then start experimenting.

Good luck!