Am I missing something? Perfect Parry isn't NEARLY as hard as I have seen people say on this forum?

[dustin1280]

So I am just starting this game, I am running through with a motivity build and the pipe wrench (which is AMAZING).

I just finished up the Puppet King boss fight, so I think I have quite a bit more to go.

But I have seen NUMEROUS posts about people calling the perfect parry system too hard or too small of a window, I don't see it....

It's not as easy to parry as sekiro was, sure, but I am finding perfect parry is generally not THAT difficult to pull off in most circumstances...

Now don't get me wrong, I still miss the window once in awhile, but I went into this game expecting to almost never pull off perfect parry and that is not the case at all, I tend to hit it about 60%-75% of the time depending on what I am fighting...

Did they patch the perfect parry window, and it just isn't as difficult as it was on initial release? Or are people just exaggerating the difficulty of perfect parry?

[Virake]

dustin1280 a écrit :

So I am just starting this game, I am running through with a motivity build and the pipe wrench (which is AMAZING).

I just finished up the Puppet King boss fight, so I think I have quite a bit more to go.

But I have seen NUMEROUS posts about people calling the perfect parry system too hard or too small of a window, I don't see it....

It's not as easy to parry as sekiro was, sure, but I am finding perfect parry is generally not THAT difficult to pull off in most circumstances...

Now don't get me wrong, I still miss the window once in awhile, but I went into this game expecting to almost never pull off perfect parry and that is not the case at all, I tend to hit it about 60%-75% of the time depending on what I am fighting...

Did they patch the perfect parry window, and it just isn't as difficult as it was on initial release? Or are people just exaggerating the difficulty of perfect parry?

I think I have an idea about what's going on. you see, in Sekiro you can spam the parry button and cancel attacks, but in Lies of P you can't do either of those things: you have to press the button at precisely the right moment and hold it until the attack connects, or it won't count as a parry. so just don't spam the button, right? wrong. unblockable attacks in Sekiro have a very narrow window in which you can react, which means you should respond as soon as you notice the cue. not so in Lies of P – here, unblockable attacks have huge windups, closer to something you'd see in Elden Ring. this means it's much harder to gauge when you're actually supposed to respond vs when the attack animation starts playing. this throws people off, but the exact reasons aren't immediately obvious, hence all this talk about difficulty, clunky feel and tight parry timings.

[SteelaiRizel]

Oro a écrit :

dustin1280 a écrit :

So I am just starting this game, I am running through with a motivity build and the pipe wrench (which is AMAZING).

I just finished up the Puppet King boss fight, so I think I have quite a bit more to go.

But I have seen NUMEROUS posts about people calling the perfect parry system too hard or too small of a window, I don't see it....

It's not as easy to parry as sekiro was, sure, but I am finding perfect parry is generally not THAT difficult to pull off in most circumstances...

Now don't get me wrong, I still miss the window once in awhile, but I went into this game expecting to almost never pull off perfect parry and that is not the case at all, I tend to hit it about 60%-75% of the time depending on what I am fighting...

Did they patch the perfect parry window, and it just isn't as difficult as it was on initial release? Or are people just exaggerating the difficulty of perfect parry?

People aren't exaggerating it, many enemies or bosses basically require you nail 5-6 perfect guards in a row or you'll eat so much (chip) damage and have no opening to heal thereafter that you will very likely die. Romeo's fire combo ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ would kill me from full health basically every time he used it because I kept ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up one of the eight swings and subsequently be stunlocked into the rest of them with no ability to recover or create distance and heal due to its insane momentum and tracking. Dying from one failed perfect guard, sometimes repeatedly, is extremely punishing and many, if not most players will view that as overly strict and unfun.

fyi, humblebrag threads are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ obnoxious and no one is ever impressed.

mayhem523 a écrit :

It's not the window that's the problem, it's the attacks. The long delayed wind up followed by near instantaneous attack makes it difficult to time blocks. Once you learn the rhythm of the attacks, perfect blocking is easy.

And this. If you try to react to most attacks, pressing the block button once the actual attack starts, you do not have time to guard before being hit. You are forced to memorize timings instead of utilize reaction time, which are two separate player skills that most games don't necessitate you be exceptionally good at one of over the other (some combination of both where one can compensate for the other makes a game feel good, e.g.; Sekiro)

To be fair if you try to perfect guard Romeo's flurry you deserve to be murdered by him for being silly.

Just run. Boom all avoided. Dodge the last swings if you want to be close.

In fact most instances where people post about it being 'overly strict and unfun' is when they were supposed to dodge or run. It's kinda funny to me.

[dustin1280]

Oro a écrit :

RE/PAKO a écrit :

blah blah don't care

I'm not looking for tips and I don't get why you people are like this. I've beaten the game. I'm responding to the topic of the pigheaded humblebrag thread.

Newsflash, you can also just perfect guard every attack, what do you mean you didn't do that? Guess you should get good.

See how that has no bearing on what you were saying and is just annoying?

This is not a humble brag topic, I was genuinely curious why I have seen so many topics about how hard perfect blocking is, it appears this is more of a player specific issue then a gameplay issue.

Turns out, perfect guarding isn't NEARLY as difficult as so many people in the forum were claiming.

As to your specific example of Romeo's fight... I tried perfect blocking that fire flurry one time and and realized that I was simply better of dodging/avoiding that than trying to perfect block it.

As a rule of thumb I perfect block what I can (with 60-75% accuracy) and I dodge what I deem not worthwhile to try to perfect block (romeo flame flurry for instance)

But there is absolutely nothing wrong with this game's parry system, it's simply tougher than sekiro but not to an insane degree.

[Oro]

dustin1280 a écrit :

Oro a écrit :

I'm not looking for tips and I don't get why you people are like this. I've beaten the game. I'm responding to the topic of the pigheaded humblebrag thread.

Newsflash, you can also just perfect guard every attack, what do you mean you didn't do that? Guess you should get good.

See how that has no bearing on what you were saying and is just annoying?

This is not a humble brag topic, I was genuinely curious why I have seen so many topics about how hard perfect blocking is, it appears this is more of a player specific issue then a gameplay issue.

Turns out, perfect guarding isn't NEARLY as difficult as so many people in the forum were claiming.

As to your specific example of Romeo's fight... I tried perfect blocking that fire flurry one time and and realized that I was simply better of dodging that than trying to perfect block it.

As a rule of thumb I perfect block what I can (with 60-75% accuracy) and I dodge what I deem not worthwhile to try to perfect block (romeo flame flurry for instance)

But there is absolutely nothing wrong with this game's parry system, it's simply tougher than sekiro but not to an insane degree.

It may not be "wrong," but it's easy to understand why some people dislike it. Memorization is a completely valid skill to require a player to develop if they want to use perfect guards on most attacks or combos. However, as I stated previously, it's not one that everybody finds all that gratifying compared to real-time reaction or a mix of both.

For the sake of hyperfixation and missing the point, let's just pretend I didn't give an arbitrary example. Any example is clearly just going to cause people to say, "nuh-uh, you can just do this other thing entirely unrelated to perfect guarding."

I won't remark further on whether or not it's a humblebrag topic but I will ask you to understand that it's certainly what it seems like when people make these, "well, I didn't have any trouble!" threads about a very common or pervasive complaint in a game forum (not just this one, every challenging game's forum). I also disagree that it's "tougher" than Sekiro, I just think it's more obtuse in its dependency on memorization to perfect guard and inability to cancel much of anything in order to actually truly react to things, and instead encourages just waiting for openings and playing defensively because of it and the lack of poise for your character + seemingly infinite poise for many of the enemies (most of which it doesn't make a lot of sense being nigh uninterruptible).

[dustin1280]

Oro a écrit :

It may not be "wrong," but it's easy to understand why some people dislike it. Memorization is a completely valid skill to require a player to develop if they want to use perfect guards on most attacks or combos. However, as I stated previously, it's not one that everybody finds all that gratifying compared to real-time reaction or a mix of both.

Real-time reactive perfect guarding genuinely seems possible with most mooks in this game without too much issue. But I absolutely agree that for bosses you kind of have to memorize the attacks and timing to perfect guard them effectively.

I would say this game definitely qualifies as a "mix of both" unless you are talking solely about boss battles (up to Puppet King, as I cannot speak to further gameplay at this point).

Sekiro had very simple parrying as you could generally just tap the block button over and over and pull it off.. I wouldn't call that "real-time reactive," I would call that simplistic.

For the record I loved Sekiro, the fact that every boss felt like a dance and had a rhythm was awesome...

Oro a écrit :

For the sake of hyperfixation and missing the point, let's just pretend I didn't give an arbitrary example. Any example is clearly just going to cause people to say, "nuh-uh, you can just do this other thing entirely unrelated to perfect guarding."

Noted

Oro a écrit :

I won't remark further on whether or not it's a humblebrag topic but I will ask you to understand that it's certainly what it seems like when people make these, "well, I didn't have any trouble!" threads about a very common or pervasive complaint in a game forum (not just this one, every challenging game's forum).

I honestly thought that Version 1.0 had more difficult timing than what is currently in the game, because the forum posts led me to believe that perfect guarding was EXTREMELY difficult, which did not turn out to be true (up to puppet king)
Now perhaps it gets extremely difficult as this game progresses (as one poster alluded to) and that is what these people are talking about.

[Oro]

dustin1280 a écrit :

I honestly thought that Version 1.0 had more difficult timing than what is currently in the game, because the forum posts led me to believe that perfect guarding was EXTREMELY difficult, which did not turn out to be true (up to puppet king)
Now perhaps it gets extremely difficult as this game progresses (as one poster alluded to) and that is what these people are talking about.

I don't think they changed any of that. It does get harder, though, that's only maybe halfway-ish through the game, and lots of the enemies and bosses get pretty annoying later on. I cited the Romeo fight because you listed it specifically as one you'd done.

And yeah, lots of basic enemies have what I'd call good telegraphs, which is to say, they let you know an attack is coming, and give you a reasonably good idea of when it's coming so you can guard it. Many elite enemies and bosses, however, have bad telegraphs, which only tell you an attack is coming, and the first time you encounter it, there is a nearly zero percent chance you will be able to effectively predict (or react) to it properly, until you learn the timing. I have examples off the top of my head, but I've learned my lesson, and you'll see soon enough for yourself. Point is, if it's really unrealistic for even a very skilled player to successfully evade or guard against an attack the first time, a lot of people (even people that aren't necessarily "very skilled") are going to feel like it's a cheap attack, and I tend to agree. If I have to get smacked by something several times to learn the timing rather than being able to leverage the telegraph and my own reaction speed from the get-go, it's going to feel cheap, to me.

I really dislike the fake-out and long, ♥♥♥♥-with-your-head wind-up ♥♥♥♥ that Elden Ring gave almost every enemy when it used to be something only a few special enemies would do as a mix-up in the older games, like Balder Knights.

[dustin1280]

Oro a écrit :

snip

Ok, I understand your thoughts on the parry system better now, I can see the concerns you have with it. Thanks for the insight.

[Limp Squirrel]

I will agree that LoP's biggest frustration is the ludicrous amount of delayed attacks combined with a hysterical amount of movement tracking.

It no longer becomes a matter of adaptation to an enemy or boss' pattern, Instead, it's pure memorization, which attack has how much delay. A really egregious example are Bishop Andreus. He has this overhead smash that he uses in 3 different combos. The timing of these smashes is different for all 3. The second combo (swipe, smash, swipe) in particular is just frustrating because he holds his arm up in the arm for half a second longer, and then throws it in your face with the speed of lightning on crack.

For a game that predominantly relies on perfect guards, the combat often reached boiling point for me. No proper windows to attack, multiple delayed attacks in the middle of a 5-7 string combo, enemies doing moves that takes them off-screen and then land a fury attack (this is literally just remembering how long it takes before pressing guard, not skill).

This game does a lot right, but the combat suffered from some very artificial difficulty.

[MMB]

Oro a écrit :

dustin1280 a écrit :

This is not a humble brag topic, I was genuinely curious why I have seen so many topics about how hard perfect blocking is, it appears this is more of a player specific issue then a gameplay issue.

Turns out, perfect guarding isn't NEARLY as difficult as so many people in the forum were claiming.

As to your specific example of Romeo's fight... I tried perfect blocking that fire flurry one time and and realized that I was simply better of dodging that than trying to perfect block it.

As a rule of thumb I perfect block what I can (with 60-75% accuracy) and I dodge what I deem not worthwhile to try to perfect block (romeo flame flurry for instance)

But there is absolutely nothing wrong with this game's parry system, it's simply tougher than sekiro but not to an insane degree.

It may not be "wrong," but it's easy to understand why some people dislike it. Memorization is a completely valid skill to require a player to develop if they want to use perfect guards on most attacks or combos. However, as I stated previously, it's not one that everybody finds all that gratifying compared to real-time reaction or a mix of both.

For the sake of hyperfixation and missing the point, let's just pretend I didn't give an arbitrary example. Any example is clearly just going to cause people to say, "nuh-uh, you can just do this other thing entirely unrelated to perfect guarding."

I won't remark further on whether or not it's a humblebrag topic but I will ask you to understand that it's certainly what it seems like when people make these, "well, I didn't have any trouble!" threads about a very common or pervasive complaint in a game forum (not just this one, every challenging game's forum). I also disagree that it's "tougher" than Sekiro, I just think it's more obtuse in its dependency on memorization to perfect guard and inability to cancel much of anything in order to actually truly react to things, and instead encourages just waiting for openings and playing defensively because of it and the lack of poise for your character + seemingly infinite poise for many of the enemies (most of which it doesn't make a lot of sense being nigh uninterruptible).

The lack of poise and no guard cancelling is down to the rally system.

[Giganx]

The timing is more strict than Sekiro, so if you're leaning on perfect parries hard this game is actually tougher than Sekiro.

Also, most of the Souls players who flocked to this game are used to hiding behind a 100% DR shield, 3 summoned players and/or 1 hit killing bosses with magic from 4 miles away, all while being level 799 in NG. So yea, this game in general is pretty tough for a Souls game.

[Scraps]

There's been a bit too many bosses that took me a long time because I would focus too hard on parrying over dodging, and honestly, the dodge only works with its respective perks because it becomes more reliable with long-winded and poorly telegraphed attacks. Base dodge, you may as well be guarding. I think a core issue is just the virtue of red attacks requiring perfect guarding, and it makes parrying much more valuable to learn, even though dodging can be great in many circumstances. But why dodge when there's the possibility of a massive red attack?

I think they wanted to make guarding, perfect guarding, and dodging viable options based on circumstances, but making a fairly common mechanic exclusive to one crumbles it all apart.

Oro a écrit :

I really dislike the fake-out and long, ♥♥♥♥-with-your-head wind-up ♥♥♥♥ that Elden Ring gave almost every enemy when it used to be something only a few special enemies would do as a mix-up in the older games, like Balder Knights.

My conspiracy theory is that From Soft saw the high praise Nameless King got in DS3 and just incorporated what made him difficult (super delayed attacks) in almost every boss in Elden Ring.

[Yuki Terumi]

The parry / pg system in LoP isn't very fun to engage with mostly due to the number of 300 frame start up but 5 active frames attacks (your'e not reacting to 5 frames). Sekiro you could parry a string from sound alone, here there's no rhyme (heh) or reasoning so its mainly ID the opener and try to memorize the timing.

[dustin1280]

So update to this topic...

I just finished the game and beat nameless puppet.

Laxasia was EASILY the hardest boss for me in the entire game, took like 80+ tries to beat her (because I am stubborn and won't use specter)

Nameless Puppet wasn't nearly as hard, he took me less then 10 tries... I think the reason I liked the nameless puppet fight so much is because all of his attacks were WELL telegraphed, and didn't pull the huge delays like other enemies in this game....

Overall I don't think the parry system in this game is that difficult at all (I beat Laxasia by parrying her attacks till her weapon broke)

I DO however understand how the delayed attacks can be difficult to deal with, until you know what to expect from them and that comes from memorizing every single pattern of enemies with delayed attacks.

[Krazy Wallet]

dustin1280 a écrit :

So update to this topic...

I just finished the game and beat nameless puppet.

Laxasia was EASILY the hardest boss for me in the entire game, took like 80+ tries to beat her (because I am stubborn and won't use specter)

Nameless Puppet wasn't nearly as hard, he took me less then 10 tries... I think the reason I liked the nameless puppet fight so much is because all of his attacks were WELL telegraphed, and didn't pull the huge delays like other enemies in this game....

Overall I don't think the parry system in this game is that difficult at all (I beat Laxasia by parrying her attacks till her weapon broke)

I DO however understand how the delayed attacks can be difficult to deal with, until you know what to expect from them and that comes from memorizing every single pattern of enemies with delayed attacks.

Well done sir! In case you were not aware, the P-organ has a 6th tier in NG+ and a 7th tier in NG++. Also, if it isn't too late, don't go into NG+ right away. Go back to the hotel and go upstairs. Depending on your ending, there may be a letter for you with an achievement.

If you did Free from the Puppet Strings ending, then there may not be a letter if I remember correctly, but the other two endings have additional achievements attached post-credits.

[grendel]

Krazy Wallet a écrit :

Oro a écrit :

I'm not looking for tips and I don't get why you people are like this. I've beaten the game. I'm responding to the topic of the pigheaded humblebrag thread.

Newsflash, you can also just perfect guard every attack, what do you mean you didn't do that? Guess you should get good.

See how that has no bearing on what you were saying and is just annoying?

Don't blame everyone else for your poor debating and discussion skills. This thread isn't about the feasibility of perfect guarding every attack. The OP was asking why people are complaining about the perfect guard mechanic and whether those complaints are justified. You then presented an argument that it was justified and gave an example where it is strategically better to dodge than perfect guard.

Don't baby rage when people point out your flaws, work on your logic and reason to do better in your discussions

This is what people here do all day in almost every thread where people complain about any aspect of this game. Who's baby raging, the people who are still trying to play the game even though they hate it or the people who defend it every day like it's their little brother? Get over yourself, gamer.

No one is debating with you. Most of the complaints are totally valid responses to the stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game design. Homing attacks that will cross entire arenas (Laxasia, Nameless Puppet, to a lesser extent Manus, King of Puppets, etc etc) is not a made up problem. Variable parry timing depending on the weapon you're using is not good game design. Chip damage through blocking is lame as ♥♥♥♥. This ♥♥♥♥ is not fun to play, and I paid just as much money as you did so I get to complain about it all I want. Cry about it.