In a bit of a weird place as someone who can't do dodges/parries in general in all games I play.

[UPRC]

I'm about four hours in so far, and compared to how I was in the first tutorial fights, I've gotten no better at being able to time my dodges and parries even though I can tell when I'm supposed to. I may actually be getting worse, and some of the enemies I fight, I just can't get the timing down to dodge or evade a single hit at all. It's just always been something I'm innately bad at in games that require strict timing. I reluctantly just turned the difficulty down to story (started on the middle one). Didn't really feel like anything else was a problem at all with the game other than how strict the dodging and parrying is.

Problem is, I felt like the game went from punishing you TOO much with high damage for failed dodges and parries on the standard difficulty, to almost holding your hand on the easiest difficulty, with damage being borderline laughable and trivial on the easy difficulty. I wish that this game had four difficulty modes or something for people like me who can't get used to the dodging and parrying. I was constantly running around on the verge of death from failing everything on the standard difficulty, but now I feel like I'm borderline invincible on the story difficulty.

Difficulty balance is out the window with this game. Easy is too easy, even if you're failing all of the dodges and parries. I wish that there were just sliders or something to make JUST dodges and parries more forgiving or something.

Anyone else in this kind of situation too?

Anyway, other than that, I AM really enjoying the game a huge amount and can see it being my GOTY. The dodging/parrying is just too strict for a dummy like me with bad reaction speed.

[Azshric]

It is pretty bizarre that you can lose like half a characters health due to a single missed dodge in the first area on normal difficulty. I mean, if there was a QTE for parrying like with attacks that'd be one thing. But instinctual parrying that is THAT punishing when you fail is quite the odd design choice. I really don't get it.

[It´sAllAimAssist]

You really need to practice the timing of the parries/dodges because it´s specific to each enemy.
I´m on expert and am a few hours for example I fought a boss several times and he destroyed me until I suddenly had all the timings down and knew which ones I could parry counter and what to just dodge and I beat it without even getting close to loosing.

Also builds DO help a ton so you can eventually fail SOME dodge/parry and still be ok.
But yeah my only concern so far is I thought it was all going to be QTE or at least have visual clues but some enemies I feel have really wonky attack animations where you just have to guess what the timing is and resort to trial and error.
I mean there was a combination of regular enemies that took me maybe 10 tries to figure out.
Best tip I have it´s usually good to try press the button the moment just before the attack lands.
For example the spear dude I timed it so I press when the tip of the spear is almost touching the characters face.

I´m enjoying the game a whole lot but that´s just because I found it fun in this title to practice the timings.
Probably because it´s wrapped up in nice visuals and other rpg systems I like.
It´s incredible once it clicks though.

But yes, probably could do with a bit more granularity for people who are not on board with the reaction stuff.