My Advice for Parrying/Dodging

[DJ Rocket X]

I've seen numerous complaints about how hard it is to dodge or parry in this game. While I personally find it pretty intuitive, those frustrations are valid. So, I wanted to give my two cents on how to make things a little easier.

1. Watch the top of the screen and the opponent. Most cases, the top of the screen will state the enemy intent. It'll say things like launching whatever projectiles it has, or is performing a 4 hit combo. Use that to prepare for whats coming. In addition, watch the enemy closer then you during it's turn. Learn the way they move just before a hit registers so you can defend more reliably later.

2. Dodge first. Dodging has a larger timing window, which when used is denoted by the "Dodge" flavor text. If you dodge right before an attack hits, you get "Perfect Dodge." Perfect dodges mean that you dodge on the timing you should use to parry. Use dodging as a way to learn the attacks and patterns, then start parrying when you feel comfortable.

3. Parry before you get hit, not as you get hit. If you press parry right as an attack lands, it'll hit you. Press it a little before, parrying is fairly strict but you can press it earlier than you might think in most cases and still get away with it as long as your not crazy early.

4. Use both defensive tools. If there's an attack with a long windup that you feel more comfortable dodging a bit early on, but can parry another attack, do it. Use dodges on attacks you don't feel great about and parry to reap the bonuses of AP and counters on attacks you feel good about.

5. Don't beat yourself up over a lossed combat. You'll come in for round 2 with a better grasp on the battle and usually you aren't put far away. Don't get discouraged and keep calm.

Those are my tips for making this game's combat a little less frustrating if you're having difficulty. Good luck out there, expeditioners!

[Ximoltrufia]

If it were too easy it wouldn't be fun, the first battle against a new enemy I always lost on purpose to see their attacks and perfect timing to parry or dodge. I almost never used dodges, only on attacks that were impossible to parry, it's a waste of damage to the enemy to dodge instead of parrying.

It's all about repetition until everything feels normal and smooth, the more tense you get, the more mistakes you'll make.

[SeraphLance]

I think #5 is really what's most important. There's really no consistency at all in the parry windows. Dancer enemies that do the spinning fireball attacks? Parry right after the attack leaves their body. Big, party-wide slam attacks, or stuff like the clair obscur dark and light sweep attacks? Parry them right as you get hit. Gradient attacks? Some you need to parry right when you see the ink or its too late, others have a flourish afterwards and you need to treat more like a conventional parry timing (though still with the gradient counter button).

Virtually nobody is hitting parries the first time except for a handful of easy enemies (like the four or five enemies that have the same forehand-backhand-slam three-hit pattern). You just have to develop the right muscle memory.

[thufirhawat333]

Number 3 took me some time to figure out. Also true for dodges, I have not realized that the game is taking the animation into consideration when determining success. Ever since I figured this out, I'm having so much more fun.

A strange thing though, sometimes it doesn't seem to react to my inputs. Even to change target prompts. It's not a keyboard thing, and I'm pretty confident it's not a hardware issue (I run it on a R 9700x paired with a 5070TI and 32 RAM @ 5600), never seen it in any other games.

[weltall_elite]

I did find that sometimes dodging and parrying just doesn’t work. I’m not sure if it’s a bug related to my settings or the hardware. But there are times where it just doesn’t work at all. In the tutorial part where you “dance” with Sophie, I spent half an hour and I couldn’t get a single dodge in, let alone a perfect dodge. I tried all kinds of timing, I watched videos. Nothing worked. Eventually I just quit out of the game and reloaded it. I got three perfect dodges immediately. Then it happened again in a sparring match with Maelle. Same thing. Now I have a pretty good read on when to dodge the enemies I’m familiar with. If it ever stops working entirely, I just reboot the game.

If everything is working, the suggestions above will probably help. But if absolutely nothing works for you, try rebooting.

I also heard that capping your framerate at 60 can make the timing more consistent, and disabling any frame generation on your TV or monitor might help. But I can’t confirm that myself.

[Puzzony]

The input is messed up for a lot of people, apparently it happens on both Gamepass and Steam version, with kb+m, but it isnt faulty for everyone, and noone knows what's the reason of happening so people can't fix it for themselves. I had to stop playing the game because of this (gamepass version). Let's hope for a fast fix from the devs.