Perfect Parrying ruined this game for me

[Daniel Clay]

It's a faithful remake and high-quality videogame which I, as a fan of the OG RE4, can easily recommend anyone to play. However, I firmly believe that parrying should not have been included in the game in the first place. The reason is because it does not function the way it should. Blocking almost every incoming attack is rather easy in this game: you don't even have to be that good at timing to do this. However, if you want to really punish your enemy, you should go for a perfect parry: it allows you to deflect your opponent's attack in a stylish way, stun them and then deliver you counterattack. Sounds pretty good, right? It actually does. Problem is, perfect parries in this game do not work properly.

There are many decent games where parrying is used as the base gameplay mechanic: MGR, Sekiro, DMC, if you use Royal Guard. They too have two types of parrying: normal and perfect. However, those games use various methods to help the player understand when to press the deflect button to execute a perfect parry. MGR, for instance, relies on visual effects and enemies changing the color of their bodies to give the player a signal for parrying. Sekiro and DMC do not have those, but the way one's enemies move usually make it easy to understand when their attack is about to connect. You are forced to stydy those timings. The windows you are given to press the button are small, but it is possible to memorize them by studying the behaviour of those enemies. When you've spent an hour or two learning those things, it's time for you to perfectly execute all your moves to slay you foe without getting hit once. To sum everything up, all the games mentioned above rely on the following elements to make parrying function properly: 1. There are visual cues helping you to understand when to make your move. 2. The way your enemies move and attack gives you hints about when you need to enter that damned parrying window. 3. Those windows themselves are small, but consistent: after about fifty retries you will memorize when to press the button. If at least one of these principles functioned properly in RE4R, it would become a pretty fun mechanic to use. However...all of them are broken.

In his human form, Jack Krauser has about 3 or 4 slashing attacks. They, at first, have rather obvious start-up animations, which normally would be used to tell the player when to parry his opponent. However, parrying when Krauser does his knife juggling simply does not work. You are only rewarded with regular parries. So, principle 1 and principle 2 are not working here. That's bad, but it is still possible to do everything right, if the third principle is functioning properly, right? As if... Problem is, because there are no visual cues and your opponent's movement give you no clue about when to press the button, you simply can't know when the parrying window gets open. I've literally tried to do everything I could to understand when to pull out my knife: I tried circling around the opponent, moving forward and backwards, pressing the button before, during and after the prompt appeared on the screen: literally nothing has worked. After spending three hours battling our beloved mentor in both of his forms , I pulled out my Stryker and TMP, forgot about the self-imposed no damage and knife only penalties and...killed him in less than five minutes. I should have probably spent those three times platinuming a better functioning game instead of that.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I haven't understood how the game functions. Maybe my reaction speed is slow, although as someone who has beaten Sekiro without too much trouble and played MGR on Hard without taking hits, I believe that I'm, well, at least slightly above average at this. If someone can help me understand how to get better at this game, I would be very grateful. Thanks for reading that useless pile of words.

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

I don't understand your issue.

Do you want to know when to parry? I know it sounds obvious. But it's when the attack is going to hit you.

If you press it to early, (on Pro) you're getting hit. Simple as that .

There's not much to teach. I don't look at the prompt, it's just there to give you an idea.
(Just pay attention to your enemy animations.)

Timings are strict. That's the skill ceiling of the game.

You playing Sekiro/DMC with Dante's Royal Guard which has very specific timings mind you. I'd assume you'd understand that.

But tell you what? There's nothing more fulfilling than pulling off consistent parries on Pro. (At least for me)

[GoBoomYay]

Skill issue.

[Thunder8ird]

For me it feels like parry have a delay so sometimes it is impossible to perform perfect parry cus delay is bigger than parry window

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

Originally posted by Thunder8ird:

For me it feels like parry have a delay so sometimes it is impossible to perform perfect parry cus delay is bigger than parry window

You're missing your timings.

There is no delay.

[Daniel Clay]

The biggest problem I have with the game is that, well, I fail to be consistent at parrying even though I think that I've got the timings right. For instance, the enemy I used as the example in my previous post has an attack which involves him doing a 360 degrees turn and hitting you with his claw when he stops turning. During my initial attempt I managed to perfect parry this attack when the claw was about 2 or 3 cm away from Leon's face, and he was slightly bending his head backwards as if to protect himself from getting hit. So, naturally, I thought that the approximate distance between the claw and Leon, and the latter's animation I've described would become the visual cues to signify when to parry the attack. However, when I tried to do exactly the same thing during my next attempts I either got hit or simply blocked the attack without deflecting it. I fail to determine the exact time the window opens and cannot perfect parry consistently.

I would also like to point out that I do manage to perfect parry most of the regular enemies attack rather often. I just did not expect that particular enemy to be so difficult to fight in terms of timings and skill ceiling. I was also rather disappointed at myself for performing so poorly after spending so many hours in the games which demand the player to have rather good reflexes. I guess I just need to git gud. There is no other solution.

[Daniel Clay]

One more thing: does it actually get easier to determine perfect parry timings on the Professional difficulty, once all the regular blocks are removed?

[Daniel Clay]

And thank you for your feedback, everyone.

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

Originally posted by Daniel Clay:

The biggest problem I have with the game is that, well, I fail to be consistent at parrying even though I think that I've got the timings right.

During my first run I made saves near X enemies that I wanted to get more consistent at getting parries, it helped.

But if you want to save time and not have to constantly load. I'd just get a trainer and sit on the guy's face landing parries until you feel comfortable.

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

Originally posted by Daniel Clay:

And thank you for your feedback, everyone.

Best luck! Also mad respect.

Most people in here. Just mindless bash the parry system without acknowledging when it's their fault, you'll nail it in no time!

[Daniel Clay]

Thank you so much for your support, Luna! Now I'm definitely going to keep practicing!

[VibeCheck]

I agree that the parry system could use a few tweaks and seems inconsistent sometimes.
Personally, I'd like to have imperfect parries on pro with either a slightly shortened window overall and/or chip damage. Perfect parry is just a tad too unforgiveable imo.

inb4 muh skill issue brigade comments - I can parry the majority of enemies just fine but the thing is, the system encourages gameplay where kiting the enemies is the optimal strat which is boring af and I rather prefer getting up close and personal more often. But getting hit on pro is so punishing, thus seldom worth the risk.
I wish it'd be tweaked.

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

Originally posted by Delerium:

I agree that the parry system could use a few tweaks and seems inconsistent sometimes.
Personally, I'd like to have imperfect parries on pro with either a slightly shortened window overall and/or chip damage. Perfect parry is just a tad too unforgiveable imo.

inb4 muh skill issue brigade comments - I can parry the majority of enemies just fine but the thing is, the system encourages gameplay where kiting the enemies is the optimal strat which is boring af and I rather prefer getting up close and personal more often. But getting hit on pro is so punishing, thus seldom worth the risk.
I wish it'd be tweaked.

Pretty much boils down to skill issue really.

You can play aggressive on Pro just fine. Just land your parries.

[Daniel Clay]

Hi there, everyone.

I did it: I cleared the first Krauser fight without taking any hits on Pro. There's something that I wanted to share with you, although I think that everybody who dedicates a lot of time to this game probably knows this: although the game states that normal parries are disabled on Pro, they are still functioning during certain battles and situations, or, to be more precise, there are attacks (their number is very small) which , although parried perfectly, will still look like they were simply blocked, not deflected. Leon won't stylishly swing his knife after parrying them and the counterattack prompt won't appear, of course. That little detail confused me greatly during my first Hardcore run, because I thought, for instance, that I could break that nasty Krauser's five-hit combo anytime I wanted, but was too bad at parrying to do so. It's true that perfectly deflecting certain attacks won't allow you to retaliate (for instance, deflecting spade swipes won't make your enemy vulnerable), but doing so is at least followed by the visual and sound indications to let you know that the parry was perfect. Parrying some of Krauser's attacks, however, will look like Leon's only blocking and not deflecting them.

Sorry if everything mentioned above seems somewhat confusing, but I just wanted to share my observations with you as soon as possible. And I'm not ranting, of course: the game should have probably stated that parrying certain attacks will only look like blocking them, but other than that, I've got nothing to complain about. And the fight I've just cleared seems even more enjoyable now: Krauser's a very honest boss and fighting him is a good way to improve your parrying skill. Hope the second fight will be as interesting as the first one because I now know a lot more about parrying and how it functions in this game.

TL;DR: even if you've perfectly parried some of the attacks (especially the ones which consist of multiple hits), it will still look like you've only blocked and not deflected them.

[Pnume]

I think it's a great addition to the game and properly balanced unless your using the infinite knife

[Mu'Ammar of Carthus]

Originally posted by Daniel Clay:

In his human form, Jack Krauser has about 3 or 4 slashing attacks. They, at first, have rather obvious start-up animations, which normally would be used to tell the player when to parry his opponent. However, parrying when Krauser does his knife juggling simply does not work. You are only rewarded with regular parries.

Played only on Normal thus far, but I noticed he delays some attacks on purpose to make you miss the timing.