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High and low strikes don't seem to be for typical 1-on-1 attacking for how often the AI will cut you before you can finish the animations. But, if you time one right, and then follow up with the opposite - so high/low or low/high. After the swing, charge up the opposite direction. You seem to move faster, swing faster and the enemies seem less likely to pull off a block. Doing this, you can chain a good number of enemies.
But for normal fighting I had the best luck with middle attack, when you're at about swords-length range. It's quick enough that it will interrupt attacks, force blocks and then catch openings. I've also noticed if you start swinging middle it will halt a charge-attack by enemies as they go to block it, even if they are a bit off. I'm not sure how much of this is intentional or just cheese.
You can pretty much 'lock' a single opponent at all times with middle swing at about sword's length distance, but it is definitely cheesy. But this game is also very difficult. I have a bit of trouble flicking to the right position to block in time and usually just opt to keep space and go for swordtip hits rather than try and do something fancy with blocks and counters. I've yet to see a counterattack even seem to do anything.
I've only felt one level so far was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and had a thumb on the scales in a bad way, Sunset 3. That just felt unfair to the player, which I hadn't felt leading up to that point.
Sunset 3 is absolutely brutal. Gotta get first cut on one of the baldies and then frantically dodge your way to one side in order to 1v1 the remaining experts/masters. Game felt very well paced and theoretically beatable without rote memorization until the sunset levels.
When there are more than one in front, keep shoving the bloody remains of the ones you killed into the next enemy, it will bring disorder and stun them as they get blood in the eyes from this. You must be very careful not to overshoot them, or do the switch-around maneuver by accident, once you get stuck between two enemies you are pretty much done for.
I wonder if that keeps working on the higher levels though. I have only tried one duel vs master and found it pretty impossible and frustrating.
I take back what I said about the pacing, this level teaches you valuable skills. This is where you learn to dodge and deal with truly lethal enemies on both sides. I was just madcuzbad.
- MID ATTACK seems to be the fastest swing in the game, meaning that if you and your opponent take a simultaneous swing with them coming from above or below and you going straight they will always lose. Not completely set on this logic but it seems to happen consistently (to me and the enemies alike).
- It's also a pretty safe approach if you just want to get close first since you'll more than likely CLASH swords. That's especially useful against enemies that have already committed to trying to do a running charge attack. Though if you're too slow to attack for a clash to happen they'll just cut you down.
- Never attack twice if your opponent BLOCKED your first swing. If you attack after a successful block from the enemy and they counter attack their cut will always land first. Of course that's also true for you, so whoever blocked the attack now has priority as long as you land the counter attack window that causes your swing to come out faster.
- The one exception to that is SHOVING. If you do get blocked or the enemy dodges past your attack shoving them is fast enough to push them back to default regardless of what they try to do (though if they get past you first you might just stumble the opposite way). Shoving seems to shut down off-block counter attacks as well despite the speed increase. Some enemies will actively shove you when you dodge attacks or try to go from a block to a counter attack because of how safe it is.
- If you and your opponent CLASH swings it is safe to take another attack, though they might just clash with you again.
- You can do faster VERTICAL SWINGS by alternating between up and down. Not sure how effective it is exactly but I've cut down lots of enemies by flowing into the opposite vertical slash when they dodged past the first once. Be careful though, because if they blocked that first swing instead you'll get your bowels cut open trying to swing again.
- You can FEINT your attack angle even without charging if you swap angles quick enough, resulting in a slower swing that shifts from one angle to the other. If you find yourself consistently thinking "what the hell why was I slower than them?!?" it's probably because you accidentally feinted and they didn't. This happens especially often if you have a bad habit of charging a swing in melee range during an exchange instead of just tapping an attack out.
- You should probably default to MID STANCE because when you do your opponent will almost always aim for you from either below or above. The swing is slower than from the middle making it easier to dodge and it's easier to anticipate due to how wide it looks. Your up dodge can get past both low and high swings as well so baiting one out by holding mid stance can be effective.
- CHARGE ATTACKS are very good for approaches if you have the space to start running for even a step or two, and they seem to make it so your attack comes out slightly faster due to you already having committed to a swing. You can flow from one into another fairly quickly against multiple enemies as long as you hold and release the button with right timing after cutting down the last enemy. You are left almost completely defenseless since you can't block while holding an attack, but you CAN still dodge attacks even while charging.
- With that in mind there are different AI TYPES (you can choose which one you fight in Duels), some prefer low stance when you hold mid stance, some prefer high in the same situation. Some are very careful and back away from you or advance just enough to stay in reach, some try and dodge into you in an infighter sort of sense. It can become easier to kill a particular enemy if you manage to recognize what sort of AI they have.
- You can up and down DODGE while advancing or retreating, you can also swap between the two dodge stances pretty quickly.
- Your VERTICAL SWINGS in particular seem to come out faster after a dodge with a small run(?) following it up, however...
- If you DODGE into an enemy from too close when they haven't committed into a swing they will almost certainly adjust their attack to the angle that WILL hit you. However you can also feint this by doing an early up dodge to make the opponent commit to a swing from the middle, then duck beneath that swing and attack them.
- As said in an earlier point SHOVING is a pretty strong, safe option in most situations. You can also use it when surrounded to swap positions with the guy in front of you to throw them back into an active enemy swing coming from behind you, causing them to die in friendly fire. If you do this too late you'll swap places but still get cut down.
- You can fling BLOOD into your opponent's eyes to blind them, however it doesn't always work (might be because of the angle, or because they already got blinded once, or they're just immune). Mid attack might be the only one that blinds enemies because of how direct the blood spray is from that angle?
-You can also shove the bodies of slain enemies to make them stumble into others before they've fallen to the ground, spraying BLOOD onto them and possibly blinding them too for another opening. By doing both of these in succession to a crowd of enemies you can sometimes end up slicing down five or so guys without any resistance whatsoever.
- You can use low attacks on the CAMPFIRE in Nightfall (level two bamboo forest massacre) to fling fire onto your enemies, burning them and leaving them very open to attacks,
- The dojo master boss seems to have EXTENDED REACH which means that if he attacks he'll probably hit you even if you feel like you're pretty far away. You have to block or dodge him on more or less every attack until you manage to cut him down.
- You can up DODGE past fleeing civilians in the town without having them stun you with a collision.
Honestly easier said than done. Since you and the enemy have the same exact moveset it means that there is a counter for basically everything from both sides. You just have to put all of it to practice and keep the exchange going until a mistake happens and someone gets cut down.
Obviously that's really, REALLY hard to accomplish against higher difficulty enemies because they're programmed to basically use all of these counters and combat tricks against you. From my experience so far the most common type of kill against higher difficulty enemies is when they try to dodge multiple times in a row and you do a quick one-two or you happen to catch them committing to a slower swing with your mid attack.
Actively using shove to protect yourself from retaliation is pretty damn strong. Dodging can be more effective than blocking, especially up dodge if you're holding mid stance because it gets past two types of swing instead of just one and they're very likely to try to swing from those angles if your sword is pointed straight at them.
Maybe this is useful, maybe it's not. Just felt like writing these observations down.
Thanks for taking the time to write all this up. I understand that the tutorial only covers the basic controls and doesn't go in-depth enough on tactics, so I'm working on an additional guide with diagrams to cover various other things like how to fight when you're surrounded, etc. The one thing I will mention though is that all the basic attacks have equal timing - if they're started from the corresponding stance. If you're in high guard, and do a high attack, it's as fast as a middle attack started from middle guard. The delay you're describing is the extra time it takes to change stance. When an enemy sees you in middle guard it will have to change stance in order to strike around it, and this extra time will give you a window in which to connect first. This is also why high and low attacks will feel slow if they're started from a different stance. You're also correct that it's faster to alternate swings - a high attack ends by putting you in the low stance, allowing you to immediately followup with a low attack without delay. The same is true for alternating middle attacks.
It can take some getting used to depending on which AI type you're facing, but here's the gist of it. You attack into a block to bait out a counter attack (the flashing sped up swing), then backstep (crouching) to avoid the swing and cut the enemy down when they're at the end of the motion. I'm using this method on higher difficulties and it works wonders as long as you're not surrounded by like five guys.
Aggressive type AI tend to chase after you with their counter which is specifically when you HAVE TO do a full dash backwards to avoid getting your head chopped off.
Defensive type AI often deliver their counter attack standing still, so you have to dash about half the distance instead and then attack before their guard comes back up.
Note that this doesn't work if they dodge the attack, or clash swings with you so you have to force them into countering from a block. They sometimes time a block or dodge it especially if your timing was off. It doesn't work EVERY time but as long as you're not facing a Master level opponent it'll land in a couple tries.
You can also just hold charge attack and back up from an enemy that's further away. If you time your swing right (just a little after the enemy speeds up into a full sprint with their attack to try and chop you down) you'll move back just enough with your swing to avoid theirs and cut them down at the same time. Note that the distance has to be far enough and you have to keep holding backwards the entire time or they'll just cut you down regardless.
You can try and set this up against enemies by shoving them back and then backstepping two or three times yourself before stancing up for their charge.
...Also thanks @Drasnus for correcting me on a few things. Looking forward to an official guide.