Alright, how do you actually get past enemies who block in SR2?

[Ilshavoh]

Without just whipping out the reaver.

We all know there's a pivotal moment where you can't use it, but you're also not really at risk of losing, which makes the experience more of a grind.

Raziel doesn't iframe through attacks, unlocks if you're more than an arm's length away from your target, and enemies have absurd tracking that negates you trying to awkwardly scoot around them to get at their back.

I very much remember the final stretch 20 years ago being a long series of CLANG CLANG CLANG as nothing happened until RNG gave me a hit.

[FireMage]

Don't heavy attacks go through blocks? The ending is kinda a slog that is right. Replaying these games for me is more of a story thing.

[Ilshavoh]

They do not. The wraith reaver ignores blocks, but everything Raziel can do without it is blockable by enemies. You can keep slamming axes down ad nauseam to no effect.

The only time heavy spam does something is when enemies try to duck or jump, and because physical heavy attacks have a large vertical component, it clips them.

[Kenshiro3]

FUN FACT: Later enemies button read and auto block/counter when you you attack them while locked on.

So The trick is to not lock on to them run circles around around them while swiping.... preferably with a sword. Allowing you to get their backside/or side as they are not autofacing/blocking. Or you can swipe them with the Reaver, which they cant block. And if your Reaver is in danger of sapping your health or you're just plain low, just switch to the spectral realm.... and swipe like crazy. Then feed on there souls and return to the material realm after you're finished. This is about the only way to reliably damage enemies in the latter half of the game.

[Ilshavoh]

I've heard this theory of input reading.

It doesn't really help to get past guards. They'll still reliably block you when performing standing light or heavy attacks.

At best, your moving around weakly poking your sword forward seems to require some distance to not immediately have the enemies input read you.

[Paradoks_DB]

There was a trick in the original, but this release seems to have some hit detection issues, so it's not that reliable unfortunately (I somehow doubt this particular issue will be addressed).
There was a way to stun lock almost any enemy in the game – claws: light attack, light attack, heavy attack, repeat. Landing any hit at some point meant death to the enemy. The trick was to try this combo and if it was blocked – dodge and immediately try again. It sometimes took a few tries but was a sure way to kill anything. I think only Sarafan swordsmen (and fire demons if you attacked them during their uninterruptible fire breath attack) could get out it. In this release unfortunately attacks tend to whiff at some point.

The best way is still to just use the Reaver and switch to claws if healing is necessary.

But the final "boss rush" does clearly show everything that is wrong with combat in this game. I still remember laughing when I read the description in the Dark Chronicle, which claimed that first two enemies "fell easily before the power of the Reaver". That’s not exactly what it looked like on my end :-).

[Ilshavoh]

Oh good lord, it was a MIX of things.

Staying unlocked helps, but not because enemies are input reading you. Not exactly.

There's an angle where Raziel is NOT facing the enemy when you press the attack button, that your attack will NOT be blocked. You have to make him awkwardly face 10~ degrees to the left or right of the enemy you want to hit, and then turn Raziel INTO the enemy as the animation starts to clip them. You still have some facing control when an animation starts.

Locking on hurts you because you CANT do this.

This is also why you can "Run around and poke people" with a sword and it works. You're always slightly off angle when doing this.

Polearms that have the swinging animation do this even better because they have a wide reach and more forgiving angle.

Straight up, if physical swords had the Reaver's horizontal running slashes, this would be so much easier.

[Kenshiro3]

Originally posted by Digibunny:

Oh good lord, it was a MIX of things.

Staying unlocked helps, but not because enemies are input reading you. Not exactly.

There's an angle where Raziel is NOT facing the enemy when you press the attack button, that your attack will NOT be blocked. You have to make him awkwardly face 10~ degrees to the left or right of the enemy you want to hit, and then turn Raziel INTO the enemy as the animation starts to clip them. You still have some facing control when an animation starts.

Locking on hurts you because you CANT do this.

This is also why you can "Run around and poke people" with a sword and it works. You're always slightly off angle when doing this.

Polearms that have the swinging animation do this even better because they have a wide reach and more forgiving angle.

Straight up, if physical swords had the Reaver's horizontal running slashes, this would be so much easier.

Thanks for explaining it better than I could. That's definitely how it works when not locked on.

But yeah basically locking on locks you in to the angle they block at. That said they actually DO have a bad habit of input reading and auto blocking when locked on. I can't count how many times they blocked my attack from behind while locked on, in the remake. I lock-on strafe dash behind them... attack them from the rear, and BAM the moment the attack connects with their back they are facing me and blocking as if they were facing that direction from the start despite their model having just done a 180. I've also had instances (usually with the demons) where they will be facing away from me when they block... and it still counts as blocked, when locked on. This only happens when locked on though... as I can pretty much poke em in the back with impunity when not locked on. That's why I am fairly certain that at least SOME of the enemies ARE input reading... or at the very least 360 blocking, when locked on.

Also I've found that if I try to use the polearms to do non-locked on attacks tends to increase the likelihood of it getting blocked and punished... as they are slower... and the wider angle has a better chance of hitting the blocked angles... thus negating the attack entirely.

[Fear Ghoul]

The combat in Soul Reaver 2 was such a downgrade from Soul Reaver. Just beat everything to death instead of having to think about strategy like in the previous game. Too bad they didn't have time to put in the cool enemy ideas they had like enemies that would be dismembered and still try to kill you. In Soul Reaver you had to look at your surroundings to find ways to kill vampires, make sure you always had a weapon, be careful with the Reaver to not get hit and lose it, or decide if it was worth it to use your glyph magic. The closest we really get in Soul Reaver 2 is deciding if you should use the Reaver to kill an enemy and not be able to restore health.

[Ilshavoh]

Originally posted by Fear Ghoul:

The combat in Soul Reaver 2 was such a downgrade from Soul Reaver. Just beat everything to death instead of having to think about strategy like in the previous game. Too bad they didn't have time to put in the cool enemy ideas they had like enemies that would be dismembered and still try to kill you. In Soul Reaver you had to look at your surroundings to find ways to kill vampires, make sure you always had a weapon, be careful with the Reaver to not get hit and lose it, or decide if it was worth it to use your glyph magic. The closest we really get in Soul Reaver 2 is deciding if you should use the Reaver to kill an enemy and not be able to restore health.

Let's not pretend any of the LoK games have anything resembling combat depth after the first playthrough.

The only reason we reasonably play these games is for the aesthetic, theme, and no small amount of nostalgiabait.

Even Defiance, at it's peak, was largely the same thing over and over with no incentive to change up your moveset. You kill things as quickly and effeciently as possible so as to not impact your constantly draining health.

[Fear Ghoul]

Still though, in Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, and Defiance at least you had to pay attention to your enemies to be able to feed on them or even just plain kill them. I really liked how in Soul Reaver paying attention to your surroundings was a major factor in fighting your enemies. I also loved all the weapons, spells, and items in Blood Omen. That combination of the shield spell and chaos armor was so much fun, having demons come beat themselves to death.

[Kenshiro3]

Originally posted by Digibunny:

Originally posted by Fear Ghoul:

The combat in Soul Reaver 2 was such a downgrade from Soul Reaver. Just beat everything to death instead of having to think about strategy like in the previous game. Too bad they didn't have time to put in the cool enemy ideas they had like enemies that would be dismembered and still try to kill you. In Soul Reaver you had to look at your surroundings to find ways to kill vampires, make sure you always had a weapon, be careful with the Reaver to not get hit and lose it, or decide if it was worth it to use your glyph magic. The closest we really get in Soul Reaver 2 is deciding if you should use the Reaver to kill an enemy and not be able to restore health.

Let's not pretend any of the LoK games have anything resembling combat depth after the first playthrough.

The only reason we reasonably play these games is for the aesthetic, theme, and no small amount of nostalgiabait.

Even Defiance, at it's peak, was largely the same thing over and over with no incentive to change up your moveset. You kill things as quickly and effeciently as possible so as to not impact your constantly draining health.

They don't. The problem is that SR2 made a half assed attempt to add mechanical complexity... and absolute botched it because they aborted it half way through. Honestly Defiance's combat while not deep was satisfying and felt like a finished version they were ORIGINALLY going for in Soul Reaver 2.

As for why we play the games... it aint just nostalgia. You're overlooking the best part about the games... THE F*CKING INCREDIBLE WRITING! That's why Blood Omen 2 was considered the black sheep and "bad" game of the series despite being an alright game in its own right.

This is ALSO there was such a violently negative reaction in the fanbase towards the multplayer arena shooter spinoff Nosgoth. Had it been the multiplayer component of a larger narrative driven LoK title... it would have likely been loved. The concept (asymetrical Humans vs Vampires Arena Combat) wasn't without merit & was honestly inspired. But nope... S/E killed that to to make a non-narrative P2W Multiplayer Money Spinner from its corpse of an epic narrative driven franchise. Fans reacted SO negatively that it never made it out of alpha.

FUN FACT: I actually got banned from Nosgoth's Facebook page for proving the devs were lying out of their a$$es, deleting reviews, & banning people for voicing criticism while claiming to "want to foster open and honest discussion with the community". I called them out on it. They said i was lying. I posted pics of them threatening & banning longtime respected members of community for doing just that. And got banned myself. XD

[「Sh1k1」]

For the most part, I've found that using the old infinite loop from the original release (claws: light light heavy repeat; Reaver: light heavy repeat) as soon as you find an opening makes taking care of literally any enemy a piece of cake. Takes a little timing after throwing out the heavy attack though.

[Baron Borie]

don't lock them, just run in circle around them and spam attach button, they won't block.

[Sodacus]

One thing I found (that is only ever stated in the manual as far as I know) is that you can bait enemies out of blocking when you're locked on. If you crouch and either press light or heavy attack, Raziel will kick at the enemy's shin and often times this will trigger a jump animation, opening them up for attacks. Doesn't always work, but once I found this it did make combat a lot smoother and reliable than the unlocked-circle-running method described above.