Parry

[BINI Revillame]

Whoever designed the parry system in this game just made it unnecessarily difficult. Why do you have to use 2 different buttons simultaneously to parry when you could've just allotted a different single-input? Re-binding it to a single button doesn't work, so is the "counter-attack" for unblockables. Is this their attempt to differentiate from souls games? If yes, then it sucks.

[Vasya2423]

Originally posted by sgrey:

It's more rewarding gameplay.

It is slightly more rewarding but much more risky.

Originally posted by sgrey:

I was able to use reflection several times on the last demo boss right at the start of his fist combo. Or you can use reflection at the end when he has very delayed kick and immediately stagger him.

After the combo he stops for long enough for you to get off your own combo anyway. There is no reason to use riskier option.

Originally posted by sgrey:

I don't get your question at all, you can ask - why deflect if you can just dodge or run away? Especially since dodge actually links into many cool combos after you get the skills.

Yes, why? My point is not that brink guard is overpowered. Dodge and guard are safer than reflect with nearly same payoff.

Originally posted by sgrey:

And it's not like the game only has two bosses. Interrupting and staggering them for a massive strike is very rewarding.

As is simply guarding and dodging. Current bosses have extremely generous windows for you to deal damage and they are staggered during your combo.

[sgrey]

Originally posted by Vasya2423:

Originally posted by sgrey:

It's more rewarding gameplay.

It is slightly more rewarding but much more risky.

Originally posted by sgrey:

I was able to use reflection several times on the last demo boss right at the start of his fist combo. Or you can use reflection at the end when he has very delayed kick and immediately stagger him.

After the combo he stops for long enough for you to get off your own combo anyway. There is no reason to use riskier option.

Originally posted by sgrey:

I don't get your question at all, you can ask - why deflect if you can just dodge or run away? Especially since dodge actually links into many cool combos after you get the skills.

Yes, why? My point is not that brink guard is overpowered. Dodge and guard are safer than reflect with nearly same payoff.

Originally posted by sgrey:

And it's not like the game only has two bosses. Interrupting and staggering them for a massive strike is very rewarding.

As is simply guarding and dodging. Current bosses have extremely generous windows for you to deal damage and they are staggered during your combo.

No one is forcing you to use reflection if you don't want to. But in the next section you will have a much harder time without it. Also, as in pretty much every souls game in existance, you need to learn the boss's move set and when you do learn the move set you can get off reflection if not 100% of the time, but at least 80-90% of the time, which is fine. And you get a reduced damage if you fail to get it off, plus there is a skill in that tree that reduces incoming damage by a lot during the execution, thus making the skill a lot less risky.
And like I said before - it is a high risk, high reward type skill that you grow into. You don't just make the boss pause, you break the posture and make them stagger, dealing much more damage. If you can get reflection off you can easily deal double the damage that you would have without it. And I was able to use just fine against the the demo boss. I even pulled it off with some of his moves that I didn't expect, such as sword strikes. I bet I can also to it with some other skills if I just practice more.

[Vasya2423]

Originally posted by sgrey:

No one is forcing you to use reflection if you don't want to. But in the next section you will have a much harder time without it.

Are you some sort of a closed beta tester who played the whole game already?
I'm talking just from the demo experience.
Yes, it is very possible that what you said will be the case but I don't have enough information to be sure of it. So I'm just sharing my impression about how useful reflect is in the demo.

Originally posted by sgrey:

You don't just make the boss pause, you break the posture and make them stagger, dealing much more damage. If you can get reflection off you can easily deal double the damage that you would have without it.

Can you elaborate? In my experience posture break is when you are able to execute a brutal strike on the boss. Doesn't reflect just make boss stagger for few seconds?

[sgrey]

Originally posted by Vasya2423:

Originally posted by sgrey:

No one is forcing you to use reflection if you don't want to. But in the next section you will have a much harder time without it.

Are you some sort of a closed beta tester who played the whole game already?
I'm talking just from the demo experience.
Yes, it is very possible that what you said will be the case but I don't have enough information to be sure of it. So I'm just sharing my impression about how useful reflect is in the demo.

Originally posted by sgrey:

You don't just make the boss pause, you break the posture and make them stagger, dealing much more damage. If you can get reflection off you can easily deal double the damage that you would have without it.

Can you elaborate? In my experience posture break is when you are able to execute a brutal strike on the boss. Doesn't reflect just make boss stagger for few seconds?

I am not a beta tester myself, but it's easy to find out what was in the beta test and just how harder some of the enemies hit.

What reflection does by default is to deal a huge damage to the stamina. Like over 50% kind of damage. And it also makes the boss pause after you interrupt the combo. Thus, the most effective use of reflection is when the boss already used some of the stamina and you brink guarded through it, then use reflection to destroy the most of the stamina bar, which will make the boss stagger immediately. If you do not get the boss to the stagger point just by reflection, his stamina bar will likely have only a little bit stamina left, so you would be able to get in and hit him once or twice and that will get him to stagger and open up opportunity for a brutal strike. There is also a skill that deals a lot of damage if you just use reflection, much more damage than the brink guard.

Bringing it together, if you time it right, you interrupt a boss (dealing damage already if the skill is enabled) and do a follow-up combo, he gets staggered, allowing you to do another combo on him, following by a brutal strike and then potentially another combo or a hit after that. You can take 30-40% of his health just like that. Sure, you can brink guard through that and get him to stagger and then do a brutal strike with the combo, but it will take longer and you are basically waiting for the boss to exhaust himself. WIth a properly timed reflection you can just stagger him when there is still a lot of stamina left.

Also, I am not claiming that using reflection is the only good or viable playstyle. It's just a good skill that you can use if the time is right. There are other ways to fight bosses, each one is good. It's just that having more tools at your disposal and potential moves is always nice. Use it or not - up to you. It is very hard to pull off if you don't practice it, so I definitely see that it's not something everyone can just do. I had to do 2 playthoughs with multiple weapons to be comfortable with using reflection during boss fights.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by sgrey:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

I never said it didn't. I haven't used reflect (aka reflection), so I don't know what it does. I am simply stating that parries (aka brink guard) aren't useless. Brink guard drains their stamina faster than doing nothing at all.

Yes, I agree. Brink guard is awesome and I really like that there are skills that enhance it and actually makes it even more useful, such as making it do damage and also have follow ups and there are more stuff that was still locked.
Reflection is by no means a replacement for the brink guard as reflection is a skill with stringent activation condition and brink guard is a game mechanic that you can use any time. The best use of Reflection is together with the brink guard during combos, where you would block a few very fast attacks and then use reflection on a slower attack or an attack with a slight delay, thus immediately breaking enemy's posture and often staggering them. I played the demo several times and tried to use reflection as much as possible and it's very difficult, even on the basic enemies. It's a skill that you would grow into as you get more proficient with the game.

I went ahead and finished the demo.

I had no need of reflection:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3413354786

[sgrey]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by sgrey:

Yes, I agree. Brink guard is awesome and I really like that there are skills that enhance it and actually makes it even more useful, such as making it do damage and also have follow ups and there are more stuff that was still locked.
Reflection is by no means a replacement for the brink guard as reflection is a skill with stringent activation condition and brink guard is a game mechanic that you can use any time. The best use of Reflection is together with the brink guard during combos, where you would block a few very fast attacks and then use reflection on a slower attack or an attack with a slight delay, thus immediately breaking enemy's posture and often staggering them. I played the demo several times and tried to use reflection as much as possible and it's very difficult, even on the basic enemies. It's a skill that you would grow into as you get more proficient with the game.

I went ahead and finished the demo.

I had no need of reflection:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3413354786

Yes, there is no need for reflection. I beat the demo 4 times and I have to hold myself back so that I won't kill the demo boss and practice. I never said you need it.

[Vasya2423]

Originally posted by sgrey:

I have to hold myself back so that I won't kill the demo boss and practice.

You can backup saves from \AppData\Local\The First Berserker Khazan\Saved\SaveGames\

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by sgrey:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

I went ahead and finished the demo.

I had no need of reflection:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3413354786

Yes, there is no need for reflection. I beat the demo 4 times and I have to hold myself back so that I won't kill the demo boss and practice. I never said you need it.

I just mean the risk vs reward does not feel worth it. The number of times where it is even usable is so niche, it is just a wasted skill point.

I practiced on the boar. And had to wait on a certain attack. Then time it perfectly. Or I could just kill the same boar in a fraction of the time with 3 javelins spammed back to back.

Originally posted by BINI Revillame:

Whoever designed the parry system in this game just made it unnecessarily difficult. Why do you have to use 2 different buttons simultaneously to parry when you could've just allotted a different single-input? Re-binding it to a single button doesn't work, so is the "counter-attack" for unblockables. Is this their attempt to differentiate from souls games? If yes, then it sucks.

BTW, you don't have to hit them "at the same time." You can just hold down block then tap the other button at any time.

[EuerDickerFreund]

Originally posted by BINI Revillame:

Whoever designed the parry system in this game just made it unnecessarily difficult. Why do you have to use 2 different buttons simultaneously to parry when you could've just allotted a different single-input? Re-binding it to a single button doesn't work, so is the "counter-attack" for unblockables. Is this their attempt to differentiate from souls games? If yes, then it sucks.

of course rebinding to single-button work. you need to delete the button you want to use. easy going

[Vasya2423]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

I practiced on the boar. And had to wait on a certain attack. Then time it perfectly. Or I could just kill the same boar in a fraction of the time with 3 javelins spammed back to back.

I can't even say why my timing is wrong before I accidently get it right few times.

[IchigoMait]

The deflection (parry) is pointless waste of time.

You only need perfect block with the damage feature, and maybe use counter or dodge for the grab stuff where perfect block doesn't work.

Parrying works for very few stuff, even not on all normal attacks, so first time you just have to waste time trial and erroring what works or not, while wondering if you're even doing it right or if it even works for the attack type the enemy is doing.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by IchigoMait:

The deflection (parry) is pointless waste of time.

You only need perfect block with the damage feature, and maybe use counter or dodge for the grab stuff where perfect block doesn't work.

Parrying works for very few stuff, even not on all normal attacks, so first time you just have to waste time trial and erroring what works or not, while wondering if you're even doing it right or if it even works for the attack type the enemy is doing.

Yeah, with all its built in limitations, it should have been a hold skill.

Hold block, then press and hold the button, doing so should have rapidly drained stamina, but put you into an auto counter stance. If they attacked you with an eligible attack, it should have triggered automatically. If you ran out of stamina then the stance ends, and you get winded.

[sgrey]

Originally posted by Vasya2423:

Originally posted by sgrey:

I have to hold myself back so that I won't kill the demo boss and practice.

You can backup saves from \AppData\Local\The First Berserker Khazan\Saved\SaveGames\

Thanks, I know that I can back up the save, but it's just faster to get him to 10% health or so and die. I completed the demo 4 times because I was done with what I wanted to do :)

And btw it seems we will actually have to farm bosses in the full game for their drops so that we can craft armor and stuff they provide.

[sgrey]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by sgrey:

Yes, there is no need for reflection. I beat the demo 4 times and I have to hold myself back so that I won't kill the demo boss and practice. I never said you need it.

I just mean the risk vs reward does not feel worth it. The number of times where it is even usable is so niche, it is just a wasted skill point.

I practiced on the boar. And had to wait on a certain attack. Then time it perfectly. Or I could just kill the same boar in a fraction of the time with 3 javelins spammed back to back.

Originally posted by BINI Revillame:

Whoever designed the parry system in this game just made it unnecessarily difficult. Why do you have to use 2 different buttons simultaneously to parry when you could've just allotted a different single-input? Re-binding it to a single button doesn't work, so is the "counter-attack" for unblockables. Is this their attempt to differentiate from souls games? If yes, then it sucks.

BTW, you don't have to hit them "at the same time." You can just hold down block then tap the other button at any time.

Tbh I think the reflection is currently bugged. Because it's just so hard to do and doesn't seem to always activate even if the timing seem to be the same. Maybe the timing is just so tight, like a millisecond or something...
And yea, I generally agree that the reward doesn't seem worth it in the demo, but I still stand by my point that it's a skill that you grow into, especially against stronger opponent that hit like a truck and you would like to stop their moves. I think this is the case where as you get used to the game you will just be able to use it more later on. And I want to know what else is in that skill tree, because it might be very OP

[sgrey]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by IchigoMait:

The deflection (parry) is pointless waste of time.

You only need perfect block with the damage feature, and maybe use counter or dodge for the grab stuff where perfect block doesn't work.

Parrying works for very few stuff, even not on all normal attacks, so first time you just have to waste time trial and erroring what works or not, while wondering if you're even doing it right or if it even works for the attack type the enemy is doing.

Yeah, with all its built in limitations, it should have been a hold skill.

Hold block, then press and hold the button, doing so should have rapidly drained stamina, but put you into an auto counter stance. If they attacked you with an eligible attack, it should have triggered automatically. If you ran out of stamina then the stance ends, and you get winded.

I think they will rebalance it in the future to be more hittable... In my testing, though, I found that you can actually just hold guard and then hit Y and execute the Reflection. It's a bit easier to do it this way, I think, but it does drain your stamina a lot to hold the guard.