Magenta Horizon Combat Guide

Magenta Horizon recently left early access so I’m making this short combat guide to help new players ease into this chaotic game.

Movement is key

While you have i-frames (via dodges, jumps, UTs, hook attacks, etc.) and hyper armor (you get hyper armor at the starting frames of using melee, ranged skills, charging up UTs, etc.), your mobility is essential for keeping yourself alive. You can’t reliably use i-frames/hyper armor all the time as the game is too hectic and taking damage often is expected. Dashing, pogoing, hook attack, and Flying V are all crucial tools for maneuvering around hordes of enemies. Pogo, hook attack, Flying V, the mid-air XXXY combo, and taking damage mid air will also reset your jump.

Hook JC (Jump Cancel)

Kind of advanced but I figured it was worth mentioning in regards to movement. The hook/pull attack has two parts to it. The first part is when you successfully latch onto an enemy, and the second is the trajectory where you get sent flying. You want to press jump immediately after the first part to cancel out the second part. Then follow up with a pogo to reset your jump. Since you can’t dash through certain enemies, this will help you to maneuver mid-air over enemies that are parallel to you. This will also just give you more control over your mid-air movement. Warning: If you miss your hook attack, there’s a one second cooldown before you can use it again.

Ranged Skills

This game was heavily inspired by Ultrakill. And like Ultrakill, you can chain together your ranged skills. This is important as these ranged skill combinations are your main crowd-control tools. The fruit bomb + lantern shot will cause a chain explosion. The cyclone blade + wraith heart will create a helicopter AOE. There’s several more combinations, and you can chain together more than two skills. You can also use the two parries you get later in the game to parry your own attacks (as you can see in the clip). Experiment with what you can chain together and try to maximize your damage output.

Health Grenade

This was inspired by Nioh 2. There are no health items in this game. Instead, you get a health grenade which you can throw at an enemy to highlight them green. Your health bar doesn’t automatically refill after landing the grenade. You need to land melee hits on them while they are highlighted in order to gain health orbs. This is where hyper armor is useful as you can continually hit enemies without getting staggered. It also does splash damage which means you can highlight multiple enemies with just one grenade or hit a surface and still highlight an enemy. The amount of health you get back will differ depending on the enemy size. Small enemies will give smaller orbs, and big enemies will give bigger orbs.

Directional Aiming

There are two directions you can throw your health grenade/ranged skill. UP on the analog stick will result in a high or further throw, regardless of whether you’re mid-air or not. DOWN on the analog stick results in a “behind the back” throw (when grounded) or a downward throw (while in the air). A common mistake that a lot of players make is accidentally tossing their health grenade behind them when they meant to throw it in front of them. If this happens often, then it’s best to leave the stick neutral when grounded and only push DOWN on the stick when you’re airborne.

UT or Charge Attack

While the UT in Magenta Horizon isn’t as absurdly powerful as the one in Ninja Gaiden 2, it has a lot more utility than NG2’s. For one, you can UT in different directions. UTs can push and bunch up enemies together. Since it’s a multi-hit attack, you can drain enemies’ poise quicker or gain more health orbs from highlighted enemies. You get hyper armor while charging it and i-frames while the UT is active so you can use it defensively. And of course, you can do on-landing UTs. Warning: UTs will not build up any of your meters.

Meters on the top left

Each ranged skill has a meter. They all collectively charge up from melee hits, but the one selected will receive the most charge. When your style meter is S-rank or above, all ranged skill meters will automatically charge up slowly (similar to Alien Soldier). The green/yellow meter is for your health grenades. When filled up via melee, you get a health grenade. You can stock up three grenades. The white meter is for your currently selected ranged skill.

How to allocate your ranged skill slots

You can carry up to eight ranged skills (four slots on each weapon wheel). You can select the skill via d-pad and switch between weapon wheels via L2 or left trigger. When you’re first starting out, I recommend only using four ranged skills (Four skills on the first weapon wheel, and the same four skills on the second wheel). This way, not only are you not overwhelmed by having too many options but you’ll also have a second set of ranged skills filled and ready by the time you have used up your first weapon wheel (since they collectively charge up together). If you’re not fond of pressing the d-pad too many times for weapon chaining, you can have one skill on the first wheel and then chain with another skill on the second wheel. E.G. fruit bomb on UP d-pad for wheel 1 and lantern shot on UP d-pad for wheel 2. You then can switch with L2 or left trigger instead of pressing the d-pad multiple times. See clip for example. Look at the weapon wheel on the top left to see what I mean.

Example of using only four ranged skills on both weapon wheels.

Enemies and bosses’ poise meter

Each enemy and boss has a poise meter. You cannot see the enemies’ poise but you can see the bosses’. Generally, small enemies and humanoid bosses will stagger with one or a few hits while big enemies and set-piece bosses will take several hits. Ranged skill combos and UTs are super effective at draining poise. Typically, one or two ranged skill combos, followed by an on-landing UT will be enough to stagger most huge enemies. When a boss’ poise meter is yellow, it means they have hyper armor active.

Some useful combos

UP Y - Launcher
DOWN YY - Stinger into launcher
DOWN X - Backpedal
Mid-air XXXY is super useful since the finisher is a Flying V
Mid-air XXY - Mid-air Backpedal (useful for knocking fodder enemies out of the air)
YY, XXYY, or XXXYY are combos with the finisher counting as a hook attack (useful against shield enemies)

That’s it for now

There’s definitely more to say but I think I gave enough for players to have an enjoyable time with the game. Go and embrace the chaos, fellow reapers!