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Narcissus1916
Apr 29, 2013

Is Avoid just up and down or also to the sides? I keep getting enemies (like the kickboxer) who punch my chest and I get hit half of the time?

I'm losing multiple lives whenever a normal enemy gets enraged, they go back to full health, and now have a yellow aura around them. No matter what I do, avoid or parry, they seem to never break. outside of building up and cheesing focus what am I missing?



Game is amazing. But I don't know if I've ever played a game as astonishingly poorly explained. The opening credits are rad as hell and then... that's it.

The actual text about restarting, death counters, replaying, and move progression are actively misleading too

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Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

Narcissus1916 posted:

Is Avoid just up and down or also to the sides? I keep getting enemies (like the kickboxer) who punch my chest and I get hit half of the time?

I'm losing multiple lives whenever a normal enemy gets enraged, they go back to full health, and now have a yellow aura around them. No matter what I do, avoid or parry, they seem to never break. outside of building up and cheesing focus what am I missing?



Game is amazing. But I don't know if I've ever played a game as astonishingly poorly explained. The opening credits are rad as hell and then... that's it.

The actual text about restarting, death counters, replaying, and move progression are actively misleading too

avoid is in all four directions. this is especially crucial in stage 2, because a lot of the enemies there have a combo that's just two punches followed by a guard-breaking straight that you can avoid to the left or right

the second-wind enemies are basically the demons from god hand. they usually appear in the same rooms, though in the events that one doesn't appear in that room there's a high chance of them instead appearing in the subsequent fight. they can be beaten down like anyone else, though they're a lot beefier and their combos are more complex

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


Narcissus1916 posted:

Is Avoid just up and down or also to the sides? I keep getting enemies (like the kickboxer) who punch my chest and I get hit half of the time?

I'm losing multiple lives whenever a normal enemy gets enraged, they go back to full health, and now have a yellow aura around them. No matter what I do, avoid or parry, they seem to never break. outside of building up and cheesing focus what am I missing?

Avoid is just up and down, yes, like a 3d fighting game ala Tekken or Virtua Fighter - if you are getting stuffed, either you are choosing the wrong avoid, or you are timing it wrong - many mini bosses and bosses have a delay attack that's designed to muck up your avoid rhythm

For enraged enemies, like any enemy, you can break their structure (force them to block attacks) or counter (parry/dodge into quick attacks). Ooooooor if you memorise or can tell who are the "super enemies", you can just... not do a finisher on them.

I only noticed this yesterday so i am not certain yet (haven't tracked) but am pretty sure that enemies that will get a phase 2 upon being hit by a finisher have a very thin, almost transparent layer of white aura when facing them initially.

Hats Wouldnt Fly
Feb 9, 2010

.
Redfont is my hero.

Oxxidation posted:

avoid is in all four directions. this is especially crucial in stage 2, because a lot of the enemies there have a combo that's just two punches followed by a guard-breaking straight that you can avoid to the left or right

the second-wind enemies are basically the demons from god hand. they usually appear in the same rooms, though in the events that one doesn't appear in that room there's a high chance of them instead appearing in the subsequent fight. they can be beaten down like anyone else, though they're a lot beefier and their combos are more complex

Just to say this again, you can push the stick in four directions, but pushing left or right is exactly the same as pushing up. You're just mistiming the chest punches, they delay them slightly.

This game is very bad at explaining itself.

Edit: I've also noticed that I don't get any of the reviving guys since I stopped using finishers. Kind of lame, they should have them activate other ways.

Hats Wouldnt Fly fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Feb 12, 2022

Chopstick Dystopia
Jun 16, 2010


lowest high and highest low loser of: WEED WEE
k

Narcissus1916 posted:

Is Avoid just up and down or also to the sides? I keep getting enemies (like the kickboxer) who punch my chest and I get hit half of the time?
The kickboxer charged punch can be avoided with lb+down just like the first two punches in that combo. The charged fist comes out later though, you may be avoiding too early, try to avoid at the last possible moment, not just tap avoid three times in a row.

quote:

I'm losing multiple lives whenever a normal enemy gets enraged, they go back to full health, and now have a yellow aura around them. No matter what I do, avoid or parry, they seem to never break. outside of building up and cheesing focus what am I missing?
You can reliably avoid them then light attack while they're still in the animation for the last move of their combo, but after it has missed you as you avoided it, this puts them into a light stun from which sweep always connects, so you can sweep, beat, repeat or sweep eyepoke, etc. If you do a heavy instead of light here they sometimes have already finished recovering from their animation when the heavy hits and may be able to block the sweep, so make sure it's a quick light after the avoid to put them in the more vulnerable state.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Chopstick Dystopia posted:

The kickboxer charged punch can be avoided with lb+down just like the first two punches in that combo. The charged fist comes out later though, you may be avoiding too early, try to avoid at the last possible moment, not just tap avoid three times in a row.

Something to note about this is that enemies often adjust their timing depending on if their hit is blocked or avoided

Chopstick Dystopia
Jun 16, 2010


lowest high and highest low loser of: WEED WEE
k
As people have been saying, wow this final boss. Very cool, very cool gimmick. I am going to have to get much better at Kung Fu I have been coasting on dirty moves and he's having none of it.

fnox
May 19, 2013



Also if the spinning moves are confusing you or throwing your avoids off, just punch them in the middle of it!

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
OK so here goes my first attempt at seriously writing on a game I guess

Always Be Centered
Sifu, and how to play it

From River City Ransom, I learned to manage a group fight, and that everything is a weapon
From Soul Calibur, I learned to attack and defend simultaneously, and how to read the tempo of a fight
From Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, I learned to abuse my foot
From Tekken, I learned to control my enemy's position, wall juggle, and avoid lows
From Virtua Fighter, I learned to see more value in a few moves I do well, and using the best tool for the task, than in using more moves just to say I did
In Sifu, I get to be tested on all of these things in the same fight

A wise man once said that there should be a video game where you get to do that long one-cut fight scene in Tom Yum Goong where Tony Jaa beats the poo poo out of like 50 dudes while running up the stairs for 5 minutes and then gets into a boss fight. That man was me and Sifu is that game. Sloclap managed to make a 3D beatemup in the old style of The Warriors and Fighting Force, one of which was fantastic in some aspects, but made with a modern understanding of design. Unfortunately, they leave a bit to the player to figure out, especially when it comes to some nuances of the system that are so elegantly done that they might go unnoticed. On top of that, there are some difficulties with the names of things, and this is true even when it comes to the names of attacks, which I'll get to later. I won't go into making an explicit argument for why I think this game is so brilliantly made. I'll let the explanation of the game be that argument.

Abstraction: Everything is a weapon
A pipe and a bat aren't really the same thing, right? Well, they might as well be, because you swing them the same. Can you palm strike with a bat? Yes, you can, and you do it the same way. Your body is a weapon, too.

Something to note about this game is that everything is carefully crafted, and everything is in its proper place, when it comes to the systems. The game is meant to be mastered, which means it has to be consistent. Therefore, things that work some way must work that way every time, and everything that communicates something is clear and consistent. The chimes that play when someone can be finished off, and again when they're out, those chimes provide valuable information. This continues over into how the moveset is laid out. Each attack in the list serves a particular function that is mirrored between the light and hard attack versions, serving similar but different purposes.

From here, I will be using keypad style fighting game input using numbers and L or H.

46L and 46H both serve similar but different purposes, and at roughly the same range: short. 46 is used for short range.
66L is a gap closer that ducks, whereas 66H is a gap closer that forgoes ducking to cover more distance. It covers a LOT of distance, by the way.
(hold)L and (hold)H are both pretty short range, but they also have a sort of hidden function: you can just hold the last hit of a combo to turn these into combo finishers.

The list could go on, but you get the idea. Any given input method should be drilled into your brain not as a specific move, but first as an input corresponding to a situation. 46 is to be used only at short range. 66 is a gap closer. (hold) can be used to end a combo. Which version of the input you use is a different part of a combination. If you squint your brain a bit, you can see some Karate Champ DNA in there. Anyway, having this understanding, where you don't care that it's called Dick Punch, because you know it as the gap closer with ducking, is very important because the same rules apply when you use weapons. Not every attack can be used with every weapon, but most can, and they continue to have the same functional similarity. For instance, using (hold) L with a knife at the end of a combo will have the protag go ham in short range with that thing. Some moves do have special bonuses with weapons, like when using Sweep with a staff.
Ultimately though, the movement of your character is pretty much the same, as is the range of each attack relative to the rest for that weapon. If I need to move a long distance to hit something, I don't run at it, I just hit 66H no matter what I'm holding, or even if I'm not holding something, or what direction they're in. Point toward enemy.

If you analyze the movelist, what you can find is that all of the possible inputs are present, given two attack buttons, directional inputs of nothing, 46, or 66, and context between the protag and the enemy. With all of the moves unlocked, the system is complete. There is nothing to add or take away unless you add more contexts or inputs. As part of the movelist only having directional inputs that end on 6, facing is irrelevant because you will automatically face the desired target of any targeted attack. Facing is also irrelevant in defense, because all of the defensive moves are omnidirectional. So, if you know how to defend, being surrounded can also be largely irrelevant to your safety.


Feeling the highs and feeling the lows
The beat stops getting into your foes

You're not in here with them, they're in here with you. When I say you should be attacking at all times and you should be defending too, there's a kind of "there is no spoon" realization you have to reach, which is that in this game, properly used defense is part of attacking. Good defense is one of the most effective offensive tools in the game, it's just a reactive offensive tool. Unfortunately, human reaction speed is pretty slow to just be reacting to some attack out of nowhere with 5 frames of animation. Fortunately, this game doesn't expect us to do that.

Using the understanding about abstracting the moveset into a simple list based on ranges and functions with 2 buttons, you should hopefully be able to get to a point where you have intentionality in your attacks. The goal here is to put attack selection on autopilot so that defense can be your primary focus. Until you're comfortable with blending defense as offense, you can really just kind of run offense in the background of your thoughts, but it does need to keep running. Just keep attacking while you intentionally watch for attacks coming in and avoid or deflect those attacks instead of getting hit. You can use avoiding to cancel an attack animation, so it doesn't matter if you're already attacking, just make sure you time your defense correctly.

Once you're comfortable with avoiding and attacking at the same time, start to use the avoid as part of your offense. Notice how when you are landing those hits, and when you knock someone on their rear end, time slows down in the game a little bit. You can use that time to your advantage, both as a kind of predictable short-term bullet time and as a way to learn the tempo of a fight. Those small time slowdowns happening in the middle of an enemy attack can be very useful because they give you a moment to read the situation and queue up your response. They are small, but the timing is consistent, and you may start to think of them as rhythmic.

Kicking and other ways to push people
There are a three really specific states of being for enemies in this game that you are gonna need to keep in mind, and those are pushed, stunned, and whatever they call it when you're ready to finish people off. You'll understand the last one. Pushed and stunned are different though, and it's not obvious how to use them. There are ways to stun an enemy, and that will leave them open to attacks, including a directional push. You can use this to do stuff like throw people over guardrails, if you do it right next to a guardrail. You won't get this with normal hitstun. "Pushed" in some moves refers to the state enemies are in when you use a directional push, and that's the same as with the front kick from LLH. That state is what those moves refer to. Hitting a wall in that state hurts.

There are lots of ways to use this to your advantage throughout the game. There is falling damage in this game, and throwing someone down a flight of stairs hurts a lot. What this really does for you though is reinforce that the context is what matters, and the enemies you're surrounded by are a target-rich environment. Hey, why am I going back to that?

Center

Leave the stick at neutral unless you are wanting to move. Be calm. This game will recognize any two inputs in the same direction, or any two inputs in opposite directions, as an attack input for a specific move. Be steady. Intend all of your inputs. Instead of reacting to individual attacks, think about what you're seeing, slow it down by attacking, identify who will swing first, and be sure to avoid that attack. Think a step or two ahead of the fight and predict. If something always responds to your attack with an attack of their own, and always with the same timing, then you just scored a free deflect after every attack.



At the end of all of this, and looking back on all this nonsense about "roguelite" poo poo, I see what the problem was. This game gives you the intended difficulty up front, completely balanced including the EXP costs for shrine bonuses, but it allows you to permanently purchase upgrades on a save as a leg up, a training mode, a fun and customizable way to play as you want to, and as a way to get people to buy a 40 dollar beatemup with 5 stages. On paper, with the way people talk about games these days, those words don't mean much, but I think people need to understand that these stages are Hitman quality, and this game is 3D beatemups getting that Hitman 2016 treatment. You'll unlock those permanent upgrades with some work, but I highly recommend you don't grind for them. Play for fun, and when they unlock, they unlock. At the end of the day, for me, all signs point to the intended difficulty, and the intended balance point of the game, to be starting the game with nothing, buying temporary skills, and trying to beat the game with just that. Double Dragon 1 on the NES had you get new skills over the course of the game too. This takes that idea and uses it for a better and more meaningful purpose.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
Horse Stance
6, 6L, L, 6, 6L, L, repeat

I also think of it as
code:
6	6		6	6		6	6
	L	L		L	L		L	L
I think I'm gonna probably dig into this poo poo deep once I actually just beat the game so I can do some kind of advanced systems rundown. I can already tell there's some poo poo in there that basically.. you shouldn't think of the combos in the movelist as combos. They are just like, all of the inputs recognized by the game system. At any time, no matter what, if you do something, you did something on that list. So really, you are making your own combos at all times, and that means the game is pretty much entirely freeform and the sooner you get your mind off the idea that the moves on the movelist are canned combos the sooner you'll start thinking up intensely powerful bullshit like the above


Something I didn't go into in that off the top essay but I think deserves an actual essay of its own is how well this demonstrates hong kong action cinema and choreography working in a videogame and into the gameplay itself. The way they did it is loving incredible to me

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Feb 12, 2022

tpink
Feb 18, 2013

Melman
I'm not great at these kinds of games but also not terrible (got through Sekiro and, well, most of Returnal), but this game is making me legit loving angry at vidjagames (lol). Maybe I just need to keep playing it until something clicks in my brain internally about the way it's supposed to be played, but after spending a couple of hours with it, I don't feel like I'm getting any better - and my farthest run has actually been my very first run so far, lol again.

THAT SAID I also find myself thinking about the game and coming back to it, so...maybe game good? Someone tell me that it does just take more practice to git gud, because I am really finding it a very frustrating experience so far. (And signalnoise, I'm going to read your effortpost and see if I can absorb some of that wisdom.)

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


Any tips for what I assume is the last boss? Specifically I am having trouble with his phase 2 dashing triple attack, "Bet you Sifu never taught you this!" I can dodge the first hit reliably, but the second one definitely gets me and I'm not sure if it's because it's undodgeable, it's a low, or I'm just not timing it right. I've so far decided to dodge first hit, block second hit, except it does MASSIVE structure damage which makes the rest of the fight hard.

My current plan is to basically just stay in Yang's face so that he's not using that move so often, but he's still backdashing very quickly and using it every now and then.

tpink
Feb 18, 2013

Melman
Ok, thanks to whoever had the tip in the first few pages of just holding down L1 and doing left/right for most blocks. I was trying to parry way too much, and this approach makes it much easier - got through the first level without any problems.

Hats Wouldnt Fly
Feb 9, 2010

.
Redfont is my hero.
https://i.imgur.com/hMZ0Uc8.mp4

Second Boss: https://imgur.com/a/vXLYC3P

Hats Wouldnt Fly fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Feb 12, 2022

Lobok
Jul 13, 2006

Say Watt?

Artelier posted:

I only noticed this yesterday so i am not certain yet (haven't tracked) but am pretty sure that enemies that will get a phase 2 upon being hit by a finisher have a very thin, almost transparent layer of white aura when facing them initially.

They do. Kind of like they have an aura just above their head. So you don't want to be doing Takedowns on just anybody as soon as you see the prompt.

Chopstick Dystopia
Jun 16, 2010


lowest high and highest low loser of: WEED WEE
k

tpink posted:

I'm not great at these kinds of games but also not terrible (got through Sekiro and, well, most of Returnal), but this game is making me legit loving angry at vidjagames (lol). Maybe I just need to keep playing it until something clicks in my brain internally about the way it's supposed to be played, but after spending a couple of hours with it, I don't feel like I'm getting any better - and my farthest run has actually been my very first run so far, lol again.

THAT SAID I also find myself thinking about the game and coming back to it, so...maybe game good? Someone tell me that it does just take more practice to git gud, because I am really finding it a very frustrating experience so far. (And signalnoise, I'm going to read your effortpost and see if I can absorb some of that wisdom.)

Yeah every time I come back to this game after a break I do consistently better.

signalnoise is absolutely correct about being calm

getting good at holding lb and using up or down (or left/right) for avoids will get you a long way and is the thing that got the game clicking more for a lot of people in this thread

it's more reactive, but once you get it you'll have more breathing room in fights and mix agression back in until you find a flow

Chopstick Dystopia
Jun 16, 2010


lowest high and highest low loser of: WEED WEE
k

:lol:

JBP
Feb 16, 2017

You've got to know, to understand,
Baby, take me by my hand,
I'll lead you to the promised land.

This is entirely without honour.

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


JBP posted:

This is entirely without honour.

No place for honour in our very mentally healthy revenge quest!!

Hats Wouldnt Fly
Feb 9, 2010

.
Redfont is my hero.

JBP posted:

This is entirely without honour.

Buschmaki
Dec 26, 2012

‿︵‿︵‿︵‿Lean Addict︵‿︵‿︵‿
Holy poo poo is the museum hard, I had to go back to the club just so I can enter it in my late 20s lol, the end of it is super difficult

CharlestonJew
Jul 7, 2011

Illegal Hen

Artelier posted:

Any tips for what I assume is the last boss? Specifically I am having trouble with his phase 2 dashing triple attack, "Bet you Sifu never taught you this!" I can dodge the first hit reliably, but the second one definitely gets me and I'm not sure if it's because it's undodgeable, it's a low, or I'm just not timing it right. I've so far decided to dodge first hit, block second hit, except it does MASSIVE structure damage which makes the rest of the fight hard.

My current plan is to basically just stay in Yang's face so that he's not using that move so often, but he's still backdashing very quickly and using it every now and then.


it's more like 4 hits, if that helps your timing better

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

Chopstick Dystopia posted:

getting good at holding lb and using up or down (or left/right) for avoids will get you a long way and is the thing that got the game clicking more for a lot of people in this thread

Honestly, there are tons of things I could say about very specific ways to approach details like that, and how elegantly the solution actually works. Left, right, or down are all an omnidirectional dodge, while up is a hop. What this means to me is that I can always flick the stick sort of like, in the direction I would want to move if I wanted to avoid that attack. Grabs are avoided by moving away. Lows are avoided by going up, and for any attack that is not a low, you can essentially build up some idea of not "down, or left, or right, your preference" but instead, "whatever direction is opposite the attack". That helps me pay attention to the fight more, and it makes me feel more sort of "in" the game. When you have a flow going, the game really feels sorta like you did in your head after watching a kung fu flick as a kid. You got the timing down and everything, you're right in there, that's you in the game! The more of that intentionality you get with it, and the more you think about the game as being better than you thought by being innovative, not obtuse, the more it's just the most incredible playground.

Also, "move with the attack" also helps in execution for me because when attacks come from multiple directions, I can use that to keep track of the order they come in, and how fast to flick

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Feb 12, 2022

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

acksplode
May 17, 2004



I just learned enemies have friendly fire in the best possible way. Two guys come at me with weapons, I avoid through their attacks, one guy clocks the other with his baseball bat. I shouted at the TV in delight.

KonvexKonkav
Mar 5, 2014

For those of you struggling, I found the game very hard at first and now I've managed to leave the museum at age 27. You can do it too, I believe in your power as gamers.

e: a question for y'all: how do you prioritize parries vs avoids? I tend to try to parry the first hits in a combo and then avoid the glowing finisher to build up structure damage and then get the counter in respectively. this does good damage but it seems risky as you'll get easily guard broken if you miss the avoid.

KonvexKonkav fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Feb 12, 2022

Perestroika
Apr 8, 2010

acksplode posted:

I just learned enemies have friendly fire in the best possible way. Two guys come at me with weapons, I avoid through their attacks, one guy clocks the other with his baseball bat. I shouted at the TV in delight.

I will never ever get tired of it :allears:
https://i.imgur.com/RaMHNC7.mp4

Discendo Vox
Mar 21, 2013

This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.
There is, of course, already a mod to replace the player character with John Wick.

Artelier
Jan 23, 2015


Discendo Vox posted:

There is, of course, already a mod to replace the player character with John Wick.

yo where it

Tirranek
Feb 13, 2014

And 'no wrinkles on old female model', because of course.

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
So did yall know there are audio and visual queues to tell you when your combo string has ended and the enemy is no longer in hitstun

I ask this question because I finally think I can fully and completely answer the question "how does defense" in this game now, full understanding, and it's only a matter of execution now. Short story is that the more thought I give to this game, the better I get at it, and I perform noticeably worse when I am not paying attention to certain things that I didn't know existed before. That is to say, not knowing it was a barrier to my performance. Execution still remains, but for real, ask me any questions you have about how defense actually works in this game and I'll see if I can't help out

PS: Deflect and parry are different things, but they are performed the same way, and they give the same confirmation feedback for the player. That feedback is a solid red dot where the hit was deflected or parried. The difference between them is that parries are deflects that cause the enemy to get parried. Basically, you press the button and if you timed it right, then you get the deflect bonus. If the attack was something that can be parried, it gets parried instead. It's good to know which attacks get parried instead of deflected, and to plan to parry that one.

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Feb 12, 2022

KonvexKonkav
Mar 5, 2014

signalnoise posted:

So did yall know there are audio and visual queues to tell you when your combo string has ended and the enemy is no longer in hitstun

I ask this question because I finally think I can fully and completely answer the question "how does defense" in this game now, full understanding, and it's only a matter of execution now. Short story is that the more thought I give to this game, the better I get at it, and I perform noticeably worse when I am not paying attention to certain things that I didn't know existed before. That is to say, not knowing it was a barrier to my performance. Execution still remains, but for real, ask me any questions you have about how defense actually works in this game and I'll see if I can't help out

PS: Deflect and parry are different things, but they are performed the same way, and they give the same confirmation feedback for the player. That feedback is a solid red dot where the hit was deflected or parried. The difference between them is that parries are deflects that cause the enemy to get parried. Basically, you press the button and if you timed it right, then you get the deflect bonus. If the attack was something that can be parried, it gets parried instead. It's good to know which attacks get parried instead of deflected, and to plan to parry that one.

Not sure i got that parry explanation. So a parry would be a deflect that stuns the enemy afterwards such that I can go into a throw or counterattack? Which attacks do enable that by the way? It seems kind of random, I often only notice I could've thrown the enemy when it's already too late.

Beat the final boss for the 1st time. This guy does not gently caress around, I entered at 32 and was 65 when the fight ended lol. This game is epic.

KonvexKonkav fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Feb 12, 2022

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

KonvexKonkav posted:

Not sure i got that parry explanation. So a parry would be a deflect that stuns the enemy afterwards so I can go into a throw or counterattack? Which attacks do enable that by the way? It seems kind of random, I often only notice I could've thrown the enemy when it's already too late.

edit: disregard, and scroll down

signalnoise fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Feb 12, 2022

Hats Wouldnt Fly
Feb 9, 2010

.
Redfont is my hero.
Alright guys so since you're all having so much trouble on the simpliest enemies I thought I'd reveal to you the secrets of being a True Kung Fu Master and clowning on everyone you meet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_kfzx7GtLw
(don't do this)

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
On the simplest enemies, the ones who don't do any lows or grabs, you can no poo poo just mash H and tap deflect when appropriate, even at the moment your own attack hits. This is really neat for practicing the whole "attack and defend at the same time" thing. Really hammers home how simple the game CAN be if you let it. Because of the way your character automatically faces the closest enemy for attacks if the stick is in neutral, this is basically how it works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQVwxfETig0

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting

KonvexKonkav posted:

Not sure i got that parry explanation.

I went back and checked something to see if it was a bias of mine, and I believe it was. I think that certain attacks appeared to work and others didn't because those attacks were easier for me to read. Upon testing it against stuff, and looking very closely at the feedback, I have a different answer

There are 3 levels of blocking

1- Holding the guard button. This sucks because the other ones are better. You won't take damage tho
2- Deflect, which is when you attempt to parry but your timing isn't good enough. It has a very wide window relative to parry, and you'll see a big white spark when it works. It's better than guarding, so why not at least try?
3- Parry. This is when you time a deflection correctly, and it is indicated by the red circle. I tested to see if it works against Sean, and it does, in both forms. However, certain moves have some kind of "unstoppable" property it looks like. You can still parry every hit and be fine, and do a lot of structure damage in the process, but it's hard to do unless you really know the feel of that attack string.

Here's the magic secret for you guys about parrying and the combat in general, and why the audio is brilliant to me too as part of the gameplay

The sound effects for hits serve a very very important purpose for timing parries because they allow you to hear the timing of a hit even if it is guarded or deflected. This means you can attempt to parry, and then check the difference between when you pressed and when you heard the hit. Aim to press the button at the same time you expect the sound effect, not when you expect two 3D models to collide.

There's ANOTHER great reason to pay attention to sound effects and visuals for parrying, too. That hit sound effect tells you when it's not your turn anymore. Ever been in a 1v1 in this game and you hesitated to attack because you didn't know if they'd attack first? Easy solution, use quick attack. You need a quick attack, right? That's its name. Use the quick attack to start whatever you wanna do and then watch and listen. What you're checking for is the enemy defending against your attack in the same way you would. They have deflects, parries, and avoids, just like the protag. Deflects won't stop your combo, but if you see a red dot or if your attack whiffs, that means it is no longer your turn, and if you want it back, you will have to take it. Every time you find an opening, it becomes your turn, and it continues to be your turn until the attacks stop landing. At that point, you should continue attacking, but you can expect incoming attacks. It's not so much something to say "oh beware of attacks", but more to tell you that you can force the timing of the defense to be on your terms, and when it's your turn to attack, you can go HOG loving WILD and the game will let you know when it's not your turn anymore.

Hel
Oct 9, 2012

Jokatgulm is tedium.
Jokatgulm is pain.
Jokatgulm is suffering.

signalnoise posted:

1- Holding the guard button. This sucks because the other ones are better. You won't take damage tho

Ok I'm pretty sure my game is bugged then, because normal non-glowing attacks are damaging me through blocks pretty regularly. Even when my structure bar is empty. Gonna have to very files and see if it helps.

Tarezax
Sep 12, 2009

MORT cancels dance: interrupted by MORT

Hel posted:

Ok I'm pretty sure my game is bugged then, because normal non-glowing attacks are damaging me through blocks pretty regularly. Even when my structure bar is empty. Gonna have to very files and see if it helps.

It's possible that you're holding the stick in a direction and accidentally making your character mistime a dodge

CharlestonJew
Jul 7, 2011

Illegal Hen

Hel posted:

Ok I'm pretty sure my game is bugged then, because normal non-glowing attacks are damaging me through blocks pretty regularly. Even when my structure bar is empty. Gonna have to very files and see if it helps.

some attacks do a bit of chip damage when blocking, really noticeable with enemies with bladed weapons

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KonvexKonkav
Mar 5, 2014

signalnoise posted:


3- Parry. This is when you time a deflection correctly, and it is indicated by the red circle. I tested to see if it works against Sean, and it does, in both forms. However, certain moves have some kind of "unstoppable" property it looks like. You can still parry every hit and be fine, and do a lot of structure damage in the process, but it's hard to do unless you really know the feel of that attack string.

Lol. I've never noticed a red circle. Let me guess, it's not a huge effect. I'm red-green colorblind meaning that I can see really obvious red objects like the Sekiro danger sign but I'm having trouble seeing shades of red that are not as strong.

If it's like you described then that it's very poorly explained and telegraphed in-game. I love this game but in terms of accessibility and tutorials it could really use some improvement.

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