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Grem posted:gently caress me what's the best way to best the big fat guys? They take decades away from me every time. This is what I did with the second to last room on stage 1. This run is me after about 4 hours of play to show what you can learn in that amount of time, but I went ahead and timestamped it for ya for that one at least. The best way to deal with ANY enemy really is to kill the poo poo out of their structure meter as fast as possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ7W2PzsHgI&t=636s Avoid the grab if both of their arms flash. Dodge away from them, which you can do by just hitting R1 without any other input to make you backdash, and do running attacks or stuff like crotch punch. Skip back to 6 minutes on that video if you wanna see how I dealt with the first fat guy. After playing even more after that run, here's some notes about defense for people having a problem with it: It is not Sekiro timing as far as I can tell. Sekiro uses "Just Defense" timing if you are familiar with that from fighting games, where you press and hold the block input, and hopefully input that block late enough that the attack hits you as your guard is starting. From what I can tell, Sifu has separate Guard and Deflect inputs, such that holding guard is a different input than Deflect. I get much better success in my defense when I dedicate my defense to EITHER deflecting or dodging before the attack comes in. There isn't much point to guarding on its own because it's just giving up an opportunity, unless you are using it to set up something. If you tap your block button, you will try to deflect and you'll get the deflect with good timing. Blocking will block at all attack heights, and so will deflecting, so if your timing is good, you can deflect that sweep instead of dodging it because there is no low or high deflect, there's just deflect. If you do it well, you'll get the good timing instead of a lovely guard that hurts your structure. Your structure should be used as basically attempts to parry, because you can get structure back very fast through dodging. How do you dodge well? This is a huge departure from Sekiro. Do not attempt to dodge by tapping block and a direction at the same time. That's bad. Instead, you should think of it like a rhythm game in the style of Guitar Hero, where you are holding down a string prior to strumming it. In this case, you hold down guard as a way to set yourself in "defense mode", if you want to call it that, and I'm going to. This defense mode is stationary, but it gives you all the defensive options you need, and it makes dodging easier to accomplish by making it so you only have to hit one button. You hold down the button, and then flick the left stick up or down depending on if the attack is a low attack. If the attack is low, you need to hit up (to dodge), hit nothing (to just block it), or release that defense button and hit deflect with enough time. However, releasing that defense button takes time to switch modes back, even though it's only a little bit of time, so you're better off deciding a head of the attack whether you'll be dodging or what. If you are dodging, you can hold down the guard button and flick the left stick with good timing to fight someone who has a string of fast high attacks and just take it like a free opportunity to get your structure back while filling your focus or whatever it's called, so you can poke em in the eye. Hope this helps some people. In no way is this game a roguelike. After playing through it enough times to unlock all your moves, what you'll be left with is a full moveset and a game to master. None of the moves overlap, all of the moves have a specific purpose, and you should want to have all of them eventually. Also, for people wanting a lock-on button, that would be detrimental in this game. Keep in mind that none of the moves in this game end on a backward input. Every single move in the game allows you to direct where it goes. Please pay attention to the fight and direct where your attacks go. Trust the game to pick the target you wanted. The game's targeting system, whatever is going on in the background, is really good. Just trust it, because lock-on = enforced tunnel vision, and this game requires you to have a lot of situational awareness. If you can't go back and forth between enemies, then you will have significantly more difficulty when managing the stun and downed states of multiple enemies. You need that if you want to maximize the efficiency of your rear end beating. In a 1v1, you'll find that there is already a kind of lock-on in place if you pay attention to it. In fights with multiple enemies, lock-on would be terrible. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 20:17
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weekly font posted:I think the biggest enemy in this game might be geometry. You get your back to a wall or couch or table and you're turbofucked. This is one of many places I disagree with fighting games not being part of it, or fighting game knowledge not being rewarded. This game was made for me. My favorite fighting game series, by a wide margin, is Soul Calibur. It's not obvious looking at SC without knowing the game, but there's a lot to remember about how the moves you're using will move the enemy you're fighting. For example, and I'll clarify that I mean "standing up from ducking" here because "while rising" and "while standing" have different meanings depending on what game you're familiar with, but if you do a horizontal with Talim while in the "standing back up" animation in Soul Calibur 2, you'll do a wide attack that knocks the enemy over and to your right. That is important to keep track of because if the wall or ledge is to your right, that's the move you use. There's also the idea of guarding or trying to parry/deflect instead of trying to avoid because you know one is riskier than other due to one of them covering more options. These are definitely fighting game understander synergies. Having your back to a wall doesn't have to mean you're turbofucked, it just means you need to change what set of moves are relevant in your mind. For instance, you can take advantage of the situation by dodging toward them after a hit to swap positions, sure. On the other hand, if you can land a move that staggers the enemy and leaves them grabbable, you can instead throw them into the wall behind you, which damages them AND extends your combo. If doing so would make you vulnerable by putting you in the middle of a bunch of guys, then throw that guy into all the other guys. Remember. You aren't trapped in there with them- They're trapped in there with you.
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Feb 10, 2022 00:28
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Play posted:A little confusing because you use both parry and deflect here, they're the same thing right? One note: you CAN deflect as you go into holding guard and get ready for an avoid. Happens all the time with me, sometimes even on purpose. Yeah you're right. Deflect is what it calls it in-game. I'm actually not sure if how good you time it means anything, like if there is a better deflect for doing it perfectly. I'm gonna go back through and beat the dogshit out of the first mission again because it makes me feel like a big man I love this game
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Feb 10, 2022 00:33
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CharlestonJew posted:Not necessarily true! Fun fact: if you reverse the inputs for the sweep or palm strike then there’s a unique animation where you’ll do the sweep/palm strike behind you instead That's what I'm saying though. It's a change in the animation, but the moves are all facing-agnostic from the start of the animation. No matter where you are facing, the end of the command ends on "forward", such that it always redirects forward at the end of it. For guarding and dodging, those too are facing-agnostic. Because of this, you can focus more on your positioning, and less on your facing. You are essentially treated as a dot on the map, and your facing without input on the left stick is given to whichever enemy is closest, as far as I can tell. Beyond that though, you are essentially a dot that emits cones or lines of damage with various properties in the direction of your left stick. Keep in mind that "a backward input" for an attack is backward relative to the attack, so it would be attacking in the opposite direction of the input. In this game, you attack in the direction of the input on the left stick. In a sense, you could think of it like a kung-fu melee twin stick shooter that way. Understanding that your facing is not a hindrance to you in any way is pretty important I'd say Also the second powerup for Score specifically gives you a bonus on Avoid or Parry. I would really like to know if Parry is a specific Really Good Timed Deflect
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Feb 10, 2022 02:07
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Pladdicus posted:A lot of reviews made the game seem like a real slog to replay which feels brutal in a run based game, what are people's experience with replaying sections? gently caress THAT The reason I bought this game in the first place is because I read the review over at Polygon. That was the only information I had to go on whatsoever really. I had seen no hype about it, no ads, no explanation of the game other than that, and it only came up by happenstance. I saw that review and could tell that the stuff he was complaining about didn't make sense. So, I got it thinking it has to be good, and it actually turned out to be kind of a dream game for me. I haven't read any other reviews, but I can tell you multiple ways that I would say that review is like, as close to objectively wrong as you can be in a review. It's a completely misguided review that judges the game negatively for things that are actually good when you consider what kind of a game Sifu is, instead of what kind of a game Sifu is not- a roguelike, in any way. Yet, when you have the review open in a browser and hover over your tab, it describes the game as a "martial arts roguelike". I don't know where that idea came from, because it's no more a roguelike than Streets of Rage 4 is a roguelike. It's no more a roguelike than River City Ransom is a roguelike. You go through the game and accrue currency to unlock your complete moveset, and in this game there happens to be a kind of skill floor on purchasing certain skills, as the ones closer to the youngest tier are generally more expensive. That actually does make sense when you consider that it's there as a training exercise for an action game that you should want to keep getting good at instead of for those skills and beating the game once to be the goal. I want to see how good I can get at this game. It's loving fun, and playing it better gives you noticeable feedback. It feels good to get better at, and it feels like there's a lot of getting better in it. Anyway here's my PROGRESS about halfway through my 2nd day of playing, on the run where I unlocked my last permanent unlock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn3E1NNL2qI I haven't even seen the fourth level yet! That's like 40% of the game I haven't seen and I'm already enjoying running through old areas just to see how badass I can do it! I haven't felt this good about the idea of recording runs of a game since Mark of the Ninja. Personally I feel like everything before all the skill unlocks are done is a tutorial to force you to become familiar with new moves one at a time after giving you enough of a basic set to get started. I didn't think it was tedious at all. Is there a place where it shows records like how many times you've played, how many times you've played a specific stage, etc? edit: i realized those were the same video, so whatever i merged the idea. man that sucks that was a really good clip i wonder what happened to it oh well signalnoise fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Feb 10, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 09:20
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Pirate Jet posted:People calling this game a roguelike is the truest demonstration yet that the word has lost all meaning entirely. I think I know exactly where it comes from if it's from reviewers directly. They see unlockable skills built into some kind of currency and they immediately connect the representation to whatever similar representation they can manage. Here's it's "you know, like other games where you play a bunch to make your guy more powerful." Except, in this case, there's a limit to how much more powerful you get, and that limit is when your moveset is complete. In the Polygon review, games like Hades and Returnal were mentioned. Hades was mentioned both for the controls relative to Sifu for a kind of "sometimes I forgot which moves I bought" and for having potentially "too many" options. If you look at the moveset not as a complete moveset with addons, but instead as an incomplete moveset that you are completing, the way the moves work in terms of inputs also make more sense, and that applies to combat with weapons, too. But that reviewer wasn't thinking about this as a game to enjoy and play again and again, because then he would have been thinking "what do I do with exp after I've bought all the skills" instead of focusing so hard on what should be considered an introduction to the game. I think we can be honest and say that the reason this game has been misunderstood is because the genre was dead and video game reviewers are often incapable of independent thought.
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Feb 10, 2022 10:02
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fnox posted:I wish the unlocks were permanent by default, I'm not sure what the point even is for having temporary unlocks. I spent 8 long hours preparing for this
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Feb 10, 2022 10:19
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I keep finding ways that the game is even better than I realized. This time, it's about the combos, and why the game looks fluid as gently caress even if you're mashing. Bottom line is here: Any combo can be started by either a light or a heavy attack. Yes, I mean that as in, all of the combos in the combo list, as long as they're just a list of button presses with nothing special about them, this seems to work. This is important for two reasons. First, it matters more that you know how a combo ends than you remember the entire attack string, but also that you can get in a jab and still finish with a back breaker combo against a very slippery boss that dodges right after attacking. That kind of thing. The other reason this is important is because it means no matter what combo you're on, the button you're on can be the first button of a different combo. You can just flow right into that, and be one beat ahead of the situation. Also, because mashing won't get you any combo endings, but you're flowing back and forth between combos all the time anyway, you look cool as poo poo no matter what you do Finally, the fact that this means the inclusion of the back breaker combo is actually important because it makes it a complete system is just  for me
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Feb 10, 2022 11:55
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Lobok posted:I'm not sure if this is exactly what you mean but last night I was doing Back Breakers (H H L H) by alternating H and L. Yeah, basically what was happening was you were doing was Input | Game thinks this H | aight H L | oh looks like you wanna use the L L L L L combo, that's ok you go on ahead H | oh my bad you wanted to use H H L H L | there you go H | i get it eventually Additional protips for fun people who have less time than me to find these things on their own Sweep attacks hit people on the ground. This includes both the running sweep H attack and the back, forward H sweep. This means if you want to hit multiple people on the ground in front of you, you can. It does require some spacing on your part, but if you do it right you can get multiple sweep kicks in sometimes, which can be better than a circle down attack. The environmental weaponry talent thing does more than just throw knives and bottles and other weapons you normally see. It also opens up the ability to kick ottomans along the floor, and a lot of things count as ottomans. Maybe there's other applications too. I dunno, I haven't beat chapter 3 yet. The point of that move where you hold H and your arm hangs and then you slap them in the face is to get a counterhit with it after holding it for a while. It's great against the fat guys because they have ridiculously long windups that are super obvious cause of the light-up arms. This last one could be sticky You should be actively doing poo poo all the time and I mean all the time, to be maximally efficient. I don't mean that as like a general rule of thumb kind of thing, I mean that the way this game is designed, there is no reason not to be trying to be on the offensive at all times, and the game not only discourages purely defensive play, but it actually rewards you for spamming, as long as you don't reach too far and gently caress up. Bosses in particular are good to spam against, and this is why I found the previous note about being able to start H combos with L so important. If you hit something, the game pauses for a moment. If you hit something 5 times, the game pauses for 5 moments. This can be VERY USEFUL when timing your defense, which has like no startup time anyway. This also rewards you by getting in little bits of damage and taking advantage of the earliest possible stagger state you can get. Now of course, to do this, you need to be able to not just fluidly swap between aggression and defense, but actually blend them. Good luck, fellow masters signalnoise fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Feb 10, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 14:05
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I don't like my current loadout does anyone know a way to wipe it without having to unlock everything again All I want to do is reset the shrines
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Feb 10, 2022 14:21
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Perestroika posted:Man, the boss on level 2 is kind of obnoxious once he gets into his second phase. He's so insanely evasive that I only ever manage to get hits in when I do focus moves or he does one particular combo that he can't instantly jump out of. The trick to that fight to get it down faster? Fight fire with fire. They speed up, you speed up. In phase one, they have a pretty slow combo that's fairly predictable, and they dodge away slow. Over the course of the whole fight, it gets more dangerous, and you need to be able to control that. Always be attacking, and interrupt yourself to dodge or parry. Don't bother starting your counters with slow attacks, just use the fast ones and transition to bigger damage. Use the focus attacks for extending combos if you feel like it. I am currently still trying to overwrite my club save before I move onto beating museum, but that means I have to get to museum at age 27 or below. The skills I want require getting 4000 score by the second shrine on stage 1 and boy am I getting in some practice lol I am learning a lot about how to get a high score now
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Feb 10, 2022 20:48
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Play posted:Do tell! I've never understood the scoring but assumed it has to do with speed, variety, and not taking damage but it's hard to actually know how it works. It's actually ridiculously simple If you aren't at 5x you are behind. You get to 5x by doing avoids or parries. For parries, a better parry gives you more multiplier. That's right, parries have multiple levels of effect, and you can see how close you are to perfect by how much white is in your parry spark relative to the red. The best parry is a solid red dot and nothing else. Anyway, you also get your multiplier up by hitting things and killing things with your special kill move, but why bother doing that when you aren't 5x? Because here's the thing, score doesn't come from anything but kills and the multiplier. The highest score you can get by the end of the first stage oldboy hallway is 1500. That is the value of every enemy up to that point, multiplied by 5. If you get hit, it drops your multiplier a pretty good bit, and if you really wanna get that high score, you'll wanna get that back up before you kill something again. The way in which you kill something has nothing to do with how many points you get for it. Use the best move for the situation. That means doing perhaps dishonorable things to avoid taking damage, like tossing 30 paint-filled lightbulbs at a single person, but c'est la vie Gave up on trying to best my old Club score. Finally managed to get through museum with an age I feel decent about (38) so I am willing to move on to Tower.
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Feb 11, 2022 00:48
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God I loving love this game it is the best game right now and I could probably write a decent goddamn essay on what makes a good actual beatemup with this game presented as the state-of-the-art and there are so many things I've discovered that I kind of want to share but I'm not sure if it's actually special or not or if its coming off as like some kind of narcissism posting my gameplay vids I just love this loving game
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Feb 11, 2022 00:53
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I think the chimes work really well if you are using a controller with a speaker in it at least, because that extra tinny speaker in the dualsense makes drat sure you catch those very vital audio cues. I've actually started running without the hud on because it is awfully distracting, and I figure no matter what, my gameplan is always the same. Having the hud off and just trusting that I have that 1 focus point the every once in a while that I want one allows me to focus on what matters, which is the fight. I got tired of getting locked into the old build so I just started up a new save. I was able to score 2 points of deflect strength off the first stage, and I died but it was in places that I could make it not affect the score, so now I can overwrite that if I need to. I am pretty much entirely avoiding all the Focus-oriented shrine bonuses this time around. To be honest I don't think it will take me very long to get the skills back.
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Feb 11, 2022 09:05
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Perestroika posted:Managed to get stage 2 down to age 25! Stage 3 is completely kicking my rear end though, specifically the boss. The timings of her attacks are so weird. That's exactly it, there are specific moves that cause a "pushed" state. There are other moves that rely on a specific state too, like being able to direction grab someone, which relies on them being in a brief stunned state. The other move I know of that can cause the push state is the front kick at the end of LLH (which I'm calling a teep), which can be reached in multiple ways. For instance, because of the way the combo system works, you can severely gently caress someone up if they're against a wall by doing running L into palm strike into H. Hel posted:It kinda sucks that you play a kung fu master but the enemies are better than you. Is there anything other than Focus moves that work as blockbreakers/unblockables when the enemies just decide to not take damage? Whoever said that the game wants you to be aggressive seems to play a different game than I do, because outside of the first few second of a fight when you can do surprise attacks, it really feels like the only really viable way is to avoid their attacks and then do a short combo, because anything else can just be randomly dodged or even parried, leaving you really open. Especially the bosses, where it really is "avoid combo, to the first two attack of the heavy combo ( because anything beyond that will miss) and then repeat. It especially sucks when enemies do the God Hand demon thing and regen to 150% health instead of dying. Would you like me to record a video of what I'm talking about? Basically the best way I can tell you to do attack and defense at the same time is to treat them as occurring separately, but simultaneously. You can dodge or parry pretty much whenever you want, so the idea is to keep up the pressure being absolutely relentless, but at the same time, when an attack comes at you, you're ready and you dodge it the same way as you would if you were just waiting for it. Attacking is something you just happen to be doing at the same time as defending, but defense is prioritized over attack unless you're in the middle of something big that you just can't cancel.
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Feb 11, 2022 17:43
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Hats Wouldnt Fly posted:Has anyone found any attacks that flowing claw works really well against? It's so stylish but I can't get it to actually land very reliably. Aight Here's a new progress vid of stage 1 with all moves unlocked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ1vqCy5jcs and to show newer players that the starting kit really is powerful, and that the real essence of the game is managing the fight, here's one without unlocking any moves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ymXRxAe4k No new move will be as useful to you as learning how to defend and attack at the same time videos may be processing at the time of posting
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Feb 11, 2022 19:22
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Would it be condescending to post what I think is the right way to approach the game from like, a conceptual standpoint to understand the way combat "works" and how the moveset is a complete and beautiful system that allows you to be a god if you do it perfectly, and what the functions of the moves actually are in the broader context of the game etc? This combat system is like a beautiful work of art to me that is just complicated enough to have meat to a game but abstracted enough to allow for full intentionality from the player to pass into the game so you can play it calmly and leave a precious tapestry of bodies behind you I've seen a lot of confusion or at least conflicting opinions about how it is or is not like a fighting game, or whatever. I'd say there are absolutely things I've taken from fighting games and applied here, but they're useful in other places too. The short version of course, for people having difficulty due to a lack of calm, is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BISrelOwLUI signalnoise fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 19:52
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Hel posted:Please do, I really want to see if I'm just doing something completely wrong, because the enemies just sometimes decide block and dodge so they to take no damage,( structure or HP) and it just kills all momentum for me because unless I have focus to spend all I can do is stand around like an idiot, waiting for an opening. And even when I get one, they just start dodging again 2 strikes into a combo. And because my attack won't hit, I can't do stuff like the push follow up or kicking them when they are down because there is nothing to trigger from. Just look at either of the two videos I posted in the post above with 2 videos, not the 1 video of sf5. This is just how I normally play now I am writing up a post that is a combination broad review to tell PEOPLE WHO LIKE BEATEMUPS what they can expect from this game, and why it is perfect, instead of listening to some bullshit pro reviewer, in addition to saying how to approach it conceptually. You shouldn't be mashing inputs, but you should be attacking all the loving time because it actually slows down the game and makes it easier to defend. I'll explain in the post
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Feb 11, 2022 20:38
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The Moon Monster posted:Beat it! I entered the last level at 38 and won at 75, with my only deaths being to the boss. Dude is nasty. I've gotten to him one time so far, and tried to do something, and upon see a gimmick he has I immediately discovered I needed to change my build. 
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Feb 11, 2022 22:50
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Hats Wouldnt Fly posted:This is good stuff. I think the most important thing I learned is that the HUD is a distraction. I turned it off and I'm rockin so much more rear end. Yep. Basically what I realized is that no matter what my situation is, my answer should be consistent. I shouldn't let fear of a low health bar impact my decisions anyway. My structure shouldn't be high. I haven't used my Focus recently, so it's full. I haven't been hit recently, so my multiplier is at max. The only thing I should be focusing on is the fight. You shall not fear death. By the way, I have this as a bottom line, for everyone who has complaints about the unlocking system: In the big ol' post I'm writing up, I am going to give my reasons for this, but I believe that the game's intended difficulty is as you first played it. You'll want to have a save with all of the unlocks, and everything completed, but for simply playing the game, I believe the intended difficulty and balance of the game is to start at stage 1 with nothing unlocked. Once I came to this conclusion, I realized that I have zero concerns about permanently unlocking stuff signalnoise fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 23:23
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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
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Feb 12, 2022 00:38
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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.
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Feb 12, 2022 01:04
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Horse Stance 6, 6L, L, 6, 6L, L, repeat I also think of it as code: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 |
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Feb 12, 2022 01:09
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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 |
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Feb 12, 2022 06:15
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Feb 12, 2022 06:16
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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 |
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Feb 12, 2022 15:05
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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 |
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Feb 12, 2022 16:33
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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
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Feb 12, 2022 16:40
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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.
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Feb 12, 2022 18:06
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This game's biggest mistake is being too elegantly designed. It doesn't tell you going into it that you're going to learn things in a given order, or that you start at the end. But it does, actually. The game tells you during the introduction credits what new skill will be tested in each stage of the game. The aging system is set up such that dying occasionally is no threat, but dying repeatedly runs you out of lives fast enough to end your run. This means that mistakes in the run of a skilled player can be overcome, but the best play of an unskilled player will be stopped. The game, as it would be given as in an arcade style setting, is presented to the player from minute one. However, new players need to become acquainted with all the moves, so the game lets you study them at will if you put in some work. Once you have all these tools learned, you go and beat the game, and what's really left? Also, why do you have so much stockpiled exp? It's because when you're done learning how to play the game, you'll be able to turn it on and beat rear end through a run of it, never permanently unlocking anything, and treating that as the game. The starting movelist is pretty powerful. None of the moves you unlock are better than the ones you start with, they just do different things. Once you know how to play the game for real, you can go back to a fresh start and play from stage one to the end, unlocking what you want to unlock, using the exp you get. Give it a try yourself, it's fun. It doesn't have ~permanent unlocks~ but it's a fun mode and I think it's where you're intended to play if you're looking for the Arcade experience It all just feels so amazing to progress through that skill curve and the unlocks and poo poo and then look back on it, I imagine Daniel Russo felt the same signalnoise fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Feb 13, 2022 |
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Feb 13, 2022 01:02
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Pro strats digging into the depths of super secret gamer territory yep boss strats tiiiiiime Artist 2: use a conveniently provided projectile to intercept a dangerous missile Fighter 2: play better I guess uhh you know, parry the first hit in case it's a low I guess
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Feb 13, 2022 04:30
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PantsBandit posted:Dodging low attacks has been a real road-block for me. The animations are so fast that I don't know how you're supposed to know to prep a low-dodge rather than a standard one unless you've just done the fight enough times to know where the low attack is in the combo string. Alright I'm gonna go ahead and make a video to show people exactly what I'm talking about I call it the rubdown
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Feb 13, 2022 20:27
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signalnoise posted:I call it the rubdown This is the most basic version of what I'm calling "the rubdown" and it's when you are putting attack basically on "always" and then dodging or deflecting when necessary. The hits that you land will give you a tiny bit of a pause, and when you get used to it, you can use it to help you in timing your parries. Always be killing poo poo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX8BNeFA3BY I recommend practicing this with just tapping light or heavy attack, not trying to work in cool poo poo yet. The light attack string and heavy attack string are really good moves, as you can see from the massive amount of posture damage I'm building up on Fighter here relative to his health with quick attacks. Heavy attacks do LOTS of regular damage, and if you just press that you'll find yourself killing the lowest level mook in 3 hits. Don't ignore your starting kit, it's really good Also a note on how the movelist and combos work, because it's really simple and powerful but not super obvious I think. The movelist contains every possible attack input that the game can recognize, and any attack can be done at any time, except that you can't use the same move twice in a row. This resets if you stop attacking long enough to drop your stance. It's like 2 seconds. That is why if you've tried to use sweep on something multiple times and couldn't get it to work, you might have had problems. By the way, you can avoid that by using that move where you hit LH real fast and it spins you around 180 degrees. Turning your back to the enemy means you can use the rear sweep, which is more likely to hit things anyway if you're real close because it has an arc that corresponds to how much you have to turn around, and it has the extra property of ducking, which the forward sweep doesn't have. Anyway this means you can make neat combos of your own that do cool poo poo. One of my favorites is the charging kick 66H thing into palm strike. The run up tends to put them off balance enough that the palm strike will land, and if you slap an enemy into a wall with that it's pretty devastating. You can also do silly poo poo like the stun slap out of it, which is cool for hitting things next to ledges. You can buffer inputs such that you input something and it will come out as soon as your current attack is done, and your current attack will be done when you hear the audio feedback of a hit, guard, or miss. So basically proper timing for combos is to put in a new input after each attack, but before the next attack is complete. I'm pretty sure that optimal play will be constant attack and defense simultaneously because the most effective defense is made no less effective by attacking 100% of the time that you aren't actively parrying or dodging, and parrying or dodging just makes your attacking better. edit: i dunno why the gently caress youtube is basically instant processing sometimes and then other times it takes like hours signalnoise fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Feb 13, 2022 |
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Feb 13, 2022 22:09
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PantsBandit posted:If I'm understanding you correctly, block and up isn't your input to go back. That's to dodge low attacks, it just happens that the character steps back during the animation. If you just want to back off you're better off hitting "rush" (RT) and back. You're actually better off just hitting rush by itself if you want to go back Anyways I made a discovery today that was kind of mindblowing to me and now I just appreciate this game even more- it's kind of a rhythm game, and I don't mean that in the sense of like "there's kind of a rhythm to it." I mean there is a genuine musical component to the game, and I think it would become most apparent when it is being played optimally. But at least I know the system now So here goes. First off, the music in this game is actually giving you combat information. The music is done like Lumines, where it's a basic backing that has stuff layered on top. In this game, those layers are additional tracks that run when you are in combat. Each enemy attack pattern adds a new track to the song. I know, that's not helpful in combat by itself, but it becomes useful. Second, enemy attacks have consistent timing according to the music. What I mean by that is each hit in a given attack string will land at the same time within a measure. It might be that out of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and the enemy's attack for the string they are using lands on the 2, 3, 4. It might change if you dodge something, who knows, but that particular attack will always land on the 2, 3, 4. That enemy will not vary the timing on when that particular move starts or lands. They can have multiple attacks of course, but with that you can start to think about the track you're listening to that corresponds to that enemy, match up an instrument within the track that corresponds to the hits, and predict the parry timing blindfolded. The hero can attack every beat, which is way faster than I thought. How do you attack that quickly and consistently without mashing? Use the music. It's your metronome. When you are attacking, you should be hitting L or H 4 times per measure, with roughly equal timing, while being ready to stop doing that and defend, or defend while attacking. Remember to dodge to get your structure back. I like to keep it low and only try to parry if it's cleared. I think that's the safest way to go. Almost forgot to mention the time dilation. When you hit an enemy, the game slows down time by 1 beat. This gives you time to think about what you're going to do next, but without throwing off your rhythm. When an enemy is stunned or whatever, and it does the longer one, that's 2 beats. Because this game has timing in the enemy attacks, you can slow down time this way while getting in your hits, and prep yourself for the parry timing you'll need when it ends on the same beat that an attack would land. Anyways hope you enjoy that, I never thought this would turn out to also be the music action game I wanted, but there ya go. This game is so much better than it says it is signalnoise fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 04:25
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Buschmaki posted:Also got the true ending, I wish there were like, post-game modes like a "70-year old mode" where you cant die in a level or maybe throughout an entire playthrough, although I guess you can hack in doing that by just dying to the firsr 2 dudes on the squat over and over lol. My firm belief is that the actual hard mode and the intended difficulty of the game is to play it like it's an arcade game that allows you to buy upgrades over the course of the game. Start at stage 1 with nothing, play through with no permanent upgrades, and that's that. To be honest, I don't think the 70 year old mode is that interesting to me now that I see how it works for the story. The older you get, the more damage you do, but wouldn't that mean it's actually harder to win at age 20? Try starting up a new game and attempt to beat it from beginning to end without permanently unlocking anything, that should be your challenge.
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Feb 14, 2022 04:45
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I still haven't beaten the game at all because I am too enamored with the dizzying splendor and elegance of this game's design
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Feb 14, 2022 04:50
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PantsBandit posted:It doesn't feel like quite anything I've played before. Honestly it rewards practice and improvement with satisfaction so well, and has so much to the combat that it doesn't tell you directly, but has been there the whole time, that I feel like they knew this stuff and intentionally didn't tell the player just because the whole point of the game was to have it be a game about the satisfaction of improvement through practice. All the unlocks and even the death system itself is a way to give the player opportunities to practice. I don't think a comparison to Sekiro is right. Sekiro is punishing and you use parries, but outside of it sharing how the parry works, they are very different games and you should approach combat very differently. Sekiro tries to kill you however it can manage, while still being beatable if you put in the time. Sifu presents enemies that can be difficult and punishing, but the game does everything it can to help you learn to beat them, even up to telling you exactly what move you should focus on from the starting skillset for each boss fight. Sifu is a game that wants the player to be good at it, and that wants the player to feel really good about getting better.
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Feb 14, 2022 07:23
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RichterIX posted:I can't figure out the timing for avoids on the Artist at all. It's not the up-down nature of them, that I get, I apparently just get confused by the animation and can't figure out the point of contact where I should be dodging. It also is compounded by the fact that she starts her strings from far away and it can be hard to tell when exactly she's going to be in range, so I just stand there dodging air like a dope while she closes on me. The timing is consistent with the music, and parries work against lows.
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Feb 14, 2022 18:27
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RichterIX posted:Thanks for the music thing! I am mainly parrying which I have better luck with but sometimes I want to use the avoid to bring my posture damage down in a hurry. Reminder that posture goes down if you haven't been hit in a while, but it stops going down if you are doing stuff. You can just back up and catch your breath. Also is everyone just trying to dodge up close for every single attack? Artist1 starts her attacks from really far away, and once they've started, you can tell where they're going. Back up and wait for her to start, then once she does a high, low, tap dash to get in and dodge the second high, low and you have her dead to rights. You can also just palm strike her out of it I'm pretty sure, and go to town. Back up and catch your breath from time to time, and try avoiding damage by not being there in the first place. Enemies keep doing their full attack string whether you're in range or not. signalnoise fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 20:13
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Narcissus1916 posted:The developer said that a future patch will add in an easier (and harder, if you hate yourself) difficulty option Harder because I love myself and I love this game
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Feb 14, 2022 20:20
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