Approach
Weapons can only be held in-hand or on the player’s back; limiting the number of carried weapons to two at all times. Therefore the player is forced to constantly cycles through objects to use as weapons that are available in the environment. Objects you find have a variety of different uses but can be categorized as follows:
Melee vs. Thrown
Thrust vs. Slash
Elemental Properties
Attack Power Property
The player is seen above toggling between slash and thrust attacks.
Attacking
No matter what weapon the player is wielding they can toggle between a thrust or slash stance by pressing left on the D-pad.
Slash attacks are fast and have high area of effect (AOE). They can be useful against enemies that are aggressive or if there are multiple enemies. However they don’t do much damage.
Thrust attacks do high damage and have good range at the cost of being slow to perform. They are useful for single enemies or if an enemy is running away.
With either stance the player can also perform a heavy attack which exaggerates the pros and cons of the current stance. Certain enemies may be weak or resistant to either of the stances or heavy attack.
The player above performs two parries on an enemy in order to end the fight by doing a finisher.
Defending
The player and humanoid type enemies can block incoming attacks or projectiles by blocking if they’re carrying an object in their hands. Blocked hits will fully protect against damage at the cost of a significant amount of stamina. If an attack is blocked with negative stamina, the blocker will be guard-broken and be vulnerable to a finisher attack that deals massive damage.
If an attack is blocked within a fraction of a second, the attack is parried. Whoever performs a successful parry sustains no damage or stamina penalty but the opponent on the receiving end will take massive stamina damage. If their stamina damage goes negative while being parried they will be guard broken and be vulnerable to a finisher attack in return.
The player demonstrates dodging enemy attacks by moving to the side for enemy thrust attacks and away for enemy slash attacks.
Dodging
The most effective way to dodge is to simply move out of the way or be mindful of spacing. To do this the player should pay attention to when an enemy begins an attack to try to anticipate whether it will be a thrust or slash attack.
To dodge a thrust attack it’s best to move to either side. Thrust attacks have high range so backing away from the attack will usually still result in getting hit.
To dodge a slash attack it’s best to back away. Slash attacks have high AOE so moving to either side is not very effective.
The player demonstrates ranged combat using various types of thrown objects.
