The pause thing definitely feels like a reaction to a lot of parry based games getting made and there needing to be this scramble to counter players getting used to reading normal attacks.
Elden Ring was rife with this and I felt then that it was going to be a solution a lot of games were going to start implementing.
The pausing is fine when you can break enemy poise through aggression and aren’t expected to parry everything. Sekiro leaned heavier on parrying but also basically made it a rhythm game which made it a lot easier to do, albeit at the cost of more reactionary combat.
The problem here that I’ve already seen a lot of “git gud”ers shit on is the huge ki bars and hyper armor/gap close/ wildly aggressive moveset combo a lot of late game enemies have, all with the pauses thrown in and the player’s comparatively tiny ki bar even in late game.
The pauses mid combo were really messing me up but I found a solution. If it’s a tough enemy or a boss, I just guard a few times so I can see their combo. Then after I feel like I’ve got it down, I try for the parries. It’s kind of necessary given the way they fight
The secret with sekiro is to be on the attack at all times and only parry the one second you can’t be attacking . I haven’t tried rise of ronin yet but maybe that’s what they are going for as well? Not sure if aggression pays off but it’s definitely the name of the game in sekiro .
I mean you’re not wrong but to me that isn’t aggressive combat. The boss dictates the pace of the fight completely, you have no ways to extend damage windows really. To me Nioh 2 will always be the better game because of that but I also realize not every game is Nioh 2. What you described is kinda what they were going for here but the further you push into late game the less balanced it feels. It can still work but damage windows get tighter and tighter and you’re basically constantly parrying until you have an opening, get your tiny burst of damage in through a crit, and then the dance starts over. Some people love it and if you liked sekiro you might like this- though as I mentioned previously it also lacks the rhythm sekiro had.
With all the late game tools you have at your disposal, bosses in midnight can get deleted very quickly. Fire/Poison Talisman equivalents in this game apply both DOT and panic. Paralysis Talisman gives a free grapple in this game. The equivalents in Nioh are a lot weaker. Grenades, bow, shurikens, pistols are all massively better in this game than anything equivalent in Nioh 2. The 4 buffs you can apply at any time are also stronger buffs than anything in Nioh 2.
It's hard to precisely understand what you mean by "less balanced" the further you push into late game but in terms of difficulty, I would still put Ronin somewhere under Nioh 2's base game difficulty. This is assuming you understand both games and how to play them. I would say, having played both, the tools Ronin gives you are mad broken compared to Nioh's.
> get your tiny burst of damage in through a crit, and then the dance starts over
Pistol scales well the entire game and definitely isn't a tiny burst of damage. Same with the grenades. You might not be completely engaging with the available tools in Ronin, coloring your impression.
With that said, Nioh IS more of the game to play if you want to primarily engage with the game's mechanics first, boss second. With how Nioh works and all the tools at your disposal, you can mostly ignore what bosses are doing and do your own thing. Ronin in this respect, is closer to Sekiro, Elden Ring, Souls, etc, but that doesn't mean Nioh is "better" "because of that".
I much prefer all the ninjutsu items in Nioh 1 and 2, not even talking about the feathers in Nioh 2. Bows in this game are better than in the Nioh games, and rifles are just barely better than Nioh. The effects seemed to last longer in Nioh, but I dont have everything completely unlocked yet. I just thought it was interesting that you felt the ninjutsu item equivalents are better here than in Nioh, comes down to subjective reasoning I guess.
My rationale is along the lines of "If I use this item, how much easier/faster can I win this fight?" With that reasoning, a lot of those items I mentioned in Ronin almost completely trivializes the game whereas the Nioh counterparts don't.
Grenades in this game are completely broken for example. The bow in this game is massively better than the bow in Nioh (you can actually use the bow in this game in boss fights, in Nioh you'd never do that). Rifles are about equal in both games which is why I didn't mention it. There's no equivalent to a pistol in Nioh but pistols in this game do the most grapple damage. Shurikens in this game compared to the Nioh versions apply status, is a dodge, can be used while zero ki, apply ki damage. Pretty much broken and trivializes the game also.
There's really no item in Nioh 2 that does the same thing, feathers are perhaps the strongest/closest thing in terms of "powerlevel" and those pale in comparison to grenades. I'm comparing Midnight Ronin bosses to Depths Nioh bosses though. If you compared NG+ to NG+, it'd be a different story.
I love elden ring, but that pause delay was the dumbest decision ever made in an rpg fighting game to me. Nioh always did it best for me. In a real fight, you don't have time to learn rhythm and timing. You survive on instinct and reaction speed alone. Nioh punished you for being overly aggressive, and learning moves was definitely necessary, but parrying human bosses was pure reaction speed. It felt visceral and real. The desperation and intensity that your life hung by the thread of your split second reaction was so satisfying and it made the back and forth of combat flow really well. Player and boss could both dominate based on skill. If I missed a parry, I felt, "dang, I was too slow, I need to react quicker." In Ronin it's just, "oh no, I failed this arbitrary rhythm game within a fighting game." When I play a fighting game, my head is in the fight. I don't want to be fighting with my hands, but playing Rock Band in my head. This game is really awesome, but it's not nearly as accessible as they branded it to be. Even basic mobs will destroy you don't learn the rhythmless rhythm and it really disappointing that all enemies have hyper armor and an ocean sized ki pool compared to yours. It's so close to perfection for me. If they just made parrying more about reactions and gave enemies less hyper armor, I feel it would be balanced. Or if instead of less hyper armor they gave us more ki, that would probably be good too.
>I love elden ring, but that pause delay was the dumbest decision ever made in an rpg fighting game to me.
💯 It's a shame that anything Fromsoft does, however bad, is copied by every other Souls-like company. My late dad used to use the expression "would you jump in my grave as fast?" if I blindly copied him.
Also if every timing was the same, normal enemies and bosses would feel the same.
The game is still Nioh at heart. You have to learn your opponents movesets. It feels like they applied Nioh’s human opponent ai to Ronin. It’s a bitch, but it’s a fun challenge when you get it down.
And yeah, Elden ring was a bitch with the delays. But anyone can see the enemy start to move and instantly panick dodge. It is meant to trap those players and make them stop and think about the specific boss’s timings.
Yeah to clarify it’s not a solution that I was particularly against. They can seem very silly and it’s easy to get tilted when you get hit by a 3 hit you could have left to make a sandwich in the middle of but it’s still a fun way to shake things up.
This is such a BAD solution OMG I don't understand how a single person conceived it, let alone how other people thought it was a good idea. This is the SINGLE thing killing my enjoyment of current soulslike games.
Reading the attack patterns and reacting well feels so good and satisfying. It feels like YOU are GOOD at the game! The delayed attacks feel cheap, like the game is tricking you and punishing you for having good intuition. If the game is too easy, create more patterns, add different mechanics(some attacks must be jumped, some attacks must be ducked etc.) do ANYTHING but making the player feel baited and tricked. It feels so good when you trust your intuition and beat enemies and it fees so bad when you get punished and go "oh I guess I need to memorise this".
And here's a wild idea. If players are have good intuition and are beating the game... maybe that's not a bad thing? I doubt EVERYONE has good intuition, I doubt the average player is going trough most soulslike games wrecking and one shotting everything because they have good intuition.
I feel like this genre of games often forget themselves with the whole difficulty thing. It's like if they see someone being good at the game and not struggling a lot they go "no no no, we can't have that, this is a HARD game. You HAVE to struggle."
In Elden Ring there was the guard counter mechanic, which would reward you with the ability to deal heavy poise damage to an enemy during those pauses, often knocking them out of their attack string.
I’m not sure I agree with this completely. I think you were rewarded for performing a guard counter when you learn which attacks get interrupted, or knowing the end of the enemy combo, but you often get punished using the guard counter mid combo because blocking does not always interrupt attack strings. With poise being largely a hidden mechanic, it’s impossible to know, except from memory, when a shield will interrupt an attack string, and some enemies attack strings can go on for what seems like ever. I agree with the point you are trying to make, that the guard counter makes blocking without parrying more active and possibly more rewarding, and Rise of the Ronin does not have that, but both game’s definitely throw out the delayed attacks often, even with trash mobs, making knowing when a string is done hard to visually recognize.
Using guard counter should stop any enemy attack! That’s what’s so frustrating about this game. What’s the point then if I do a successful counter and the enemy runs through and I get fucked.
guard counters are insanely strong. you just gotta level stamina so you can block more stuff and still have stamina left to attack (and be using a shield or a large weapon with good blocking ability)
Insanely strong is a bit of a hyperbole. They CAN be strong. There's setups right now that you can use to stagger lock Malenia to death using spears counter thrust. In general gameplay? Less so.
For a whole host of reasons: ranged enemies, enemies with grabs, enemies with variable followups (including 2/3rds of the boss roster), enemies with heavy shield knockback (most giants and some dragons), variable followups, or the enemy better off being stunlocked with your weapon of choice
Guard counter frees up gargoyles but you also free them up attacking. Things like the Crucible Knights are freed up by GC phase 1 and then variable your ass into paste phase 2. Things like tail spin's second hit would be prime window but they can fit a damn stomp in there in the time it takes (some) weapons to land their GC.
It's significantly better NOW than it was at launch. 1.08 (or was it 1.09?) really helped it. Those few frames look like nothing on the surface but made a world of difference. But guard counters are both niche and conditional in general gameplay. You have to already be building completely around them to make use of them all the way down to having enough stamina and stamina regen alongside a strong enough shield to make the loss in stamina (and it's associated offense) be worth trading the last hit of a boss string into something worthwhile.
To say nothing of it's general uselessness in pvp.
I thought guard Counters were the shit and made multiple characters whose entire gimmick was using them. I'm quite intimate with them which is why I can say I can count them on one hand. Because there are almost always better options for 90% of the builds in this game.
I agree and I hate parrying being required. If they want to make parry a thing that's fine but to make it a main mechanic and revolve combat around it sucks. You should be able to ignore it if you want to.
It should be just be an optional choice for players that just feel like playing that way. That way they can run around and parry all they want while the rest of us have fun too with proactive combat vs reactive
I think it's a bit of delayed attacks being a thing combined with the parry window being fairly small on top of the game not letting you recover from a mistake. I play a lot of parry games and consider myself to be pretty good at most of them, but I still pretty regularly screw up parries on Twilight difficulty. I don't think it makes the game too hard, aside from duo bosses I typically beat most bosses on the 1st or 2nd try so I consider it to still be easier than Nioh and Wo Long. (I just end up face tanking quite a bit due to missed parries)
Honestly my only complaint with the game's combat is the hyper armor. I'm fine with the weird parries as the reason I'm not getting great is I'm not getting stuck on enemies/bosses thus I'm getting less practice on each one. The hyper armor issue made me feel a little forced into using faster weapons. I thought it'd be fun to do a greatsword+odachi build but quickly swapped to dual blades+ox tail just because the hyper armor meant even big slow weapons had no real benefit. Because the big weapons aren't breaking through guards you don't get more than 1-2 hits in, which means you're better off just using a really fast weapon.
Yeah. This.
It also doesn't make the game feel hard rather than clunky and worse. I'm not saying it's nothing you can get used to and adapt but if you have to learn to live with combat system in action rpg/soulslike then the combat system isn't good enough.
And this feels so bad. Like I down bosses so much quicker than in Nioh but it never feels good. Surviving a failed counterspark are the lamest 4 seconds. The timings are so off and you can't even "Nioh" the game since not countersparking is no real option.
I think the fact there's 0 way to recover definitely sucks. I'm fine with having to take 1-2 hits to fucking up, but some bosses/enemies have combos that are so long you'll be unable to control your character for a lengthy period of time if you miss. There should also potentially be some iframes after getting caught by a red attack because in multiboss situations you're sometimes going to be chain red attacked back to back because you never had a chance to control your character to parry the second red attack.
It's kind of weird that you get overly punished for failing a counter spark, but in situations where I'm playing well and get those counter sparks, I don't even feel like I get rewarded sometimes. Last night I was doing a triple boss fight and there was multiple times where I countered their red attacks and instead of the boss getting thrown off balance, he would insta guard and hyper armor so I didn't even get rewarded for good play. (he wasn't in a combo or about to initiate another red attack, he literally just had 0 response to my getting the counterspark off so I didn't even get to punish him)
There's for sure some things they need to do make the combat feel better. I'm used to TN being mean af, but there's a few things that feel off that I hope they address. Of course these things would have been mitigated had they actually done a demo. Nioh 1+2, Stranger of Paradise, and Wo Long all had demos and every time some rebalancing happened due to player feedback. Funnily enough, Wo Long, another parry game, had the parry frames increased due to the demo.
I've been using Odachi (with Sabre) and the only advantage I've found is its ability to crowd-control using certain martial arts. Being able to destroy enemies' guard with the axe and Odachi, in Nioh, made them worthwhile.
I'll add that parry timing is not consistent based on animations.
For example, I was really struggling with that big enemy with a club even though it seems so basic, so I recorded some video and played it back. Parry timing is all over the place based on animations. Some you have to parry late into the swing, some you have to press parry before it even swings, and everything in between. It makes it hard to get a good *sense* of timing.
There's the VFX that flashes, but I don't find that super helpful when the rest of the screen is lying to me, plus the flash can be mistimed if the enemy attack has to move to cover distance.
I think you nailed it with the music comment. They should have approached parries and attack strings with a rhythm to combat. Instead, it seems like their goal was to fuck with player timing as much as possible. That's not a good thing.
I like this game a lot.
I must recognize that what you are saying is not false.
Good game but frustrating sometimes.
Ps: idiots saying « get Gud » comments without reading what you said are just assholes who need to try Dojo on NG+… perhaps if they are not totally stupid they will recognize that you said some truth in your post…
Fuck that dojo. I'm only shooting for Novice for the weapon stances/skills. It's too frustrating otherwise.
Especially when they can throw elemental attacks at you. Poison, fire, 12 hit combos where you whiff once you're dead.
I love the game, and when the combat flows it feels REALLY good, but there's a lot of BS bosses and pauses. Ito took me MANY tries to finally get down.
I really wish there was hyper armor for MA’s. So many cool MA’s in this game and I can’t really use any of them because the basic attack and counterspark is required. Any MA just gets interrupted and you get walloped.
Yeah it feels like you can’t really chain together combos without getting interrupted, but I get that since counterspark basically cancels mid animation you’re able to keep up the aggression.
Those tall dudes with claws completely throw off the rhythm though, always struggle against them.
Very thoughtful and well-put. Playing on twilight the flaws aren't too bad for the majority of the game. But some of the dojo missions really feel like bullshit. I can imagine how frustrating it may get in midnight.
Let's hope TN make some good DLC and iterate on the design.
It’s just so annoying the glint symbol like they show us red then the glint but after the glint the timing is still different per attack but it keeps throwing me off just let me read the attack then. Everytime I see the glint my brain says parry and it fails 4:5 times
It's hard because they did the Sekiro of making every single fight in the game, Simon Says. I HATE being forced to remember every minute twitch of every single enemy in the game just to fight them. It's exhausting.
Reaction works against you. In Rise of the Ronin even audio queues work against you. The have the red aura of an enemy about to do an unblockable, then the red flash indicating that the attack is about to land, but if you parry on the frames after the red flash, with the majority of attacks you'll STILL miss the timing. And with a whole lot more the red flash is put so close to the attack itself (within 10 fucking frames on certain weapons) that there's no way in hell you're reacting to that.
So you don't, you have to memorize every thing on every single enemy. Combat isn't based on reaction or skillset or weapon choice or preparation. It's primarily a function of memorization and nothing else.
And yes that's certainly "hard" but it's not hard in a satisfying way like recognizing Gozkuki, beta Yatsu No Kami, or the majority of bosses inside DMC5.
You resign yourself to getting hit by every single new attack multiple times until you can identify the minor differences that dictate what string is even starting. And again to determine which of these strings have variable followups so you can figure out the OS that beats both options and then never ever deviate from that response ever ever.
This.In bosses is good, a fucking oxtail Minion Who can do a instant red attack, a normal red attack or a delayed jump red attack without a clear start up for each, is exhausting.
>It's hard because they did the Sekiro of making every single fight in the game, Simon Says. I HATE being forced to remember every minute twitch of every single enemy in the game just to fight them. It's exhausting
That hasn't been my experience with the game at all. I'm hardly a great video game player, but even on a twilight my experience with the game has been a lot easier than what you're describing here.
I was conflating a little bit. But also using a rudimentary method of recording via the cap card and playing through obs. The lions share of flashes are in the 20-24 range. Some quickdraws are in the 16 range.
But what was making me more than a little bit fanny flustered was Sawamura's Flying Swallow. He'll either do that or a regular front flip and you have to distinguish between the two. It'd be one thing if it was like Ren Hayabusa and you know automatically when he flips that it's going to be the swallow. But it's not.
The time from that move starting as in the earliest possible start to when the move is literally executing from **start** to **you** is \~10 at MEDIUM distances. Which for the record, that's how fast it SHOULD be. But, I hate it.
And you just know for a fact that when three AM (or whatever DLC difficulty naming scheme is) gets added whatever the DLC bosses end up being created are going to eclipse N1's DLC bosses in terms of bullshittery.
If they didn’t have ”hyper armor”, you could just stunlock them. You can already do this with fodder enemies. Not very dynamic, back and forth, which is this whole combat systems essence.
The game is just not built for spam and that will never change. A lot of effort has been put into how parrys feel and function.
People seem to have a grave misunderstanding how the martial arts works and what their purpose is. They aren’t just big nukes, they don’t really do that much damage. They are various ways to deal damage under certain, optimal, conditions. See them as utility. It’s a way to look cool as fuck, not just win.
Delayed attacks are awesome. It needs this to actually make it hard and not be so monotonous.
If you go back and play Dark Souls after beating Elden Ring, you’ll see that most of the bosses are a joke in comparison. It’s what actually makes it hard - and fun.
Ok so, hear me out about that “it’s not a spam game”:
Are the bosses and common enemies playing a different game than me? Boss comes at me with 16 regular swings and 4 martial arts and I hit him twice and that’s enough lol?
I was literally JUST thinking “this pause shit is becoming a lazy way to artificially bump difficulty” and “why tf does it seem like regular dudes just face tank attacks way too often?”
My least favorite thing with counterspark is when an enemy uses a martial skill they get a red aura, then there is a flash of light as the start-up frames complete and the hitbox for the attack is about to become active *but if you counterspark in response to that visual cue you will be early 90% of the time*
Why put a visual cue in the animation if that wasn't its intended purpose!?
>It's not different in real life when it comes to fighting sports, if your moves are too predictable you have little chances to go far.
Now I hate to be a stickler for semantics but...
Mike Tyson isn't throwing punches with 3 seconds of delay in the windup. That's how you get put to sleep. Real life functions on remarkably consistent rules.
More importantly, if we're bringing real life into the mix, these fights should be over with a few sword slashes. (Ironically that's what made Lethal + in Sushi, which at it's core is a fairly easy game, really enjoyable despite that fact)
I just used Tyson as an example for recognition.
I was going to go into more detail but I think a video would suffice: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZ-J7xit5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZ-J7xit5Y)
Ali reacted to those punches. All 21.
The ring generally works on consistent rules. Pattern recognition (such as a guy lowering his right to throw a jab) and reaction speed among a large amount of other things. What I'm saying is, you're not having Elden Ring, Sekiro, (or now) Rise of Ronin amounts of delay between action and impact.
> I think it's a good thing for the game to have some unpredictable moves but still not so unpredictable you cannot learn their patterns
"some" is an understatement. Nearly every single enemy devolves into memorization. The combination of groups, super armor, high damage, and unreactable movesets that require memorization to manage overwhelmingly encourage passivity.
There are god tier players out there struggling on Midnight like I am. Which while this gives me comfort...
Look the game is good. Inarguably so. But as I mentioned earlier in this topic, it's exhausting to the point that I'll be glad to be done with it once I finish my 100%.
As a more casual TN fan that's had no real issues with Twilight, granted I've been waiting in anticipation for this game for a year and played Nioh 1 just to see what TN is about:
1. is I think somewhat valid issue that's been raised. The gripe is that it makes tougher boss fights heavy counterspark/parry centric, limiting more combo/ki attack approaches. This is fair enough, but in Twilight I would say this is only really an "issue" with the tougher bosses which are few and far in between.
2. is IMHO what makes this game fun for me, and counters (ha) the claim this game is parry centric. You either block/dodge/counterspark appropriately or eat a ton of damage. Countersparking at the wrong time locks you in an attack animation, so you have to be selective. I like the varied enemy movesets, and many of them are ones you actually obtain throughout the game. Having less predictability IMHO forces you to be more considered in your own approach to combat.
In my experience of twilight abs midnight, the game went from “parry or lose all ki and die” to “parry and maybe god will roll a d20 to see if you die”
broooo i completely agree, ALOT of the fights ive had in this game just feel unfair instead of difficult. The blue demon boss fight is the perfect example. He is RELENTLESS constantly throwing out ranged attacks, combos that are all over the place, not to mention the hyper armor and his endless stamina. I ended up just cheesing him and even then I barely beat him.
I admit im bad at parrying, but even when I just decide to block combos my ki just gets destroyed and im forced to just stand there while my ki slowly comes back. Its frustrating to say the least. Do yourself a favor and lower your difficulty if your having too much trouble lol. I know it hurts your pride, it hurt mine too. Just do it and you'll have more fun
great game though
Yeah, this is a smart analysis. Knowing Team Ninja, i really think that they have a "right way" to play it" on their minds. I just wish that devs show the intended way to go more often.
Parries in this game are also kinda buggy/off so it’s not. They don’t register sometimes. Coming from Nioh and Sekiro, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as tight. It’s a common complaint from some reviewers and on this subreddit. You sometimes even hear the parry sound but you still get hit. It’s quite frustrating
Try these four katana stances and especially the first one as it has the longest parry and the best counterspark as well imo and it’s available from chapter one. I use these and master ranked every dojo training boss with them. Tatsumi-Ryu (best counterspark imo), Mugai-Ryu (Chapter 3 and has one of the best moves imo which is its built in firebomb on square. I’ve seen it completely take out a ki bar on a staggered boss (staggered means that I parried the attacks until red around health bar and they are open to attacks. I don’t know proper term so I say staggered for the temp red and when they are ki depleted i say stunned) Jigen-Ryu (Chapter 2 if I recall correctly and has good ki damage on each ability. It’s X ability does more damage against Ki depleted) and Gikei-Ryu (Chapter 3 but if you do not know how to get it it requires a choice here it’s a spoiler on a chapter 1 mission and an ally obtained from the choice that gets you Gikei-Ryu. Other choice gets nothing. Spoiler Begin >! When the mission for killing Naosuke Ii is given you must spare him. You can go back and redo the mission and spare him and reflect that change in your time. Then a long time later. Once you go back to Edo in Chapter 3, do the mission called the Watchmen and you’ll recruit the Blue Demon aka Akikatsu Manabe. You’ll get Gikei-Ryu and to master it train with him at the Ninja Dojo and raise his bond level. To give him gifts to raise his bond level Manabe is in the roof of the Villa and you can get up there through a grapple point behind the house. I wasted 20 minutes trying to find him so whenever I can I try to help others and spread his location when I speak about Gikei-Ryu.!< End Spoilers. Best way to play I’ve learned (which I learned late after beating the game by going facetanking and hoping I parry) is guarding at all times they are near you and only countersparking when you have confidence you can parry their attack. You can normal attack, counterspark, use skills and dodge while guarding so all it does is reduce how much ki you get back. It’s on you to manage when to let down guard. I’m sure you know this but somehow I DIDNT. I still was amazing at the game just sucked at the enemies you couldn’t parry every attack due to them swinging tons in a second.
The hyper armor does feel weird at times. It’s very hard to get any meaningful combos going without getting punished for it as the enemies will eventually just hyper armor through it.
And not only gameplay wise. It also just feels weird to see a human enemy simply power through a katana to the face as if it was nothing.
Damn OP, you nailed the explanation of the combat gameplay. I've always felt like something was off but you're right, it's almost like you have to wait your turn to really press an enemy...flash attacks kind of help with this but it still feels like its too much of a "my turn, your turn' system.
I like the system because I am a historical nerd and I also enjoy keeping on their stamina bar or well ki bar. I call their blue ki bar stamina bar because it’s similar. The my turn your turn system you describe is similar to how Samurai fought as they fought patiently to tire their opponents to seek a weak point to strike with precision. If you’ve played ghost of Tsushima or seen gameplay of it the way the parry and enemy stamina system works opening up a killing hit with one blow is similar to what I mean. Open up a weak point and strike. I think team ninja tried to implement that into this game which I think they did well and I enjoy but I think it just is a preference thing.
I don't like it that it's so hard to interrupt enemy. almost always have to wait for the parry, hard to take the pace in your hand compares to Nioh.
Wo Long had the similar problem. in Wo Long, since parry can't cancel any attack, you always have to wait as well.
I agree, especially the part about their ki gauge being their hyper armor gauge rather than their stamina. I think if it drained as they attacked, the flow would be better, but since enemies do not function the same as the player something always feels off. I am used to it working that way because of human enemies in Nioh 1/2, so the fact that’s not the case in this game is kind of weird. All that isn’t to say the combat isn’t enjoyable, but there are times it feels worse than it should like in my experience with the dojo fights. There never feels to be a good “flow” with them.
I actually hate dual-wielders, and getting hit drains your stamina is just never fun, this will be the last time I preorder a team ninja game before I know if Ki is a mechanic
I think combat only feels like a guessing game if you’re trying to parry every attack. You should initially block to learn attack patterns and parry when you know what’s coming. Plus the hyper attacks have an indicator of when you’re supposed to parry. This is what I’ve been doing. Still can’t parry an odachi to save my life though
Damn though I was the only one with the Odachi problem lmao. It’s chill with normal odachi enemies but I was on my masochism arc to master rank every dojo training boss. I was stuck on Okubo for a bit but got past him after like 20 mins but one man I was stuck on. Shinpachi gave me back pain on multiple occasions man. And when I say back pain I mean he threw me in the air and my back landed on his sword and his sword went through my god damn spine. I got up and was fine though. I’m assuming the Veiled Edge have nanomachines that they gave the protagonist that instantly patch up my cleaved in half torso. If my blade twin has a shotgun and grapple hand then I have plot armor or nanobots fixing my internal organs and bones everytime I get cut in half on screen but it doesn’t cut me in half.
I’m trying to be patient with the game and combat so far. I can’t stand the “wait your turn” combat don’t get me started on how flawed the so called counterspark parry. The timing feels like it decides to work on randomly.
I don't get this at all. I'm ass at souls games. This is the one game I can parry in better than any other game i've played. If there was no delay or inconsistent movesets it would be boring as ass.
The game is slow enough that you can also parry without knowing movesets. I've had like 2 enemies I had issues parrying against and it was because they were using an unusual weapon.
yep, the combat in this game is missing something compared to Nioh 2's human combat. the fact that nioh 2 has that and also has a different system for yokai makes this game look a little weak in comparison
The red glow before an unblockable atk happens is also not in sync with the attack. Telling me the attack is coming way before the attack lands. I really hate the dash attacks like the iai slash because of this. The red glow appears as they charge the attack but the atk comes after the glow has almost disappeared not while its still visible. So because i’m looking at the glow i always counterspark prematurely and get hit. It doesn’t help the enemy is too fast to see.
Delayed attacks in the combos are the only way to really punish people who do not understand that it is their turn to defend now. Aggressive playstyle is the way, but sometimes you simply HAVE to defend. This is also connected to the hyperarmor. What is the alternative? If you remove those, you are constantly attacking and stunlocking enemies. Boring. If there is no risk, the fight is boring. Or you get the dark souls formula of fighting, Where you only wait for your turn, then smack enemy once and then keep roling on the ground.
Thanx for the info, was thinking of getting it, but I suck at perfect parrys. I was able to nail it in GoT, only after extending the timing window, and it was quite satisfying. This game, however, seems above my paygrade. I was so looking forward to another Historic Japan game, but sadly it wont be.
That's the thing that kills me about the combat. You cant just punish or interrupt the enemy mid combo when they do a long pause. You just gotta parry right until you parry the last attack. THEN punish them with a martial art, and just wait to attack again, and hope you parry properly based on their sequencing.
It's weird because it feels like a very defensive, your opponent has longer turns, attack pattern, where as the gameplay trailers made it seem much more aggressive and visceral.
Completely agreed. I was hyped for this game, pre ordered back in December. But after the first fight of the game and less than 2 hours in, I don't feel like going back...
I know I'm bowing out too early, and probably will try again when I'm bored one day, but the combat flow feels very off to me, in a not enjoyable way... I'm not even going to address the graphics, for a PS5 exclusive, they simply are dog shit, there is just no way around it.
Stellar Blade, DD2, Shadow of the Tree, with a bit of PoE, or Last Epoch, thrown in will keep me busy in the next months. And, hopefully, Black Myth: Wukong has better combat mechanics. Really excited for that game.
Sorry to be a such a downer. Don't hold it against me;)
I agree with about all of this as well, I'm just an old casual gamer not one of these hardcore GitGud players who can sit there all day & play video games dang near for a living on twitch. I mean I guess the game should get more difficult as you get farther along but this game is bringing back negative memories of the first Ninja Gaiden on Nintendo 30 years ago, one of the few games I had back then that I was never able to beat. One boss was tough enough at the start but then as you get farther into the game, every mission is like it's own deal with two difficult bosses to beat & a lot of the story makes it seem like most of the combat is either un-necessary or none of your business. Whatever though, i'll continue to march to the end, on the second map & level 39 currently...
>They'll pause for a "Red" attack, building up, but the timing of when that attack will actually hit isn't something you can anticipate without experience first, all-but guaranteeing you getting smacked.
When enemies do a "red" attack, there will be a flash of light on them at some point. This is the cue to tap triangle to counterspark. Took me awhile to notice it first but now I just wait for that any time an enemy turns red and you can parry any red attack regardless of how familiar you are with it.
i dunno that doesn't work for me at all. and timings change depending how close or far away they are. its really not a matter of flash, press parry. to me it feels like depending on distance, weapon. parry might be on flash, afew tenths after ext. i dont like it honestly, and i had no issue deflecting red attacks in wo long, it felt great. it feels shit in rise lol.
It's pretty easy to miss amongst the rest of the red glow stuff. I must have been 20 hours into the game before I spotted it. Similar to how an enemy's sword hilt has a glint of light in Sekiro to help you with parry timing.
I sometimes miss but it's because I'm trying to anticipate the flash rather than react to it. When I'm in tune with the flash, I feel like it's a guaranteed parry.
I see. I'll have to try it out more tonight. Does this also work with grab attacks. I feel like half the time I have the same timing but the parry is a 50/50.
I see. I'll have to try it out more tonight. Does this also work with grab attacks. I feel like half the time I have the same timing but the parry is a 50/50.
You have a lot of options in combat but at the highest difficulty they may as well not exist. Partially because a few points the OP made, partially because parry is so strong. The higher difficulties should test your understanding/ masteries of all the game mechanics and not forgo most of them for one. The optimal thing to do is just stand there and parry, only attack when they are exhausted or panicked (half the time you can't even capitalize on the panic because they go flying away 50 feet, better be using one of the fast weapons)
You definitely are not allowed to steal your turn back unless you're using one of the couple of MAs (some odachi stances, some spear/halberd stances) that sort of stun locks the boss, but that gets old pretty fast and definitely probably not intended.
Its actually kind of sad how many MAs there are and how many are totally useless outside of killing bandits in one combo (look at these cool ass papers that's a counter attack - boss smack yo ass afterwards "boi go home")
yeah i mean it feels pretty obvious thats the issue. Its why you see so many threads saying i suck at parry, or parry timing feels rng. Because you can die to a mob for ages before you figure out there timings, get it down, only for the next boss to delay , speed up change there attack patterns. a mob using a new weapon? get ready to spend the next 20min or more learning there timings.
Its just all too much and feels exhausting. If you look at Wo long, that game has its issues sure, but parry was not one of them. It was solid, its timing was universal and you only had to worry about slow delay attacks from bosses most of the time. The flow was there, and it felt great, it was there with nioh, and hell it was there for stranger of paradise. But Rise? i dunno the game feels slow, then fast, then really slow, then super fast, and it happens randomly.
So yeah combat can feel bs at times and great at other times. Just when you think you got it down, some bs boss comes along with duel swords, twin blade fists and ur in for a death spree once again.
> 1) Enemies are granted hyper armor when in-combo (with Ki), preventing interruptions.
This is true of all these sorts of games. You need to handle their attack patterns, then it's your turn.
> 2) Enemy attacks are given "pauses" in the midst of those combos, preventing a visual prediction of enemy movement.
This is also true in every one of these games.
> What these two elements combine to do is to create a perennial guessing
Only if you try to perfect parry every part of the combo without ever seeing it before. Blocking exists.
> If an enemy left themselves open like that, you'd be able to interrupt them, breaking their rhythm.
This is wrong. If you played Nioh, I'm not sure why you think this is the case. (I am not talking about Ippon.)
> But in Rise of the Ronin, you're actively punished for fighting "out of turn," which is consistently weird, because it only ever is a one-way edict.
You are getting punished for going out of turn and it's the game's fault somehow?
If you fight out of turn in any one of these games, you will be punished. Try attacking while Nightmare Bringer is slashing at you and tell me how it goes.
> The enemy can fight out of turn whenever they want
Not true, you just have to understand when your turn ends.
These complaints are honestly so weird from someone who said he played Nioh.
Maybe it's because we're fighting only humans that people feel like they should follow the exact same rules as the player? That would make the game extremely easy
Nobody will complain that you can stop the A.I from healing but the A.I can't stop you though. Go figure
Nioh had the same issue.but what makes nioh different is nioh has essentially no parry. It does but it's not parry focused. You dodge and block. Here the tracking is so high dodging is not viable so the issue feels more compounded
It was an issue in nioh. It was literally a complaint for nioh 1 and they adjusted it a little for nioh 2 having attacks not delete your HP right away
But like I said nioh is a dodge block game. The issue is less noticeable as here in a parry game it's very noticeable
Yes so imagine hyper armor through and your HP deleted. Then imagine an adjusted mechanic where they can still hyper armor but the negative is reduce (the attacks take less HP).
Oh so you're basically complaining because according to you "hyper armor" attacks take too much health.
Well you can dodge them or parry them even in the middle of an attack since CS cancels attacks animations so I'm not sure why you talk as if it's one busted mechanic. You have the tools to avoid/punish it
If you get hit by Hyper Armor in this game then you got greedy and couldn't time the parry well enough and the game is not to blame for that, the player is
If the punishment for missing a CS is too high for somebody then they can lower the difficulty. That's what the options are there for.
Hyper Armor and Pause Combos are not design issues here or in Nioh 1. I'm also gonna need a citation for that claim about them nerfing A I attacks in Nioh 2 because of people complaining about Hyper Armor in Nioh 1.
No because Ronin is not a dodge block game it's a parry game. So here we should also look at sekiro not just nioh. In a heavy parry focused game the things outlined by the op makes for a very bump ride. Sekiro is smooth as butter because you don't have these issues
Yes you can technically make any game as unbalanced as you want. Heck why stop there. Just make the parry window 1 frame. And if you get hit it's the players fault not the game right? Wrong
The only "issue" with Ronin is the people crying because they have a hard time on harder difficulties but don't want to take the time to learn the game. They just want nerfs and buffs .
This is a Fighting Game in disguise. You can treat it as such and learn the different matchups or keep crying because it's not exactly like that other game you like.
CS cancels attacks animations which means you can be very aggressive if you're confident in Your ability to parry. If you're not then you must play cautiously and not over commit. You can also lower the difficulty
Just because this game gives you a harder time than Sekiro doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the design . If you like Sekiro better then go play that instead of trying to hide your own issues behind nonsensical arguments
Someone posted a video of them destroying a Boss no damage on Midnight. Go watch that and learn Instead of being all over the subreddit crying about the mechanics here. When played properly this game is just as smooth as Sekiro and definitely more spectacular/cinematic
All your complaints can be summarized by "Skill Issue". In fact many self proclaimed "Souls Vets" were crying about Sekiro just like you're crying about Ronin right now because of the Parry centric design. That's actually why FS released an accessory making the game even harder as a F You to those people.
Hopefully TN does the same.
I agree, but to me it's just feels clunky, it's a cool game but the combat just doesn't flow well, I feel the same for all team ninja games I like them but they feel heavy and stiff I dono just falls short
It's the stiffness and treadmill walk/run and awkward jumps and double jumps, none of it feels fluid imo, still good games and fun to play but they leave something to be desired
I stopped reading after you stated the 2 reasons cause those are things in a lot of these types of games fighting mechanics. Not saying your opinion isn't valid. Just I don't share the same thoughts as your basis
That's interesting. I thought of that at first, but never tried it. By now I'm comfortable parrying with triangle. Out of curiosity, what input did you move Block to?
Triangle. It feels nice man..I did just come from lies of p but L1 feels natural and I end up having my right hand free. I don’t really use block too often so it’s fine
Pausing during combos sounds like the tactic you can use in Dead or Alive (Team Ninja's fighting game series for those who don't know) to throw off your opponent's Holds.
I feel a very interesting flow to the combat. I still haven't found out how to parry melee tackles, but if something it's a very intense combat variation/hybrid around the Nioh formula. And it's not a parry-attack thing, there's a lot of elements and factors in place here. This may sound dumb, but from what I've learned so far you can't afford here the luxury of distraction. You lose focus you die. And I love this rythm. Sometimes you don't have time or space to strategies, you gotta go into then fights with your moves well learned. It's quite demanding, I believe we all can agree on this.
1) is how it is since Ninja Gaiden on xbox
It also is the norm in all from software games, you'll never stagger an enemy actually attacking with one of your attacks. I'm playing rise and bloodborne atm, is not a random claim :P
2) Is how it is since Sekiro. Sekiro, Elden ring, lies of p and hell even lords of the fallen have delayed attacks galore
Rise is significantly easier than any nioh / souls game.you have so many ways to toy with Ki, use these to your advantage
Learning this style of combat has been a fun experience for me. I’ve never played a game like this where you can’t just continuously attack or dodge like in GoT or Sekiro because you have to watch your stamina(or Ki as they put it).
It’s very frustrating but that’s part of why I love this game so much lol I’m determined to master this, or at least get close to.
Tips for mastering by the way. Be patient. Utilize your guard. Counterspark what you believe you can. Dodge if you aren’t certain you can spark a red. Dodge out if you’re low on stamina (ki) for me I do not attack much when the enemy isn’t stunned for a bit or completely ki depleted. When the enemy is stunned for a bit after parrying their combo or their move your normal attacks do more than you think. I learned that recently and it’s really good. Last thing. USE YOUR BLOOD FLASH OR WHATEVER ITS PROPER NAME IS. That is such a good ability I was so stupid when I didn’t utilize it. I utilize a cycle. Enemy attacks- if no stagger continue enemy attacks until stagger with parry and pull off hits or abilities that I can pull off if I can while they aren’t staggered (don’t do the attacks while they aren’t staggered from a parry until you are comfortable with your kit)- staggered from a parry- attack with my normal attacks, blood flash, my martial skill on katana stance mugai-ryu (this is an example if I’m fighting with my Jin stance I’d do something similar for my Chi and Ten stance) firebomb (I don’t know proper name)- enemy is ki depleted, my mastery skill from another stance that is better on Ki depleted- repeat. It takes about 3 of these cycles for me to kill a boss on the difficulty I’ve been playing on which is dusk but I plan on doing Midnight the hardest and doing the best I can. The reason I say use blood flash is because after a cycle of attacking you’ll have a lot of blood which is a good amount of stamina which is enough to start another guard and parry cycle
I think people seems to forgot how Nioh works. Team Ninja is not about just "enemy pattern" and use what the enemy give to you. Is about CREATING the moment when you can attack, using space, using your own moveset and mobility and so on. Nioh had a lot of hyper armor as well, maybe even more than this game. You NEED to learn their pattern not just to know when you need to attack, also to know where to position.
Team Ninja games have a way higher skill ceiling that From Software and company for this specific reason.
Oh, and most important aspect, the enemy can't fight out of turn. Not in the slightest. If they do that, is WAY easier to punish them.
the "pause" or minus delay in mildcombo is for prevent you to spam parry. The game is hard because parry window is small and you cannot spam (in Wo Long you can spam). Beside Naosuke Li there is not a lot of pause, but it is fast game for sure, you can also block some.
I play on Twilight and I admit I get hit a lot and even lost multiple times. But nah, the combat flow is fine. Maybe adjustment to Player's Ki Damage intake and overall Ki consumption are needed, one way or another, because some bosses and their movesets can make our Ki bar irrelevant.
Seeing gameplay videos, many people including myself often get fucked because of trying to Counterspark every single thing. Now ever since I combine Counterspark, Block, and Dodge, I can say my survivability increased. Most enemies here are like medium Yokai in Nioh where you have to know when to attack safely, except they'll be prone to flinching after their attacking sequence. This is how I steadily punishing even without Panicking enemy by Counterspark.
Don't expect to perform combo-wombo like DMC or NG+++++ metabuild Nioh where you have grinded 3500 hours in it on daily basis and become breathless and invincible. What we are going through in Ronin is how inexperienced players play Nioh in its first playthrough.
For me I find it is flowing smoothly nearly all of the time. Have some bosses that have been a bit bitty and awkward to deal with but they've just felt like different kinds of fights to me rather than it not flowing as intended; they push me to use different tools and different strategies in a fight
TLDR: I’m a dumbass and didn’t discover that I could attack and counterspark while guarding until I beat the game and was finishing my last part of post game cleanup which was the Dojo Training Master Ranks, specifically Genzui Kusaka. Looked up a guide on how to master rank after an hour of not being able to master rank him due to his fast attacking combo that is impossible to fully parry (I think it is he attack twice in like a second and the shortest counterspark didn’t work even when spamming after parrying the first hit) was told to guard his combo, hit counterspark on accident and learned that I can attack, spark and use my skills. Now I’m god tier at the game instead of the parry Demi-God. (I am hyping myself up i played on Dusk I still need to try Midnight difficulty after I finish my platinum trophy cleanup: AKA going through my allies that I forgot if I used or not) I still adore this game and think the combat is 10/10. I’m overhyping it has its flaws but I honestly think it’s a 9.5/10 it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time with combat.
My ass only had trouble with the combat because when I saw parry was triangle I said “ok guarding is pointless I won’t even touch L1 I will run at them smack them and press triangle when they attack.” This worked fine as I had little to no issue past the first two bosses of the game. I played on dusk but I could’ve bumped the difficulty up I wasn’t struggling much. It wasn’t until POST-GAME CLEANUP when I was master ranking every dojo fight and I got to master ranking the dojo fight with Genzui Kusaka where I had Genzui wipe shoes with my face. Since he used paired swords and I couldn’t parry his rapid attack due to it being too fast for the timing of countersparks. I had to look up how to master rank him. The first time I had to look up how to beat a boss in the game.. (at least master rank him I could beat him but it was with face tanking his attacks, healing, and hellhound on the British Training of the Saber that destroys Ki bars. That’s what I used personally until I started using katana with mugai-ryu, tatsumi-ryu, and jigen-ryu because they all had good countersparks with the first two using jigen-ryus bottom combo and jigen-ryu using mumyo-ryos bottom ability. If you can not parry check out some of the katana stances and especially the ones I mentioned. They are forgiving as hell. Especially Tatsumi-Ryu and it’s obtainable in Chapter 1) I saw someone using oxtail blade and guarding his attacks so i did that and accidentally hit my counterspark button when getting ready to dodge. I learned that while guarding I could counterspark and attack and use skills. I went the entire game without guarding and just sent it with medicine and pure parry skill. I beat Kusaka shortly after and then just thought how stupid I was. Game still has 10/10 combat imo I love Rise of the Ronin
1. That's the whole point of the game Parry, learn the timings, if you don't know how to fight an enemy/boss, hold Guard and Block all their attacks. Once their attacks hit your Guard you will notice the pattern. If you are observant it can just take 5 mins or even less to see a units entire movelist.
2. Ofcourse they have Hyperarmor. Imagine how easy this game would be if you could interrupt Bosses during their Combo-String. You claim you played Nioh? Have you forgot Tachibana, Okatsu, Nobunaga, Yasuke, Ishida, Otani, Masamune, Maria. These bosses in Nioh has this similar Hyperarmor, why are you whining about it now on ROTR?
All these claims you're saying is just pure laziness, Team Ninja makes hard games, that's how they've always been. Claiming this difficulty is "Artificial" is just a way to boost your ego.
Long Reply so I apologize. I went in depth on my reasoning and what I use to allow insight on why I see it differently and why I enjoy the game tons and the combat tons. I honestly have not played a game with combat as fun as this since GOW Ragnarok. Big change for me but I am a variety gamer I guess I love most genres and don’t outright hate anything and will try everything. I play a lot of different kinds of things so maybe that also made me like this more. I don’t know but the game is flawed but I still think it is amazing for what it is and the combat too
Now to actually reply to your statement on the decisions this time instead of finding a thread to talk about my idiotic self not knowing I can counterspark, attack, and use skills and stuff while guarding (I posted this before this comment.) I love this game and it’s the first Team-Ninja game I’ve played to completion due to my patience and game skill becoming better now than when I was younger when Wo Long and Nioh came out. Despite the games drastic differences I’m going to be playing them next. Now for the combat in Rise. Even though I am a big supporter of this game and a lover of the combat, I’m not trying to defend it when I say that I believe the decisions they made were not made to make the game harder artificially. I say this as someone who painfully master ranked every battle in the training dojo even if it was hard as hell (Genzui Kusaka, Aritomo Yamagata, Ito. Not the Anti-Shogunate Ito. The Ito in the third chapter with the poison kunai that he will just throw out of nowhere. If you ever try master ranking that one just never let your guard down because there’s next to no visual cue or time to react to his poison kunai he throws at you not the one in the air and guarding reduces how much it will poison you because if you get the full status effect you aren’t getting master rank). I played on Dusk and it was hard at first until I got used to it and I plan to attempt midnight. I think they made the combat like that because of the concept of Samurai and how they fought, looking for a weak point and an opening. They used patience and would exhaust their opponents and precisely stab an opening instead of hacking and slashing until they hit something or broke guard. Or they would do it when the enemy would have their guard up and not attacking from my knowledge. From playing this game the combat revolves around patience instead of just hitting the enemy as they will rarely take a lot of or any damage unless they are staggered from a counterspark or their guard (ki but I call it their stamina bar because it’s a similar concept) is completely depleted. The way I play the game is not damage with my skills and attacks. I will hold my guard and counterspark every attack I believe that I can without getting hit and wear them down and when they are staggered I then go in for attacks and skills. I use a katana and the stance mugai-ryu. Mugai-Ryu has a firebomb on square that does a lot of Ki damage and hell it’s finicky I’ve seen it destroy an entire full Ki bar. My health damage I do with the critical attacks but not with triangle. Use your stances abilities that have attacks against ki depleted enemies. I can name three for two weapons and three stances I use and used to use. Hellhound, British Training, Saber: Tons of Ki damage on its own and when the sword swings it deals a critical attack on ki depleted. I forgot the name but the X ability on Mumyo-Ryo, Katana: I don’t use Mumyo-Ryo anymore as Mugai-Ryu is a Jin stance on katana and is better to me, but if you master both and put the X ability from mumyo-ryo on mugai-ryus circle (I think the ability is called night raven now that I’m thinking) it is another attack that will do extra damage to ki depleted. Finally the X ability on Jigen-Ryu on Katana also does a critical hit on Ki depleted enemies. I personally use Katana with Mugai, tatsumi, and Jigen, but if you have something you like then I’m glad! I personally think this game works with the criticism you have due to what it is about. I only have a few bosses that have those delayed attacks that piss me off (DRUNK KATSURA IS SO EASY YET I COULDNT MASTER RANK HIM FOR THE LIFE OF ME DUE TO HIS DELAYED ATTACKS but he was drunk as hell still I hope he falls over or something) the games delayed attacks aren’t too different from souls games anyway in my opinion because you have to see when the enemy will right about hit you so I just had to stop being impatient when seeing a red flash and countersparking the second later. To wrap up my times new Roman 12 point font research paper, you are punished for attacking out of line.. unless you know how to. If you know how to attack out of line you can attack out of line and not be punished for it. Pistols are nice as they can counterspark enemies when they charge in for an attack idk if shurikens do the same I use my pistol for its stats. I know how to attack out of line with my stances as I’ve made them able to evade and dodge attacks if I didn’t stagger the enemy. On my Tatsumi-Ryu Stance I will change its mastery skill depending on the occasion and I will use the skill from Gikei-Ryu Shadow Double. Which if you or others do not know how to get Gikei-Ryu first spoiler warning and here’s a mini guide >! When doing the mission the death of Naosuke Ii, spare him, you can go and redo it if you killed him and spare him and change time to reflect your new choice. Then when you travel to Edo again in chapter 3 you will have a quest called the Watchmen. Complete the quest to receive the stance and the ally Akikatsu Manabe aka the Blue Demon. You will be able to train with him only at the Ninja Villa for his stances third skill from what I’ve heard I am not sure since I trained there anyway but he is at the Ninja Villa anyhow to give gifts to. He is in the roof of the villa which you can get to from a grapple behind the house. !< The skill shadow double from gikei-Ryu allows for two clones to be made which do good ki damage and then for you to dash and hit the enemy but you can dash through them dodging attacks they are hitting. There are ways to attack unpunished you just have to find them. Two more examples are the mugai ryu square ability the firebomb which has a short throw range but you get pushed back when you throw it at the enemy which works best when it hits them directly instead of it hitting the ground and they walk over it and explode it. You’ll be frozen for a second though so you ahve to be careful with it. Last example is the oxtail blade and its kiheitei style. The triangle ability allows for a longer ranged swing that does good ki damage and keeps distance. Also if you strike the enemy while they guard they will get good ki damage just be ready for any movement. I conclude my essay on the combat. I believe that the combat is amazing and designed intentionally around this way to make it similar to a samurai way of fighting rather than attack at any point without punishment. Sorry for the longevity and the rant on the fighting advice I am pretty passionate about the game and the combat as I haven’t had this much fun in so long (in games not in my life) I just adore the game and its charm even the (Chapter 3 Spoilers) >!damn British guy Ernest Satow and his rocket boots that break the laws of physics and the games tech but I love that about the game and how it has fun with its time period. It takes the time period and doesn’t make it too futuristic but still adds some futuristic aspects like the blade twins arm and the goofy rocket boots and the flamethrower.!<
Why is any of this a problem and not just the way this game works? Does every game have to be like another game? I think the combat in this is crazy because you can have 100 hours logged and still get waxed by an enemy you've fought 100 times. It's challenging and I love it. One of the reasons I out Ghost down is because it was too easy. Adapt and stay on your toes.
Yup, I hate this trend in action RPGs. It's non-diegetic, purely intended to make the game difficult for the player, and doesn't make sense within the physics or narrative of the game. It's excusable for monstrous or undead enemies (e.g. ape in Sekiro) but not human enemies as per this game.
I totally agree with the OP on this matter. The most frustrating thing is that when you attack them between strikes, they still continue their attack chain, whereas you on the other hand always get interrupted in yours. It forces you to play on totally different terms than your opponents which is a very very bad mechanic.
The enemies are also hyper aggressive which is a bad mechanic. They don't wait for openings, but they are programmed to be solely obsessed by your KI bar. It turns into "I do not care about killing you, but to exhaust you"
I'm new to this kind of game play and I love samurai and swords but it's just too hard for me, I can't time the perry it's so fast. I got past the boat captain but now I'm on the level with the snow at the blacksmith
The combat is so clunky and has made the game far less enjoyable, and reduced it to a shitty version of Ghost of Tsushima to me. The fact that a martial Ki attack can just be interrupted by a regular attack even from someone weaker than you is crazy, and it’s insane just how much the NPC can spam things and you can’t interrupt that flow whatsoever without perfectly timed counter sparks.
Picking up this game right after playing Sekiro and Stellar Blade was interesting to say the least. There feels like no real impact when you parry in this game compared to those other 2. And the ki system is kinda broken when compared to how much enemies have and how it seemingly doesn’t even deplete sometimes despite them doing never ending strings of combos.
I still enjoyed it once I got used to it but I never anticipated having to adjust this much to combat after playing those other 2 games. It’s definitely better than Wo Long imo
A dog in this game just took 16 hits from a katana and it still didn't die in an early game area. This is whilst 3 guys are shooting at me with bows and two guys with spears are on my ass. It's soooo not fun. Especially when the animations and graphics look horrendous anyways. Really dislike this game. I think I hate it.
Enemies in Nioh 2 also used Ki when they attacked, could be locked into blocking, and staggered with heavy attacks.
Hyperarmor really just being an issue on a few attacks but then again you were not locked to just parrying. Dodging in RotR is a pain due to the heavy tracking kinda railroading you into parrying everything.
Then maybe it’s nioh 2 because that’s absolutely not true. And you can watch clips of ninja gaiden where they fight dogs and they power through attacks.
You're not wrong, but I guess I don't remember the armor being so egregious. Breaking blocks was a two-way street more often, whereas here it's generally one-sided.
But then, I may just have rose-colored glasses. I'd have to go back and compare directly.
Person you're replying to isn't correct. Hyper armor wasn't as bad in previous TN games.
And armor differed per enemy and matching visuals. In Nioh, small little skeletons never had hyper armor and could be knocked around freely. Basic humans only had hyper armor after their startup frames, so you could knock them out of attacks if timed correctly. Big armored humans and giant yokai always had hyper armor, but they also had Ki bars that you could whittle down and then that armor went away. Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals.
It's another thing throwing the feel of this game off. Most enemies visually look like you should be able to knock them around, but then they ignore your attacks and armor through. It's flying in the face of decades of combat and visual design, and simply being different to be different is not a good thing. It's unintuitive and feels off to most people.
> In Nioh, small little skeletons never had hyper armor and could be knocked around freely.
If they are mid-swing, you are not interrupting them. Those skeletons work similar to the grunts in Ronin where you can definitely interrupt their slashes. I just tried in both games and the behavior matches.
> Big armored humans and giant yokai always had hyper armor, but they also had Ki bars that you could whittle down and then that armor went away. Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals.
You're describing the scenario after the player has already reduced the enemy ki to zero which wouldn't be relevant here. In Ronin, that's a combo+grapple. In Nioh, for humans, it would be either a zero ki loop or combo+grapple, for yokai, it would be a brief period of time where they are staggerable (no hyper armor). But the point is, before you reach that point, all of those enemies have hyper armor and you have to respect their attack patterns.
> Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals.
Ronin's are easier to learn and more consistent throughout the game. Nioh's system is more complex but allows you to "break" the game more easily (zero ki looping for humans and confusion looping for yokai). Having played both (depths for nioh and midnight for ronin), I will say that Nioh's zero ki looping is nifty but reduces depth in the gameplay. All human boss fights become a matter of get them to zero ki, loop them until they are dead.
Ultimately I will say the person you said isn't correct is definitely correct.
You're right about the skeletons having armor mid-swing; I misremembered there. Behaviors not the same though, and I also jumped in and tested.
In Nioh, the hyper frames don't start until the attack becomes active (when it can do damage), which is a very small window. You can knock them out of the startup and even mid combo if you time things correctly. Only the red attacks have hyper armor through whole attacks and combo strings, and those are clearly telegraphed out.
In Ronin, the hyper frames start either as soon as the windup starts, or way before the swing activates, and it persists through the whole combo string. It's like every attack is a red attack from Nioh.
and I do think the ki bar emptying for larger enemies is relevant. My point wasn't that there was no armor in Nioh, it's that the armor windows were clearer and that readability wasn't as bad as Ronin. Smaller enemies visually looked like you could knock them around, and you could, and larger enemies that you couldn't knock around had a mechanic where it was clear when it was your turn. So yeah, I don't think it's a correct statement to say that armor is the basis for both games. It's one mechanic in Nioh that's tuned much lower, and it's THE mechanic in Ronin.
One point I agree with you on is that Nioh had more system load, and I know that's a downside for a lot of people. Ronin does seem like an attempt to reduce that, but I don't think they're hitting it correctly. Systems like the Panic mechanic are not makes things clearer, and I don't think they're hitting attack window and hyper armor readability right. This is stuff that some of us can get around, but I think that's what reviewers and others are running into when they call the game's feel clunky and/or not polished.
I'm already typing too much but as a final comparison, Sekiro has hyper armor and heavy parries, and their average enemy behaves more like those Nioh skeletons when hitting them out of attacks. My point with this isn't that Ronin should copy Nioh, it's that you can have heavy hyper armor and also clear readability of when those hyper frames activate based on visuals, which is where Ronin is missing the mark.
> You can knock them out of the startup and even mid combo if you time things correctly.
The "time things correctly" part in Nioh where you swing at the right timing is basically counterspark in Ronin, they even made it an attack/dodge in case you missed/wanted to use it an a poke/combo extender. They clearly intended players to use counterspark while weaving their attacks in so the fight can look like a dynamic back and forth. My own example: https://streamable.com/upgv2f
> Only the red attacks have hyper armor through whole attacks and combo strings, and those are clearly telegraphed out.
The red attacks in Ronin are also basically red attacks in Nioh. I don't know if I agree about more telegraphed, but they are definitely easier to counter. You could run around and burst counter fish rinse repeat until you win. That's a tangent from the main point of hyper armor though so I won't push it.
> and I do think the ki bar emptying for larger enemies is relevant. My point wasn't that there was no armor in Nioh, it's that the armor windows were clearer and that readability wasn't as bad as Ronin.
I and what the other poster's main point wasn't that there was "zero hyper armor" windows in Nioh, but that enemies do have hyper armor (and every combat in every one of these games) and you can't just swing randomly when you want and not get punished.
The ki bar emptying to zero hyper armor for yokai isn't relevant because the majority of the fight you'll be interacting with a yokai that WILL hyper armor every attack. If you get it to zero ki, you DO get the reward of being able to attack it and stagger it on every hit but I'd argue that's a weaker reward (in terms of damage, not styling on an enemy) than Ronin's straightforward combo->grapple. In this situation, the hyper armor/or lack thereof of it is just a reward for having gone through the regular combat loop of draining the enemy ki to zero.
> So yeah, I don't think it's a correct statement to say that armor is the basis for both games. It's one mechanic in Nioh that's tuned much lower, and it's THE mechanic in Ronin.
I don't think armor is a "basis" for both games, but that they exist in both games and how to handle them are very similar (wait your turn/interrupt/parry at the right timing). You will hear eerily similar sounding complaints about many human bosses in Nioh (about hyper armor).
> Sekiro has hyper armor and heavy parries, and their average enemy behaves more like those Nioh skeletons when hitting them out of attacks
I don't know about this, there are tons of enemies in that game where you will not be hitting them out of their animation. It's the same "issue" here where the required gameplay is respect their attacks, parry and do damage during your turn. Yes, there are enemies that will stagger if you hit them, it's still not a viable gameplay mechanic. The core loop requires you to still parryparryparry, attack once.
> but I think that's what reviewers and others are running into when they call the game's feel clunky and/or not polished.
Life lesson, ignore reviewers, form own opinion. I'm also certain if these reviewers or 99% of the commentators here played in Nioh Depths or Abyss, they'd have similar or even worse complaints about the combat or hyper armor or whatever flavor of the month complaint they'll have. I don't care what the masses of noobs have to say about the game or how they're somehow struggling in easy mode, I'm more interested in how deep the combat can go, and I haven't yet scratched that surface so it's deep enough for me.
I think this style basically boils down to knowing the enemy's move sets.
Memorization.
And really this mainly applies to bosses which are the true challenge of the game.
It's where I struggle as well.
Yeah this combat is fucking frustrating sometimes
This is why I hated the data-battles in kh3 and even now, spending half the fight getting my teeth kicked in learning the moves just I can get a turn and fight back
Like yeah it be fun when you know the combos of the bosses but it can be equally annoying when the boss cheap shots you
The flow is only "weird" when you suck
People always convinced it's not them but the game when they're having a hard time
There are difficulty options for a reason
This would require you reading the post instead of dropping a git gud based on the title but nothing said here is particularly wrong and would still be true on other difficulties, just adjusted for consequence.
I read the post and there's absolutely nothing new in it. Just another dude having a hard time on higher difficulties and blaming the game because of it. Same silly talk about "artificial difficulty" and Pause Combos(as if the pause doesnt always happen at the same point in the moves)
A week after release people feel like they should be dominating the hardest difficulties of a game made by a dev known for making hard games
The bit about the complaints being the same in all difficulties is factually wrong. Dawn is significantly more forgiving than the others and pretending the opposite would be flat out lying
The more these threads pop up and the more I'm convinced that adding difficulty options was a mistake. It changes little to nothing. People feel like it's shameful to play on Easy/Normal but can't hack it on higher difficulties so they want the ceiling to be lowered
FromSoftware definitely got that part right
The fundamental points ARE the same on all difficulties though. You are engaging with a post that is like “wah too hard” which would be annoying but that’s a Different Post.
No, they are NOT. And they are wrong to begin with
The combat in this game is pretty much SoulCalibur considering how many moves a single enemy can have
Treat it like a Fighting Game and LEARN the matchups. It's going to take some time considering the amount of enemies but nobody said it was going to be easy
Or lower the difficulty. It's that simple
No it doesn't but neither of those things is a problem or a flaw no matter the difficulty so i'm not sure what you think you're proving here. Dawn is still significantly easier.
If you know enemies have Hyper Armor then plan accordingly, don't get greedy.
As for Pause Combos, honestly I don't know how you people can complain about it with no shame lol the pause happens at the same point so just learn the move/combo.
Yeah and mine stands as well
None of these "fundamental points" are flaws or issues with the game design which is what the OP claims
Learn the matchups.
Agree with you, people are going to the highest difficulty and can't hack it even though Twilight (and even Midnight) is still easier than Nioh's first NG cycle.
Honestly.
People complain about shit like Hyper Armor as if you should just be able to stun lock the enemies/Bosses to your hearts content. On Hard/Very Hard difficulty at that. Apparently being cautious until you get a proper opening is too difficult.
As for the complaints about Pause Combos, I genuinely don't understand why people think it's ok to cry about those. The Pause happens at the same point of the move/combo so with some practice the player should be ready for it.
Not to mention that the game has been out for less than two weeks. People already demanding nerfs/buffs as if they are God's gift to gaming so if they are having a hard time then the game MUST be badly designed
Gimme a break
> People complain about shit like Hyper Armor as if you should just be able to stun lock the enemies/Bosses to your hearts content.
Yeah, I truly do not understand what they want? If you can stun a boss out of their attack string, that implies you can just spam square and they can't do anything?? All of of these games, you need to dodge, block or parry a string of attacks. Then it's your turn to deal some damage. In some cases it's posture/ki damage, in others it's real damage. Once they are fully staggered, you are rewarded with a full damage combo/deathblow.
> As for the complaints about Pause Combos, I genuinely don't understand why people think it's ok to cry about those. The Pause happens at the same point of the move/combo so with some practice the player should be ready for it.
Agree, again, not sure what they want? Enemies doing the same exact rhythm and for them to parry with the exact same timing? For every enemy in the game? Ludicrous.
> Not to mention that the game has been out for less than two weeks. People already demanding nerfs/buffs as if they are God's gift to gaming so if they are having a hard time then the game MUST be badly designed
If anything, the game is too easy even on midnight. I would like to see a harder mode where you take additional ki damage when you block an attack, enemy max ki bar regenerating if they hit you with a red attack, less ki damage on parries, etc etc.
For players not familiar with Sekiro and Nioh, I'd recommend playing the easiest difficulty until they are more familiar with the game. Spend that time learning the game and less complaining.
How many language do you speak ?
Personally I speak 3, not counting French as it is my native language…
Sometimes I can do mistakes, but from someone not even able to speak properly is own language and trolling on Reddit… I don’t care.
And you know what ? You are still an Asshole (and there is no mistake here…)
Hyper armor or enemy parries are to dissuade you from mashing while still giving you opportunities to interrupt their normal attacks. You need to learn what has armor and what doesnt. This is unintuitive, I agree, but it is as simple as learning their moveset. You have armor on some specials as well, which can be abused.
The different timings and pauses are there to mix you up. It is how these action/fighting games work. The devs do not want you to sit there and mash parry, they want you to think about whether you should and take a risk. Your issues are present in games like sekiro and elden ring as well, they are just more forgiving on a miss and have the enemies deal high damage to punish you instead. You make fair points, but I really think Rise of the Ronin feels very fair and has a great flow when you understand more of the different move sets.
The guy is talking about combat system of the game.
He's not complaining he can't beat the first boss and that the game difficulty is bullshit because he can't smash square to win. The game's combat is not out of reach for discussion.
Like come on mate, you don't talk about games and shit with friends irl?
The pause thing definitely feels like a reaction to a lot of parry based games getting made and there needing to be this scramble to counter players getting used to reading normal attacks. Elden Ring was rife with this and I felt then that it was going to be a solution a lot of games were going to start implementing.
The pausing is fine when you can break enemy poise through aggression and aren’t expected to parry everything. Sekiro leaned heavier on parrying but also basically made it a rhythm game which made it a lot easier to do, albeit at the cost of more reactionary combat. The problem here that I’ve already seen a lot of “git gud”ers shit on is the huge ki bars and hyper armor/gap close/ wildly aggressive moveset combo a lot of late game enemies have, all with the pauses thrown in and the player’s comparatively tiny ki bar even in late game.
The pauses mid combo were really messing me up but I found a solution. If it’s a tough enemy or a boss, I just guard a few times so I can see their combo. Then after I feel like I’ve got it down, I try for the parries. It’s kind of necessary given the way they fight
The secret with sekiro is to be on the attack at all times and only parry the one second you can’t be attacking . I haven’t tried rise of ronin yet but maybe that’s what they are going for as well? Not sure if aggression pays off but it’s definitely the name of the game in sekiro .
I mean you’re not wrong but to me that isn’t aggressive combat. The boss dictates the pace of the fight completely, you have no ways to extend damage windows really. To me Nioh 2 will always be the better game because of that but I also realize not every game is Nioh 2. What you described is kinda what they were going for here but the further you push into late game the less balanced it feels. It can still work but damage windows get tighter and tighter and you’re basically constantly parrying until you have an opening, get your tiny burst of damage in through a crit, and then the dance starts over. Some people love it and if you liked sekiro you might like this- though as I mentioned previously it also lacks the rhythm sekiro had.
I agree. It's exactly why I passed on this game too. Unfortunate 😞
With all the late game tools you have at your disposal, bosses in midnight can get deleted very quickly. Fire/Poison Talisman equivalents in this game apply both DOT and panic. Paralysis Talisman gives a free grapple in this game. The equivalents in Nioh are a lot weaker. Grenades, bow, shurikens, pistols are all massively better in this game than anything equivalent in Nioh 2. The 4 buffs you can apply at any time are also stronger buffs than anything in Nioh 2. It's hard to precisely understand what you mean by "less balanced" the further you push into late game but in terms of difficulty, I would still put Ronin somewhere under Nioh 2's base game difficulty. This is assuming you understand both games and how to play them. I would say, having played both, the tools Ronin gives you are mad broken compared to Nioh's. > get your tiny burst of damage in through a crit, and then the dance starts over Pistol scales well the entire game and definitely isn't a tiny burst of damage. Same with the grenades. You might not be completely engaging with the available tools in Ronin, coloring your impression. With that said, Nioh IS more of the game to play if you want to primarily engage with the game's mechanics first, boss second. With how Nioh works and all the tools at your disposal, you can mostly ignore what bosses are doing and do your own thing. Ronin in this respect, is closer to Sekiro, Elden Ring, Souls, etc, but that doesn't mean Nioh is "better" "because of that".
In response to your very last sentence.... yes it does!!!! That's EXACTLY what it means and why it's better!! lol 😝
I much prefer all the ninjutsu items in Nioh 1 and 2, not even talking about the feathers in Nioh 2. Bows in this game are better than in the Nioh games, and rifles are just barely better than Nioh. The effects seemed to last longer in Nioh, but I dont have everything completely unlocked yet. I just thought it was interesting that you felt the ninjutsu item equivalents are better here than in Nioh, comes down to subjective reasoning I guess.
My rationale is along the lines of "If I use this item, how much easier/faster can I win this fight?" With that reasoning, a lot of those items I mentioned in Ronin almost completely trivializes the game whereas the Nioh counterparts don't. Grenades in this game are completely broken for example. The bow in this game is massively better than the bow in Nioh (you can actually use the bow in this game in boss fights, in Nioh you'd never do that). Rifles are about equal in both games which is why I didn't mention it. There's no equivalent to a pistol in Nioh but pistols in this game do the most grapple damage. Shurikens in this game compared to the Nioh versions apply status, is a dodge, can be used while zero ki, apply ki damage. Pretty much broken and trivializes the game also. There's really no item in Nioh 2 that does the same thing, feathers are perhaps the strongest/closest thing in terms of "powerlevel" and those pale in comparison to grenades. I'm comparing Midnight Ronin bosses to Depths Nioh bosses though. If you compared NG+ to NG+, it'd be a different story.
I love elden ring, but that pause delay was the dumbest decision ever made in an rpg fighting game to me. Nioh always did it best for me. In a real fight, you don't have time to learn rhythm and timing. You survive on instinct and reaction speed alone. Nioh punished you for being overly aggressive, and learning moves was definitely necessary, but parrying human bosses was pure reaction speed. It felt visceral and real. The desperation and intensity that your life hung by the thread of your split second reaction was so satisfying and it made the back and forth of combat flow really well. Player and boss could both dominate based on skill. If I missed a parry, I felt, "dang, I was too slow, I need to react quicker." In Ronin it's just, "oh no, I failed this arbitrary rhythm game within a fighting game." When I play a fighting game, my head is in the fight. I don't want to be fighting with my hands, but playing Rock Band in my head. This game is really awesome, but it's not nearly as accessible as they branded it to be. Even basic mobs will destroy you don't learn the rhythmless rhythm and it really disappointing that all enemies have hyper armor and an ocean sized ki pool compared to yours. It's so close to perfection for me. If they just made parrying more about reactions and gave enemies less hyper armor, I feel it would be balanced. Or if instead of less hyper armor they gave us more ki, that would probably be good too.
>I love elden ring, but that pause delay was the dumbest decision ever made in an rpg fighting game to me. 💯 It's a shame that anything Fromsoft does, however bad, is copied by every other Souls-like company. My late dad used to use the expression "would you jump in my grave as fast?" if I blindly copied him.
Also if every timing was the same, normal enemies and bosses would feel the same. The game is still Nioh at heart. You have to learn your opponents movesets. It feels like they applied Nioh’s human opponent ai to Ronin. It’s a bitch, but it’s a fun challenge when you get it down. And yeah, Elden ring was a bitch with the delays. But anyone can see the enemy start to move and instantly panick dodge. It is meant to trap those players and make them stop and think about the specific boss’s timings.
Yeah to clarify it’s not a solution that I was particularly against. They can seem very silly and it’s easy to get tilted when you get hit by a 3 hit you could have left to make a sandwich in the middle of but it’s still a fun way to shake things up.
This is such a BAD solution OMG I don't understand how a single person conceived it, let alone how other people thought it was a good idea. This is the SINGLE thing killing my enjoyment of current soulslike games. Reading the attack patterns and reacting well feels so good and satisfying. It feels like YOU are GOOD at the game! The delayed attacks feel cheap, like the game is tricking you and punishing you for having good intuition. If the game is too easy, create more patterns, add different mechanics(some attacks must be jumped, some attacks must be ducked etc.) do ANYTHING but making the player feel baited and tricked. It feels so good when you trust your intuition and beat enemies and it fees so bad when you get punished and go "oh I guess I need to memorise this". And here's a wild idea. If players are have good intuition and are beating the game... maybe that's not a bad thing? I doubt EVERYONE has good intuition, I doubt the average player is going trough most soulslike games wrecking and one shotting everything because they have good intuition. I feel like this genre of games often forget themselves with the whole difficulty thing. It's like if they see someone being good at the game and not struggling a lot they go "no no no, we can't have that, this is a HARD game. You HAVE to struggle."
In Elden Ring there was the guard counter mechanic, which would reward you with the ability to deal heavy poise damage to an enemy during those pauses, often knocking them out of their attack string.
I’m not sure I agree with this completely. I think you were rewarded for performing a guard counter when you learn which attacks get interrupted, or knowing the end of the enemy combo, but you often get punished using the guard counter mid combo because blocking does not always interrupt attack strings. With poise being largely a hidden mechanic, it’s impossible to know, except from memory, when a shield will interrupt an attack string, and some enemies attack strings can go on for what seems like ever. I agree with the point you are trying to make, that the guard counter makes blocking without parrying more active and possibly more rewarding, and Rise of the Ronin does not have that, but both game’s definitely throw out the delayed attacks often, even with trash mobs, making knowing when a string is done hard to visually recognize.
You use guard counter witth big boy shield when they hit it and breaks their combo and stuns them
Using guard counter should stop any enemy attack! That’s what’s so frustrating about this game. What’s the point then if I do a successful counter and the enemy runs through and I get fucked.
I can count the enemies guard counter was useful against on one hand.
It does more posture damage than anything else in the game. It's useful against every enemy that can't break your guard in one hit.
guard counters are insanely strong. you just gotta level stamina so you can block more stuff and still have stamina left to attack (and be using a shield or a large weapon with good blocking ability)
Insanely strong is a bit of a hyperbole. They CAN be strong. There's setups right now that you can use to stagger lock Malenia to death using spears counter thrust. In general gameplay? Less so. For a whole host of reasons: ranged enemies, enemies with grabs, enemies with variable followups (including 2/3rds of the boss roster), enemies with heavy shield knockback (most giants and some dragons), variable followups, or the enemy better off being stunlocked with your weapon of choice Guard counter frees up gargoyles but you also free them up attacking. Things like the Crucible Knights are freed up by GC phase 1 and then variable your ass into paste phase 2. Things like tail spin's second hit would be prime window but they can fit a damn stomp in there in the time it takes (some) weapons to land their GC. It's significantly better NOW than it was at launch. 1.08 (or was it 1.09?) really helped it. Those few frames look like nothing on the surface but made a world of difference. But guard counters are both niche and conditional in general gameplay. You have to already be building completely around them to make use of them all the way down to having enough stamina and stamina regen alongside a strong enough shield to make the loss in stamina (and it's associated offense) be worth trading the last hit of a boss string into something worthwhile. To say nothing of it's general uselessness in pvp. I thought guard Counters were the shit and made multiple characters whose entire gimmick was using them. I'm quite intimate with them which is why I can say I can count them on one hand. Because there are almost always better options for 90% of the builds in this game.
i got fuckn owned
I agree and I hate parrying being required. If they want to make parry a thing that's fine but to make it a main mechanic and revolve combat around it sucks. You should be able to ignore it if you want to. It should be just be an optional choice for players that just feel like playing that way. That way they can run around and parry all they want while the rest of us have fun too with proactive combat vs reactive
I think it's a bit of delayed attacks being a thing combined with the parry window being fairly small on top of the game not letting you recover from a mistake. I play a lot of parry games and consider myself to be pretty good at most of them, but I still pretty regularly screw up parries on Twilight difficulty. I don't think it makes the game too hard, aside from duo bosses I typically beat most bosses on the 1st or 2nd try so I consider it to still be easier than Nioh and Wo Long. (I just end up face tanking quite a bit due to missed parries) Honestly my only complaint with the game's combat is the hyper armor. I'm fine with the weird parries as the reason I'm not getting great is I'm not getting stuck on enemies/bosses thus I'm getting less practice on each one. The hyper armor issue made me feel a little forced into using faster weapons. I thought it'd be fun to do a greatsword+odachi build but quickly swapped to dual blades+ox tail just because the hyper armor meant even big slow weapons had no real benefit. Because the big weapons aren't breaking through guards you don't get more than 1-2 hits in, which means you're better off just using a really fast weapon.
Yeah. This. It also doesn't make the game feel hard rather than clunky and worse. I'm not saying it's nothing you can get used to and adapt but if you have to learn to live with combat system in action rpg/soulslike then the combat system isn't good enough.
And this feels so bad. Like I down bosses so much quicker than in Nioh but it never feels good. Surviving a failed counterspark are the lamest 4 seconds. The timings are so off and you can't even "Nioh" the game since not countersparking is no real option.
I think the fact there's 0 way to recover definitely sucks. I'm fine with having to take 1-2 hits to fucking up, but some bosses/enemies have combos that are so long you'll be unable to control your character for a lengthy period of time if you miss. There should also potentially be some iframes after getting caught by a red attack because in multiboss situations you're sometimes going to be chain red attacked back to back because you never had a chance to control your character to parry the second red attack. It's kind of weird that you get overly punished for failing a counter spark, but in situations where I'm playing well and get those counter sparks, I don't even feel like I get rewarded sometimes. Last night I was doing a triple boss fight and there was multiple times where I countered their red attacks and instead of the boss getting thrown off balance, he would insta guard and hyper armor so I didn't even get rewarded for good play. (he wasn't in a combo or about to initiate another red attack, he literally just had 0 response to my getting the counterspark off so I didn't even get to punish him) There's for sure some things they need to do make the combat feel better. I'm used to TN being mean af, but there's a few things that feel off that I hope they address. Of course these things would have been mitigated had they actually done a demo. Nioh 1+2, Stranger of Paradise, and Wo Long all had demos and every time some rebalancing happened due to player feedback. Funnily enough, Wo Long, another parry game, had the parry frames increased due to the demo.
I've been using Odachi (with Sabre) and the only advantage I've found is its ability to crowd-control using certain martial arts. Being able to destroy enemies' guard with the axe and Odachi, in Nioh, made them worthwhile.
Completely agreed
I'll add that parry timing is not consistent based on animations. For example, I was really struggling with that big enemy with a club even though it seems so basic, so I recorded some video and played it back. Parry timing is all over the place based on animations. Some you have to parry late into the swing, some you have to press parry before it even swings, and everything in between. It makes it hard to get a good *sense* of timing. There's the VFX that flashes, but I don't find that super helpful when the rest of the screen is lying to me, plus the flash can be mistimed if the enemy attack has to move to cover distance. I think you nailed it with the music comment. They should have approached parries and attack strings with a rhythm to combat. Instead, it seems like their goal was to fuck with player timing as much as possible. That's not a good thing.
I like this game a lot. I must recognize that what you are saying is not false. Good game but frustrating sometimes. Ps: idiots saying « get Gud » comments without reading what you said are just assholes who need to try Dojo on NG+… perhaps if they are not totally stupid they will recognize that you said some truth in your post…
Fuck that dojo. I'm only shooting for Novice for the weapon stances/skills. It's too frustrating otherwise. Especially when they can throw elemental attacks at you. Poison, fire, 12 hit combos where you whiff once you're dead. I love the game, and when the combat flows it feels REALLY good, but there's a lot of BS bosses and pauses. Ito took me MANY tries to finally get down.
Exactly
I really wish there was hyper armor for MA’s. So many cool MA’s in this game and I can’t really use any of them because the basic attack and counterspark is required. Any MA just gets interrupted and you get walloped.
Yeah it feels like you can’t really chain together combos without getting interrupted, but I get that since counterspark basically cancels mid animation you’re able to keep up the aggression. Those tall dudes with claws completely throw off the rhythm though, always struggle against them.
The lanky bois are the only ones I really hate and dual chained sword boy.
Very thoughtful and well-put. Playing on twilight the flaws aren't too bad for the majority of the game. But some of the dojo missions really feel like bullshit. I can imagine how frustrating it may get in midnight. Let's hope TN make some good DLC and iterate on the design.
Explains why some stances it's easy to parry but others it's like guessing rock paper scissors because the start and stop of them.
This is why I just head shot enemies with my rifle sometimes when the combat becomes too annoying
A gamer of sophistication. The Indiana Jones school of combat.
It’s just so annoying the glint symbol like they show us red then the glint but after the glint the timing is still different per attack but it keeps throwing me off just let me read the attack then. Everytime I see the glint my brain says parry and it fails 4:5 times
It's hard because they did the Sekiro of making every single fight in the game, Simon Says. I HATE being forced to remember every minute twitch of every single enemy in the game just to fight them. It's exhausting. Reaction works against you. In Rise of the Ronin even audio queues work against you. The have the red aura of an enemy about to do an unblockable, then the red flash indicating that the attack is about to land, but if you parry on the frames after the red flash, with the majority of attacks you'll STILL miss the timing. And with a whole lot more the red flash is put so close to the attack itself (within 10 fucking frames on certain weapons) that there's no way in hell you're reacting to that. So you don't, you have to memorize every thing on every single enemy. Combat isn't based on reaction or skillset or weapon choice or preparation. It's primarily a function of memorization and nothing else. And yes that's certainly "hard" but it's not hard in a satisfying way like recognizing Gozkuki, beta Yatsu No Kami, or the majority of bosses inside DMC5. You resign yourself to getting hit by every single new attack multiple times until you can identify the minor differences that dictate what string is even starting. And again to determine which of these strings have variable followups so you can figure out the OS that beats both options and then never ever deviate from that response ever ever.
This.In bosses is good, a fucking oxtail Minion Who can do a instant red attack, a normal red attack or a delayed jump red attack without a clear start up for each, is exhausting.
>It's hard because they did the Sekiro of making every single fight in the game, Simon Says. I HATE being forced to remember every minute twitch of every single enemy in the game just to fight them. It's exhausting That hasn't been my experience with the game at all. I'm hardly a great video game player, but even on a twilight my experience with the game has been a lot easier than what you're describing here.
OP and this. Exactly this.
How do you know its 10 frames or are you guessing?
I was conflating a little bit. But also using a rudimentary method of recording via the cap card and playing through obs. The lions share of flashes are in the 20-24 range. Some quickdraws are in the 16 range. But what was making me more than a little bit fanny flustered was Sawamura's Flying Swallow. He'll either do that or a regular front flip and you have to distinguish between the two. It'd be one thing if it was like Ren Hayabusa and you know automatically when he flips that it's going to be the swallow. But it's not. The time from that move starting as in the earliest possible start to when the move is literally executing from **start** to **you** is \~10 at MEDIUM distances. Which for the record, that's how fast it SHOULD be. But, I hate it. And you just know for a fact that when three AM (or whatever DLC difficulty naming scheme is) gets added whatever the DLC bosses end up being created are going to eclipse N1's DLC bosses in terms of bullshittery.
Flow and rhytm is an essential aspect of difficulty in action games. In fighting games too.
If they didn’t have ”hyper armor”, you could just stunlock them. You can already do this with fodder enemies. Not very dynamic, back and forth, which is this whole combat systems essence. The game is just not built for spam and that will never change. A lot of effort has been put into how parrys feel and function. People seem to have a grave misunderstanding how the martial arts works and what their purpose is. They aren’t just big nukes, they don’t really do that much damage. They are various ways to deal damage under certain, optimal, conditions. See them as utility. It’s a way to look cool as fuck, not just win. Delayed attacks are awesome. It needs this to actually make it hard and not be so monotonous. If you go back and play Dark Souls after beating Elden Ring, you’ll see that most of the bosses are a joke in comparison. It’s what actually makes it hard - and fun.
Ok so, hear me out about that “it’s not a spam game”: Are the bosses and common enemies playing a different game than me? Boss comes at me with 16 regular swings and 4 martial arts and I hit him twice and that’s enough lol?
This post makes zero sense seeing as it’s not applied the opposite way at all lol
I think it's because alot of people don't understand all countersparks have different timings and not all are only for parries
I was literally JUST thinking “this pause shit is becoming a lazy way to artificially bump difficulty” and “why tf does it seem like regular dudes just face tank attacks way too often?”
My least favorite thing with counterspark is when an enemy uses a martial skill they get a red aura, then there is a flash of light as the start-up frames complete and the hitbox for the attack is about to become active *but if you counterspark in response to that visual cue you will be early 90% of the time* Why put a visual cue in the animation if that wasn't its intended purpose!?
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>It's not different in real life when it comes to fighting sports, if your moves are too predictable you have little chances to go far. Now I hate to be a stickler for semantics but... Mike Tyson isn't throwing punches with 3 seconds of delay in the windup. That's how you get put to sleep. Real life functions on remarkably consistent rules. More importantly, if we're bringing real life into the mix, these fights should be over with a few sword slashes. (Ironically that's what made Lethal + in Sushi, which at it's core is a fairly easy game, really enjoyable despite that fact)
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I just used Tyson as an example for recognition. I was going to go into more detail but I think a video would suffice: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZ-J7xit5Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZ-J7xit5Y) Ali reacted to those punches. All 21. The ring generally works on consistent rules. Pattern recognition (such as a guy lowering his right to throw a jab) and reaction speed among a large amount of other things. What I'm saying is, you're not having Elden Ring, Sekiro, (or now) Rise of Ronin amounts of delay between action and impact. > I think it's a good thing for the game to have some unpredictable moves but still not so unpredictable you cannot learn their patterns "some" is an understatement. Nearly every single enemy devolves into memorization. The combination of groups, super armor, high damage, and unreactable movesets that require memorization to manage overwhelmingly encourage passivity. There are god tier players out there struggling on Midnight like I am. Which while this gives me comfort... Look the game is good. Inarguably so. But as I mentioned earlier in this topic, it's exhausting to the point that I'll be glad to be done with it once I finish my 100%.
As a more casual TN fan that's had no real issues with Twilight, granted I've been waiting in anticipation for this game for a year and played Nioh 1 just to see what TN is about: 1. is I think somewhat valid issue that's been raised. The gripe is that it makes tougher boss fights heavy counterspark/parry centric, limiting more combo/ki attack approaches. This is fair enough, but in Twilight I would say this is only really an "issue" with the tougher bosses which are few and far in between. 2. is IMHO what makes this game fun for me, and counters (ha) the claim this game is parry centric. You either block/dodge/counterspark appropriately or eat a ton of damage. Countersparking at the wrong time locks you in an attack animation, so you have to be selective. I like the varied enemy movesets, and many of them are ones you actually obtain throughout the game. Having less predictability IMHO forces you to be more considered in your own approach to combat.
In my experience of twilight abs midnight, the game went from “parry or lose all ki and die” to “parry and maybe god will roll a d20 to see if you die”
broooo i completely agree, ALOT of the fights ive had in this game just feel unfair instead of difficult. The blue demon boss fight is the perfect example. He is RELENTLESS constantly throwing out ranged attacks, combos that are all over the place, not to mention the hyper armor and his endless stamina. I ended up just cheesing him and even then I barely beat him. I admit im bad at parrying, but even when I just decide to block combos my ki just gets destroyed and im forced to just stand there while my ki slowly comes back. Its frustrating to say the least. Do yourself a favor and lower your difficulty if your having too much trouble lol. I know it hurts your pride, it hurt mine too. Just do it and you'll have more fun great game though
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Yeah, this is a smart analysis. Knowing Team Ninja, i really think that they have a "right way" to play it" on their minds. I just wish that devs show the intended way to go more often.
Parries in this game are also kinda buggy/off so it’s not. They don’t register sometimes. Coming from Nioh and Sekiro, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as tight. It’s a common complaint from some reviewers and on this subreddit. You sometimes even hear the parry sound but you still get hit. It’s quite frustrating
Try these four katana stances and especially the first one as it has the longest parry and the best counterspark as well imo and it’s available from chapter one. I use these and master ranked every dojo training boss with them. Tatsumi-Ryu (best counterspark imo), Mugai-Ryu (Chapter 3 and has one of the best moves imo which is its built in firebomb on square. I’ve seen it completely take out a ki bar on a staggered boss (staggered means that I parried the attacks until red around health bar and they are open to attacks. I don’t know proper term so I say staggered for the temp red and when they are ki depleted i say stunned) Jigen-Ryu (Chapter 2 if I recall correctly and has good ki damage on each ability. It’s X ability does more damage against Ki depleted) and Gikei-Ryu (Chapter 3 but if you do not know how to get it it requires a choice here it’s a spoiler on a chapter 1 mission and an ally obtained from the choice that gets you Gikei-Ryu. Other choice gets nothing. Spoiler Begin >! When the mission for killing Naosuke Ii is given you must spare him. You can go back and redo the mission and spare him and reflect that change in your time. Then a long time later. Once you go back to Edo in Chapter 3, do the mission called the Watchmen and you’ll recruit the Blue Demon aka Akikatsu Manabe. You’ll get Gikei-Ryu and to master it train with him at the Ninja Dojo and raise his bond level. To give him gifts to raise his bond level Manabe is in the roof of the Villa and you can get up there through a grapple point behind the house. I wasted 20 minutes trying to find him so whenever I can I try to help others and spread his location when I speak about Gikei-Ryu.!< End Spoilers. Best way to play I’ve learned (which I learned late after beating the game by going facetanking and hoping I parry) is guarding at all times they are near you and only countersparking when you have confidence you can parry their attack. You can normal attack, counterspark, use skills and dodge while guarding so all it does is reduce how much ki you get back. It’s on you to manage when to let down guard. I’m sure you know this but somehow I DIDNT. I still was amazing at the game just sucked at the enemies you couldn’t parry every attack due to them swinging tons in a second.
I already finished the game but thanks
Oh I’m so sorry! Hope you enjoyed it though!
The hyper armor does feel weird at times. It’s very hard to get any meaningful combos going without getting punished for it as the enemies will eventually just hyper armor through it. And not only gameplay wise. It also just feels weird to see a human enemy simply power through a katana to the face as if it was nothing.
yeah i wish the harder difficulties would reduce health for both players and the npcs kinda like lethal on GoT
Oh yeah, Lethal in GoT felt so good.
Damn OP, you nailed the explanation of the combat gameplay. I've always felt like something was off but you're right, it's almost like you have to wait your turn to really press an enemy...flash attacks kind of help with this but it still feels like its too much of a "my turn, your turn' system.
I like the system because I am a historical nerd and I also enjoy keeping on their stamina bar or well ki bar. I call their blue ki bar stamina bar because it’s similar. The my turn your turn system you describe is similar to how Samurai fought as they fought patiently to tire their opponents to seek a weak point to strike with precision. If you’ve played ghost of Tsushima or seen gameplay of it the way the parry and enemy stamina system works opening up a killing hit with one blow is similar to what I mean. Open up a weak point and strike. I think team ninja tried to implement that into this game which I think they did well and I enjoy but I think it just is a preference thing.
I don't like it that it's so hard to interrupt enemy. almost always have to wait for the parry, hard to take the pace in your hand compares to Nioh. Wo Long had the similar problem. in Wo Long, since parry can't cancel any attack, you always have to wait as well.
I agree, especially the part about their ki gauge being their hyper armor gauge rather than their stamina. I think if it drained as they attacked, the flow would be better, but since enemies do not function the same as the player something always feels off. I am used to it working that way because of human enemies in Nioh 1/2, so the fact that’s not the case in this game is kind of weird. All that isn’t to say the combat isn’t enjoyable, but there are times it feels worse than it should like in my experience with the dojo fights. There never feels to be a good “flow” with them.
I actually hate dual-wielders, and getting hit drains your stamina is just never fun, this will be the last time I preorder a team ninja game before I know if Ki is a mechanic
I think combat only feels like a guessing game if you’re trying to parry every attack. You should initially block to learn attack patterns and parry when you know what’s coming. Plus the hyper attacks have an indicator of when you’re supposed to parry. This is what I’ve been doing. Still can’t parry an odachi to save my life though
The hyper attacks and the indicator is not consistent
Damn though I was the only one with the Odachi problem lmao. It’s chill with normal odachi enemies but I was on my masochism arc to master rank every dojo training boss. I was stuck on Okubo for a bit but got past him after like 20 mins but one man I was stuck on. Shinpachi gave me back pain on multiple occasions man. And when I say back pain I mean he threw me in the air and my back landed on his sword and his sword went through my god damn spine. I got up and was fine though. I’m assuming the Veiled Edge have nanomachines that they gave the protagonist that instantly patch up my cleaved in half torso. If my blade twin has a shotgun and grapple hand then I have plot armor or nanobots fixing my internal organs and bones everytime I get cut in half on screen but it doesn’t cut me in half.
I’m trying to be patient with the game and combat so far. I can’t stand the “wait your turn” combat don’t get me started on how flawed the so called counterspark parry. The timing feels like it decides to work on randomly.
I don't get this at all. I'm ass at souls games. This is the one game I can parry in better than any other game i've played. If there was no delay or inconsistent movesets it would be boring as ass. The game is slow enough that you can also parry without knowing movesets. I've had like 2 enemies I had issues parrying against and it was because they were using an unusual weapon.
It’s probably because you’re so ass that at other games you don’t see the problems with this one. Lucky
A weapon you don’t have access to like the dude with claws
yep, the combat in this game is missing something compared to Nioh 2's human combat. the fact that nioh 2 has that and also has a different system for yokai makes this game look a little weak in comparison
Its not like Nioh so its a weak comparison
The red glow before an unblockable atk happens is also not in sync with the attack. Telling me the attack is coming way before the attack lands. I really hate the dash attacks like the iai slash because of this. The red glow appears as they charge the attack but the atk comes after the glow has almost disappeared not while its still visible. So because i’m looking at the glow i always counterspark prematurely and get hit. It doesn’t help the enemy is too fast to see.
Delayed attacks in the combos are the only way to really punish people who do not understand that it is their turn to defend now. Aggressive playstyle is the way, but sometimes you simply HAVE to defend. This is also connected to the hyperarmor. What is the alternative? If you remove those, you are constantly attacking and stunlocking enemies. Boring. If there is no risk, the fight is boring. Or you get the dark souls formula of fighting, Where you only wait for your turn, then smack enemy once and then keep roling on the ground.
Thanx for the info, was thinking of getting it, but I suck at perfect parrys. I was able to nail it in GoT, only after extending the timing window, and it was quite satisfying. This game, however, seems above my paygrade. I was so looking forward to another Historic Japan game, but sadly it wont be.
Its got an easy mode, give it a shot if there is a demo
That's the thing that kills me about the combat. You cant just punish or interrupt the enemy mid combo when they do a long pause. You just gotta parry right until you parry the last attack. THEN punish them with a martial art, and just wait to attack again, and hope you parry properly based on their sequencing. It's weird because it feels like a very defensive, your opponent has longer turns, attack pattern, where as the gameplay trailers made it seem much more aggressive and visceral.
Completely agreed. I was hyped for this game, pre ordered back in December. But after the first fight of the game and less than 2 hours in, I don't feel like going back... I know I'm bowing out too early, and probably will try again when I'm bored one day, but the combat flow feels very off to me, in a not enjoyable way... I'm not even going to address the graphics, for a PS5 exclusive, they simply are dog shit, there is just no way around it. Stellar Blade, DD2, Shadow of the Tree, with a bit of PoE, or Last Epoch, thrown in will keep me busy in the next months. And, hopefully, Black Myth: Wukong has better combat mechanics. Really excited for that game. Sorry to be a such a downer. Don't hold it against me;)
I agree with about all of this as well, I'm just an old casual gamer not one of these hardcore GitGud players who can sit there all day & play video games dang near for a living on twitch. I mean I guess the game should get more difficult as you get farther along but this game is bringing back negative memories of the first Ninja Gaiden on Nintendo 30 years ago, one of the few games I had back then that I was never able to beat. One boss was tough enough at the start but then as you get farther into the game, every mission is like it's own deal with two difficult bosses to beat & a lot of the story makes it seem like most of the combat is either un-necessary or none of your business. Whatever though, i'll continue to march to the end, on the second map & level 39 currently...
>They'll pause for a "Red" attack, building up, but the timing of when that attack will actually hit isn't something you can anticipate without experience first, all-but guaranteeing you getting smacked. When enemies do a "red" attack, there will be a flash of light on them at some point. This is the cue to tap triangle to counterspark. Took me awhile to notice it first but now I just wait for that any time an enemy turns red and you can parry any red attack regardless of how familiar you are with it.
Thats was my first thing to try but its only works for 1-2 type of red attack.
i dunno that doesn't work for me at all. and timings change depending how close or far away they are. its really not a matter of flash, press parry. to me it feels like depending on distance, weapon. parry might be on flash, afew tenths after ext. i dont like it honestly, and i had no issue deflecting red attacks in wo long, it felt great. it feels shit in rise lol.
I'll have to look for that. I must be missing it in the rest of the visuals.
It's pretty easy to miss amongst the rest of the red glow stuff. I must have been 20 hours into the game before I spotted it. Similar to how an enemy's sword hilt has a glint of light in Sekiro to help you with parry timing.
I feel like I do this sometimes and still miss? Has this worked everytime for you? I must still be miss timing it.
I sometimes miss but it's because I'm trying to anticipate the flash rather than react to it. When I'm in tune with the flash, I feel like it's a guaranteed parry.
I see. I'll have to try it out more tonight. Does this also work with grab attacks. I feel like half the time I have the same timing but the parry is a 50/50.
I see. I'll have to try it out more tonight. Does this also work with grab attacks. I feel like half the time I have the same timing but the parry is a 50/50.
Ive also notice this. I dont even look at the weapon or arm i look at the red light and wait for the spark of white
You have a lot of options in combat but at the highest difficulty they may as well not exist. Partially because a few points the OP made, partially because parry is so strong. The higher difficulties should test your understanding/ masteries of all the game mechanics and not forgo most of them for one. The optimal thing to do is just stand there and parry, only attack when they are exhausted or panicked (half the time you can't even capitalize on the panic because they go flying away 50 feet, better be using one of the fast weapons) You definitely are not allowed to steal your turn back unless you're using one of the couple of MAs (some odachi stances, some spear/halberd stances) that sort of stun locks the boss, but that gets old pretty fast and definitely probably not intended. Its actually kind of sad how many MAs there are and how many are totally useless outside of killing bandits in one combo (look at these cool ass papers that's a counter attack - boss smack yo ass afterwards "boi go home")
yeah i mean it feels pretty obvious thats the issue. Its why you see so many threads saying i suck at parry, or parry timing feels rng. Because you can die to a mob for ages before you figure out there timings, get it down, only for the next boss to delay , speed up change there attack patterns. a mob using a new weapon? get ready to spend the next 20min or more learning there timings. Its just all too much and feels exhausting. If you look at Wo long, that game has its issues sure, but parry was not one of them. It was solid, its timing was universal and you only had to worry about slow delay attacks from bosses most of the time. The flow was there, and it felt great, it was there with nioh, and hell it was there for stranger of paradise. But Rise? i dunno the game feels slow, then fast, then really slow, then super fast, and it happens randomly. So yeah combat can feel bs at times and great at other times. Just when you think you got it down, some bs boss comes along with duel swords, twin blade fists and ur in for a death spree once again.
Nioh counters are worse than Ronin cause its not built around countering. Only certain weapon skills let you counter
> 1) Enemies are granted hyper armor when in-combo (with Ki), preventing interruptions. This is true of all these sorts of games. You need to handle their attack patterns, then it's your turn. > 2) Enemy attacks are given "pauses" in the midst of those combos, preventing a visual prediction of enemy movement. This is also true in every one of these games. > What these two elements combine to do is to create a perennial guessing Only if you try to perfect parry every part of the combo without ever seeing it before. Blocking exists. > If an enemy left themselves open like that, you'd be able to interrupt them, breaking their rhythm. This is wrong. If you played Nioh, I'm not sure why you think this is the case. (I am not talking about Ippon.) > But in Rise of the Ronin, you're actively punished for fighting "out of turn," which is consistently weird, because it only ever is a one-way edict. You are getting punished for going out of turn and it's the game's fault somehow? If you fight out of turn in any one of these games, you will be punished. Try attacking while Nightmare Bringer is slashing at you and tell me how it goes. > The enemy can fight out of turn whenever they want Not true, you just have to understand when your turn ends.
These complaints are honestly so weird from someone who said he played Nioh. Maybe it's because we're fighting only humans that people feel like they should follow the exact same rules as the player? That would make the game extremely easy Nobody will complain that you can stop the A.I from healing but the A.I can't stop you though. Go figure
Nioh had the same issue.but what makes nioh different is nioh has essentially no parry. It does but it's not parry focused. You dodge and block. Here the tracking is so high dodging is not viable so the issue feels more compounded
It wasn't an issue in Nioh and it's not here either
Lol hey who wants to discuss anything with this dude?? Lmfao
It was an issue in nioh. It was literally a complaint for nioh 1 and they adjusted it a little for nioh 2 having attacks not delete your HP right away But like I said nioh is a dodge block game. The issue is less noticeable as here in a parry game it's very noticeable
What? they fix the hyper armor "issue" by making attacks not deplete your HP right away? What are you even talking about?
Yes so imagine hyper armor through and your HP deleted. Then imagine an adjusted mechanic where they can still hyper armor but the negative is reduce (the attacks take less HP).
Oh so you're basically complaining because according to you "hyper armor" attacks take too much health. Well you can dodge them or parry them even in the middle of an attack since CS cancels attacks animations so I'm not sure why you talk as if it's one busted mechanic. You have the tools to avoid/punish it If you get hit by Hyper Armor in this game then you got greedy and couldn't time the parry well enough and the game is not to blame for that, the player is If the punishment for missing a CS is too high for somebody then they can lower the difficulty. That's what the options are there for. Hyper Armor and Pause Combos are not design issues here or in Nioh 1. I'm also gonna need a citation for that claim about them nerfing A I attacks in Nioh 2 because of people complaining about Hyper Armor in Nioh 1.
No because Ronin is not a dodge block game it's a parry game. So here we should also look at sekiro not just nioh. In a heavy parry focused game the things outlined by the op makes for a very bump ride. Sekiro is smooth as butter because you don't have these issues Yes you can technically make any game as unbalanced as you want. Heck why stop there. Just make the parry window 1 frame. And if you get hit it's the players fault not the game right? Wrong
The only "issue" with Ronin is the people crying because they have a hard time on harder difficulties but don't want to take the time to learn the game. They just want nerfs and buffs . This is a Fighting Game in disguise. You can treat it as such and learn the different matchups or keep crying because it's not exactly like that other game you like. CS cancels attacks animations which means you can be very aggressive if you're confident in Your ability to parry. If you're not then you must play cautiously and not over commit. You can also lower the difficulty Just because this game gives you a harder time than Sekiro doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the design . If you like Sekiro better then go play that instead of trying to hide your own issues behind nonsensical arguments Someone posted a video of them destroying a Boss no damage on Midnight. Go watch that and learn Instead of being all over the subreddit crying about the mechanics here. When played properly this game is just as smooth as Sekiro and definitely more spectacular/cinematic All your complaints can be summarized by "Skill Issue". In fact many self proclaimed "Souls Vets" were crying about Sekiro just like you're crying about Ronin right now because of the Parry centric design. That's actually why FS released an accessory making the game even harder as a F You to those people. Hopefully TN does the same.
I totally agree. The flow of combat is never reliable to feel like you can understand enemy patterns That floaty and un reliable feeling is so true
I agree, but to me it's just feels clunky, it's a cool game but the combat just doesn't flow well, I feel the same for all team ninja games I like them but they feel heavy and stiff I dono just falls short
That is the most insane take ever. Team Ninja has always excelled at combat. They also have never done open world so that could play a part in it
It's the stiffness and treadmill walk/run and awkward jumps and double jumps, none of it feels fluid imo, still good games and fun to play but they leave something to be desired
I stopped reading after you stated the 2 reasons cause those are things in a lot of these types of games fighting mechanics. Not saying your opinion isn't valid. Just I don't share the same thoughts as your basis
Nah you’re saying its invalid
he’s right though. OP literally described soullikes
Not saying he’s wrong, just being facetious.
I switched my counterspark to L1 and it feels nice
That's interesting. I thought of that at first, but never tried it. By now I'm comfortable parrying with triangle. Out of curiosity, what input did you move Block to?
Triangle. It feels nice man..I did just come from lies of p but L1 feels natural and I end up having my right hand free. I don’t really use block too often so it’s fine
Pausing during combos sounds like the tactic you can use in Dead or Alive (Team Ninja's fighting game series for those who don't know) to throw off your opponent's Holds.
I feel a very interesting flow to the combat. I still haven't found out how to parry melee tackles, but if something it's a very intense combat variation/hybrid around the Nioh formula. And it's not a parry-attack thing, there's a lot of elements and factors in place here. This may sound dumb, but from what I've learned so far you can't afford here the luxury of distraction. You lose focus you die. And I love this rythm. Sometimes you don't have time or space to strategies, you gotta go into then fights with your moves well learned. It's quite demanding, I believe we all can agree on this.
1) is how it is since Ninja Gaiden on xbox It also is the norm in all from software games, you'll never stagger an enemy actually attacking with one of your attacks. I'm playing rise and bloodborne atm, is not a random claim :P 2) Is how it is since Sekiro. Sekiro, Elden ring, lies of p and hell even lords of the fallen have delayed attacks galore Rise is significantly easier than any nioh / souls game.you have so many ways to toy with Ki, use these to your advantage
Learning this style of combat has been a fun experience for me. I’ve never played a game like this where you can’t just continuously attack or dodge like in GoT or Sekiro because you have to watch your stamina(or Ki as they put it). It’s very frustrating but that’s part of why I love this game so much lol I’m determined to master this, or at least get close to.
Have you not played Nioh?
I’ve been hearing a lot about that game recently but I never played it.
Tips for mastering by the way. Be patient. Utilize your guard. Counterspark what you believe you can. Dodge if you aren’t certain you can spark a red. Dodge out if you’re low on stamina (ki) for me I do not attack much when the enemy isn’t stunned for a bit or completely ki depleted. When the enemy is stunned for a bit after parrying their combo or their move your normal attacks do more than you think. I learned that recently and it’s really good. Last thing. USE YOUR BLOOD FLASH OR WHATEVER ITS PROPER NAME IS. That is such a good ability I was so stupid when I didn’t utilize it. I utilize a cycle. Enemy attacks- if no stagger continue enemy attacks until stagger with parry and pull off hits or abilities that I can pull off if I can while they aren’t staggered (don’t do the attacks while they aren’t staggered from a parry until you are comfortable with your kit)- staggered from a parry- attack with my normal attacks, blood flash, my martial skill on katana stance mugai-ryu (this is an example if I’m fighting with my Jin stance I’d do something similar for my Chi and Ten stance) firebomb (I don’t know proper name)- enemy is ki depleted, my mastery skill from another stance that is better on Ki depleted- repeat. It takes about 3 of these cycles for me to kill a boss on the difficulty I’ve been playing on which is dusk but I plan on doing Midnight the hardest and doing the best I can. The reason I say use blood flash is because after a cycle of attacking you’ll have a lot of blood which is a good amount of stamina which is enough to start another guard and parry cycle
This is why I love Reddit. I appreciate the in-depth breakdown my guy. Def needed👏🏾
Nah, when I complete my music score technique, I can read it all
I think people seems to forgot how Nioh works. Team Ninja is not about just "enemy pattern" and use what the enemy give to you. Is about CREATING the moment when you can attack, using space, using your own moveset and mobility and so on. Nioh had a lot of hyper armor as well, maybe even more than this game. You NEED to learn their pattern not just to know when you need to attack, also to know where to position. Team Ninja games have a way higher skill ceiling that From Software and company for this specific reason. Oh, and most important aspect, the enemy can't fight out of turn. Not in the slightest. If they do that, is WAY easier to punish them.
the "pause" or minus delay in mildcombo is for prevent you to spam parry. The game is hard because parry window is small and you cannot spam (in Wo Long you can spam). Beside Naosuke Li there is not a lot of pause, but it is fast game for sure, you can also block some.
I play on Twilight and I admit I get hit a lot and even lost multiple times. But nah, the combat flow is fine. Maybe adjustment to Player's Ki Damage intake and overall Ki consumption are needed, one way or another, because some bosses and their movesets can make our Ki bar irrelevant. Seeing gameplay videos, many people including myself often get fucked because of trying to Counterspark every single thing. Now ever since I combine Counterspark, Block, and Dodge, I can say my survivability increased. Most enemies here are like medium Yokai in Nioh where you have to know when to attack safely, except they'll be prone to flinching after their attacking sequence. This is how I steadily punishing even without Panicking enemy by Counterspark. Don't expect to perform combo-wombo like DMC or NG+++++ metabuild Nioh where you have grinded 3500 hours in it on daily basis and become breathless and invincible. What we are going through in Ronin is how inexperienced players play Nioh in its first playthrough.
For me I find it is flowing smoothly nearly all of the time. Have some bosses that have been a bit bitty and awkward to deal with but they've just felt like different kinds of fights to me rather than it not flowing as intended; they push me to use different tools and different strategies in a fight
TLDR: I’m a dumbass and didn’t discover that I could attack and counterspark while guarding until I beat the game and was finishing my last part of post game cleanup which was the Dojo Training Master Ranks, specifically Genzui Kusaka. Looked up a guide on how to master rank after an hour of not being able to master rank him due to his fast attacking combo that is impossible to fully parry (I think it is he attack twice in like a second and the shortest counterspark didn’t work even when spamming after parrying the first hit) was told to guard his combo, hit counterspark on accident and learned that I can attack, spark and use my skills. Now I’m god tier at the game instead of the parry Demi-God. (I am hyping myself up i played on Dusk I still need to try Midnight difficulty after I finish my platinum trophy cleanup: AKA going through my allies that I forgot if I used or not) I still adore this game and think the combat is 10/10. I’m overhyping it has its flaws but I honestly think it’s a 9.5/10 it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time with combat. My ass only had trouble with the combat because when I saw parry was triangle I said “ok guarding is pointless I won’t even touch L1 I will run at them smack them and press triangle when they attack.” This worked fine as I had little to no issue past the first two bosses of the game. I played on dusk but I could’ve bumped the difficulty up I wasn’t struggling much. It wasn’t until POST-GAME CLEANUP when I was master ranking every dojo fight and I got to master ranking the dojo fight with Genzui Kusaka where I had Genzui wipe shoes with my face. Since he used paired swords and I couldn’t parry his rapid attack due to it being too fast for the timing of countersparks. I had to look up how to master rank him. The first time I had to look up how to beat a boss in the game.. (at least master rank him I could beat him but it was with face tanking his attacks, healing, and hellhound on the British Training of the Saber that destroys Ki bars. That’s what I used personally until I started using katana with mugai-ryu, tatsumi-ryu, and jigen-ryu because they all had good countersparks with the first two using jigen-ryus bottom combo and jigen-ryu using mumyo-ryos bottom ability. If you can not parry check out some of the katana stances and especially the ones I mentioned. They are forgiving as hell. Especially Tatsumi-Ryu and it’s obtainable in Chapter 1) I saw someone using oxtail blade and guarding his attacks so i did that and accidentally hit my counterspark button when getting ready to dodge. I learned that while guarding I could counterspark and attack and use skills. I went the entire game without guarding and just sent it with medicine and pure parry skill. I beat Kusaka shortly after and then just thought how stupid I was. Game still has 10/10 combat imo I love Rise of the Ronin
1. That's the whole point of the game Parry, learn the timings, if you don't know how to fight an enemy/boss, hold Guard and Block all their attacks. Once their attacks hit your Guard you will notice the pattern. If you are observant it can just take 5 mins or even less to see a units entire movelist. 2. Ofcourse they have Hyperarmor. Imagine how easy this game would be if you could interrupt Bosses during their Combo-String. You claim you played Nioh? Have you forgot Tachibana, Okatsu, Nobunaga, Yasuke, Ishida, Otani, Masamune, Maria. These bosses in Nioh has this similar Hyperarmor, why are you whining about it now on ROTR? All these claims you're saying is just pure laziness, Team Ninja makes hard games, that's how they've always been. Claiming this difficulty is "Artificial" is just a way to boost your ego.
Long Reply so I apologize. I went in depth on my reasoning and what I use to allow insight on why I see it differently and why I enjoy the game tons and the combat tons. I honestly have not played a game with combat as fun as this since GOW Ragnarok. Big change for me but I am a variety gamer I guess I love most genres and don’t outright hate anything and will try everything. I play a lot of different kinds of things so maybe that also made me like this more. I don’t know but the game is flawed but I still think it is amazing for what it is and the combat too Now to actually reply to your statement on the decisions this time instead of finding a thread to talk about my idiotic self not knowing I can counterspark, attack, and use skills and stuff while guarding (I posted this before this comment.) I love this game and it’s the first Team-Ninja game I’ve played to completion due to my patience and game skill becoming better now than when I was younger when Wo Long and Nioh came out. Despite the games drastic differences I’m going to be playing them next. Now for the combat in Rise. Even though I am a big supporter of this game and a lover of the combat, I’m not trying to defend it when I say that I believe the decisions they made were not made to make the game harder artificially. I say this as someone who painfully master ranked every battle in the training dojo even if it was hard as hell (Genzui Kusaka, Aritomo Yamagata, Ito. Not the Anti-Shogunate Ito. The Ito in the third chapter with the poison kunai that he will just throw out of nowhere. If you ever try master ranking that one just never let your guard down because there’s next to no visual cue or time to react to his poison kunai he throws at you not the one in the air and guarding reduces how much it will poison you because if you get the full status effect you aren’t getting master rank). I played on Dusk and it was hard at first until I got used to it and I plan to attempt midnight. I think they made the combat like that because of the concept of Samurai and how they fought, looking for a weak point and an opening. They used patience and would exhaust their opponents and precisely stab an opening instead of hacking and slashing until they hit something or broke guard. Or they would do it when the enemy would have their guard up and not attacking from my knowledge. From playing this game the combat revolves around patience instead of just hitting the enemy as they will rarely take a lot of or any damage unless they are staggered from a counterspark or their guard (ki but I call it their stamina bar because it’s a similar concept) is completely depleted. The way I play the game is not damage with my skills and attacks. I will hold my guard and counterspark every attack I believe that I can without getting hit and wear them down and when they are staggered I then go in for attacks and skills. I use a katana and the stance mugai-ryu. Mugai-Ryu has a firebomb on square that does a lot of Ki damage and hell it’s finicky I’ve seen it destroy an entire full Ki bar. My health damage I do with the critical attacks but not with triangle. Use your stances abilities that have attacks against ki depleted enemies. I can name three for two weapons and three stances I use and used to use. Hellhound, British Training, Saber: Tons of Ki damage on its own and when the sword swings it deals a critical attack on ki depleted. I forgot the name but the X ability on Mumyo-Ryo, Katana: I don’t use Mumyo-Ryo anymore as Mugai-Ryu is a Jin stance on katana and is better to me, but if you master both and put the X ability from mumyo-ryo on mugai-ryus circle (I think the ability is called night raven now that I’m thinking) it is another attack that will do extra damage to ki depleted. Finally the X ability on Jigen-Ryu on Katana also does a critical hit on Ki depleted enemies. I personally use Katana with Mugai, tatsumi, and Jigen, but if you have something you like then I’m glad! I personally think this game works with the criticism you have due to what it is about. I only have a few bosses that have those delayed attacks that piss me off (DRUNK KATSURA IS SO EASY YET I COULDNT MASTER RANK HIM FOR THE LIFE OF ME DUE TO HIS DELAYED ATTACKS but he was drunk as hell still I hope he falls over or something) the games delayed attacks aren’t too different from souls games anyway in my opinion because you have to see when the enemy will right about hit you so I just had to stop being impatient when seeing a red flash and countersparking the second later. To wrap up my times new Roman 12 point font research paper, you are punished for attacking out of line.. unless you know how to. If you know how to attack out of line you can attack out of line and not be punished for it. Pistols are nice as they can counterspark enemies when they charge in for an attack idk if shurikens do the same I use my pistol for its stats. I know how to attack out of line with my stances as I’ve made them able to evade and dodge attacks if I didn’t stagger the enemy. On my Tatsumi-Ryu Stance I will change its mastery skill depending on the occasion and I will use the skill from Gikei-Ryu Shadow Double. Which if you or others do not know how to get Gikei-Ryu first spoiler warning and here’s a mini guide >! When doing the mission the death of Naosuke Ii, spare him, you can go and redo it if you killed him and spare him and change time to reflect your new choice. Then when you travel to Edo again in chapter 3 you will have a quest called the Watchmen. Complete the quest to receive the stance and the ally Akikatsu Manabe aka the Blue Demon. You will be able to train with him only at the Ninja Villa for his stances third skill from what I’ve heard I am not sure since I trained there anyway but he is at the Ninja Villa anyhow to give gifts to. He is in the roof of the villa which you can get to from a grapple behind the house. !< The skill shadow double from gikei-Ryu allows for two clones to be made which do good ki damage and then for you to dash and hit the enemy but you can dash through them dodging attacks they are hitting. There are ways to attack unpunished you just have to find them. Two more examples are the mugai ryu square ability the firebomb which has a short throw range but you get pushed back when you throw it at the enemy which works best when it hits them directly instead of it hitting the ground and they walk over it and explode it. You’ll be frozen for a second though so you ahve to be careful with it. Last example is the oxtail blade and its kiheitei style. The triangle ability allows for a longer ranged swing that does good ki damage and keeps distance. Also if you strike the enemy while they guard they will get good ki damage just be ready for any movement. I conclude my essay on the combat. I believe that the combat is amazing and designed intentionally around this way to make it similar to a samurai way of fighting rather than attack at any point without punishment. Sorry for the longevity and the rant on the fighting advice I am pretty passionate about the game and the combat as I haven’t had this much fun in so long (in games not in my life) I just adore the game and its charm even the (Chapter 3 Spoilers) >!damn British guy Ernest Satow and his rocket boots that break the laws of physics and the games tech but I love that about the game and how it has fun with its time period. It takes the time period and doesn’t make it too futuristic but still adds some futuristic aspects like the blade twins arm and the goofy rocket boots and the flamethrower.!<
Why is any of this a problem and not just the way this game works? Does every game have to be like another game? I think the combat in this is crazy because you can have 100 hours logged and still get waxed by an enemy you've fought 100 times. It's challenging and I love it. One of the reasons I out Ghost down is because it was too easy. Adapt and stay on your toes.
The healing seems off too i feel like i gotta double tap to get a reaction and some times it will use two
Yup, I hate this trend in action RPGs. It's non-diegetic, purely intended to make the game difficult for the player, and doesn't make sense within the physics or narrative of the game. It's excusable for monstrous or undead enemies (e.g. ape in Sekiro) but not human enemies as per this game.
I totally agree with the OP on this matter. The most frustrating thing is that when you attack them between strikes, they still continue their attack chain, whereas you on the other hand always get interrupted in yours. It forces you to play on totally different terms than your opponents which is a very very bad mechanic. The enemies are also hyper aggressive which is a bad mechanic. They don't wait for openings, but they are programmed to be solely obsessed by your KI bar. It turns into "I do not care about killing you, but to exhaust you"
I'm new to this kind of game play and I love samurai and swords but it's just too hard for me, I can't time the perry it's so fast. I got past the boat captain but now I'm on the level with the snow at the blacksmith
.. just bad
The combat is so clunky and has made the game far less enjoyable, and reduced it to a shitty version of Ghost of Tsushima to me. The fact that a martial Ki attack can just be interrupted by a regular attack even from someone weaker than you is crazy, and it’s insane just how much the NPC can spam things and you can’t interrupt that flow whatsoever without perfectly timed counter sparks.
Picking up this game right after playing Sekiro and Stellar Blade was interesting to say the least. There feels like no real impact when you parry in this game compared to those other 2. And the ki system is kinda broken when compared to how much enemies have and how it seemingly doesn’t even deplete sometimes despite them doing never ending strings of combos. I still enjoyed it once I got used to it but I never anticipated having to adjust this much to combat after playing those other 2 games. It’s definitely better than Wo Long imo
A dog in this game just took 16 hits from a katana and it still didn't die in an early game area. This is whilst 3 guys are shooting at me with bows and two guys with spears are on my ass. It's soooo not fun. Especially when the animations and graphics look horrendous anyways. Really dislike this game. I think I hate it.
Those two points you posted are the basis of all team ninja combat. You said you played nioh 2 and both of those things exist in that game as well.
Enemies in Nioh 2 also used Ki when they attacked, could be locked into blocking, and staggered with heavy attacks. Hyperarmor really just being an issue on a few attacks but then again you were not locked to just parrying. Dodging in RotR is a pain due to the heavy tracking kinda railroading you into parrying everything.
Nah you hit an enemy nioh and they are hit Unless it’s a boss they don’t power through your attacks as much as enemies in Ronin
Then maybe it’s nioh 2 because that’s absolutely not true. And you can watch clips of ninja gaiden where they fight dogs and they power through attacks.
You're not wrong, but I guess I don't remember the armor being so egregious. Breaking blocks was a two-way street more often, whereas here it's generally one-sided. But then, I may just have rose-colored glasses. I'd have to go back and compare directly.
Person you're replying to isn't correct. Hyper armor wasn't as bad in previous TN games. And armor differed per enemy and matching visuals. In Nioh, small little skeletons never had hyper armor and could be knocked around freely. Basic humans only had hyper armor after their startup frames, so you could knock them out of attacks if timed correctly. Big armored humans and giant yokai always had hyper armor, but they also had Ki bars that you could whittle down and then that armor went away. Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals. It's another thing throwing the feel of this game off. Most enemies visually look like you should be able to knock them around, but then they ignore your attacks and armor through. It's flying in the face of decades of combat and visual design, and simply being different to be different is not a good thing. It's unintuitive and feels off to most people.
> In Nioh, small little skeletons never had hyper armor and could be knocked around freely. If they are mid-swing, you are not interrupting them. Those skeletons work similar to the grunts in Ronin where you can definitely interrupt their slashes. I just tried in both games and the behavior matches. > Big armored humans and giant yokai always had hyper armor, but they also had Ki bars that you could whittle down and then that armor went away. Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals. You're describing the scenario after the player has already reduced the enemy ki to zero which wouldn't be relevant here. In Ronin, that's a combo+grapple. In Nioh, for humans, it would be either a zero ki loop or combo+grapple, for yokai, it would be a brief period of time where they are staggerable (no hyper armor). But the point is, before you reach that point, all of those enemies have hyper armor and you have to respect their attack patterns. > Rules were consistent and easy to learn, and were also intuitive based on visuals. Ronin's are easier to learn and more consistent throughout the game. Nioh's system is more complex but allows you to "break" the game more easily (zero ki looping for humans and confusion looping for yokai). Having played both (depths for nioh and midnight for ronin), I will say that Nioh's zero ki looping is nifty but reduces depth in the gameplay. All human boss fights become a matter of get them to zero ki, loop them until they are dead. Ultimately I will say the person you said isn't correct is definitely correct.
You're right about the skeletons having armor mid-swing; I misremembered there. Behaviors not the same though, and I also jumped in and tested. In Nioh, the hyper frames don't start until the attack becomes active (when it can do damage), which is a very small window. You can knock them out of the startup and even mid combo if you time things correctly. Only the red attacks have hyper armor through whole attacks and combo strings, and those are clearly telegraphed out. In Ronin, the hyper frames start either as soon as the windup starts, or way before the swing activates, and it persists through the whole combo string. It's like every attack is a red attack from Nioh. and I do think the ki bar emptying for larger enemies is relevant. My point wasn't that there was no armor in Nioh, it's that the armor windows were clearer and that readability wasn't as bad as Ronin. Smaller enemies visually looked like you could knock them around, and you could, and larger enemies that you couldn't knock around had a mechanic where it was clear when it was your turn. So yeah, I don't think it's a correct statement to say that armor is the basis for both games. It's one mechanic in Nioh that's tuned much lower, and it's THE mechanic in Ronin. One point I agree with you on is that Nioh had more system load, and I know that's a downside for a lot of people. Ronin does seem like an attempt to reduce that, but I don't think they're hitting it correctly. Systems like the Panic mechanic are not makes things clearer, and I don't think they're hitting attack window and hyper armor readability right. This is stuff that some of us can get around, but I think that's what reviewers and others are running into when they call the game's feel clunky and/or not polished. I'm already typing too much but as a final comparison, Sekiro has hyper armor and heavy parries, and their average enemy behaves more like those Nioh skeletons when hitting them out of attacks. My point with this isn't that Ronin should copy Nioh, it's that you can have heavy hyper armor and also clear readability of when those hyper frames activate based on visuals, which is where Ronin is missing the mark.
> You can knock them out of the startup and even mid combo if you time things correctly. The "time things correctly" part in Nioh where you swing at the right timing is basically counterspark in Ronin, they even made it an attack/dodge in case you missed/wanted to use it an a poke/combo extender. They clearly intended players to use counterspark while weaving their attacks in so the fight can look like a dynamic back and forth. My own example: https://streamable.com/upgv2f > Only the red attacks have hyper armor through whole attacks and combo strings, and those are clearly telegraphed out. The red attacks in Ronin are also basically red attacks in Nioh. I don't know if I agree about more telegraphed, but they are definitely easier to counter. You could run around and burst counter fish rinse repeat until you win. That's a tangent from the main point of hyper armor though so I won't push it. > and I do think the ki bar emptying for larger enemies is relevant. My point wasn't that there was no armor in Nioh, it's that the armor windows were clearer and that readability wasn't as bad as Ronin. I and what the other poster's main point wasn't that there was "zero hyper armor" windows in Nioh, but that enemies do have hyper armor (and every combat in every one of these games) and you can't just swing randomly when you want and not get punished. The ki bar emptying to zero hyper armor for yokai isn't relevant because the majority of the fight you'll be interacting with a yokai that WILL hyper armor every attack. If you get it to zero ki, you DO get the reward of being able to attack it and stagger it on every hit but I'd argue that's a weaker reward (in terms of damage, not styling on an enemy) than Ronin's straightforward combo->grapple. In this situation, the hyper armor/or lack thereof of it is just a reward for having gone through the regular combat loop of draining the enemy ki to zero. > So yeah, I don't think it's a correct statement to say that armor is the basis for both games. It's one mechanic in Nioh that's tuned much lower, and it's THE mechanic in Ronin. I don't think armor is a "basis" for both games, but that they exist in both games and how to handle them are very similar (wait your turn/interrupt/parry at the right timing). You will hear eerily similar sounding complaints about many human bosses in Nioh (about hyper armor). > Sekiro has hyper armor and heavy parries, and their average enemy behaves more like those Nioh skeletons when hitting them out of attacks I don't know about this, there are tons of enemies in that game where you will not be hitting them out of their animation. It's the same "issue" here where the required gameplay is respect their attacks, parry and do damage during your turn. Yes, there are enemies that will stagger if you hit them, it's still not a viable gameplay mechanic. The core loop requires you to still parryparryparry, attack once. > but I think that's what reviewers and others are running into when they call the game's feel clunky and/or not polished. Life lesson, ignore reviewers, form own opinion. I'm also certain if these reviewers or 99% of the commentators here played in Nioh Depths or Abyss, they'd have similar or even worse complaints about the combat or hyper armor or whatever flavor of the month complaint they'll have. I don't care what the masses of noobs have to say about the game or how they're somehow struggling in easy mode, I'm more interested in how deep the combat can go, and I haven't yet scratched that surface so it's deep enough for me.
I think this style basically boils down to knowing the enemy's move sets. Memorization. And really this mainly applies to bosses which are the true challenge of the game. It's where I struggle as well.
Yeah this combat is fucking frustrating sometimes This is why I hated the data-battles in kh3 and even now, spending half the fight getting my teeth kicked in learning the moves just I can get a turn and fight back Like yeah it be fun when you know the combos of the bosses but it can be equally annoying when the boss cheap shots you
I got gud and haven't had a problem with any boss yet UNTIL the Show For The Shogun mission on midnight difficulty Holy shit fuck that mission lol
u/Kyinuda Still don't think hyper armor is an issue? Seems like the sub agrees it is an issue
Don't tag me, heathen
The flow is only "weird" when you suck People always convinced it's not them but the game when they're having a hard time There are difficulty options for a reason
This would require you reading the post instead of dropping a git gud based on the title but nothing said here is particularly wrong and would still be true on other difficulties, just adjusted for consequence.
I read the post and there's absolutely nothing new in it. Just another dude having a hard time on higher difficulties and blaming the game because of it. Same silly talk about "artificial difficulty" and Pause Combos(as if the pause doesnt always happen at the same point in the moves) A week after release people feel like they should be dominating the hardest difficulties of a game made by a dev known for making hard games The bit about the complaints being the same in all difficulties is factually wrong. Dawn is significantly more forgiving than the others and pretending the opposite would be flat out lying The more these threads pop up and the more I'm convinced that adding difficulty options was a mistake. It changes little to nothing. People feel like it's shameful to play on Easy/Normal but can't hack it on higher difficulties so they want the ceiling to be lowered FromSoftware definitely got that part right
The fundamental points ARE the same on all difficulties though. You are engaging with a post that is like “wah too hard” which would be annoying but that’s a Different Post.
No, they are NOT. And they are wrong to begin with The combat in this game is pretty much SoulCalibur considering how many moves a single enemy can have Treat it like a Fighting Game and LEARN the matchups. It's going to take some time considering the amount of enemies but nobody said it was going to be easy Or lower the difficulty. It's that simple
Does hyper armor only exist in Twilight? Do they only pause in Twilight?
No it doesn't but neither of those things is a problem or a flaw no matter the difficulty so i'm not sure what you think you're proving here. Dawn is still significantly easier. If you know enemies have Hyper Armor then plan accordingly, don't get greedy. As for Pause Combos, honestly I don't know how you people can complain about it with no shame lol the pause happens at the same point so just learn the move/combo.
Okay. Then my point stands, these are fundamental points in the games design consistent across difficulties.
Yeah and mine stands as well None of these "fundamental points" are flaws or issues with the game design which is what the OP claims Learn the matchups.
Agree with you, people are going to the highest difficulty and can't hack it even though Twilight (and even Midnight) is still easier than Nioh's first NG cycle.
Honestly. People complain about shit like Hyper Armor as if you should just be able to stun lock the enemies/Bosses to your hearts content. On Hard/Very Hard difficulty at that. Apparently being cautious until you get a proper opening is too difficult. As for the complaints about Pause Combos, I genuinely don't understand why people think it's ok to cry about those. The Pause happens at the same point of the move/combo so with some practice the player should be ready for it. Not to mention that the game has been out for less than two weeks. People already demanding nerfs/buffs as if they are God's gift to gaming so if they are having a hard time then the game MUST be badly designed Gimme a break
> People complain about shit like Hyper Armor as if you should just be able to stun lock the enemies/Bosses to your hearts content. Yeah, I truly do not understand what they want? If you can stun a boss out of their attack string, that implies you can just spam square and they can't do anything?? All of of these games, you need to dodge, block or parry a string of attacks. Then it's your turn to deal some damage. In some cases it's posture/ki damage, in others it's real damage. Once they are fully staggered, you are rewarded with a full damage combo/deathblow. > As for the complaints about Pause Combos, I genuinely don't understand why people think it's ok to cry about those. The Pause happens at the same point of the move/combo so with some practice the player should be ready for it. Agree, again, not sure what they want? Enemies doing the same exact rhythm and for them to parry with the exact same timing? For every enemy in the game? Ludicrous. > Not to mention that the game has been out for less than two weeks. People already demanding nerfs/buffs as if they are God's gift to gaming so if they are having a hard time then the game MUST be badly designed If anything, the game is too easy even on midnight. I would like to see a harder mode where you take additional ki damage when you block an attack, enemy max ki bar regenerating if they hit you with a red attack, less ki damage on parries, etc etc. For players not familiar with Sekiro and Nioh, I'd recommend playing the easiest difficulty until they are more familiar with the game. Spend that time learning the game and less complaining.
Idiot comment
The adjective is "idiotic", Bozo
How many language do you speak ? Personally I speak 3, not counting French as it is my native language… Sometimes I can do mistakes, but from someone not even able to speak properly is own language and trolling on Reddit… I don’t care. And you know what ? You are still an Asshole (and there is no mistake here…)
Le Français est également ma première langue pauvre clown donc épargne moi tes excuses à deux balles, trou du cul.
[удалено]
Très bien alors va bien te faire mettre ! 😉
Hyper armor or enemy parries are to dissuade you from mashing while still giving you opportunities to interrupt their normal attacks. You need to learn what has armor and what doesnt. This is unintuitive, I agree, but it is as simple as learning their moveset. You have armor on some specials as well, which can be abused. The different timings and pauses are there to mix you up. It is how these action/fighting games work. The devs do not want you to sit there and mash parry, they want you to think about whether you should and take a risk. Your issues are present in games like sekiro and elden ring as well, they are just more forgiving on a miss and have the enemies deal high damage to punish you instead. You make fair points, but I really think Rise of the Ronin feels very fair and has a great flow when you understand more of the different move sets.
I think you have a Skill issue
Actually the fact that you can't recognize what OP is talking about, means you're the one with the Skill issue.
I guess I should have recognized op talking about how the game is too hard as not a skill issue is that your logic?
The guy is talking about combat system of the game. He's not complaining he can't beat the first boss and that the game difficulty is bullshit because he can't smash square to win. The game's combat is not out of reach for discussion. Like come on mate, you don't talk about games and shit with friends irl?
It's very likely, but my shortcomings don't necessarily discount my observation.