- Hylebos
- |
- Fabled Mythic Member
Well, you lock onto enemies by pressing in the right trigger, and from there it behaves a bit like Z targeting from Legend of Zelda. Unlike Legend of Zelda however, you have an endurance bar and two types of attacks with your melee weapon, a weak one that doesn't expend a ton of endurance, and a strong one that expends more endurance than the weak. Blocking attacks with your shield or weapon also expends endurance, the amount of which depends on the force of the attack. Other abillities like running, rolling, and jumping backwards also expends endurance.
Your endurance regenerates back over time, but if you run out, you won't be able to block the next attack with your shield, and you won't be able to attack with your weapon. It forces you to pace yourself in combat, if you go in over your head, you'll run out of endurance, they'll break through your defenses, and you will get stabbed very quickly to death.
I should also mention that you can heal yourself with Estus Flasks, which are these health potions that you can refill whenever you rest at a bonfire. However, whenever you rest a bonfire, most of the enemies you just killed regenerate, forcing you to get through that area entirely using those five to ten estus flasks, which means that reducing the amount of damage that you take while traveling is vital, especially if there is a boss up ahead.
Attacks feel very precise to the point where you can easily learn your opponent's moves and dodge all of their attacks from muscle memory. You have a ton of mobillity unless you are wearing heavy armor, which leads to fun moments where some dude with a huge hammer tries to clobber you and you roll out of the way as his hammer destroys the stone column that you were standing next to.
You can inflict critical strikes on your opponent by circling around behind him and stabbing him in the back, or by parrying his attack with your shield and then counter attacking. The former seems a lot easier than the latter, at least against computers anyways, I haven't had a ton of experience dueling other players.
Different weapons have very different attack animations and different strengths and weaknesses, wielding a long sword feels very different from wielding a two handed sword, it just feels so good!
I'm no expert on the magic bits, I've always played as a melee character. In general it's just very deep, very well done. It rewards good positioning and patience and punishes people who are in a rush or don't think while they fight. It honestly gives me tremendous amounts of hope for the future standard of gaming.
[Edited on 01.03.2013 8:28 PM PST]