I came from Bloodborne where the parry with a gun is quite similar to the standard parry you’d expect from Dark Souls: relatively long wind-up, only certain attacks can be parried, for others you’re SooL. Even though I liked the parry mechanic, as a consequence of it working on only a limited amount of attacks and pulling it off was generally hard while in the midst of a boss’ very frantic moveset, I’d usually rely on dodge rolls.
FF to Sekiro and Lies of P, the parry has been replaced with a deflect that’s easier to pull off since it’s just a well-timed block combines with a stance bar that allowed for alternative win-cons outside getting the boss’ HP to 0. Especially Sekiro’s hyper focus on deflects being the name of the game, a lot more attacks can be deflected which, in previous installments, usually would not have been deflectable/parriable.
FF to Elden Ring, the classic parry is back and only a limited set of specific moves can be parried. It’s certainly an option for those who like it but some enemies just outright don’t accommodate for parries to be usable, so again you’re SooL. The Deflecting Hardtear attempts to remedy this by including a deflect similar to Sekiro with the added caveat, unfortunately, that outside of not taking damage from attacks you’d normally be damaged by, with exceptions like builds and specific shields, you don’t again anything by doing so outside having an alternative to dodging. It’s a good idea but not exactly what I want from the game. What it does well, however, is that you can deflect attacks that you’d usually not be able to.
What if this system were applied to standard parries? I know you shouldn’t be able to parry some kinda laserbeam or something similar. But specifically in Elden Ring where the aggressiveness of bosses and their mobility is off the charts to combat the increasing skill of players, I’d wish for more tools to be able to deal with the increased complexitt. For example by letting me parry attacks that clearly should be from a visual standpoint but can’t be because FS says so.
Is this just a severe case of GitGud™ or does any of this make sense/resonate with you?
Poor communication of it is absolutely frustrating, particularly how there’s rarely ever a distinction in feedback between “your timing was slightly off” and “your timing was good but this cannot be parried”. You shouldn’t ever have to go look up whether an attack is parriable out of game, and From aren’t very good at this
Honestly I’d be fine with literally any attack being parriable with some kind of ash of war type ability. Let the standard parry be free, add versions with mana costs that can deflect normally-unparryable stuff with some magical assistance. Elden Ring sorta got there with Carian retaliation, but didn’t commit hard enough in my opinion. There should have been a version for huge physical attacks, and the blasphemous claw should have been a version of this too
When it comes to the Soulbornering games, Fromsoft is all in on “learn by damage.” Miss a parry = take damage. Miss-time a roll = take damage. And keep taking damage until you get it right. It’s the only form of feedback they seem willing to give. It is frustrating, but if they stopped doing it, would it still be an FS game?
I mean you could fill a set of encyclopedias with a list of jank and quality of life problems in FS games, but it makes me wonder how many of those problems are a core part of what makes a Souls game a Souls game.
If you count Sekiro, that actually has explicit non-diegetic signals for what can’t be parried (although I’m not suggesting that that model ought to be applied generally). More broadly, there is other feedback involved in parrying, it’s the audio and animation. If you missed completely you just get hit. If you make the parry, you get no damage, the enemy flinches, and you get a specific sound cue. If you only slightly miss, you get less damage and a different audio cue. My issue is that if it’s unparryable… You get that second audio cue again
My suggestion would be that unparryable attacks get a third sound effect, and maybe some kind of unique animation for your character, when you get the parry timing right. That way it remains diegetic, the feedback is in line with what you get in other situations in the same games, and you still have to do the part of actually attempting and nailing a parry to get it. It’s very similar to what happens when you block and get your guard broken - no damage (yet, you’re almost certainly about to take some), but a unique sound and animation
Definitely, I’m fine with the wind ups, I can live with the different timings for different types of parries, even… But god damned how is it annoying not to know if an attack is not meant to be parried!
Moonrithyll in Shadow of the Erdtree was infuriating for this. That looks like a normal goddamn sword what do you mean it’s unparryable
The Lies of P combat is my favorite, it’s like Elden ring but more fair. Specifically when it comes to deflects/parries ER feels like you need to memorize when to parry whereas in LOP it feels natural to parry attacks from a new enemy.
Also, just want to comment on this
I know you shouldn’t be able to parry some kinda laserbeam or something similar.
I think you can do this in breath of the wild.
I know you shouldn’t be able to parry some kinda laserbeam
I’m interested…
I needed to watch a few times to comprehend that they are parrying a nuclear blast wave.
In my opinion it feels fair in BoTW because those lasers hurt if you mess it up, and it greatly damages/destroys your shield (as I recall) even when done correctly, which reduces the amount of shield surfing you get to do trying to collect the guardian’s loot.
I think I agree?
At the end of the day parrying is a high risk/high reward mechanic and not being able to tell if you can even parry it isn’t very fair.
I don’t know what would be an appropriate design change to fix this though. From definitely wanted the classic high speed sword duels out of Sekiro so they tuned the mechanics to it, whereas ER seems to be about the mobility.
It does make sense. Screwing around and finding out is usually entertaining but having the game not communicate so many things and leaving players to browse through endless wikis in search for some orientation is absurd, specially taking into account those that may not be up-to-date or, more recently, AI slop sites that host complete nonsense.
That’s part of the reason why my partner stopped playing Elden Ring. Safest options were basically endless loops of a couple of hits after a dozen rolls or searching for a guide online, which left her feeling luck and cheese took all the credit for each victory.
That’s part of the reason why my partner stopped playing Elden Ring. Safest options were basically endless loops of a couple of hits after a dozen rolls
I mean… I wouldn’t call that cheese or luck. That’s just… Soulslike gameplay. You press B/Circle for ~30 seconds and then you’ve earned your alloted 1-2 presses of R1. Rinse and repeat.
Sure, we had fun playing Dark Souls 1-3. The point is FS games would be way more fun if it took a few more lessons from fighting games like proper visual and audio cues for each type of action. Taking it further, if FS added systems on a souls game like those present in Grim Dawn for builds (and have them work coherently without sudden and unexplained exceptions) I’d poop myself all over.
I enjoy Elden Ring’s fuck around/find out approach and various discoverable flavors of parry. The reason being that is resulted in emergent gameplay where I don’t know what the hell is going on until I find and master a different ability for myself. It preserves the novelty for a longer period of time.
For instance, I was very late in discovering the existence of the deflecting tear phisic. One day I had just invaded a lone player and they were just deflecting my fireballs and dragon’s claw with like, a thrusting sword and it was COOL! They got to farm so much aura in that moment and I suddenly had more motivation to go figure out what the hell they had drank when I arrived.
I like those moments and the sequences of events that they trigger. It feeds my hunger for narrative and discovery, even if so far most of them have turned out to be lesser parries compared to the ole Bloodborne Blikky
I played elden ring completely blind and never really played a FS game. I really liked the idea of parrying, especially bosses. I vrute forced my way through some bosses, because i assumed that’s the way to do it. You can obviously parry a lot if you really want to, but in hindsight, after my second play through, i realised that i made it way harder than i had to.
For sure, it’s definitely a mechanic for challenging yourself. Pretty badass to just pick it up like that, though
What is FF?
“Fast Forward” (as in “now I will talk about…”, not that there’s a soulslike called Fast Forward)
Thank you. I’ve been a fromsoft fanboy since ps2 days and thought I missed something.
I dont parry in video games. Its a challenge I dont find fun or interesting. Every time I try to parry, the inconsistencies and lack of clarity just demonstrates that its a punishing mechanic that I have more fun circumventing by dodging, kiting, or staggering
