The animations are very clear. The threatened attack is clearly telegraphed from the guard held, and the follow on attack will behave as if the ‘ending’ posture of the previous attack were being held as a guard.
There are some variations arising from swords being off position from a parry or a cut, as the animations are partly procedural in response to physics inputs.
The mouse movement is only to select a new guard before a cut is made, or to switch guards once a cut is demonstrated in order to feint, delivering the cut along a new line. Precision isn’t needed.
Dead parrying or blocking is accomplished ‘automatically’ by holding the “q” button, and similarly to real fencing is mostly instinctive with minimal options for decision making, and no opportunity to attack directly from it.
While real longsword fights emphasise simultaneous meisterhewen or master cuts - ones that cover the opponent’s attack while striking the opponent, the game uses a tempo based parry-riposte system more suited to game play. Here you leave an opening, permitting your opponent to attack in a known or expected way, and you cut into his attack and immediately on displacing his weapon strike into the target. This is done by leaving the block ‘off’ and making the action to parry in the ‘instant’ of his strike… Parry risposte is riskier, you have a greater chance of being struck in the opening, but if you can work the timings is really effective at striking an opponent.
A final method of striking safely is to move while near the edge of his measure, voiding his attack and while it is still in motion striking along the same direction as his cut.
All of this is based on a pared down system of German Longsword, and sword in one hand, but the techniques are workable, both in reality and in the game. So much so that I use some aspects of the game (decision making and distance management - plus multiple combatant variations) to inform real fighting with steel federschwert that I do as a sport. This is not something I can say about any other game.
When he goes high, he will strike to the head, if his hands go low with the point rearwards he will cut from low on that side. The other positions usually strike sideways between the ear and the armpit, but there are some variations in the guards used, and some can fall more diagonally. Almost always the cut will fall from the side the guard is in to the opposite point(s) of the star, he will draw back, clearly telegraphing the attack intention and giving a limited window to move, which can void the attack, or to enter a defensive frame - or alternatively to prepare to finesse the parry timing and to seize the attack from the opponent.
This is fairly difficult to see in the beta at the combat arena, as performance in this area is not very good, and it is better to experiment with the various bandit groups you can find on your travels (one or two are much easier than 4 or 40, so not picking off more than you can deal with in sensible).
I have some quibbles with some minor details of it, but overall it is among the best combat systems I’ve come across, and I’d rate the WIP system as a 7/10 or more, with many of the things I found issue with being interactions between ‘unfinished’ armour and weapon databases and some odd values for certain items.
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