Due to how damage scaling seems to work relative to armor values, it’s easy to drop any enemy – even a heavily armored one – with a handful of strikes after beefing up Henry’s combat skills a little, even with a weapon that would realistically be completely ineffective against armor (such as a sword). I accidentally killed a well-armored mercenary who challenged me to a duel after one-shotting him with a longsword riposte, and I’m only 27 hours in!
This has to be fixed, and soon. After about an hour of sparring with Captain Bernard in Rattay, I managed to improve my character’s strength and swordsmanship to 10 and 12, respectively. After selecting some perks that compliment my playstyle, such as Brute, I’m suddenly able to slash plate-wearing enemies to death within two or three longsword swings (sometimes, even one swing is enough to do the trick).
I feel like I have to intentionally gimp myself by using a weapon I’m unproficient in just to keep the game even remotely challenging or interesting. Damage values (such as “slash” and “pierce”) need to be toned down, and they need to scale less with levels in governing attributes and skills such as Strength and Swords.
Great care was taken to ensure that combat in KC:D is period-authentic and sophisticated. All that goes out the window when you can walk up to an armored knight and kill him with two or three taps of your sword.
