I need some help, I’m having some problems with my current hardcore playthrough that I swear must be some sort of bug. This is my second hardcore playthrough. In my first, I was able to do combat just fine throughout the game, exceptionally well in fact. I could reliably beat any single enemy, including Captain Bernard and Runt. I could pull off chains of combos one after another with no issue. At that time in that playthrough, my sword, defense, warfare, strength, and agility were around 10-12.
I’m now on a second hardcore playthrough and am having a huge amount of trouble with combat. I’ve managed to get to about the same level stats-wise, with everything around 10-12ish. However all throughout this playthrough, I have had great difficulty training with Captain Bernard at all, it has been a huge grind. The reason is that he master strikes me on my first hit 3 out of 4 times, regardless of what direction I attack from or if I feint. And when I do manage to get the first hit in, he almost always perfect blocks the 1st or 2nd hit. It feels as if my stats are actually stuck at 1 even though they say they are 12. I’ve had equal severe difficulty killing any armored bandit 1-on-1.
It takes 10 tries to get 2 hits successfully in, but even when I do, the combos only rarely work. The third hit either just acts a regular attack or it gets perfect blocked. This seems to happen with every longsword combo. And these times when I get 3 hits in, it is visually clearly the correct sequence of strikes but for some reason no combo activates (yes I have trained the perks). This is a stark contrast from the previous playthrough I was just in. Is there a known bug or issue regarding these symptoms?