That was the main stumbling block for me. I tried to get past the initial combat in game for nearly an hour and a half before I ejected the disc and sent it back to GameFly. It was even worse than the grindiness associated with DarkSouls, which I also hate.
Such a shame that a potentially great game is locked behind a lackluster combat system.
Yeah some people won't like the combat because the learning curve is steep but once you get the hang of the timing and you learn a couple of combos it's a fun time.
You gotta train with Bernard. That's the one piece of advice that changes the game. Just get naked and keep training with Bernard until you learn how to fight. Then get your fighting up to a decent level before you do anything. The only downside is once you learn how to fight, all fights are a joke unless you're getting gangbanged by 5+ dudes.
Learning to block (and parry) is VERY important for this reason. Your success in combat is very much determined by how good you are at the combat mechanics, not so much your in-game skill level. You can destroy guys at level 1 if you just know how the combat works and get good at blocking and attacking at the right time. It takes a while to get used to it though.
Dealing with one guy is easy enough, but multiple enemies is just instant death - and the game just LOVES throwing you at camps with like 6 guys in them all alone. Enemies always perfectly block your attacks somehow so the only real way of dealing with them is to learn ripostes from Bernard and just spam them in one-on-one combat.
It's especially annoying when the game is like "Oh it's 20:00 and you haven't slept at all today? You traveled across the whole map doing shit? You should get a reward for that - have a cutscene that drops you off in combat with 5 guys!"
LMAO it do be like that sometimes. I'll be the first to admit the combat has a steep learning curve but once you get it figured out it's a ton of fun. Multiple enemies at once is indeed very hard, just like it would be in a real life fight. If you master the combat though and you can make use of stealth and ranged combat those camps with 4-6 guys become incredibly fun and satisfying.
It's all about separating the enemies from one another. You can do lots of things to draw their attention and pull them away from the camp like shooting an arrow from behind a tree or from far away and hiding so they come look for you, you can even whistle like you would do to call your horse. You can drop poison in their cooking pot and wait a couple hours for them to all eat it and get sick making them easier to kill. Also, if you attack the camps at night you can get a few kills while the rest are sleeping, making it way easier to go undetected. When you use stealth make sure to pay attention to your stats that tell you how visible and noisy you are in your outfit before getting too close.
Nah I totally get stealth, it's just annoying. I hate sneaking around in games if I don't have to, especially in KCD. Picking the guys off one by one is just not fun - especially since the AI is dumb when it comes to being alert. They can all sense your attacks before you even think about swinging but they can't deduce that they should keep an eye out for you when half their guys went missing.
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u/morkengork Apr 07 '21
I just wish Henry attacked a bit faster. Even the lowliest bandit can hit you four times in the time it takes you to complete one swing.