This patch tests out some drastic changes to the base combat: all cooldowns have been replaced by an exposed state. You will be exposed when you are hit too often or when dealt specific damage. When you are exposed, you cannot block or parry and will receive critical damage instead of normal damage.
The good news is that this also goes for enemies.
Power attacks are also removed, with the exception of throwing weapons which are still thrown by holding down the button for a short while. The idea is that these changes make combat easier to read, safer, and easier to manage, especially when facing only one enemy. Basically you need to score a hit, or force an opponent to block or parry 3 times in order to ‘expose’ them, at which point you can probably defeat them quite easily. However, facing multiple enemies is still challenging as you will need to avoid being exposed yourself. For the end game we plan to lean on larger groups a little bit more.
This is still a work in progress; many magic weapon effects and combat skills need to be reconsidered. In addition, the tutorial doesn’t work with the new changes. But we are eager to learn from the community what you think about these changes. For that reason the patch will only be rolled out to the beta branch on Steam. We hope that some of you like to try out these changes. The combat practice would be an obvious place to start.
Please let us know what you think on our Discord channel!
https://discord.gg/4Y4983keuf
To get you in the mood: here's some of apt music from the game (also available on Spotify or on Steam with a hefty 75% off currently):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osPiRt0ayz4&list=OLAK5uy_m5f0P8GUB08nr9AKY-q27l3R8ShnaGmeo&index=8