It's not easy to get this game to work these days but when it does...wow. This might be the best ARPG Diablo-like out there in terms of combat. The combat is so well done with so many options you won't believe it. I play it on Nightmare just to maximize the options. Where do I even start. You'd have to have played various other games to understand. For example lets start with Vermintide 2. In Ver2, attacking different types of enemies WHILE they are attacking can cause a trade, because depending where in the animation frame you and the enemy are, it directly impacts the stun threshold. And then the enemy's class/type itself on top of that. In B&S, it's the same. You can pick from 3 heroes and lets say you pick the female. Her combo chains are amazing but if you miss your opening (get to that in a sec) you're risking your attacks missing and the damage on Nightmare takes her health to more then half per hit from the most basic first encounter in the game, the zombie. The best way to combo the zombie with her on Nightmare (the hardest difficulty): 1) Fight 1 by 1, attract one zombie then return to familiar/cleared territory 2) Wait infront of the zombie and get it to miss then retreat. This does something to the zombie's anticipation and takes it more off-guard, as long as you didn't retreat too far back to take advantage of it. Immediately move in and do your combo, go for knockdown. The combos themselves can be reset by mixing attacks like 2 stabs, 2 kicks, 2 stabs, 2 kicks, then 2 stabs again and finish with the kick combo to knockdown. It won't kill but it will optimally keep the zombie chained for max damage. Avoid dragging the fight too far into other zombies or they'll come after you and you can't do more then 2 at a time on nightmare, at least not right off the bat when you start with new character. It's like one hit takes like 90% health on the female character in one zombie hit. 3) By pointing the mouse somewhere around the zombie and mashing space, you can effectively dodge the zombie's attacks in time like a counter attack; However I wouldn't recommend it on level 1 or even 2 or 3 (on Nightmare) because the enemy's awareness of you somehow keeps the stun integrity mostly intact and this means you risk missing more attacks then hitting, increasing your chance to get hit instead of the zombie. Best way to do it in the beginning is to just step away as it's trying to hit you then immediately step back in. Your combos work then. Do it too soon and you get hit by the attack you're trying to dodge. Do it too late and it's awareness (I don't know what else to call it) resets back, meaning it's stun threshold resistance to your upcoming combo is very high. 4) The characters all auto-target based on closest enemy. It even animates your hero to move while looking body AND head separately, from the enemy it's...pretty amazing for such an old game to have, someone animating all this. Drag the enemies to the wall, knock them down with combo, get up in their face as they get up, wait for them to try and hit, dodge it. This formula is mostly for the zombie on Nightmare difficulty and especially important with the female (she does lots of combos but has very weak power and stun capacity and has very little health and scaling health) but it can apply to most enemies on map 1. 5) Your primary attack (the girl has 2 primaries, the dudes have 1) have a combo chain you can execute with right click as if holding shift in diablo or poe to attack in place, for example. Each subsequent attack in that combo before it ends has stronger chance to stun the enemy then the last. If you manage to execute it so that the last few hit the enemy, you have highest chance to successfully hit them and knock them down. It's the starter attacks that are the riskiest (on Nightmare) because they can wiff based on your stats pretty hard and you won't have reaction time to avoid getting hit. This is mostly for you to understand if fighting more then one enemy and you don't want to leave the map and re-enter it to reset enemy awareness of you, because that works btw. You leaving the map lets a group of enemies stop following you indefinitely, useful to know when you are overwhelmed. The combat in this game is insanely good and detailed and you can't see it at first glance. It's only on harder difficulties where you have to apply everything you got to survive and level up. I didn't even talk about the skills in the game which are great and add even more flair then the opening combat system, which lets you: - Block/Parry. Block is different from parry and applies differently to projectiles which are timed blocks vs just holding block. Blocks completely absorb damage for most enemies and parries help you counter attack. Zombie bile vomit, for example, can be parried but not blocked. The Wolves you encounter after the zombies have a much larger arsenal of attacks, akin to Mount & Blade combat, where they can block with shields when you try to combo, but then kick you while they're blocking you, causing you some damage and small stun. The combat is pretty fast paced too which is good, but not too fast, allowing you to react. You can mash space and point mouse where you want to dodge around and try to push through their stun threshold because they're very versatile on Nightmare. I haven't been able to yet defeat one single Wolf with the girl on Nightmare at level 1, but I beat the map with the guy in the middle that uses a short sword and the big guy with the big two handed sabre-looking sword, he's got the highest stun-inducing impact, shortest combo tho, so knocks them down the soonest which means combat takes longer, per enemy, to kill. The girl can do the most jugging for the most damage, per knockdown. - You develop higher tolerance to damage, stun and are capable of admitting stuns to enemies more reliable from your starter attacks in the combo chain more "accurately", so to speak, as you level up. About level 3-4 you will start to nice the zombies become easier, the Wolves enemies become easier, on map one, on Nightmare for all but the girl. The girl needs few more levels but once she's got those levels, she's so fun to play because of her combos. Diablo 2 assassin female character has got nothing on the combo options of this girl in S&B. That's what I'm trying to tell you also: The combat in S&B is so much more interactive with so many more details and options compared to Diablo and PoE and PoE2, because you have way more control over it, without special effects flying allover the screen to tell you who/what is activating who/what and it looking like a tornado of fireworks at some rave party on LSD, to the point where you can't see diddly anymore on higher levels, to figure out what kills you. S&B isn't like that. Everything makes sense to me and can see everything the enemy does and it's completely my fault if I don't react to it. It's clean, it's beautiful. They made a S&B2 but I don't see it accessible in North America or on ..nevermind its on steam too! I love this game and it sucks no one copied it for modern graphics and multiplayer compatibility. It should be the standard for ARPG combat. It's never boring, never feels repetitive, you can always do something new or different to get enemies downed faster and get good to the point where you can take out a bunch of them at the same time, from your own skill alone, NOT THE STATS. I'm especially talking at level 1 Nightmare, you get to truly visualize how, with all the options you got at level 1, from your hero, the stat difference between you and the enemy still let you punch through because of the level of interactivity and game design of the gameplay they implemented into it. Try that ♥♥♥♥ on Diablo 1 or something like that and it's impossible unless you've leveled up your character on Normal, then Hard because those ARPGs rely a lot more on stat-based combat.
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