Just to start off I have a lot of experience with other games with similar combat systems, I have done challenge runs in souls and I have done PVP with some of the “tryhards” who only play in modded and have a good understanding of what makes or breaks weapon classes and this will be my second playthrough of Wicked at over 100 hours of playtime, my previous playthrough was with dagger and eventually curved sword.
The unarmed gauntlet has a lack of controllability after every single one of it’s animations starts that will make you miss frequently if you didn’t judge both distance and angle of your character model first which is bad because we should be able to mostly keep our eyes on our enemies while we fight and we are also often fighting near some sort of ledge or trap. My suggestions to fix this are as follows:
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The full forward momentum of the standard attack (X on an xbox controller) should only happen if the analog stick is held towards the direction of the enemy. If it is not held down you should be able to stand relatively still while attacking. You do want us to fight in platforming levels and not fall off a ledge, after all.
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During the active frames of every attack, there should be some relative ability to turn your character model to face the enemy if the attack started in the “wrong” direction or to just follow the enemy as they move. I don’t mean allow a full 180 or anything (although this is possible with many attacks in Elden Ring) but there should be more than the 0 ability we have to adjust our attack after starting it now, something like this tends to vary across the weapon classes/attacks in other games.
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Considering the standard attack for this weapon class has two swings you should be able to independently angle them (with left and right analog movement, in relation to where you are facing) even after startup if needed since enemies often move out of range and a different one enters your range during it’s duration and it’s silly how little we are able to control our attacks to deal with this.
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Outside of the prior points it may be a good idea to add slight tracking after an attack is started. At current it is too easy to constantly miss or overshoot and this also makes attempts at combos impossible since you have to stop attacking to adjust your angle of attack.
Thanks for the consideration of feedback, the game seems to have improved overall since I last did a playthrough and has the foundation for a great game.