Dear developers,
I have played for 18h so far and I am stunned by how different the game is due to the mixture of components.
Though I am missing the Sekiro deflect. Parry and instant staggering I always thought was extremely boring, as is rolling away. It completely kills the flow of the fight and feels repetitive.
I would love if players had the option to choose between parry and deflect.
Deflect feels fluid, you have to learn the attack chains and you feel powerful when having it down to a T.
Parrying heavy enemies with Daggers, Dual Daggers or Spears and staggering them breaks the feel of the game a bit.
E.G.:
Deflect has higher frames to react
enemy attack chains are not interrupted
poise dmg lower
stagger on full poise bar
EDIT: perfect deflect = no poise build up/ imperfect = small poise dmg
parry/deflect can be chosen between OR is possible with Dex weapons.
Due to the fact that you already created a mix of everything, this one inclusion into the combat system would - in my eyes - make the game ABSOLUTE GOLD!
Maybe adding diiferent parry systems to different weapons/shields.
Swords: Sekiro style
Small shields: Dark souls style
Big shields: generally you can not parry all the attcaks but with big shields you can. Maybe even break their weapon.
Dual daggers: Imagine Heimdall in god of war ragnarok. He was dodgingin all of your attacks. Something similar to that but instead of dodging you are parrying with one and slicing with other it inflicts both posture and health damage. So when enemy attacks you parry and hit at the same time wit one tap of the parry button. Since daggers are fast you can also squize in your attacks aswell. You are tapping parry and attack basicly.
Axe: You grab enemy weapon with axe swing and throw him around you. This couse damage to nearby enemies. Harder the enemy attack wider and more damaging the swing. If they hit the wall they stagger as well. (Overall adding some wall mechanics would be nice)
These are the stuff I can think of for now. By the way. I really enjoyed the bare hand grab attack at the beginning of the game. But I dont think people will ever use it again. Sometimes you want to seperate enemies from each other. Imagine running and grabbing one and carrying then throwing him. Maybe something like in god of war 3. Or tackling and beating them as in tekken. Or you tackle and you both fall down a cliff but since you land on them fall damage is neglected. Bare hand attacks looks cool and savage with this amazing voice acting. It would be cool if game encourage you to go barehand.
Also please add execution from front after stagger.