Caveat that I don’t usually play this kind of game. That said, the parry timing feels really bad to me. I have no idea when to press the parry button. The timing feels different for different enemies. This doesn’t feel like a fun mechanic that I can learn to get good at. It just feels random and frustrating and I hate it.
That’s true, it is. Some bosses will have voluntarily looooong telegraph windows (when they wind up their attacks), which play with your nerves.
Parrying can be extremely frustrating at first if you’re not used to it because it’s very punishing. Failing to parry a boss can lead to death very very fast.
Have you tried lowering the difficulty or playing a mage class? Playing in a lower difficulty is a fantastic way to learn patterns and then apply them in higher difficulties, if you so wish.
It doesn’t feel like a difficulty slider issue. Turning down the difficulty would probably just mean the enemies have less health, something like that. it wouldn’t give me the ability to successfully time the dodges. Right now the game feels like it’s impossible to time the parays correctly. it’s either too early or too soon, and it feels sluggish and hard to control. There is a lack of visual and tactile feedback to tell me if I’m too early or too late. Two parries back to back can be one late, one early, no middle ground.
and honestly that’s not the only thing that feels bad about the combat. getting stuck on the enemies and the surroundings doesn’t feel good. It feels bad. maybe I’m just bad. or maybe the combat needs to be improved, given that people like me will be playing the game.
No, it’s more. It also allows you to get way way more chances before getting the ultimate punishment. You can have a big foe hit you 3, 4, 5 times before death, giving you a lot of time to get away, heal, and get back. This can turn seconds of tries into minutes, better learning.
Unless you really enjoy being punished, try out another difficulty.
It might just be a skill issue, yes, I am famously mediocre at most games… but at the same time, i have played games like darksouls. The parry timing feels worse than darksouls 3, and not “harder” but just “random” to me. And when dodging I get caught on so many things in the environment, including the enemies.
with darksouls 3 I felt like I could understand what to do and gradually get better at it, even though it was hard. with NRFTW it just feels clunky and frustrating and not improvable for me.
There’s gonna be a class that is all about parries in the full version of the game (I assume it’s gonna have some sort of advantage to make parrying easier) so if you really enjoy a play style that relies on parries you might find that class a good go-to!
I’m sure you all just use lightweight builds and dodge everything. thats what everybody does. it’s easy to dodge because you dont have to have perfect timing, just get out of the way fast. parry on the other hand is just completely useless. impossible to tell when the parry window is. why would anybody use the parry mechanic in the game when it’s build so impossibly frustrating and useless like it is.
i would like to play with a shield and use the parry mechanic. i am currently playing with a shield. despite that i do not use the parry mechanic in practice. why? because it is always effective to dodge away from danger, while the parry mechanic usually just doesnt work. if the devs dont want players to use parry, just remove it from the game. either that or fix it. the fact that everyone uses a lightweight build should be a clue about what is going on with this mechanic.
That how it supposed to be. Parry is just a very useful tool for the “more skilled” players, although it’s ridiculously easy right now. The only thing that can be hard at first is that it’s activated on release of the button, unless you rebind parry and block to two different buttons.
The parry window is very long, just try to parry a bit early and you’ll likely be successful.
I agree 100% with Harambe, the parrying mechanic is completely random.
Firstly, it depends on whether you’re using KB&M or controller, it’s almost broken on KB&M, better for controller but still not properly useful as a consistent, learned and predictable mechanic.
Further, I’d add that any character using a shield should have an in built advantage with the parry mechanic, giving more use to a shield than simply blocking. Also, several enemies feature a thrust attack that simply can’t be parried, which doesn’t make any sense at all to a shield user.
As to sBAM point about “just a useful tool”, has sBAM done many of the “parry” challenges? Where you often have to get 20 parries. If, like me, you attempt these in one go, where your objective isn’t to kill the enemy but farm parries, you really learn the true randomness of this mechanic.
Fortunately it’s a minor feature of this great game and can effectively be ignored or bypassed. Although they do include quite a number of charm buffs that rely on parrying.
Uhm what is broken about it?
There are a few slight windup frames from pushing key/button and the parry window itself, then you’re golden.
If you keep missing out with your window, that’s usually due to the enemy’s weapon not hitting you in that timeframe. Learning enemy patterns is actually the real crux in this game, that takes way longer then to understand the parry mechanic.
Silas
Thanx Silas.
While the parry mechanic isn’t especially common in video games, in over 25 years of gaming I have played enough games with parry to know when it’s good and when it’s bad. I stick with my appraisal of the noticeable difference between KB&M vs Controller too. I’ve used both, and it’s better with a Controller, as is most gameplay in NRftW.
It’s still a fabulous game overall and parrying is a minor element fortunately.
let me be clear: parrying in NRFTW is harder than in dark souls 3, and not in a good way. In a bad and random unpredictable way. In dark souls when i miss a parry, I can see whether i was too early or too late. next time i know what to do. In NRFTW, the enemies are just flailing all over the place. They have tenticles and barnacles and multiple arms and glowing things just sloshing about. They go into a frenzy, and some point of that frenzy is evidently when they are attacking you. Good luck figuring out when that is! Your parry is either too early or too late, and next time you fight that enemy you’ll just have to click the button randomly, because you haven’t been able to learn anything from repeatedly missing your parries.
I find parrying in dark souls easier than in NRFTW, because in dark souls it is telegraphed in an understandable way.
Yes that is exactly what is required to learn the game. The lads in discord can help you further if you have particular problems analyzing a certain enemy, but overall the process for learning an enemy attack and how to parry it is going through trial and error and see what works.
For example, kicks can be parried (the giant club wielders) if you do it quite early.
That is a wild statement. I’ve played 600 hours of this game with only keyboard and mouse and I’d say I do pretty well. Of course, if this is something to your own character that is understandable, but please don’t state it as fact then 
.
I’m still not understanding in particular what makes you say parry is better on controller, does it feel more reponsive to you? I’m not aware of any differences between the methods. On keyboard you press a button (or Right Mouse Button in my case), on controller it’s different?
Silas
Thanx Silas,
I’m not trying to be contentious or bombastic here, but as Harambe has just clarified, unlike other games featuring parry, we feel incapable of learning the technique due to various factors.
As to your “wild statement” reference, your 600hrs trumps my 350hrs, so I bow to your superior experience. However, that doesn’t alter the validity of our initial premise. I readily retract the term “broken” but it still remains very difficult for us, and we both have quite a lot of experience with this mechanic in other games.
Your question about Controller vs KB&M, I’ve noticed that even though, due to a lack of learnability, I end up merely spamming the buttons in both cases, with the controller I seem to get noticeably more parries.
I appreciate your input and understand your defensive posture for this fabulous game, but I think we’re all here to offer the Devs genuine feedback into various aspects of their game, and I certainly only wish to assist them in any small way to perfect their game. Though with the release happening this autumn, these critiques may well be too late. 
Ah sorry if I sounded defensive, appreciate your perspective nonetheless, thanks for taking the time to reply .
Silas
Let me start with a question: How many hours have you spent specifically practicing parrying, rather than simply playing the game and occasionally attempting a parry?
Parrying in skill-based games like Wicked has always been in the “hard to learn” category, especially for casual players. That’s an intentional design choice, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Parrying is meant for players who are willing to invest time - sometimes a lot of time - into mastering it. There are plenty of people on the forum and discord who can complete the entire game relying heavily on parries.
You mentioned that you had no trouble parrying in souls games. I wonder if part of the difference comes from Wicked’s camera perspective and how it affects timing perception.
Aside from that, I suspect you’re often reacting by mashing buttons rather than making deliberate inputs, which may be contributing to your difficulties. If you’re truly determined to master parrying, I would recommend approaching it as a skill to be learned systematically.
Start by learning the active parry window of your weapon. An easy way to do this is to take an endgame character wearing a full plate set into a new realm on the lowest difficulty. Find a sword-wielding enemy in the first area and practice parrying without killing him. At this stage, your goal is not to parry consistently, but to develop an understanding of when your weapon’s parry window is actually active. Recording your practice sessions and reviewing them frame by frame can help speed up the learning process.
Once you’re comfortable with that, move on to learning enemy attack patterns. This is the most difficult and time-consuming part of mastering parries because every enemy behaves differently, has different attack timings, and may even have attacks that cannot be parried. This stage can easily take hundreds of hours. The best approach is to combine dedicated parry practice with regular gameplay, gradually building familiarity with each enemy’s moveset and timing.
Just because you’ve been playing video games for over 25 years doesn’t automatically mean you’re right.
First, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either keyboard and mouse or a controller when it comes to parrying. Both are perfectly viable. I primarily play on keyboard and mouse and can complete the game relying almost entirely on parries.
You also mentioned that shields should provide an advantage when parrying. To the best of my knowledge, they already do. Shields increase the active parry window, making the timing more forgiving.
As for unparryable thrust attacks, I’m not aware of any. Granted, the last time I played was a few months ago, but I’m fairly certain that most, if not all, thrust attacks can be parried.
Yeah, parrying is so random man… It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with player timing or execution. It’s obviously the game’s fault.
Interesting response StivenHunt.
You suggest you know that Moon Studios made a design choice to make parrying difficult. Are you part of the team?
Harambe’s simple statement, " the parry timing feels really bad to me" still stands, coz it’s what they feel, and matches with my own experience. I stand by my 25yrs experience quote too. I am right in so much as that experience allows me a valid feel for how game mechanics work in practice. In most games, you attempt a certain move, learn when the timing windows are and improve. It’s a simple, effective strategy. Here though, that process feels inconsistent. Your suggestion that we make a research project out of it demonstrates peculiar thinking about video games.
I’ll finally say that I have greatest success using the controller, so there must be a difference, and even with a controller, there absolutely is a thrust attack that I’ve never been able to parry. It’s telegraphed and can be dodged but I maintain it can’t be parried. Ask whoever on the team is responsible for the parry mechanic, and I’m confident they’ll back me up.
No. If I were part of the development team, I wouldn’t be able to engage with people on the forum in that manner.
It’s an educated guess. This game was marketed - and still is - as a skill-based game, and the CEO of Moon Studios has compared it to souls-likes numerous times in interviews. Skill-based games, by definition, are meant to be difficult and require player skill to fully master.
On top of that, the difficulty of the parry mechanic has been discussed hundreds of times since the game entered early access. If this wasn’t an intentional design choice, they would have changed it already to some garbage like “hold to parry” or “you can’t parry attacks that have a bright red flash”.
What is even the point of talking about how something “feels”? That’s an extremely weak argument for making a hard-to-learn mechanic in a skill-based game easier.
That’s exactly the problem, having a “feel” for how mechanics work in practice is not the same as understanding how they actually work.
If other players can consistently perform the mechanic you’re criticizing, then your personal feeling is evidence of your experience with the system, not evidence that the system itself is flawed.
Sure, but who said Wicked is supposed to be like most games? You know what most games also have in common? They never sell millions of copies. Being different from the norm isn’t automatically a flaw, especially when that difference is part of the game’s identity.
It is perfectly possible to learn parrying purely by feel, that’s how I learned most of it myself. You’ve said you’re struggling to learn it that way, so I suggested an alternative approach.
Either way, mastering parries takes a huge amount of time and practice. There are no shortcuts and “Parry 101: Master It in One Evening” guides. Like any high-skill mechanic, it requires repetition, experience, and a willingness to fail repeatedly while learning.
I have great success using keyboard and mouse, and as you can see from the video in my previous post, it works just fine. So which is it: the game’s fault or a skill issue?
Which enemy uses that attack? Give me the delinquent’s name or a picture, and we’ll be able to investigate further.