Seems like the biggest difference is keeping contact with the weapon to exercise control, rather than just deflecting the attack. Always good to see the differences in the real-life equivalent!
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
@@user-bz6gh5ng2m in fact, the first main boss in Elden Ring has to cut off pieces of people that can level up (like the player character) and stitch them to himself in order to mimicking the act of leveling up
My personnal approach to unrealistic dark souls mechanics is basically this: they are a visual manifestation of common techniques enhanced to be more visually cool. The move in of itself doesn't really work, but deflect, weapon control and counterattack are essential in martial arts, with timing at the core.
Also Fromsoft overexaggerate most if not all player animations to make them easily readable so that players can tell what their character and other player characters are doing. The big wide arc of the medium shield parry is very recogniseable, so that the player gets substantial visual feedback that their button input did the correct action, and any player on the recieving end immediately undetstands what happened.
Are you saying that we should accept that games sometimes show representation of abstract ideas rather than perfect attempts at realism? But that goes against everything AAA action games have been doing for decades!
This video is also good to see the struggle of fighting against someone with a longer reach 2:43. Skall is completely stretched just to hit him with the tip of the sword and the two handed swordsmen with the body relaxed is like... "if this wasn't an example of a parry I would have hit before you even get close to me". Another proof that spears are amazing.
Um greatswords and spears are disadvantaged against shields. Sure two unskilled opponents, one with long stick, one with shield will have a pretty even fight, with the long stick with a slight advantage. BUT give the same tool sets to two skilled opponents, the spear has only one shot, and if they miss it, the shield just gets close enough for the spear to be useless
It really depends on the armor level tho, remember the spearman can thrust really fast at the head and legs alternately here, which a small round shield would have difficulty protecting you from
The boys and I tested the parry ourselves (in a completely safe fashion) and concluded that for the parry to work against a full swing strike, the defender needs to intercept with sufficient force and thus timing to shock their opponents grip on the weapon. We found that when done "right" it actually hurt the strikers hand somewhat, thus loosening their grip or as Skall puts it: breaking the structure Cool to watch!
I love how your analysis always acknowledges the role of exaggeration for the sake of clarity and animation. Context is important with things like this
I think the downsides you go over are kinda the point. Enemies don't necessarily *react* to a parry the same way a real person would, but the parry *timing* is very easy to screw up, and you're gonna take a hit if you do.
Well that’s his point though, do these techniques work in a real world setting, or is this another case of ‘game sword go swing swong’. He remarked many times that there are limitations to how realistic a ‘parry’ can be in a souls game, especially when you can’t block with both the left AND right hand weapons
@@Gacho39That's what the comment is talking about... It's the same either way, your gonna get punished for doing this shit if you don't nail the parry in IRL or in the game
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
I’ve seen a lot of polls from the channel asking what type of stuff I want to see. This is it right here. Specifically trying something and talking about why it does and doesn’t work without discarding it wholesale simply because it comes from a viedogame or whatever. The video is also exactly as long as it needs to be. I love a 30 minute video, but there’s actually got to be 30 minutes of content. And I have a huge respect for when a video has a little over four minutes of content, that’s exactly how long it is. I’ll always watch, like, and usually comment on videos like that (assuming the youtube beast of castle aaarrrgghh actually lets me know it exists)
Whata cool is that the game does take these sort of ideas into consideration. There are partial parries (you are too early on the parry, and you take some damage), charge attacks to bait parries etc. Still a fun vid
I like these videos. Realistic analysis of popular video game fight mechanics. It’s fun to see how practical (or impractical) the movements really are when used in real life
As far as the different parry animations you see, Bucklers and similar shields have always had that style of parry animation, whereas larger shields (except Greatshields) have always had that "sideswipe" style. The Buckler type shields are better at parrying, as a tradeoff for having lower defensive values for blocking.
The parrying dagger also has a slightly different animation from the buckler, with slightly different timing as well. iirc it's almost up to personal preference whether the buckler or parrying dagger has a better parry.
I'm curious about the mechanics of just how far you would want to extend your shield arm to minimize danger to yourself. Too far and you leave yourself open; too close and the attacker has more power behind the attack. I'd love to see a video about the ideal mechanics for successful shield parrying. Great video, Skall!
Skal, have you seen the gam "We Who Are About to Die". It has an interesting (if clunky) combat system where you position your weapon and shield manually, similar to Mount and Blade. Looks interesting.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is also quite good. The "stances" are a bit stiff, but you get the basics. What I really like about this combat system are the riposts, espeacially if you have a shield equipped. It is not like the Souls-games, where you swing it around, to try to deflect the weapon. Your charakter is shielding himself, while guiding the enemies weapon away, to get a poke or a cut into the opening. You can see that it is in no way "stylish" for dramatic effect but just clean effecient blocking and striking
@@R4KK3SH Erm... I've loathed Kingdom Come since my friend told me he could go through whole fights just doing the "aggressive parrying", as it is perfectly safe and takes some of the opponent's life... You call this realistic? 😏
@@miceliusbeverus6447 You're absolutely right, taking down hordes of enemies just by parrying is totally unrealistic. But I was talking about the movements behind it, not the mechanics and behavior of the AI. The aim of the fight is to overcome the opponent's defenses and land a hit. In this game, the character does this by directing the opponent's blade past him and taking advantage of the opening this creates. A fairly common tactic in martial arts. 😉
@@R4KK3SH Sure. But I am doubtful if you can call a game realistic if the whole fight is about mashing a single button... I would say that a game is better when you have to start a counter-attack (however irrealistic its animation) at the right moment and then pass on smoothly to executing your attack; especially when another factor is considered, namely that different actions open up for different counter-measures... If this is rendered well, the main idea of fight is well presented in my view... I don't like getting fixated on not-perfectly-rendered animations instead of this rhythm "if I do A, than you can do B or C, but if you're late, I'll respond by D"... So to make the game more challenging - and, paradoxically, even more realistic in the broader sense - I would play a game like Kingdom Come without parrying at all!!! No matter how realistic it's animation might be... I am not sure if I managed to make myself clear 😏 Appreciate you answered me ☺
@@miceliusbeverus6447 I think this is a design decision. The game itself is quite...challenging when playing it for the first time. You shouldn't overwhelm the player with complicated combat mechanics. So it's kept simple enough that everyone kind of gets the hang of it. I would also like to see that you have some power of choice about how to react to a certain attack or how your opponent reacts accordingly if you make a wrong decision. But that's why it's more of a sandbox game than a big fantasy game. The combat is simple enough for everyone to understand, but still somewhat challenging. Of course, it could also be that I'm not quite as good at the game as you are and therefore quickly become satisfied with this type of mechanic, who knows. 🤷♂ Basically, you can talk to me about almost anything and if someone brings up a good point, I usually reply to it.😉
I love the appearance of Form Software parries. I used to be cock blocked from enjoying them some years ago. But today I can finally separate art and realism.
Great video, really shows the importance of contact and keeping your opponent's weapon under control, something hard to do in games because you don't actually have contact because you just pass the weapon through a hitbox.
My personal take on the swinging parry in the SoulsRing series is that it makes sense based on the attacks it's used against. With all the enemies being shown to put their whole back into the swings with no intention of feinting or of disguising their timing, it makes decent enough sense to exploit that by adding some more kinetic energy into your parrying to cancel out the extra energy the enemies put into their swings. Especially since, from playing, the attacks you'd often be trying to parry are the really massive and telegraphed ones which, realistically, would be a bit tricky for you to just take on at the peak of their momentum (as you do in-game) with a more reserved, closed and realistic parry. All in all, glad to see some more SoulsRing. Really liking this format by the way, short, informative, fun and to the point. Hope you're having a good time with these, I'd love to see more of them.
The other problem is the stager of the enemy afterwards. They fall back like a truck hit them. A trained knight, a 8 foot humanoid who apparently knows how too wield weapons or a monster flounders like an 8 year old clumsily falling back because you waved your hand at them. You shouldn't be able to parry large monsters anyways. As soon as you try their attack should smash through the parry and into you head. Because...that's what would happen.
Well... When was the last time that someone was completely stunned and knelt there motionless for a couple of seconds just because their arm got swiped aside?
Many people lose it completely if you parry an attack they felt proud of, at least in an intermediate level in my muay Thai gym. It's funny! They feel proud, they get parried, and they eat a combo, mentally stunned, and then they respond with something random and panicked.
@@theodorealenas3171 This is not the same though, martials arts thai boxing parries are way more difficult to accomplish, it is basically a whole different move. With swords/shields, not so much.
“I’m gonna parry the cars”, that is what I thought you were going to do in the beginning to illustrate the absurdity of parrying something of that size 😆
In pvp you do things like wait half a second to go around a parry, or depending on the game attack from the other side, or use an attack that's less vulnerable to parry, like a shove or a kick, or just an extra large two handed attack. But if the parry does land, you can assume to lose at least half your hp,.
You should take a look at the parry on Sekiro, its a more deflective move that doesn't try to interrupt the opponent but rather throw him off balance in search for the right time to deliver a lethal blow. That game also has the mikiri counter which is just flexing on your enemy and i love it. really cool game.
I mean, you are basically describing how a PvP match goes, if your opponent sees that you're going for a parry and he anticipates this, he'll probably faint or wait for the parry and then counter attack, this is why it's so risky to go for parries regardless of how foolproof it would seem. Although it does look silly when the attack comes from the right and you parry to the left and it works anyways, but adding different parry directions like in for honor would make it quite more complicated.
Maybe we can see more animations adepting to context in the future in games with action combat, the technology seams to be getting ready for that. At least in Battlefield and CoD, it seams that more and more variations of animations get implemented.
Have you seen great weapon parries from Dark Souls 2? A mechanic unique to that entry, any two hander sword to colossal ultra great sword could perform a parry, the animation is rather neat as it does look like exerting the weight of the weapon to deflect an attack.
Very nice. There is only one thing I see that Skallagrim could do better here. And that is that he currently blocks the strength of the opponent's blade, which still gives the opponent a chance to escape with a short "slip" or "flip" of the sword and meet him with a counterattack. If, on the other hand, the block is aimed at the wrist or at least the hilt of the opponent's sword, there is less danger of the opponent slipping out. That as constructive criticism and otherwise: great video. :-)
and what about the parrying dagger and rapier/curved swords main hand and off-hand parry? Great content, thanks for sharing it with us Also, a look at interactions on the game with thursting weapons, and blunt weapons(parrying them too)? (impact damage) Swords always get the most of us haha
Skall, I wonder if you have ever made a vid that discuss the Combat Philosophy rather than the practical practice of certain game animation, things that are a bit more abstract and theoretical base. Though not sure if something like that can even be made
I need to work on my sword and shield fighting. My issue is that I'm left handed so since their weapon arm is on my weapon arm I end up just fencing while holding a lump of wood. It also doesn't help that there isn't nay historical treatises on left handed sword and shield like they do with rapier or smallsword. There are a few techniques that larpers use that I may try to implement.
A couple bosses in the souls series (the ivory King most recognised) are left handed and a lot harder to fight because of it, because it changes the way you need to dodge and I always felt like the timing was also switched up because of their handedness
I'd also love to see you do a video addressing the fact that a lot of enemies in the Souls games delay their attacks to try and throw off timing. I don't mean feints, which ARE valid maneuvers, I mean just drawing your sword back to strike and then making the whole strike extremely delayed and slow, which in reality just gives the opponent more time to prepare for the attack.
Margit can eat 2-3 strikes while delaying his stupid cane swings, it's quite fun once you get past the temptation to roll on the preparation and wait for the executive motion instead.
@@PXCharon Yeah, enemies having hyper armor during attack animations is the *only* reason they can get away with those super delayed attacks, because in real life, hauling back for a massive swing and then holding it is a really good way to get stabbed, thus why all attacks tend to be snappy, quick, and bring you back into a defensive position as fast as possible. Of course, I understand why attacks are exaggerated and delayed in a video game, since there's a difference between reacting to an opponent IRL and doing it in a video game, so it's always going to be a compromise somewhere. Still, a Souls-style game with more realistic combat animations would be a treat, I think.
@@jessicaslater4243 The issue with realistic animations is that we wouldn't be able to react in time. Skilled fighters can move very fast, a simple thrust with a standard sword would be impossible to even block, let alone roll away from.
I was really hoping you would discuss the blade Perry as well I found it very interesting and if you tighten the motions you can kind of just do a reverse Melanie to achieve the same
Could you also touch on the way they hold shields? I’m no expert but the way they hold kite shields longwise rather than with a horizontal grip just doesn’t seem right to me Looks cool though
I understood that the parry in elden ring is more like hitting the hand of the opponent, at least I remember reading a comment saying to parry the hand not the weapon and it became pretty easy
As I've been practicing with sword and buckler I've been instructed that the buckler should primarily protect your sword hand to minimize the chance of it being sniped by your opponent. In actual practice, against human targets anyways, the parry you see in these games are huge motions that expose a lot of vulnerability if you do them. It's been really interesting seeing the way games represent swordsmanship vs actual practice.
I wish how like there’s a guard counter when you block an attack with the shield and then follow up with an attack that the parry came with a built-in counterattack or riposte
Another Elden Ring Realism video idea could be the Heavy Thrusting Weapons like the “Great Epee”. Could they be usable? What would their upsides and downsides be?
1:11 if this man still kept moving his sword towards you, you'd be kinda dead, because his sword bounced, and i believe it bounces a lot more when its heavy object swinged at full speed
Short video, but I love it. Would love to see you go all in and deep dive more into parries in general. I know you've done similar videos, but maybe it's time to revisit? :D
I never really thought about how these game mechanics would work in real life, but I think your comment about animation conventions being used to exaggerate and make it more visual for the player to respond make more sense given how you show that this parry (at least in concept) works
It's a beat. Those exist in swordplay, but are really risky and mostly seem unnecessary. If you and your opponent have heavy weapons, you may need to really whack his to bring it offline, and hopefully he'll be slow to recover because of its weight. But there's a fair chance he'll just slip/wind his weapon off of your beat. Attacking weapons with a beat is very risky, as the opponent can easily move his weapon and dodge your strike, and still be in a position to attack you while you're open.
Question Skall, Would blocking/failing to parry against an opponent considerably stronger than you attacking with force just cause you to injure yourself i.e. a wrist, shoulder or elbow fracture/ sprain. I'm just considering the concept of energy dispersion and diversion when your foe isn't just a human adversary and the force applied is much greater than the expected force of normal weapon strike.
@@moojoy1920 and there was the parry dagger in DS1 as well. I'm not sure if that one would really count, but you could attack with it so I'm counting it
A lot of DS1 weapons (daggers, curved swords, rapiers, katanas, and fists) could parry while in off-hand. DS2 just expanded that to all non-polearms and added the ability to parry with a main-hand weapon.
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
"Simply stopping and then hitting" is what many enemies in the games do: delayed attacks. As you can guess, we unanimously hate that. Players have that option too, with charged strong (R2) attacks that we can use right away or hold for up to 2 seconds. Good players will know to adapt to how their opponents act and react to properly get hits in.
It seems like the whole reason that parry would work is mainly when the opponent either doesn’t have enough skill to change the attack, or the observation skills to see the parry and react. So the more skilled the opponent the less likely that parry would work flat out. And I get the feeling it would work even less often as you fought them longer. Good info to know
Thankfully, you're not maidenless Skall. Joke aside, on your ending point, I've actually killed *two* bosses in Elden Ring, the Tree Sentinel, and the Dragon Agheel, just by standing up on top of a high ledge out of their reach, and shooting them full of arrows and bolts until they finally died; same with the gladiator with the chained hammers dungeon boss, just that I was on the same level as him because the room we fought in didn't *have* ledges, and so I shot him dead before he could get close enough to me to attack. And by the way, my killing Agheel in that fashion was my literal *first* attempt at beating him. PS: I was using a greatbow against the gladiator boss, and so the arrows knocked him down every time; and I used the same greatbow against Agheel.
Can you do a video on total war warhammer 3's weapons. I always thought they where really cool and grounded but then Kislev got these great maces that look way too big and it upsets me when I look at them lol. Especially cuz a lot of the weapons especially for the humans look so grounded and normal
hey skall I have been looking at getting a spear and saw you had the long hewing spearhead from windlass just wondering if it has held up great or maybe just go for the leaf spearhead? Or if anyone has had experience with windlass spears and knows which one would be the most durable thanks.
Seems like the biggest difference is keeping contact with the weapon to exercise control, rather than just deflecting the attack. Always good to see the differences in the real-life equivalent!
*slaps sword away nonchalantly*
@@davidp6913 gotta love fiore
@@davidp6913
maria: *parries you*
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
Bosses that can cut down large trees and pillars can be stopped by a puny parry.
Tbf your character can lift a stone hammer the size of a small car with one hand if you spec it in strength so it kinda makes sense
@@K40005 Agreed, you’re basically a god in these games.
@@user-bz6gh5ng2m in fact, the first main boss in Elden Ring has to cut off pieces of people that can level up (like the player character) and stitch them to himself in order to mimicking the act of leveling up
By a 'lil 30 cm shield
With a f’ing buckler. No thanks.
My personnal approach to unrealistic dark souls mechanics is basically this: they are a visual manifestation of common techniques enhanced to be more visually cool. The move in of itself doesn't really work, but deflect, weapon control and counterattack are essential in martial arts, with timing at the core.
Also Fromsoft overexaggerate most if not all player animations to make them easily readable so that players can tell what their character and other player characters are doing.
The big wide arc of the medium shield parry is very recogniseable, so that the player gets substantial visual feedback that their button input did the correct action, and any player on the recieving end immediately undetstands what happened.
Are you saying that we should accept that games sometimes show representation of abstract ideas rather than perfect attempts at realism? But that goes against everything AAA action games have been doing for decades!
I was about to say exactly that, and I checked if someone said it already, and your comment was at the top
@@QuantumHistorian
Cant tell if this is sarcasm or not.
@@goosemanVEVO thank you, that's how I know I'm doing it right.
1:35 Yeah, that's a trick that Elden Ring bosses tend to do an infuriating amount
This video is also good to see the struggle of fighting against someone with a longer reach 2:43. Skall is completely stretched just to hit him with the tip of the sword and the two handed swordsmen with the body relaxed is like... "if this wasn't an example of a parry I would have hit before you even get close to me". Another proof that spears are amazing.
Um greatswords and spears are disadvantaged against shields. Sure two unskilled opponents, one with long stick, one with shield will have a pretty even fight, with the long stick with a slight advantage. BUT give the same tool sets to two skilled opponents, the spear has only one shot, and if they miss it, the shield just gets close enough for the spear to be useless
Yeah, two handed spears are terrible against swords and shields.
It really depends on the armor level tho, remember the spearman can thrust really fast at the head and legs alternately here, which a small round shield would have difficulty protecting you from
and they can do it while stepping back
@@declanthehelper456 what about greatswords tho
I like your recent shorter videos. Nice and concise. Straight to the point!
Edit: grammar
*concise
@@sparkyphantom92 thanks
The boys and I tested the parry ourselves (in a completely safe fashion) and concluded that for the parry to work against a full swing strike, the defender needs to intercept with sufficient force and thus timing to shock their opponents grip on the weapon. We found that when done "right" it actually hurt the strikers hand somewhat, thus loosening their grip or as Skall puts it: breaking the structure
Cool to watch!
I love how your analysis always acknowledges the role of exaggeration for the sake of clarity and animation. Context is important with things like this
great performance on the "epic beard NPC guy"!
no nonsense or cross talk and attacks perfectly on queue with your talking
I think the downsides you go over are kinda the point. Enemies don't necessarily *react* to a parry the same way a real person would, but the parry *timing* is very easy to screw up, and you're gonna take a hit if you do.
Well that’s his point though, do these techniques work in a real world setting, or is this another case of ‘game sword go swing swong’. He remarked many times that there are limitations to how realistic a ‘parry’ can be in a souls game, especially when you can’t block with both the left AND right hand weapons
What? It's only a flesh wound.
Well yeah, he's talking about real life, not the game
@@Gacho39That's what the comment is talking about... It's the same either way, your gonna get punished for doing this shit if you don't nail the parry in IRL or in the game
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
i swear you're the first person to make a video on this topic. gg
I’ve seen a lot of polls from the channel asking what type of stuff I want to see. This is it right here. Specifically trying something and talking about why it does and doesn’t work without discarding it wholesale simply because it comes from a viedogame or whatever. The video is also exactly as long as it needs to be. I love a 30 minute video, but there’s actually got to be 30 minutes of content. And I have a huge respect for when a video has a little over four minutes of content, that’s exactly how long it is. I’ll always watch, like, and usually comment on videos like that (assuming the youtube beast of castle aaarrrgghh actually lets me know it exists)
Whata cool is that the game does take these sort of ideas into consideration. There are partial parries (you are too early on the parry, and you take some damage), charge attacks to bait parries etc. Still a fun vid
0:25 not normally a fan of these, but that was funny and fit well
I like these videos. Realistic analysis of popular video game fight mechanics. It’s fun to see how practical (or impractical) the movements really are when used in real life
As far as the different parry animations you see, Bucklers and similar shields have always had that style of parry animation, whereas larger shields (except Greatshields) have always had that "sideswipe" style. The Buckler type shields are better at parrying, as a tradeoff for having lower defensive values for blocking.
The parrying dagger also has a slightly different animation from the buckler, with slightly different timing as well.
iirc it's almost up to personal preference whether the buckler or parrying dagger has a better parry.
I'm curious about the mechanics of just how far you would want to extend your shield arm to minimize danger to yourself. Too far and you leave yourself open; too close and the attacker has more power behind the attack. I'd love to see a video about the ideal mechanics for successful shield parrying. Great video, Skall!
Quick and clean Video 👌
bro is the real life Soldier of God, Rick
Well said! I love bucklers and seeing some focus on them is awesome!
Skal, have you seen the gam "We Who Are About to Die". It has an interesting (if clunky) combat system where you position your weapon and shield manually, similar to Mount and Blade. Looks interesting.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is also quite good. The "stances" are a bit stiff, but you get the basics. What I really like about this combat system are the riposts, espeacially if you have a shield equipped. It is not like the Souls-games, where you swing it around, to try to deflect the weapon. Your charakter is shielding himself, while guiding the enemies weapon away, to get a poke or a cut into the opening. You can see that it is in no way "stylish" for dramatic effect but just clean effecient blocking and striking
@@R4KK3SH Erm... I've loathed Kingdom Come since my friend told me he could go through whole fights just doing the "aggressive parrying", as it is perfectly safe and takes some of the opponent's life... You call this realistic? 😏
@@miceliusbeverus6447 You're absolutely right, taking down hordes of enemies just by parrying is totally unrealistic. But I was talking about the movements behind it, not the mechanics and behavior of the AI.
The aim of the fight is to overcome the opponent's defenses and land a hit. In this game, the character does this by directing the opponent's blade past him and taking advantage of the opening this creates.
A fairly common tactic in martial arts. 😉
@@R4KK3SH Sure. But I am doubtful if you can call a game realistic if the whole fight is about mashing a single button... I would say that a game is better when you have to start a counter-attack (however irrealistic its animation) at the right moment and then pass on smoothly to executing your attack; especially when another factor is considered, namely that different actions open up for different counter-measures... If this is rendered well, the main idea of fight is well presented in my view... I don't like getting fixated on not-perfectly-rendered animations instead of this rhythm "if I do A, than you can do B or C, but if you're late, I'll respond by D"... So to make the game more challenging - and, paradoxically, even more realistic in the broader sense - I would play a game like Kingdom Come without parrying at all!!! No matter how realistic it's animation might be...
I am not sure if I managed to make myself clear 😏 Appreciate you answered me ☺
@@miceliusbeverus6447 I think this is a design decision. The game itself is quite...challenging when playing it for the first time. You shouldn't overwhelm the player with complicated combat mechanics. So it's kept simple enough that everyone kind of gets the hang of it.
I would also like to see that you have some power of choice about how to react to a certain attack or how your opponent reacts accordingly if you make a wrong decision.
But that's why it's more of a sandbox game than a big fantasy game. The combat is simple enough for everyone to understand, but still somewhat challenging.
Of course, it could also be that I'm not quite as good at the game as you are and therefore quickly become satisfied with this type of mechanic, who knows. 🤷♂
Basically, you can talk to me about almost anything and if someone brings up a good point, I usually reply to it.😉
Looking good, Skall. Glad to see you and your pals rocking it. :-)
I love the appearance of Form Software parries.
I used to be cock blocked from enjoying them some years ago. But today I can finally separate art and realism.
Great video, really shows the importance of contact and keeping your opponent's weapon under control, something hard to do in games because you don't actually have contact because you just pass the weapon through a hitbox.
This is the kinda content you need.
I mean, more realistic than rolling away, probably
My personal take on the swinging parry in the SoulsRing series is that it makes sense based on the attacks it's used against. With all the enemies being shown to put their whole back into the swings with no intention of feinting or of disguising their timing, it makes decent enough sense to exploit that by adding some more kinetic energy into your parrying to cancel out the extra energy the enemies put into their swings. Especially since, from playing, the attacks you'd often be trying to parry are the really massive and telegraphed ones which, realistically, would be a bit tricky for you to just take on at the peak of their momentum (as you do in-game) with a more reserved, closed and realistic parry.
All in all, glad to see some more SoulsRing. Really liking this format by the way, short, informative, fun and to the point. Hope you're having a good time with these, I'd love to see more of them.
Awesome beard on your friend there!
Kinda odd having a shorter video, but I'm into it. Cheers
I am making a game with stylized historical combat. This kind of content is extremely helpful :)
Fun stuff Skall 😊 Thanks man 🍻
The other problem is the stager of the enemy afterwards. They fall back like a truck hit them. A trained knight, a 8 foot humanoid who apparently knows how too wield weapons or a monster flounders like an 8 year old clumsily falling back because you waved your hand at them.
You shouldn't be able to parry large monsters anyways. As soon as you try their attack should smash through the parry and into you head. Because...that's what would happen.
Funny video. I get flashbacks from the realistic fencing game.
Keep it up.
Well... When was the last time that someone was completely stunned and knelt there motionless for a couple of seconds just because their arm got swiped aside?
Many people lose it completely if you parry an attack they felt proud of, at least in an intermediate level in my muay Thai gym. It's funny!
They feel proud, they get parried, and they eat a combo, mentally stunned, and then they respond with something random and panicked.
@@theodorealenas3171 This is not the same though, martials arts thai boxing parries are way more difficult to accomplish, it is basically a whole different move. With swords/shields, not so much.
@@sgorgardr227 Yes. But I bet they do react in the same comedical style if you punish a proud move.
Nice! Where are the practice swords from btw?
The arming sword is from Purpleheart Armory (it's an I:33 style); the longsword is from Black Armoury, a HEMA shop based in France :)
i love this content.
I feel dumb and satisfied
“I’m gonna parry the cars”, that is what I thought you were going to do in the beginning to illustrate the absurdity of parrying something of that size 😆
Great video bud
In pvp you do things like wait half a second to go around a parry, or depending on the game attack from the other side, or use an attack that's less vulnerable to parry, like a shove or a kick, or just an extra large two handed attack. But if the parry does land, you can assume to lose at least half your hp,.
You should take a look at the parry on Sekiro, its a more deflective move that doesn't try to interrupt the opponent but rather throw him off balance in search for the right time to deliver a lethal blow.
That game also has the mikiri counter which is just flexing on your enemy and i love it.
really cool game.
I'm glad that Skall' wears' his protection.
That beard alone would stagger me and leave me open for a quick kill. Magnificent :O
fun fact: with sword and buckler in elden ring, you can actually stab while being covered/blocking with the shield
I like and comment for the algorithm gods of youtube. Entertaining video, and video idea as usual. :)
I mean, you are basically describing how a PvP match goes, if your opponent sees that you're going for a parry and he anticipates this, he'll probably faint or wait for the parry and then counter attack, this is why it's so risky to go for parries regardless of how foolproof it would seem.
Although it does look silly when the attack comes from the right and you parry to the left and it works anyways, but adding different parry directions like in for honor would make it quite more complicated.
Nice work
Skal, PLEASE do a fight analysis of the High Isle trailer for elder scrolls online, it’s blowing up on the internet right now
Maybe we can see more animations adepting to context in the future in games with action combat, the technology seams to be getting ready for that. At least in Battlefield and CoD, it seams that more and more variations of animations get implemented.
Next video should be on car parrying. Demonstrations would be helpful!
I know this is a vid about bucklers but I'm loving the glorious Nordic Beards in this vid
Nice. I need to get back into Elden Ring.
RE 3:28 - I wouldn't want to *have to* fight giant monsters with a puny arming sword, but how badass would it have to be to *be able* to do it
Have you seen great weapon parries from Dark Souls 2? A mechanic unique to that entry, any two hander sword to colossal ultra great sword could perform a parry, the animation is rather neat as it does look like exerting the weight of the weapon to deflect an attack.
Very nice. There is only one thing I see that Skallagrim could do better here.
And that is that he currently blocks the strength of the opponent's blade, which still gives the opponent a chance to escape with a short "slip" or "flip" of the sword and meet him with a counterattack.
If, on the other hand, the block is aimed at the wrist or at least the hilt of the opponent's sword, there is less danger of the opponent slipping out.
That as constructive criticism and otherwise: great video. :-)
and what about the parrying dagger and rapier/curved swords main hand and off-hand parry?
Great content, thanks for sharing it with us
Also, a look at interactions on the game with thursting weapons, and blunt weapons(parrying them too)? (impact damage) Swords always get the most of us haha
Skall, I wonder if you have ever made a vid that discuss the Combat Philosophy rather than the practical practice of certain game animation, things that are a bit more abstract and theoretical base. Though not sure if something like that can even be made
I need to work on my sword and shield fighting. My issue is that I'm left handed so since their weapon arm is on my weapon arm I end up just fencing while holding a lump of wood. It also doesn't help that there isn't nay historical treatises on left handed sword and shield like they do with rapier or smallsword. There are a few techniques that larpers use that I may try to implement.
A couple bosses in the souls series (the ivory King most recognised) are left handed and a lot harder to fight because of it, because it changes the way you need to dodge and I always felt like the timing was also switched up because of their handedness
Is this your backyard? It’s so nice looking. I’m easily impressed by green cuz I live in burnt brown California
As far as I know he lives in a city apartment without backyard / garden. So I guess it is his friend's.
Cool ringtone btw
Lol, fun vid. Thanks
I'd also love to see you do a video addressing the fact that a lot of enemies in the Souls games delay their attacks to try and throw off timing. I don't mean feints, which ARE valid maneuvers, I mean just drawing your sword back to strike and then making the whole strike extremely delayed and slow, which in reality just gives the opponent more time to prepare for the attack.
Margit can eat 2-3 strikes while delaying his stupid cane swings, it's quite fun once you get past the temptation to roll on the preparation and wait for the executive motion instead.
@@PXCharon Yeah, enemies having hyper armor during attack animations is the *only* reason they can get away with those super delayed attacks, because in real life, hauling back for a massive swing and then holding it is a really good way to get stabbed, thus why all attacks tend to be snappy, quick, and bring you back into a defensive position as fast as possible.
Of course, I understand why attacks are exaggerated and delayed in a video game, since there's a difference between reacting to an opponent IRL and doing it in a video game, so it's always going to be a compromise somewhere. Still, a Souls-style game with more realistic combat animations would be a treat, I think.
@@jessicaslater4243 The issue with realistic animations is that we wouldn't be able to react in time. Skilled fighters can move very fast, a simple thrust with a standard sword would be impossible to even block, let alone roll away from.
I was really hoping you would discuss the blade Perry as well I found it very interesting and if you tighten the motions you can kind of just do a reverse Melanie to achieve the same
Perhaps you could add the "Medieval Combat Reference" tag to this. Contribute to Shad's project.
A lot of videos should, right? If only timestamps could be tagged to help animators.
Could you also touch on the way they hold shields? I’m no expert but the way they hold kite shields longwise rather than with a horizontal grip just doesn’t seem right to me
Looks cool though
I understood that the parry in elden ring is more like hitting the hand of the opponent, at least I remember reading a comment saying to parry the hand not the weapon and it became pretty easy
As I've been practicing with sword and buckler I've been instructed that the buckler should primarily protect your sword hand to minimize the chance of it being sniped by your opponent. In actual practice, against human targets anyways, the parry you see in these games are huge motions that expose a lot of vulnerability if you do them. It's been really interesting seeing the way games represent swordsmanship vs actual practice.
Love the use of the Monty Python monster!!
I wish how like there’s a guard counter when you block an attack with the shield and then follow up with an attack that the parry came with a built-in counterattack or riposte
Another Elden Ring Realism video idea could be the Heavy Thrusting Weapons like the “Great Epee”. Could they be usable? What would their upsides and downsides be?
The leaving you open part is quite right, most of my parry attempts end up with a sword in my face. Turns out guns are better than shields.
1:11 if this man still kept moving his sword towards you, you'd be kinda dead, because his sword bounced, and i believe it bounces a lot more when its heavy object swinged at full speed
yeah its just a deflect it works but its ofc exaggerated like almost everything in those games.
*waves shield aggressively*
Please make a video about charged attacked!
Skall can you react to some of Weaponism's videos? I'd really like to see your take on their content, they show some very interesting stuff.
Short video, but I love it. Would love to see you go all in and deep dive more into parries in general. I know you've done similar videos, but maybe it's time to revisit? :D
I never really thought about how these game mechanics would work in real life, but I think your comment about animation conventions being used to exaggerate and make it more visual for the player to respond make more sense given how you show that this parry (at least in concept) works
Holy cow it's a battle of the Beards!
It's a beat. Those exist in swordplay, but are really risky and mostly seem unnecessary.
If you and your opponent have heavy weapons, you may need to really whack his to bring it offline, and hopefully he'll be slow to recover because of its weight. But there's a fair chance he'll just slip/wind his weapon off of your beat. Attacking weapons with a beat is very risky, as the opponent can easily move his weapon and dodge your strike, and still be in a position to attack you while you're open.
Don't mind me, just commenting for the algorithm.
So youre saying delayed attacks are reliable
The Start music sounds like its from the first Fable.
Question Skall,
Would blocking/failing to parry against an opponent considerably stronger than you attacking with force
just cause you to injure yourself i.e. a wrist, shoulder or elbow fracture/ sprain. I'm just considering the concept of energy dispersion and diversion when your foe isn't just a human adversary and the force applied is much greater than the expected force of normal weapon strike.
Do more weapon modification videos like you did with reaper scythe turned into war scythe
Dark Souls 2 had a lot of weird/dumb stuff added, but it did let your parry with weapons, not just shields.
Elden ring and ds3 at least also allow you to parry with certain other weapons, specifically curved swords and katanas.
@@moojoy1920 and there was the parry dagger in DS1 as well. I'm not sure if that one would really count, but you could attack with it so I'm counting it
@@moojoy1920 You can also parry with any dagger or the wakazashi with the ash of war.
A lot of DS1 weapons (daggers, curved swords, rapiers, katanas, and fists) could parry while in off-hand. DS2 just expanded that to all non-polearms and added the ability to parry with a main-hand weapon.
So, parrying is basically just briefly catching/redirecting a strike in order to land an easier hit?
You need that high risk long arm movement to deflect the enemy so hard that their whole body is staggered enough for you to charge a heavy thrust attack for 2 seconds 😂
"Simply stopping and then hitting" is what many enemies in the games do: delayed attacks. As you can guess, we unanimously hate that.
Players have that option too, with charged strong (R2) attacks that we can use right away or hold for up to 2 seconds. Good players will know to adapt to how their opponents act and react to properly get hits in.
It seems like the whole reason that parry would work is mainly when the opponent either doesn’t have enough skill to change the attack, or the observation skills to see the parry and react.
So the more skilled the opponent the less likely that parry would work flat out. And I get the feeling it would work even less often as you fought them longer.
Good info to know
3:48 Skall's ringtone reveal? Hello?
Was that techno-viking? :)
Thankfully, you're not maidenless Skall.
Joke aside, on your ending point, I've actually killed *two* bosses in Elden Ring, the Tree Sentinel, and the Dragon Agheel, just by standing up on top of a high ledge out of their reach, and shooting them full of arrows and bolts until they finally died; same with the gladiator with the chained hammers dungeon boss, just that I was on the same level as him because the room we fought in didn't *have* ledges, and so I shot him dead before he could get close enough to me to attack.
And by the way, my killing Agheel in that fashion was my literal *first* attempt at beating him.
PS: I was using a greatbow against the gladiator boss, and so the arrows knocked him down every time; and I used the same greatbow against Agheel.
thx for nice video
What about the parrying dagger?
Can you do a video on total war warhammer 3's weapons. I always thought they where really cool and grounded but then Kislev got these great maces that look way too big and it upsets me when I look at them lol. Especially cuz a lot of the weapons especially for the humans look so grounded and normal
hey skall I have been looking at getting a spear and saw you had the long hewing spearhead from windlass just wondering if it has held up great or maybe just go for the leaf spearhead? Or if anyone has had experience with windlass spears and knows which one would be the most durable thanks.
Ay whats that ringtone, Skalla!
And, drinking a potion to instantly heal...you have no problem with that?
You should review The Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle's new launch cinematic!
Still wanna know if the folding shields from Sekiro, God of War and that one S.W.A.T episode are in anyway practical.