Really like a lot of the changes, especially the addition of combos to the sword attacks. My only question is why “Up” was chosen for the combo instead of “Down”. An overhead chop attack, or “Down” is an extremely common attack in sword fighting, at least the kind that most of us are exposed to in movies, etc. It’s the classic power attack, how many movies have their sword fights end with one guy wailing away with overhead attacks while the other guy is attempting to block / cowering behind a shield. On the other hand, an uppercut, or “Up” is much less common, especially a perfectly vertical attack as shown in the example gif. The reason for this is twofold. First, you can’t get as much power behind an attack swinging upward. Second, and most relevant to the game, is that your arm/hand angle rarely allows for a perfect upward vertical strike.
I’ll try and explain. The bottom of your hand always leads the top in sword strikes. This is basically required to ensure that the impact of the strike does not knock the sword from your hand; it pushes in the sword into the palm of your hand instead of into the fingers. It also allows your elbow/tricep to both add speed/power to an attack and recoil on impact. If you lead an attack with the top of your hand, you may hyper-extend your elbow on impact.
How does all this relate to the “Up” attack in the combo? Well, I can’t figure out a way to ever attack “Up” in a perfect vertical motion without either having the top of my hand lead the bottom, or by having the attack start on the left side of my body (I’m right handed), with my entire body turned to the left, essentially my side/back to the target and swinging up from there. And that still tends to be a lower left to upper right diagonal. I suppose you could get a vertical “Up” attack that starts on your right side by turning your arm inward and down to initiate the attack, but this seems really complicated to perform with a full length sword without chopping into your own legs. Now try and string two of these “Up” attacks together for Cleave… Super awkward shoulder rotations required.
Yes, this is a VR game and melee has no force feedback and there is no full length sword to navigate around your body and therefore a vertical “Up” attack where the top of your hand leads the bottom is easy to accomplish and there is very little risk of dropping your sword or chopping off your own limbs… But it just feels wrong. And a vertical “Down” attack is a seemingly easy, realistic alternative.
All that to say, can we swap “Up” for “Down”?