Parry mechanics

So I just hit me the other day, when a game offers a parry mechanic in a single player game from the ones I've played that offer it, the mechanic becomes overpowered fast and makes the game much easier then it by all means should be.

DMC 3 - 4
Offers a entire style rank up as a reword for pulling it off and unlike other moves in these games doesn't scale down how much style it builds with repeated use, a DT guage and builds it's own meter for one of the potentially most powerful attacks in the game and there is no exception to what it beats, even an attack the game expects you to dodge because it's a 1 hit kill can be parried and then use the meter it builds to 50% damage the boss when you get the chance.

Bayonetta. (Transformars devastation I guess too)
As simple as flicking the analog at the enemy, no negative for being off with your timing but heavily rewarded for it being well timed, get a strong counter attack + witch time + witch energy (Autobot super attack) meter gain and like before nothing in the game > this ability.

MGR:R
Here there is only 2 exceptions to moves that beat it here being 1 enemy made with an unblockable and by definition unparryable and the final boss who still does damage when blocked and parried (not that you should use the block input in this fight since another move bypasses his entire moveset.) Upon getting the timed block for parry it almost always one shots the enemy and on the last difficulty it can one shot some bosses due to both you and enemies having ridiculous damage.

Onimusha series
Parrying here is a 1 shot kill not for only the enemy but any enemy close the the parried enemy, but then they also reward the player for using this mechanic with 3X the orbs you'd usually get meaning with this you could gain access to much better equipment faster especially in the first where you have to level not only the swords but keys for access to other areas, it can also be done on bosses to make very, very fast work of them.

Dark Souls
Is it around your size? No need to put any effort in then just parry it and deal massive damage and walk behind for a quick back stab if it dared get back up, this is probobly the least overpowered as it doesn't work on things much bigger then you but it can still make short work of things that are.

What I'm getting at here is in Player vs Enemy it's not like playing someone else where a parry would be like some out read out played move, vs an AI opponent it's like you know exactly when they'll attack because they're made to attack like that and then and over rewarding for mechanics like that when they're not that hard, when vs an AI it should be a matter of seeing it once before you should be able to parry it every time from now on.

There are other examples I have but they fall in the same camp as above, are there any games that are player vs enemy AI that offers a parry mechanic that is not broken?

The problem with most is that they come with shittons of iframes and can't be bricked/missed and don't have major recovery time to get raped during and come packaged with a counter attack and don't have any cost associated with them.

mountain blade's is alright.

Jedi Outcast has the best parry mechanics.

paper mario ttyd
good luck trying to parry the last boss though

I think your problem is that you're playing games with exceptionally powerful characters and complaining about how strong they are. You need to strike a balance between DMC "block and kill everything with one button" and something useless, likeā€¦ well, honestly, I can't think of any games with downright bad parrying. It may be hard to get right, but the whole point of parrying is that it's a reward for your timing and skill, so if it doesn't do much, then why not just guard and attack instead?

I think your problem is that you're playing games with exceptionally powerful characters and complaining about how strong they are.
Except in Onimusha and Darksouls your characters aren't really overpowered with their abilities, but the parry is still too strong compared to their other abilities (Multiple hits avoiding getting countered or just wait for them to attack and one shot them)

The thing is it's over rewarded, especially when it's an enemy with a set pattern which can just parry.

Another Example I could have given was the battle network and starforce games where parrying is rewarded with bonuses like double damage/Super attacks/Extra attacks/Bonuses for winning and the AI is set to act in a certain way usually on a set of 3 to 4 moves and regular enemies when inline with you making it there also easy to time.

Well a parry in fencing is blocking your oppenent's strike. It doesn't involve a counterattack, although it can set up for one.
It also flips priority, meaning you if attack someone and they parry, you are now the defender and vice versa. If a defender counterattacks the attacker but still gets hit, point goes to the attacker.
In a game there would have to be checks for defending the strike and making a counter.

You're thinking about this the wrong way. You seem to be trivializing the skill it takes to master something like Royal Guard in DMC3/4 and use it effectively against every enemy in the game.

If you have learned every attack of every enemy in the game's frame data and can perfect guard them all even 50% of the time, you're damn near a fucking master at the game and deserve every bit of the reward that comes with Royal Guard, especially considering normal enemies come in packs and you need to keep an eye on what every single one of them is doing.

The parrying mechanic of a game like DMC3 isn't making the game overly easy. If you master how to use it right, the game is already overly easy for you since you've clearly put hundreds of hours into learning how every enemy and boss acts, reacts, and times their attacks. You'd dominate the game without using parries on the hardest difficulty.

Well I've put my tiredness in action games on myself well then haven't I.

Just fucking kill me fam

Actually getting the timing for parrying in DMC is too hard to actually be more broken than just dodging the attacks.

Not really, with all attacks in DMC 3 and 4 they all have a wind up to them, you just need to take the time to get what it is down and just do it on reaction.
Even once you see it timing RG is one of the most trivial things in the game.

Most enemies have at least 2 different attacks with different timings, and come at you in groups of around 5 or more (including different enemies who have entirely different attacks). Learning how to parry them may not be the hardest thing in the world, but learning how to parry multiple enemies at once and weave that into your offense so you can still make the timer S rank is incredibly difficult.

I could never consistently perfect block in any game no matter how predictable the attack is. Maybe I'm just shit at timing.

And they have different wind ups to them, learn the game.
And mechanically ones off screen don't attack no matter the difficulty (They just try harder to get on screen) and they never attack 2 at a time past minor scripted bits like the 3 enemies attacking at the start in mission 1 of 3, again learn the game.

No it's not it's learning what cancels into it like any variant of thousand slash, it's as hand as slipping in the dodge roll into attacks.

You can parry everything in Bunny Must Die,
Even stationary traps and lasers.

Which is the fucking point. It's a lot to take in and simply using Royal Guard doesn't automatically make the game easier unless you've already learned the game. The hell are you arguing about? You're agreeing with my point here.

Nigga I've put hundreds of hours into DMC3 and I can say for a fact you're misremembering this point. I've definitely been attacked by multiple enemies at once in every mission of the game. On Dante Must Die, sometimes by multiple enemies using both of their attacks, like a Hell Lust using it's dashing uppercut while the other does it's normal dashing slash.

Which again agrees with my point. You can not simply pick up Royal Guard as a new player and suddenly the game is baby mode. It takes time and effort to learn how and when to block. What I disagree with here is that it's as hard as slipping dodges into attacks. If you jump too early out of the way of an attack, you still dodged it and took no damage. If you guard too early, you didn't get a perfect guard and took damage, though you avoided the majority of it and the hitstun that comes with it. There's definitely more skill to using Royal Guard than simply jumping to avoid attacks.

Learning the game is what you're meant to do as you go, you start with this ability that parries attacks, learn it there's not really any lab time and none of the beginning difficulties offer both variants of attacks they only offer usually the slower of the 2, so all that changes once you hit very hard is that you have 1 more move per demon to learn and you've played through the game twice to get to that point

No one enemy started it's active attack and the game decided another enemy can start it's wind up during it to being it's active as the others ended, they didn't attack at the same time, one attacked first and the other as soon as the active on the attack ends the next attack began it's active.
There were never 2 active attacks going on at once, just closely one after another.

No but you can quickly learn it with the way the game eases it's enemy types at you.
and it's not like you're just standing there going lol Royal Guard, you're still beating on them, moving them off screen getting them in hit stun, but you're getting the mechanic that covers you as you go making it much easier.
As long as your in the mindset for learning and using your tools you should be minor competent with it by mission 6 to 9 and by the time more attacks appear 2 difficulties later you should already be competent enough to learn them in a short time.

That isn't what this thread is about and you know it. This was about discussing overpowered parrying in games that make them far easier than they have any right to be. It's right there in the OP. You'd be right in any other discussion of DMC3's Royal Guard, but not here.

Webm attached. I won't say I know for an absolute fact that both these attacks were active at the same time, but damn does it look like it. This isn't one of those scripted attacks like the last encounter of Mission 3 where you get attacked by 3 Hell Sloths at the same time, either.


Again, I wouldn't be disagreeing with you in any other thread, but when discussing "overpowered parry mechanics", that argument just doesn't work. My point still stands that by the time you can trivialize DMC3 using Royal Guard, you've already mastered the majority of the game and can trivialize it style-less.

Look, the issue with parrying is that it is its own system by itself, which can beat anything the game throws at you.

In games where parries can beat any attack, the only system you need to learn is parrying. Parrying in most games has no element of spacing, only the element of timing, so you tend to lose out on a lot of the dynamic spacing challenges that go on in a game, reducing the game to just a timing challenge. A tough timing challenge, but just a timing challenge.

3rd Strike limits this by making it so parries lose to throws, and so there are 2 types of parries, high and low, and most attacks can only be beaten by the right parry. This means that you can't parry correctly all the time, so you need to fall back on the other game systems to defeat your opponent. This is especially true because 3rd strike is a multiplayer game. Attacks come out in less than 15 frames routinely (average human reaction time), so parries need to be performed pre-emptively versus most attacks.

In Single Player games, for parries to not be overpowered, they need to not be a one-stop solution for everything. They need to not be a one-stop solution for any particular type of thing either. There need to be limitations on them that make them situationally inferior to other options so that players need to use the whole system instead of exclusively the parry system.

There's a lot of ways you could potentially do this, such as making parries more spacing dependent, with different per-attack spacings. They could have drawbacks relative to other moves. They could be limited in how many times you can use them, or they could only be allowed to be used after setting up another condition using the other systems.

"when a game offers a parry mechanic in a single player game from the ones I've played that offer it, the mechanic becomes overpowered fast and makes the game much easier then it by all means should be. " - my OP - 2016

That's technically not an attack, they always do that upon entering the DT state but the other 2 before reaching it were already knocked.

Except it's about games that have the function and can't be used in this way since I am capable of using it like that it honestly drains challenge out and by extension for me fun

Ys Seven added a Flash Guard which let you parry ANY kind of damage (even being submerged in lava) and earned you a temporary damage boost on top of bonus points for your SP and EXTRA gauge. The window for parrying was small, and you'd receive more damage if you mistimed your parries. As Flash Guarding is the most surefire way to raise those gauges, you'd spend more time Flashguarding than dodging. MoC also apparently has Flash Dodging with identical effects, but I didn't play it yet. Needless to say, it feels like Flashguarding trivializes the game at time.

in the yakuza games you can get several levels of parrying depending on the situation

you can learn no-bar parry moves that knock back or stun an enemy when you strike right before they do, or if you have heat bar you can activate a flashy high damage parry