Kingdom Come Deliverance | Master Strikes Are Overpowered,Here's How To Balance It. 

There is an important point you didn’t mention though. See how in real life fencing they are trying to TOUCH each other and not really Penetrate each other’s armor and body? This is why they act so fast, because they are not putting any weight behind their attacks. So when you try to kill someone (especially someone wearing plate armor) you need to put your whole body into it, resulting in the attack being a lot slower and leaving a lot of openings which your enemy can make use of to land a decisive blow or a “master strike”.

As a fencer, I can say that keys to perform a master strike are following: 1. Stance aka "the call". To to be sure that opponent acts the way you need to provoke him by showing the opening while being able to attack as he tries to attack 2. Distance. Correct distance is needed to be able to both reach your opponent and cross the line of his attack thus defending yourself, while understanding your and his reach and playing with steps forward and backward can make timings of his attack more predictable. You can see it as another way of provocation. 3. Sidestepping. Sidesteps are useful to both ease the timings by shifting away from opponent's attack while maintaining same distance and to cover your closing up by braking the straight connection between the amount of steps you make and the distance between you and your opponent. I believe that here you can see that the war is the path of deception. 4. Speed and perception. From my own experience sometimes you just meet a person that utterly overspeeds you. There is no way to deal with such person but to change tactics. Sadly, but there are oly stances in this game to come in play. Distance is being corrected by the game each time you or a bot strikes, your camera is locked so no accells or clever sidestepping are available, and the agility barely affects your speed. Overall I believe tha KKD can't be fixed to become a game with great fighting in it. Yet as is it's a very good game. Like Oblivion, but better and without magic.

And now we're getting the second game with only 4 directions for strikes. Definitely can see them removing the master strike completely and leaning more towards combos. However, unless they make supposed "easy" enemies actually easy so you don't have to watch for slowed down block animation each time you attack, I don't see this working out, since the main problem is the reliability on defence in this game. In the topic I've read though one of the designers does say that second game benefits more from more of an attacking style, which sounds cool, but we will see. Excited either way.

4:50 JCVD, if he would make knight movies.

if i were to say how i feel about kcd's master strikes: its very clear they tried to be realistic, but they didn't entirely want to be the ultra realistic game. that'd be unfun in a lot of ways.. arma 3 is a good example of a game that advertises itself as realistic but isn't actually realistic at all. its not that they can't do it, they certainly can. but its for the enjoyment of the player. plus, if you wanted an ultra realistic game.. having it be a pc exclusive isn't the go. vr is the only way. since that way you're able to use your body to its fullest instead of the fighting being purely animation based. tl;dr: they probably didn't want to hurt player experience so they made the combat border the line between realism and unrealism, and even then vr is the only way to have full realism. nice content by the way, its really enjoyable for me to watch.

The entire combat system needs and update. Removing the master strikes or having them replace the perfect parry is what would work for me.

I have mixed feelings on master strikes it is super brain dead when you learn the timing. I think it should still exist in the sequel just make the timing tighter. It also feels kind of cheap when your opponent does it sometimes multiple times in a row. I think basic bandits shouldn't be able to preform the technique but the leader can. All and all it's a solid mechanic, it's just a shame that it can make you disengage with the game's systems if you choose to use it often.

I play the game with and without master strike(mod indeed) what I notice when there is no master strike is you can be very aggressive "IF" you confident that you can block there ripose after there perfect block you(which break your combo and leave you open for ripose) so without master strike combat are much flow and faster but with master strike it makes you think twice before commit an attack which give more intense and dangerous feel for a fight My thoughts on master strike is to improve mechanic make this is all player false if it happen(like mirro stance from a mod that you mention in a video) or when you get master strike you can hit them back and if done right both of you and you opponent get damage this will make you think twice before spam master strike in return

It would be cool if in order to use a master strike you had to learn it from a sword master somewhere. Would give more incentive for exploration.

I did play the game for quite a long time, but I had a hard time performing the master strikes. But do fence too, and I know and can perform most of the master strikes. From the examples you stood out for criticism, the first one should probabley be done into the armpit or thoat instead of the belly, and really simular moves are present in spanish martial arts with blades. The second is just clasical sidestep, the principal is not being where the axehead is going to hit, and it can be seen in all kinds of martial arts (I personally know it from aikido as well). I havent done much work with shiled, so I can't verify the third one, but to me the spin seems to be on the outside, while enemys weapon is occupied by your shield, but I'm not sure. In general, master strikes are usefull, but not as much if you have two people skilled as much as the performers at tournaments, but you would see them if they would be fencing with people with less experience. And i think that in the skallagims tournament ( the person opposite to the camera did 2 separete attemts of master cuts, going for shilhau and tverchhau, but hey were coutered, bacause many of modern practitionners know about them and train them (maybe not correctly), as well as counters for these basic ones. They also seldom commit to the attack in such a way, that master strikes would be usefull.

This is a very good video. Educational too

I remember having a lot more fun with the combat system until I learned master strikes. Sure, they are flashy, but man, does it basically make your op in 1v1s as long as you only play defensively. Im likely going to install the mod that removes them. I hope it works. I already beat it once, and I am on my second playthrough. Master strikes at least for me were easy to pull off. As well as enemies use them way too much.

Very cool analysis, I am struggling to do the simple master strike due in large part because I’d forgotten to learn it, I’m 50+ hours in and have muscle memorized the perfect strike wheel defense. So to just hit L1 on ps4 it’s almost too easy and I keep forgetting 😂

Nailed it, good video

I played the game back in 2019 and tought it was the best game ever created..... until i unlock the master strike. This skill just broke the game and i didn't even finished it. I just started again one week ago and again thinking that this is the best game ever created. I hope i will still think so after unlocking the master strike. For the sequel i wish they just get rid of it altogether.

The problem with KCD and really all games with melee combat (including third person action games like Dark Souls etc.) is that, despite being "real time" on paper, they still feel "turn based" in practice. There's always this very strange, artificial back and forth to the combat - you attack, I block/dodge, then I counterattack and you block/dodge, rinse and repeat. This is most egregious with shields as pointed out in this video where the characters will just very stupidly throw their shield arm off to the side so it's not defending anything while they're attacking. The "master strike" in KCD seems like it's the devs' attempt at showing a more realistic kind of melee combat where the character is both attacking and defending in a single move, because in reality you're never taking turns in a fight - both opponents are always attacking and always defending, simultaneously. They don't get locked into a 'dodge' action where they can only avoid an attack and not attack back at the same time, they don't throw their shield hand off to the side to leave themselves open during an attack. However, master strikes only end up feeling more artificial that way, because they couldn't think of a way to implement them without it being a forced action - you successfully tap one button at the right time, and it enters a canned animation where the attacker is parried and hit back. Essentially because it exists as an uncounterable attack that can be used as a counter to any other attack, the technically correct solution to any combat encounter is always to wait for the opponent to attack first and then masterstrike. The only penalty for mis-timing is that you get a parry instead of a masterstrike, which only resets the momentum of the fight and costs you nothing. On top of that the random nature of the counterattack could do absolutely nothing, or kill the opponent in one hit depending on what variation is chosen. It's incredibly strange and feels very fake as a result of all of this. Ultimately I don't think there's a way to make melee combat feels realistic or reasonable in a videogame unless it's full VR or something. There just isn't a control scheme you can map on to just a mouse+keyboard or gamepad that allows for the kinds of actions a real human with a full range of body motions at all times can achieve. A real human body has too many possible "inputs" at any given time, so to speak, and on top of that there are things that simply can't be translated into a digital space, even in VR - like reading your opponent's body language, their eye movements, the way their grip subtly shifts or one foot inches slightly forward or back which can be an early tell that hints at their next move before they even make it and which are all the things that let seasoned martial artists move so quickly and confidently. I'd probably opt for the "do away with masterstrikes entirely" option and make feinting and correctly matching your guard to the opponent's attack much more of a factor in combat instead.

master strikes are the main reason I can't bring myself to finish this game

1.9+ on my KCD version, and I gotta say.. is it really necessary for some random bandit to know how to riposte and master strike me? I can't even do a combo because this random dude is able to counter the shit out of me with one move? And why the fuck is this sword master strike doing so much damage to me when I'm wearing full plate armor? Why was Sir Zoul easier to fight than Peter the Black? The combat needs a serious overhaul, first of I'd want it to be way faster, way more aggressive, and for the AI to use feints. I think if you had a fast paced combat sequence, that ends pretty quickly too and lets you switch to the next opponent in rapid successions it would greatly enhance gameplay. Duels should be made tougher, and require patience, oberservation skills and to know how to use your own equipment. I would want to say early game of thrones could be an example for how I'd like combat to be like, but it might not be that realistic (Though the fighting in those early seasons seemed relatively ok imo). Like imagine you're Jon Snow and this random BANDIT this random goon counters you and cracks your skull with a stick. Wtf?? Hope this made sense.