Ok, normally i dont take my time to rant on a forum, but this waste'o 60bucks finally triggered me enough.

1. Regular enemies are so weak that u must be mentally disabled to die to them.
2. Fanatics are outright CHEATS:
   1. They have godmode against ANY melee attack that is not an ability or a parry counter.
   2. You just hit em in da face with your 2h axe? No problemo, a true fanatic does not even stumble but instantly dashes out an unavoidable combination of counter attacks that take away 90% of your health.
   3. Their unparryable ridiculously hard hiting red rune attacks are faster than their soft hiting regular attacks. LOL! Intuitive and reasonable design!
   4. You might think using counter roll (raven tree ability) is a good option for fighting a red rune attack? I did. Let's see what happens: Their attack hits you, takes away 50% of your health and after you recovered from it your character runs towards them, now doing the counter roll. GG, well refined, perfectly responsive animations and controls!
   5. Oh and.... after performing the counter roll 70% of all times they just turn around and block your attack aimed at their back, loughing at you. True fanatics have muscles like an ox that allows them turning their shield in 180° at ninja-reflex-lightning-speed after somebody has rolled over their back with his full body's weight!
   6. RNG was finally with you and you landed a hit? Congratulations to taking away 3% of their health bar.

As a dark souls enthusiast I can only say: Please get new designers and coders for your company. You current ones are bad at it.

Btw.: This thread might contain polemics.

The combat system has so much potential that just went to waste. Actions are buged, desynced, unresponsive, just.... clunky. I'd really like to upload some examples with counter roll

@beluga25
I could even upload proof of that [censored], but i dont know if uploading gameplay recorded with OBS is a copyright violation.

Man the feeling of fighting a cheating enemy is so frustrating i just lost my entire motivation to go on playing this game. Never had such a bad gaming experience in my life...

AC:Valhalla has some severe issues with combat. The biggest one is related to how stamina works for NPCs. I will explain it in three steps:
(1) What I would intuitively expect from a pseudo-realistic stamina implementation in video games,
(2) the way it currently IS implemented into the game,
(3) the way it SHOULD be implemented into the game.

(1) Stamina should have one major purpose: Define a state for your character that affects what he is able to do at a given time. If you are out of stamina, then you are out of breath, severely reducing your capability of performing tiring actions like lifting a weapon or shield, sprinting, dodgeing, etc.

(2) There are two stamina systems in the game: The one for Eivor and the one for NPC enemies, especially bosses.

(2a) If the player runs out of stamina, Eivor cannot dodge nor parry anymore. Regarding the stuff written above this is a good implementation because it elevates the game above simplistic "hack'n'slash-click-spam" as the player has to think about his actions. Stamina is a regenerating and actions cost stamina which is even affected by the weight-stat on your equipped gear.

(2b) For bosses and enemies stamina is a non-regenerative stat (it's not even called stamina, but "stun"), displayed by one or more yellow bars above their health, that can be taken away by parrying their attacks, hiting them with heavy attacks or by destroying "weak spots" on their bodies.

• If the "stun" bar falls to 0, the enemy is stuned, opening a window for a special hard hitting blow that takes away a high amount of their health.
• This is a one time opportunity, if the stun bar is gone, it's gone for the entire duration of the fight.
• Stagger mechanics seem to be related to that aswell, at least for zealots:
  • If you parry their attack combos while they have some stamina left, they sometimes stagger.
  • But if their stamina bars are depleted, they are unimpressed by your further parries. Shield zealots can not be staggered anymore leaving almost no chance to hit them with melee attacks. I don't know whether this is a bug or intended, but as soon as their stamina is gone, they get super overpowered by removing all stagger opportunities from them.
• Contrary to Eivor, stamina/stun never affects what a NPC boss can do. Even at 0 stamina/stun, he will continue his hard hiting attacks, dodge, block, etc.

=> Not only is this absolutely [censored] taking into consideration what stamina actually is (1), it also takes away every feeling of reward for your good timings.

(3) This is what a proper implementation of stamina would look like:

• Enemies should regenerate their stamina just as Eivor does. If you deplete it, it should have ramifications tied specifically to the type of enemy you are facing: No more rune attacks (red hard hits), shield zealots could let their shield fall, murderers (dagger enemies) could be left without the ability to dodge, enemies at 0 stamina could always be staggered when being parried, etc. etc.
• This way would make gameplay rewarding as you have to play aggressively to outrun an enemy's stamina regeneration in order to stagger him and open opportunities for counter attacking - a paradise for tuning difficulty settings
• Stamina/stun bars could be tied to an enemy's weak spots: By destroying them, some bars are simply taken away, making it more easy to drain his stamina to zero and get more staggers to land hits on heavily defensive enemies.

I don't think these suggestions are anything new to the world of gaming. I lack any understanding how the current unintuitive and unrewarding design could have been developed and could have been rated fun.

AC:Valhalla has some severe issues with combat. The biggest one is related to how stamina works for NPCs. I will explain it in three steps:
(1) What I would intuitively expect from a pseudo-realistic stamina implementation in video games,
(2) the way it currently IS implemented into the game,
(3) the way it SHOULD be implemented into the game.

(1) Stamina should have one major purpose: Define a state for your character that affects what he is able to do at a given time. If you are out of stamina, then you are out of breath, severely reducing your capability of performing tiring actions like lifting a weapon or shield, sprinting, dodgeing, etc.

(2) There are two stamina systems in the game: The one for Eivor and the one for NPC enemies, especially bosses.

(2a) If the player runs out of stamina, Eivor cannot dodge nor parry anymore. Regarding the stuff written above this is a good implementation because it elevates the game above simplistic "hack'n'slash-click-spam" as the player has to think about his actions. Stamina is a regenerating and actions cost stamina which is even affected by the weight-stat on your equipped gear.

(2b) For bosses and enemies stamina is a non-regenerative stat (it's not even called stamina, but "stun"), displayed by one or more yellow bars above their health, that can be taken away by parrying their attacks, hiting them with heavy attacks or by destroying "weak spots" on their bodies.

• If the "stun" bar falls to 0, the enemy is stuned, opening a window for a special hard hitting blow that takes away a high amount of their health.
• This is a one time opportunity, if the stun bar is gone, it's gone for the entire duration of the fight.
• Stagger mechanics seem to be related to that aswell, at least for zealots:
  • If you parry their attack combos while they have some stamina left, they sometimes stagger.
  • But if their stamina bars are depleted, they are unimpressed by your further parries. Shield zealots can not be staggered anymore leaving almost no chance to hit them with melee attacks. I don't know whether this is a bug or intended, but as soon as their stamina is gone, they get super overpowered by removing all stagger opportunities from them.
• Contrary to Eivor, stamina/stun never affects what a NPC boss can do. Even at 0 stamina/stun, he will continue his hard hiting attacks, dodge, block, etc.

=> Not only is this absolutely [censored] taking into consideration what stamina actually is (1), it also takes away every feeling of reward for your good timings.

(3) This is what a proper implementation of stamina would look like:

• Enemies should regenerate their stamina just as Eivor does. If you deplete it, it should have ramifications tied specifically to the type of enemy you are facing: No more rune attacks (red hard hits), shield zealots could let their shield fall, murderers (dagger enemies) could be left without the ability to dodge, enemies at 0 stamina could always be staggered when being parried, etc. etc.
• This way would make gameplay rewarding as you have to play aggressively to outrun an enemy's stamina regeneration in order to stagger him and open opportunities for counter attacking - a paradise for tuning difficulty settings
• Stamina/stun bars could be tied to an enemy's weak spots: By destroying them, some bars are simply taken away, making it more easy to drain his stamina to zero and get more staggers to land hits on heavily defensive enemies.

I don't think these suggestions are anything new to the world of gaming. I lack any understanding how the current unintuitive and unrewarding design could have been developed and could have been rated fun.

The combat system has so much potential that just went to waste. Actions are buged, desynced, unresponsive, just.... clunky. I'd really like to upload some examples with counter roll

@beluga25
I could even upload proof of that [censored], but i dont know if uploading gameplay recorded with OBS is a copyright violation.

Man the feeling of fighting a cheating enemy is so frustrating i just lost my entire motivation to go on playing this game. Never had such a bad gaming experience in my life...

Ok, normally i dont take my time to rant on a forum, but this waste'o 60bucks finally triggered me enough.

1. Regular enemies are so weak that u must be mentally disabled to die to them.
2. Fanatics are outright CHEATS:
   1. They have godmode against ANY melee attack that is not an ability or a parry counter.
   2. You just hit em in da face with your 2h axe? No problemo, a true fanatic does not even stumble but instantly dashes out an unavoidable combination of counter attacks that take away 90% of your health.
   3. Their unparryable ridiculously hard hiting red rune attacks are faster than their soft hiting regular attacks. LOL! Intuitive and reasonable design!
   4. You might think using counter roll (raven tree ability) is a good option for fighting a red rune attack? I did. Let's see what happens: Their attack hits you, takes away 50% of your health and after you recovered from it your character runs towards them, now doing the counter roll. GG, well refined, perfectly responsive animations and controls!
   5. Oh and.... after performing the counter roll 70% of all times they just turn around and block your attack aimed at their back, loughing at you. True fanatics have muscles like an ox that allows them turning their shield in 180° at ninja-reflex-lightning-speed after somebody has rolled over their back with his full body's weight!
   6. RNG was finally with you and you landed a hit? Congratulations to taking away 3% of their health bar.

As a dark souls enthusiast I can only say: Please get new designers and coders for your company. You current ones are bad at it.

Btw.: This thread might contain polemics.