There are weapons you can use that don’t require you to think seconds in advance to use effectively. You don’t have to use every weapon, and you certainly don’t have to use every weapon at once before you’ve gotten the baseline familiarity with enemies you need to enjoy them. Yes, of course you shouldn’t use slow attacks in situations you can’t land them in time; it’s like that even in the game you’re referencing. Heavy weapons were given massive guard ratings as a rule of thumb BECAUSE you’re supposed to be choosy with how you counterattack. In exchange, they can wait patiently and get huge returns when they do win trades or stagger enemies, and that only speeds up as you get quartz upgrades that emphasize parries even more.

Buffer a guard before you roll and you can option-select between blocking the attack (your roll input was late) or rolling it (your roll input was early enough, and hopefully timed well enough to dodge the attack). Also, you can cancel the endlag of some attacks without having to commit to a roll if you block out of them. With the way the game handles stale parry attempts, be careful about crutching on this too much because you’ll have a tiny parry window, but it can help smooth out basic movement in a way you might enjoy.

thanks for the response

i find for examples in some hours

the chtulu giant in the village with the giant axe too unbalanced, the perfect parry doesn't open a real windows, he do 3 rapid attack that push you away

the bear knock back you after perfect parry

the fuego boss have a wrong area attack

the heavy W are too weak versus fast weapon, too many open and similar damage

bonus
the dragon halberd make a chainsaw sound when you backstab? is a bug?

the parry feels too slow even without animation cancel

hope in the sequel some things will be addressed

for now i am enjoing the game, not at souls level or at nioh level, but is fine, the story is great, it have potential

There are some attacks that you're better off dodging rather than blocking specifically to avoid blockstun like you're describing. Most heavy attacks fit that bill, and frequently even heavy weapons can circle around. If it's the Big Pipe Wrench you're talking about, try running R2s which have good reach and are reasonably fast; otherwise your big can opener attack is going to be the counterattack fable art it has on the handle piece. Treat its R1s like heavies on light weapons and treat its charged R2s for only the largest of openings when you think an enemy is due for a stagger, and definitely fish for it when their gauge is white and ready for a critical.

The chainsaw sound isn't a bug; that's just one of the variants of the riposte / backstab SFX. The game has a small handful it picks from depending on the animation.

Originally posted by Darius:

the dragon halberd make a chainsaw sound when you backstab? is a bug?

pretty sure that happens with all the weapons, and is coming from P's grinding gears

Originally posted by Fenix:

Originally posted by Darius:

the dragon halberd make a chainsaw sound when you backstab? is a bug?

pretty sure that happens with all the weapons, and is coming from P's grinding gears

It also shows up whenever you open a stubborn heavy door.

Actually all actions except guard have relatively long recovery. From uses action queue and later delayed attack to counter button spam, this is Neowiz's alternative.

i think the dodge in this game is more of a trap than a useful ability since guarding or perfect guarding is almost always safer and more effective since most attacks are to quick to dodge unless they are "heavy" attacks, but then again i do mostly play on faster weapons and as such i cant really give any good points on how the bigger and slower weapons are.
But in my opinion the clunkyness comes from trying to roll away from the attacks when the attacks are more of the deflect type of attack, i feel like the first boss i really trying to trick you into using the roll mechanic way too much. Sorry if these tips are bad but this genuinly made the game really fun (dex builds are better in this game tbh)