BREAKTHROUGH!!
1. Yeah, I was too far when doing my backstabs. You have to get close enough to make the animation weird, with your nose almost touching the enemy.
2. When using a spear, you can attack while still holding up your shield! (Or you can equip a second spear and flail away. Or two flails and really flail away.) They can still break my poise pretty easily, but not as easily as when my shield is just hanging at my side.
3. Ash summons are not one-use-only. What's more, they last a pretty long time and are quite tough! I was pretty sure I would be able to use those wolves multiple times, but I assumed they would just be wolves, which I can very nearly one-shot with my little starting spear.
Knowing these, I was able to backspear most of the enemies in that initial outpost and only needed one heal spell before the elite knight. I summoned the dogs on him, and they almost took the guy out alone!
Then I went to that starting dungeon with the wolves and wasted that boss easily. Then sliced through that costal cave for Boc without much trouble... yeah, it's clicking now. (Also, being less scared means less panicky clicking the attack button, which means less getting hit because I can't dodge while attacking.)
There are definitely things to UNlearn in this game. First, levelling isn't as big a deal as it is in most RPGs. It's important for sure, but it isn't like "forget attacking anything 3 levels above you, sleep through attacking things 3 levels below you" important. Improving your weapons is at least as important.
And, as I had hoped, while there's a lot of focus on how hard the fights are, this game also has highly challenging and rewarding exploration. I've seen many games with good exploration (far more without), but games with challenging exploration? Exploration where you've got to be smart about it or you'll end up dead? That's seriously rare.
Of course, it will kill you sometimes even when you are smart about it. Smart ain't always good enough for From.
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