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Post by asterra on Jul 5, 2016 3:01:47 GMT -6
O most defenaitly, by the time they send out a full demo for all plats, i would assume they will throw in a couple more enemies, weapons, and........dialogue, ha im dieing to hear some voices, i really want to know who Robert Belgrade is voicing. I really hope his role is nothing less than a playable character. There are three in total, so I think the odds are very good. I also hope he speaks with that very slightly eastern European accent he used in SotN.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 23:29:55 GMT -6
I had this issue, and although most people claimed to have gotten the situation corrected by Fangamer within 24 hours, in my case they didn't fix the problem until update 41. So be braced for not getting your key until July 8th. It all feels a bit arbitrary and disorganized.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 23:23:53 GMT -6
I'll be honest, censorship and bad localization is something that worries me but even if some outside company screws iga's vision we already have a budding mod community to fix it. I actually don't feel that a mod to fix things is an adequate solution. Better than nothing? Sure. But there are two main problems, starting with the fact that the community has to wait X amount of time until an uncensored iteration of their game is finally available. More important to me, however, is the simple fact that I would not be playing the game as shipped; I'd be playing Bob's Tweak of the game. And I'd lose the sense of mutual enjoyment that's supposed to come with playing a new game on day 1, when the vast majority of players are actually playing a somewhat different game. Mods are great for working in after the game proper has been exhausted, but they do de-legitimize. Fortunately, it doesn't seem as though this will be an issue with Bloodstained.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 23:18:30 GMT -6
If your enthusiasm for Bloodstained can be curbed by its localization, will anything really be good enough for you? Making a fake quote like that is all just coming from your perspective, which I think might be a bit unfair. No offense, but it seems to me that your request for information on 8-4's activities was more in rhetoric than in earnest. If you want more information, you're going to have to Google; if you're not interested, as I suspect, you won't, and that's that. Here's a freebie answer to your first question. But let me be clear about one thing: 8-4's presence would be, to me, like a taint. Even if the game ended up fundamentally unaltered, how would I know? History serves that 8-4 works in little tweaks that serve the purposes of their special narrative, sometimes effectively without the developer's knowledge or consent. Would you expect Inafune and Inti Creates to truly be aware of the politically-driven message behind the "ethical journalism" quip in MN9's English translation? Certainly not without having the "joke" explained in detail. No, the localization was left in 8-4's hands and they made the decision that they made.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 22:06:50 GMT -6
This may not be much use, but during my attempts to find bugs in the game, I did note that backstepping alone is not the fastest mode of travel in the demo. A carefully-timed mix of backstep and crouch is some 5 to 10% faster. In practice, I want to say it's too challenging to pull off efficiently, but certainly when the day comes for TAS runs, I expect to see a lot of it.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 21:26:30 GMT -6
asterra I'd like to see some of your research that points to 8-4 butchering localization like you're talking about. It's a bit off topic, but please PM me if you're willing. Not going to bother with PMs if there are others already willing to discuss it here. It's topical enough. If you want specifics on what 8-4 gets up to, probably the best way to go about it is find their wiki, locate the list of games they've localized, and Google each one along with "8-4" and "censored". Being perfectly honest, the censorship problem 8-4 has is really the least concern most people have with them; their translation efforts get far worse condemnation. Lazy, expurgated, stilted, filled with memes and references that never existed. The day someone steps in to compete with 8-4 directly is the day they go out of business. But back on topic, let's look at their recent history. Azure Striker Gunvolt: In addition to doing a p***-poor translation that got a lot of negative feedback (so much that Inti Creates essentially apologized for using 8-4 again for ASG2), 8-4 instigated the push to cover the protagonist's navel and remove their ponytail. In the end, fan backlash prevented this from occurring anywhere except the box art. Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem Awakening: Evil bathing suits covered up, among other things. Most authoritative source I could find said Nintendo gave 8-4 free reign / encouraged censored localization and okayed what they came up with. Mighty No. 9: A marvelous gem from this game was already posted above. Somewhere in the game is a bit of dialogue from a reporter which mentions "ethical journalism." If you're unfamiliar, this topic was under special scrutiny a few years ago when MN9 was a new item, although the culmination of the controversy (Gawker/Kotaku's semi-bankruptcy) is more recent. 8-4 evidently could not help attempting to poke fun at a side of the argument with which they were opposed, even though their hired job was to do a good and accurate localization. Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that 8-4 are the ones who were responsible for getting the notorious (and ultimately, belatedly fired) community manager their job. Poor Inafune had no idea what he was getting himself into. Having 8-4 attached to Bloodstained would be the kind of nightmare that would gut my enthusiasm for the game. "We decided to change these textures to show a little less skin. We got rid of physics in certain areas. This bit of dialogue was too racy. We also threw in some recent memes, like the one about giggling while wearing a Chewbacca mask. Trust us, Igarashi - we know what foreign countries will like."
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 14:53:03 GMT -6
People throw around the term "PS2" to define graphics much too easily, without ever really taking into consideration the actual comparison or what that entails. I agree. I don't consider myself one of them. Bloodstained's boss is about the same level of detail - mesh and textures - as the Hydra in God of War. As a factor contributing to the cartoony look, that's only somewhat important, but it is a factor. There is much more detail in Miriam and the other enemies in the game, if expressly thanks to the difference in scale. But by far the biggest factor is the colors. There is a stark incongruity between the saturated look of the boss and the rather more believable hues of the boat, or the stylized but decidedly unsaturated background. The ocean's water here is a churning brown, but the boss's watery flesh is the uncommon blue of an arctic iceberg.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 14:41:33 GMT -6
I should check those IP address now that you point that out. Edit: I checked. They are completely different. We had a rush of new members that day because the update pointed directly to that thread. Why is 8-4 getting flack? We would be lucky to have them do localization. [...]Not all agree on the cell shaded look, but it was a very one sided decision, so IGA listened. This all has nothing to do with your thoughts other than me pointing out all backers were "to blame." (Curse the lack of multiquote.) While it is arguably unfair of me to make an accusation like that without evidence, even half-sarcastically as I did, I'm frankly not swayed by IP addresses - not when anyone creating multiple accounts in rapid succession would be likely to have adequate foresight to spoof their IP, and when two "guests" post the same sentiment literally within one held breath of one another and then disappear forever. I'll stick by my guns on this one. 8-4 gets special resentment from me because they are absolutely notorious for taking it upon themselves to censor the games they localize, changing dialogue and outright modifying visuals in an effort to sanitize whatever happens to offend them. It is absolutely no secret that they do this, so they are a permanent red flag with me, and if I'd bothered to research them before backing MN9, I'd be slightly richer today. In the case of MN9, which had literally nothing to censor, we can at least thank 8-4 for that game's hamstrung dialogue and its oh-so-topical jibe about "ethical journalism." I wouldn't be surprised if IGA regrets holding that particular questionnaire, and that we won't be getting another that impacts the game's design.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 3:35:28 GMT -6
Had to read the whole thread to see where it would go. The TL;DR of the thread seems to be: One person was knee-jerk triggered and decided to start the ball rolling on reshaping the game to fit their sensibilities. Noticed their opinion was staggeringly unpopular. Started two "guest" accounts within two minutes of one another to voice a "me too" opinion. Eventually gave it up, likely because the discourse was too civil to be (de)constructive.
Bravo, everyone.
As far as my take on the boss... I considered the design of the boss to be a good sign, and this was confirmed by that article where Igarashi basically promised that he'd be doing what he wants, for his Japanese audience. That is the end of any MN9-like concerns, and perhaps helps explain 8-4's blessed absence from this project in spite of pretty much everyone else associated with MN9 being on board. I do like the design.
The aesthetics could use work, as others have already pointed out. I think someone also already stressed two of the main aspects of what's wrong with the look.
1. The shader. According to what I've read, this very community is to blame for the fact that we have this cel shaded look to the game. In the case of this boss, it seems that the black outlines have been kept in rough proportion with the size of the enemy, rather than staying uniform with the complete game render. That's a problem. Miriam's black outlines are subtle because she is always so small on the screen; otherwise they would probably be cause for a demand to revert the shader to something less obnoxious. The excessively thick edges on the boss give it a cartoony look, which leads me to
2. The colors. These are not an accident, or incompetence. Those too-bright colors are deliberate. And I have to strongly suspect that the specific idea was to make the boss look cartoony to match the shader. I have faith that the designers of this boss could have figured out ways to make it stand out from the terrain/background without arbitrarily giving it full-body pastels.
The final aspect, in my opinion:
3. The model as a whole. The mesh and the textures are basically PS2 caliber. Really and truly. Good for the framerate and for ensuring ports to Vita and Wii-U, not so great for showcasing a polished-looking boss in 1080p. The other two aspects combine with this one to generate something that actually wouldn't have looked terribly out of place in Mighty No. 9.
Fixing any of these aspects would go a long way, but the most important is #2, followed by #1. My feeling (and expectation) is that when the final product drops, players will be able to choose a different shader from the menu, or at least tone down/disable the cel shading effect.
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Post by asterra on Jul 4, 2016 2:22:35 GMT -6
1) You will consider Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night smaller than Symphony of the Night if the whole game end up having 1600 rooms, since if you count the inverted castle of Symphony of the Night, that game has more than 1800? Thus, that would mean the Dev team didn't keep the promise of "Iga's Biggest Castle" Stretch goal? Yes, it is smaller. Here are the salient points: - Total playtime, which can be considered in this case to be the effective gauge of the game's value, is directly affected by a few things, with the total area of exploration being one of the main ones. Fewer areas to explore = less total playtime = less value.
- Even though SotN's inverted castle was simply a mirror of what had already been explored, it came packaged with its own enemies, its own items, and, never forget, its own music.
- I would say the majority of people expect an inverted castle at this point, or something equivalent that serves all of the same purposes, so if the game ends up not having one, it will end up feeling smaller than people were expecting, pretty much regardless of the size of the castle proper.
With all this having been said, IGA could simply bump the room total to 2000 or whatever, and there'd be no possible room for complaint. Also, I would be perfectly okay with having the inverted castle be something only available on a New Game+ (or similar), along with the better ending, assuming multiple endings.
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Post by asterra on Jul 3, 2016 0:10:31 GMT -6
Besides, wasn't one of the biggest complaints about Mighty No. 9 that everything was very lifeless and emotionless? Animating Miriam more would be the exact opposite of that. I think that was the complaint, but that it stemmed specifically from the fact that the (voiced) dialogue carried emotions which the game's visuals manifestly failed to reflect. That failure seems to have been largely owing to a terribly misguided stylistic direction, perhaps stimulated by dev timeline pressures and laziness. On the topic of Miriam's reaction to the boss enemy, I've tried visualizing what kind of reaction would work in this case, and nothing does. Her default face expresses calculated seriousness. Even so much as a slight squint of the eyes would imply things about her persona which simply do not exist without the expression. If IGA or whoever's in charge of this aspect of the game doesn't want any such thing implied, then their current approach was the correct one. Maybe it's easier to guess that the non-expression could be thanks more to the fact that the entire demo effort is effectively a work-in-progress. Personally, I feel that the demo was specifically coordinated to be as fully representative of the final product as Inti Creates could make it, and that every other task was put on hold to help make it happen, so that when the game finally ships, there would be zero chance of hindsight remorse, the way there very definitely was with MN9.
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Post by asterra on Jul 1, 2016 22:39:18 GMT -6
Okay, now my take. I need to preface by noting that I consider Yamane's SotN soundtrack to be not just the best Castlevania soundtrack but to be one of the best soundtracks to anything I have ever personally experienced. In brutal honesty, I feel that Castlevania soundtracks are perhaps better known for certain iconic tracks than they are for music you'd purposefully record and listen to at your non-gaming leisure. Some tracks from Castlevania 2 and Castlevania 3 would make such a list, in my opinion. A couple from Lament of Innocence. Not much else, really. Now, do I mean the entire SotN soundtrack? No. I don't have rose-tinted glasses when it comes to music; I can differentiate between music that is genuinely superb in ways that I personally like, and music that I've simply gotten used to, grew up with, or associate with a particular game/movie/whatever. That said, I would say that 50% of SotN's soundtrack (not counting the many boss battles) is in my traveling playlist. I can only name a handful of games or movies which share this distinction. Super Mario Galaxy, Chrono Trigger... it's a short list.
Where to begin on Bloodstained's music? I think I'll limit the discussion to two tracks: Galleon Minerva and Cursed Orphan. Galleon Minerva seems calculated to be Bloodstained's counterpart to SotN's Dracula's Castle. The two tracks are just about interchangeable. I don't consider either track to be flat-out amazing, in the specific sense of adding to a limited playlist that includes only the best, but I do consider Dracula's Castle to be an absolutely iconic part of SotN's soundtrack, and I am gradually coming to accept Galleon Minerva as fulfilling much the same role. Comparing the quality of the two, Galleon Minerva suffers from a decidedly lower production value, feeling like a track that was rejected from SotN in favor of Dracula's Castle. Cursed Orphan is the one track we have from the second composer, Ippo Yamada. Yamada has done a fair bit of music I like, including the exceptional and very famous Wily stage music from Mega Man 2. But I'm not here to be part of an echo chamber, so I must honestly submit that I find Cursed Orphan to be extremely generic and derivative. I get the impression that he slapped it together to serve as a counter piece to the somber and inactive main theme provided by Yamane. Yamada did a good job with minute-long chip tunes on the NES, but there is little here to give confidence in his half of Bloodstained's soundtrack. I found myself heartened to note that the demo's music was in fact entirely Yamane's doing, particularly as I was betting on Yamane only providing a token number of tracks, leaving it to Yamada to compose the majority of the soundtrack.
Now, there's a point that I feel I need to stress: While SotN's soundtrack was a technical masterpiece from front to back (not counting the credits), what elevated it above almost everything else I've ever listened to was the standout pieces that simply blew me away. SotN did not waste time in this regard: The first track that caught my notice to that extent was Prologue.
Now, just give the speakers some volume and listen to that. People in this thread seem hyped for the music we've heard so far in the demo. "I like it," everyone seems to be saying. "It's great." But if we'd been privy to a track anywhere near the caliber of Prologue, people would be frothing at the mouth over how great the final product is going to be. There would be no question: We were in for something special. In a way, I'm glad we've only been shown sort of middling-good tracks thus far; goodness knows I wouldn't have wanted to wear out Prologue a year before I got to play SotN. But in a way, it also leaves me room to worry whether the final product will have any tracks of the caliber of Prologue, the incongruous but irresistible Crystal Teardrops, the appropriately macabre and discordant Abandoned Pit, the melodic and slightly dissonant waltz Dance of Pales, or the epic and surprising The Tragic Prince. I also worry that Yamane's total output won't even allow for very many such tracks, especially with her counterpart muscling in. The final worry I have is that the change in IP may have (or may be having) a stifling effect on Yamane's creativity. What do I mean? I mean if we don't get any waltzes, organ-heavy Beethoven-esque sonatas, gothic-sounding harpsichord tunes, or, heck, even heavy rock pieces here and there, it's specifically because that was all done in Dracula-themed Castlevania, and here we have a new game whose setting feels nebulous. Perhaps the most Yamane really knows is that they want it to be "like Symphony of the Night", but perhaps not identical to it. I have to say that the music is the component of the game that I'll fuss over the most because my taste in games, I have found, has tended to be dictated to a great extent by how good its soundtrack was. You'd better believe that if most of Bloodstained's soundtrack ends up being of a vein of Cursed Orphan, it will color my entire experience with the game. So far, Bloodstained is looking to be more than I ever hoped it could - especially after the debacle of a certain very closely-patterned flop. Here's hoping the soundtrack ends up blowing me away.
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Post by asterra on Jul 1, 2016 20:15:39 GMT -6
Alright. Finally got the demo yesterday, so now it's time for some belated comments, suggestions and thoughts. I already made use of the bug report thread to post a video of most of the new bugs I found. First, some discussion of the observations people have already made in this thread: "It's too easy."I disagree. Keep in mind that 1) this is a demo that was designed to be digested by passers-by at E3, 2) this is obviously meant to be the start of the game when things are as easy as they're going to get, and 3) this is not New Game+, or "hard difficulty", or anything else special. By no means is this demo difficult, but I am perfectly willing to accept the idea that difficulty is something that one will have to either specifically choose in the beginning, or earn the right to later. "Backdash is broken."I disagree. Bloodstained is taking pains to mimic Symphony of the Night. This was bluntly obvious from the outline and videos provided during the Kickstarter. Something like this is being said in an attempt to shape the game the way someone personally prefers, rather than the way that was implicitly promised. I can't blame someone for attempting, but it's IGA's game. My take: Backdash is mostly functional, but needs to be interrupted by moving in the direction of the backdash, so that the player can attack in that direction, just as they can in SotN. Also, if one balks at the prospect of the backdash truly becoming the default mode of travel 100% of the time (rather than only when the player has become comfortable with the areas they travel, which is how it works in SotN), then a better idea would be to provide some means for roughly equating the travel speed of backdash through the use of a relic or whatever system the game ends up using for such special abilities. Make it a tradeoff. "Miriam's animation is too stiff."I sort of agree. The fact of the matter is that most Castlevania characters have stiff animation, and Miriam is actually just upholding this tradition. But I would not complain if they made her animation a bit more girlish - I can take it or leave it. That said, some of the animation segues do need work (see below). "Miriam's face should animate during cutscenes."I disagree. Miriam seems to be similar to Alucard - emotionless and not prone to a lot of talking. I like this. If they gave her startled (or whatever) expressions during cutscenes, it would betray that persona. Worst case, it might end up looking as bad as MN9. With that out of the way, my own thoughts: CRITICISMS: 1. Menu elements are too heavily compressed. Here is an example of what I mean: A closeup of the key icon from the equipment menu. The super-pixellation is starkly visible in this case as a stairstepping effect along the key, but the consequences of compression are apparent in other spots. Every graphical element of the menus suffers similarly. On consoles, this can be considered unavoidable, but on Steam/GOG, all menu elements really should be raw images. 2. Some menu elements are low resolution. For example: The stained glass background is a 1080p element, but Miriam's portrait is a heavily compressed, scaled 720p (roughly). 3. All menu elements should be readied for 4k. By the time this game comes out, every platform it is slated to be on (that people will actually opt for) will have 4k available, and most PC users will be using GPUs capable of running the game at 4k60, so this is what they will do. The current menu elements are designed for 1080p. This means the game proper will be 4k but the menus will be 1080p. I'm telling you up front: This will be incongruous and a point of contention for a lot of people. 4. The animation for doing an instant 180 does not segue well from the running animation which precedes it. There is too much motion missing and it gives the impression of a cut film. HOPES:1. Steal. This was not specifically promised in the Kickstarter, so I have to make it a hope. I loved this system in Curse of Darkness. My hope is that most enemies have a stealable item, along with common and rare drops, a shard, etc., all faithfully notated in the bestiary once they're discovered, along with the number of each that the player has discovered and the number of each monster they've killed. Data is fun, discovering things is fun, and "collecting them all" is fun! More things to do is always a plus. What I definitely don't want to see is most enemies having only one or two total items each, across all of these possibilities. Use that imagination and give us the variety that can keep it interesting! 2. Powering up shards through use. Yes, what's likely to be the case is that you can level up shards by collecting more shards. If that's all there is to it, then it feels a little too easy. If, however, the player must also actually use abilities in order to reach their maximum potential, well that gives players another goal to work on and another thing to do in the game. Trigger and Directional shards can be based on strict number of uses against targets. Effective and Familiar shards can be based on duration used. Obviously, absorbing more copies of the same shard would still be a necessary component of the formula for powering up. This idea is the only suggestion I'm going to put forward here - my aim is to prolong the useful playtime of the game and perhaps force the player to actually make use of the many abilities they'll effortlessly absorb.
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Post by asterra on Jul 1, 2016 0:45:04 GMT -6
I don't think this is a serious flaw, it is just a small problem for me, that i would want to see differently. But i do have confidence on IGA and the dev team. And yes, Morte has no Shard because that creature is a half-demon, it has some context and i like that. ANyway, i wanted to see if i was alone n that matter, and i think i am haha. For what it's worth, I agree with your sentiment, for precisely the reasons you outlined (and were largely ignored on), re the fact that mandated souls = forced creativity and de facto variety. Narrative-driven laziness will just result in an ability variety that is comprised, to a disappointing proportion, of legitimately useful abilities at the obvious expense of abilities which exist for the fun factor. We could not expect, for example, to see anyone throwing paper airplanes with a lethargic "Hoi." under such a system. I'm also very uncomfortable with the idea of monsters being limited to either shards or components. This again threatens variety. I'd be happier if most monsters had components they could drop, shards they may have, a common and a rare, and also a special item to steal, all faithfully tallied in the information panel, along with how many of each the player has found. (Stealing is a feature that is definitely on my wish list.)
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Post by asterra on Jul 1, 2016 0:19:47 GMT -6
Hey, all. Thanks to the email-slash-survey issues a lot of people were having as evidenced by half of update 41 being devoted to them, I only just got the demo today. I took a little time to slap together a video showcasing the bugs I've found. Half of the things I discovered were of course already mentioned here over the last week, so I've limited the video to the bugs which don't seem to have been covered, and which I know can be reproduced by anyone with no difficulty. Here is some elaboration: - Backstep bug 1: Backstepping has a sequence of three animation phases: 1) Jumping backwards. 2) Landing. 3) Transitioning to neutral pose. Interrupting the backstep with an attack (weapon or magic) is supposed to permanently interrupt the animation sequence, but instead it only delays it; once the attack animation sequence is complete, the remaining backstep animation phases play out, assuming no further input from the player. For example, interrupting backstep with an attack during phase 1 (jumping backwards) will result in phases 2 (landing) and 3 (transitioning to neutral pose) playing out once the attack animation sequence completes.
- Backstep bug 2: Furthermore, after interrupting a backstep with an attack, if the next action is another backstep, and it is done before the full sequence of animations (attack and backstep) has been allowed to play out, then the first animation phase of the backstep (jumping backwards) gets interrupted partway through, resulting in a visible pause in the animation. This phenomenon can be readily reproduced by backing yourself against a wall and spam alternating attack/backdash.
- Backstep bug 3: The backdash cannot be interrupted by moving left or right on the control pad. This in turn prevents the player from attacking in the direction of the dash, which is a significant gameplay oversight. In Symphony of the Night, which Bloodstained very obviously seeks to imitate, literally the only thing that doesn't instantly interrupt the backslide is attempting to move Alucard in the opposite direction from the slide (the direction he's facing), and even this does interrupt it after a quarter of a second. While this oversight is not technically a bug, it is a significant enough detriment to the gameplay and the obvious intent of the game that I consider it to be a bug. It certainly deserves just as much developer focus as a proper bug.
- Jumping bug: Jumping and attacking (with the sword) at the same time causes the weapon to appear in Miriam's hand for a couple of seconds, but with no attack.
- Terrain bug: Jumping down into an area where the first platform is high on the screen, such as the middle vertical portion of the map with the Amy enemies, can result in Miriam arbitrarily falling through / missing said platform on her way down. This phenomenon is likely tied to the swaying of the playfield.
Other observations: - Attacking while on the ground (or during a backstep) has four animation phases: 1) Attacking. 2) Transitioning to en garde pose. 3) En garde pose. 4) Transitioning to neutral pose. If the weapon is changed during phase 1 or 2, the remaining animation phases will continue to reflect the original weapon, meaning for example that swapping from sword to boots during an attack will result in Miriam assuming the sword's en garde pose, but with no sword in her hand.
- Changing weapon (mundane or shard) immediately before an attack with said weapon lands causes the attack to pass right through the enemy.
I have other observations and comments to offer that aren't bug-related. I'll save that for tomorrow and a different thread.
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