I've been wondering, but I don't wanna watch a bunch of videos and gifs so maybe someone can help me out here:
How in depth is the combat? Like, fighting hand to hand? Can smaller enemies move through your attacks and/or dodge? Is it easy to stun lock lost of enemies resulting in "mash attack to defeat?" Do weapons have pretty varied move sets with cool combinations of moves? How does parrying work?
I'm just hoping that one-on-one encounters can be clever and varied. I want to dodge through attacks and learn how enemy hitboxes line up with my dodge invincibility, and deliver cool critical attacks even on smaller enemies. Combat mechanics are some of the coolest part of action RPGs for me, so I'm hoping these things are as satisfying and surprisingly deep as the rest of the game and world.
1. There Are No I-Frames on dodges much like previous Zelda games (enemy movesets carefully consider this in mind). You literally dodge in this game by not getting hit and backflips and sidesteps facilitate this.
2. Bokoblins don't really dodge but Lizalfos can and will move very fast and launch a variety of projectiles. Other enemies can move in interesting ways.
3. 1v1 is not something that this game excels at compared to say Dark Souls (Some enemies do better at this than others like Lizalfos). It's much closer to The Evil Within or RE4 where individual enemies can do big damage if the player is not careful but the player can easily take them out unless it's a boss type. Most of the time, it's going to be groups of enemies that you're going to handle and crowd control strategy is a key element of combat in tandem with resource management.
4. Weapon movesets are basic but they're all different and different weapons within different archetypes have different properties including durability which can impact fights in a meaningful manner. The Physics engine also facilitates some pretty nuanced interactions in tandem with the crowd control elements mentioned earlier.
5. Rune abilities are also part of combat but they demand more creativity, but also consume the least resources to implement for the most part.
6. Link can perform a lot of dodge and jump cancels and smoothly transitions between melee or ranged.
7. The bow is as much of a tool as any other weapon used to knock down enemies deal bonus damage, use elemental arrows for other effects.
8. Parrying requires holding the lock on and hitting the A button at the right time. Success can reflect projectiles and disarm enemies no bonus damage like Dark Souls though.
9. You can also use your horse to damage enemies and enemies can do things like Pick up other objects in the environment to throw at you.
