Ok, just finished the first 5 missions, all with the gun since I mained bow on the vanilla.
First of all, instead of having a line representing the projectile trajectory, there's a crosshair. Dunno if it will be the same for the bow as it's not accessible on the demo (or I missed something).
After each shot your character will cock the gun again (it's not even semi-auto). Your rifle stores 8 bullets (you can mix then), and you don't need to empty it to load more. You load then with triangle, and select the bullet type with suqare and circle (you cicle through then). You can mash triangle to quick the loading, but doing so consumes stamina. Holding triangle will empty your gun.
There are 5 bullet types, and each gun comes with 3 types (you can't choose). You have access to 3 different guns on the demo, so all 5 types of bullets are accessible across those three.
The effects for each bullet are as listed on the Koei wikia, and in that order their in-game color are green, lime, blue, orange and pink.
You don't need to hold buttons to aim. Pressing square will ready your weapon. You can move and aim freely, and shoot either with square or R.
You can also aim with circle, and you character will aim on her knees. You can't move in this stance, but shooting (done with circle or R) is different depending on the equipped bullet and stamina is consumed by shot or by keeping the stance.
On your knees, your shots behave like this:
- green bullet: you can shoot without cocking the gun after each shot (now we're semi auto). Each shot will consume stamina, and it will end before you can shoot 8 bullets. I'd say the interval between each shot is on par with spamming square with the bow.
- lime bullet: your shot will start charging quickly (quickier than charging a square shot with the bow having prescience on 2 mitamas), up to three levels, and yout stamina is drained as quickly. It power ups the shot, but I didn't notice exactly what. Maybe it increases the damage, or the area the shot can damage, or maybe both. It's piercing as the normal lime shot;
- blue: charges like the green one. At level 1 it shoots a burst of fire in front of you. At level 2, the burst is bigger. At level 3, it's an explosion bigger than the first but smaller than the second, and your character will roll back;
- orange: doesn't charge, so only spends stamina on shoot. It's a regular explosive shot, but your character rolls back (like with the charge lvl 3 blue circle shot);
- pink: it will charge like the lime shot. After hitting the enemy, it'll generate at the point of impact a blue orb that does various ticks of damage. It does not move, so the enemy can walk out of it. I presume each level of charge will increase it's duration.
As for the grenades: your character throws the grenade (square+x) on an arc. You need to shoot it for it to explode. After the throw your character will immediatly enter square shooting mode on the direction of the nade, so it's a matter of timing to throw the thing and then just press square or R to shoot.
The problem is: the grenade doesn't explode on impact and will bounce - or at least change direction - if it hits an enemy. I believe that, given time, one can get used to the distance of the throw to avoind having it bouncing off onis. If all else fails, you can still shoot it while it's on the ground, and it'll explode by itself after some time.
I feel like there's no visual feedback whether the grenade damaged the enemy or not - or maybe I just missed with it every single time, who knows. It'll need some more testing, but for now I don't really feel it.
The destroyer is just like the bow - activate, aim, shoot.
And that's what I can tell and recall for now. As for LMN's impressions about the new bosses and the AI, it's how I felt too. You can also fight chtonian and manhunter, and they feel just the same as vanilla.
Naginata will be the supreme masher weapon, btw. Long range, fast, can get airbone and have a mashable circle attack like the fists (but without the timing thing). Just tried it on the tutorial, btw.
