Junior Member
Hey. So after experimenting a lot with the controller set up in the game, I've found that by far the biggest issue I had was guard-break cancelling. Basically, while the reaction time for guard breaking is huge I consistently failed it because that time is significantly shortened by the proportionately long time it takes for you to move your finger from the right thumbstick to the X/square button.
Not just that, but it also put you at an automatic disadvantage against anyone on PC for a similar reason; When using the keyboard+mouse setup, your fingers are all aready in the right place, whereas there is more movement involved in the controller setup.
Another issue is dodging; In the keyboard+mouse setup is how dodging works. In the K+M setup you dodge and block with different hands - And that makes it easier to do one after the other in quick succession. In the controller, you block and dodge with the same hand, making it considerably more difficult to do so.
Aaand lastly, feinting. Feinting is a great mechanic for getting an enemy to be out of position or surprise-guardbreak them, but that's also something the controller player struggles since to feint they have to press B (or circle) and that's the same hand they'd use to change the attack direction to begin with!
So thinking on these things, I've come up with what are (in my opinion) much better keybinds for the controller to do all these functions without forcing the player to move their hands away from the default position:
1 -> Change dodge to the left thumbstick button. This means you move and dodge with the same hand just like in the PC version and dodging no longer means you have to commit to giving up your defense until you reposition.
2 -> Change guard break to the right thumbstick button. That means guard-break cancels are now done in the same position as blocks are, which means you have considerably more time to react to a guard break after a feint or after a chain of attacks.
3 -> Change the feint button to the left bumper button. That way you can feint without having to move your hand away from the guard thumbstick, which makes changing directions and attacking considerably easier.
As for the buttons which get unmapped as a result (sprint, camera center and quick message)
Change sprint to A(X), camera centering to X(Square) and quick message to B(Circle). Have quick messages be selected with directional keys instead of the current setup.
All these actions are done outside of guard mode most of the time and therefore there's no real impact in limiting them in that mode. And since when you're sprinting you won't be doing much blocking, it's fine to keep the A button as the sprint button instead.
That way the entire button layout is already correctly positioned when you're in guard mode, and suddenly the movement start making a lot more sense.
This is, obviously, just my opinion. And the main reason I'm posting it is because I enjoy playing with the controller but right now there's no way to customize controller controls in the game, so I've no real way to change the layout to something I'd prefer.
Opinions are always welcome.
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