Heavy Boots on Cobblestone
The first thing I check in any melee game is the left stick response. You drop into the opening train car as Geppetto's puppet, take three steps, and immediately sense the mass on this character. Turning around has weight. Starting a sprint takes a moment to ramp up, and stopping leaves you sliding for half a pace before your boots settle on the platform.
That deliberate weight carries directly into your defensive buttons. Guarding comes up fast enough to catch incoming strikes, but the base dodge roll feels stubby. The distance is short. Worse, the recovery animation keeps you glued to the floor just long enough that chain attacks from street brawlers will clip your back leg before you can buffer a second roll. You have to commit early, or you take the hit.
Swapping Blades and Handles
Combat picks up once you unlock the weapon assembly system. Splitting weapon heads from their handles lets you tune your moveset and damage scaling to match your habits. Put a swift rapier blade onto a long blunt handle and you get weird reach with piercing stabs, while pairing a heavy saw blade with a light grip lets you swing high-impact iron without waiting through a glacial backswing.
The Legion Arm brings useful utility to your off-hand. Firing off a grappling wire pulls smaller puppets straight into range of a charged strike, and the mechanical punch crushes guard meters cleanly. Hit feedback is satisfyingly loud, with metallic screeches and dull thuds that let you know you caught meat instead of armor. It makes the weapon crafting feel worthwhile instead of like a gimmicky menu chore.
Strict Windows and Snapping Tracking
Defensive play demands precision. Normal blocks eat your stamina and deal guard regain damage that you have to win back by landing counter hits. The real prize is the perfect guard, which shatters enemy blades and opens up stagger opportunities. The timing is extremely strict. You cannot flutter the guard button and hope for the best, because late presses turn into clean hits and early presses just result in standard chip damage.
My biggest grievance is the tracking on heavy puppet swings. Enemies will lift an overhead club, twist ninety degrees mid-air to follow your lateral sprint, and drop it directly onto your skull. When an attack animation defies physics to chase your hitbox, dodging sideways stops being a reliable answer. You are forced to stand right in the pocket and learn the deflect rhythm by heart, whether you like parrying or not.
A Bloody Belle Epoque Tour
The ruined city of Krat looks great, filled with trashed carriages, dead clockwork constructs, and eerie gas lamps. Steam players get full English interface and voice support, and the spoken dialogue from Geppetto and the hotel residents stays grounded instead of drifting into cartoon theater. It helps the quiet moments breathe between brutal alley runs.
At $59.99 on Steam, the package is dense and runs smooth during heavy scuffles. Deciding whether to lie or tell the truth gives some narrative flavor, but the real draw is simply mastering the savage streets. If NEOWIZ gave the puppet a slightly cleaner dodge cancel and cut down on enemy pivot tracking, this combat would stand alongside the absolute best in the genre. As it stands, it is a very sharp, slightly rigid brawler.
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y'all ever try parrying a toddler tantrum in aisle three while juggling two gallons of milk that's the dodge roll in this game. saw on rapier handle sounds nasty though gah might steal that build. boss tracking feels like my mother in law locking onto the last slice of pecan pie at thanksgiving. weapon crafting deep but movement stiff as a board. fixin to wait for a patch or two before i drop sixty on it.
y'all sleepin on the dodge roll tech, just parry everything. fixin to platinum this before the weekend. that saw-on-rapier build gah mentioned? nasty in pve. boss tracking is bs but parry window carries hard.
dude the parry sound is so crisp i literally jumped out of my chair first time i got a perfect guard the weapon mixing is insane you can make like a giant saw blade on a rapier handle and it actually plays different not just numbers going up bosses track you like heat seeking missiles tho its wild
tbh the dodge roll feels like my old knees lol sixty bucks for stiff movement is wild weapon mixing cool but movement kills it for me tbh games just felt more complete back then lol
pinocchios dodge roll isnt the only wooden thing here lol, guy moves like a tree trunk. mixing custom blades and handles is ridiculously fun though, already spent an hour just testing movesets.
dodge roll feels off tbh. parry window tight but doable. weapon mixing actually changes movesets not just stats. $60 steep for stiff movement. beat my time on first boss then talk rn
honestly the weapon mixing sounds cool (like that time i tried to fix the garbage disposal with a coat hanger (bad idea btw)) but sixty dollars is steep for stiff movement. parry sound crisp tho. might grab it on sale after the holidays (if my backlog ever shrinks (it wont)).
Hey parryframe, quick question about mixing weapons. Does picking a different handle actually change how your attacks swing, or does it just swap the stat scaling? You mentioned custom movesets but I wanna know how deep it actually goes. Nice review.
Total letdown. Bought it and refunded by noon because the dodge roll is broken and enemy tracking cheats.
@l33t_strpurethe parry sound design alone is worth sticking around for ngl. weapon assembly goes way deeper than it looks at first glance, the fights feel really satisfying once you get the deflections down. hope neowiz keeps at it.
sixty bucks is four breakfast platters where i'm from. weapon mixing neat but that dodge roll stiff as a board.
dont worry about the dodge roll friend we all struggle with new systems at first! the weapon crafting sounds wonderful for tinkering minds. take your time learn the rhythm. - harold
@wombat_23dude the parry sound is so crisp i literally jumped out of my chair first time i got a perfect guard the weapon mixing is insane you can make like a giant saw blade on a rapier handle and it actually plays different not just numbers going up bosses track you like heat seeking missiles tho its wild
@gahy'all sleepin on the dodge roll tech, just parry everything. fixin to platinum this before the weekend. that saw-on-rapier build gah mentioned? nasty in pve. boss tracking is bs but parry window carries hard.
@cjh91the saw blade on rapier handle sounds mighty fine cjh91. my grandson showed me similar build in elden ring. keep at it the rhythm clicks eventually. - harold
@gahy'all ever try parrying a toddler tantrum in aisle three while juggling two gallons of milk that's the dodge roll in this game. saw on rapier handle sounds nasty though gah might steal that build. boss tracking feels like my mother in law locking onto the last slice of pecan pie at thanksgiving. weapon crafting deep but movement stiff as a board. fixin to wait for a patch or two before i drop sixty on it.
reminds me of dorm nights back in '99 (on the old Trinitron (we played resident evil 2 until the disc skipped)), anyway the parry sound effect? chefs kiss. the dodge roll though (my knee hurts just watching it).
groundbreaking stuff, truly. the weapon assembly system is the only reason i havent refunded this yet. mixing blades and handles actually changes how combos flow instead of just swapping damage numbers like every other souls clone since 2016. but that dodge roll. twenty euros for a mediocre pub burger and you still get more distance on your roll than this puppet manages. recovery frames feel like youre stuck in molasses while every boss tracks you through walls. parry window is generous at least. sound design on perfect guards hits different though, ill give it that.
@tk2002sounds like Pinocchio's nose isn't the only thing that's stiff around here! 🤥 the weapon crafting does sound neat though, mixing and matching like a culinary arts degree for murder puppets. no spoilers but i'm fixin to cry at the ending already.