Drifter Melee Combat

In the Duviri Paradox, unless you are playing on the circuit, you spend most of your time playing as the Drifter. However, this Drifter isn’t quite the same as the Drifter or Operator you have on your ship. The Drifter of Duviri has his or her own set of weapons, and a rather different combat style.

It’s rather odd, to say the least

A lot of people have compared Drifter’s melee combat to something like Dark Souls. However, I’ve never really played those games, so I can’t compare them accurately. However, I do agree that the melee is a bit clunky. It’s pretty slow and there’s also a lot to do. We’ve got blocking, parrying, reflecting projectiles, switching targets, all that sort of thing. A lot of controls to suddenly memorize if you haven’t played a game like this before. Sure, you get a little rundown of how to use Teshin’s Sun and Moon katanas, but, honestly, I struggled to remember it all. Blocking and heavy attacks were easy to do but I sucked at deflecting projectiles. At least I remembered the most important button though: rolling.

But there’s just not enough time to do all those things.

There’s too many enemies

The problem is, the above system doesn’t really work when there’s more than a couple of enemies about. In fact, most enemies attack in groups of three. I ended up finding that locking on to enemies was a bit of a bad idea. You don’t really want to lock on, you kinda need full control of your character so you can successfully roll or block damage. But I found you’re not always in control, you have to wait for one action to end to do another. There’s no real way to get out of a bad movement, but at least the roll button has you covered.

But yeah, going into melee distance with multiple enemies is a disaster waiting to happen. Especially against the giant Dax. Those guys hit hard. You’ve also got to deal with Dax archers, who stand back and take pot shots at you while you’re busy trying to block, parry and kill the melee-focused Dax.

Shooting is just as good

Instead of doing all that melee stuff though, I did things my own way. Because Drifter has a gun, the Sirocco. It’s not the most powerful gun around, but it gets the job done. Rather than spend most of my time in melee mode, I shoot targets and wear them down from a distance, where their attacks can’t reach me. Kiting and shooting is so much easier, especially if you find the right decrees. Most decrees lean towards melee combat, but between rolling to reload and getting extra damage when reloading, you can actually get a lot done. Way more than someone like me who can barely aim.

Is the melee combat clunky? Yeah, it is. But is it fun? I guess so. Is that how you do maximum damage? Sure, but I prefer keeping my distance. And, thankfully, DE is perfectly happy for me to stick to shooting things. With the right decrees, shooting with a gun and rolling around is a pretty good way to fight.