Hello, this is Espero Studio.
Here are the patch notes for v0.3.0 Demo.
We judged that the existing 3-charge-based heavy attack mechanism didn't fit MEHEN, where players need to respond to fast-paced enemy attacks with guard/parry/counter.
This is because charging the heavy attack up to 3 stages by any means other than parrying leaves the player vulnerable to enemy attacks (since you can't guard while charging a heavy attack), and there simply isn't enough absolute time to do so.
For these reasons, we have changed the heavy attack mechanism in the following ways.
Heavy attack charging is no longer divided into stages; holding the attack button for 1 second now completes the charge.
Holding the attack button right after a successful parry will instantly complete the heavy attack charge.
The attack combo count no longer decreases while charging a heavy attack.
Heavy attacks now have a 2nd and 3rd hit added, just like light attacks. (Light and heavy attacks share the same attack combo.)
As a result of these changes, the effects of some artifacts have also been changed.
When designing MEHEN, our intended combat flow was one where players are always either attacking or reacting to patterns, with no downtime. However, we judged that the previous system — where the player is completely defenseless from the start to the end of an attack motion — inevitably pushed combat into a more passive, defensive style.
For this reason, we have changed attack motions so they can be conditionally canceled, in the following ways.
You can now cancel into a guard during the early and late portions of both light and heavy attack motions.
You can now charge a heavy attack during the late portion of both light and heavy attack motions.
Improved the frame drop issues that occurred especially often on the world map, in towns, and similar areas.
Fixed a bug where mashing the confirm key at game start would prevent the main menu from loading.
Fixed a bug where Leo, encountered in the tutorial, had its max HP set to the playtest values instead of the demo values.