The beauty of Dark Souls lies in many aspects, one of them being the ability to play in a huge variety of playstyles, shaped by many hidden stat-systems governing how much damage you'll do, take, or be able to avoid, and how. A particular personal favourite was backing away from a swinging enemy only to then do the 'forward+heavy attack' move, which saw your character leap forward and bring their weapon down on the enemy, Thor-vs-Captain America style. As it's still early days with exposure to the game, this is one that many people are still figuring out, but what we do know is that the system determining whether or not you can do such an attack is predicated on something other than just stamina. Most of the time now you'll back away and go for the jumping animation, only for a static swing to play out, leaving you wide open for opponents to skewer your hips off. Chances are there will be a stat you can put points in to to alter this, and allow for you to react to enemies regardless of what state they're in, or whichever animation you're coming out of, but as it stands it appears that in comparison to DS1, you are not free to execute a jumping move or guard break whenever you like. Obviously the 'upside' to this is picking and choosing exactly what you're going to do; a core staple of the games in the first place. However by flat-out not telling you what is going on within the game to determine if you'll make a victory-securing jump forward or an aimless swing like some soldier with his My First Axe instruction manual, it completely removes the symbiotic relationship you had with the controls in DS1. Battles are no longer more Sherlock-Moriarty styler plays for position whilst trying to pre-cognitively tell exactly how your enemy is going to react, instead you're forever worrying if the game's controls are going to damn you before the enemies do.
