Combat Feedback

[spark dawn]

Played the demo for a bit over 8 hours, really feels very Legend of Spyro inspired, demo was pretty good overall but the combat has a few sore points:

• Input window for the combo attacks
  Currently, the only way to pull off the combo attacks is by quite literally button mashing because the input window for the game to register the next attack in a combo ends before the animation for your current attack even began, this feels extremely clunky and is in a dire need of a fix, extending the input window to just a few frames after the attack's hitbox became active, or to just a few frames after the attack hitbox stopped being active would do wonders for the feel of combat

• Swapping to secondary elements
  Having to hold a button to even have the option to swap to a secondary element feels a bit clunky, it's not too bad but it could be greatly improved by allowing you to double tap the button of the corresponding element to swap to a secondary element or by having the option to change from holding down the button to swap elements to simply tapping it once to permanently swap to the secondary elements
  Example of the former: Pressing the Ice element button once will swap to the ice element, pressing it twice in quick succession will swap it to water element; somewhat similar to how swapping to dante's dark slayer style works in DMC4 if you need a reference.
  Example of the latter: Pressing the Secondary Elements button will swap the element selection to the secondary elements permanently, pressing the button again will swap back to the primary elements; kinda like how Nioh item shortcuts work if you need a reference.

• A small nitpick of mine, and it is probably beyond the scope of this project for now, but: basic attack variety
  The game currently only has 4 basic attack strings: 2 grounded, 2 aerials; having a third or even a fourth basic attack string that mixes up light and heavy attack inputs would make the combat feel a bit less repetitive; even just adding a light/heavy attack out of dodge or a press and hold charged attack would help with this, or even just having (more) effect changes on the basic attack string in each element mode.

[woeful sentinel]

The combat in Glyde is built around using special abilities as main damage tools and combo extenders etc. Melee attacks primary use is to restore flame bar. There could be more variety between elements with melee attacks but we want to stick to special abilities as main tools used in combat

[spark dawn]

i find myself running out of juice pretty often on bossfights due to the lack of enemies around to hit for the quick refills; while i could see you guys were going for a more FF16 style where the combat is centered around the special attacks, there is quite a gap where you have to basic attack for a long time during bosses in order to refill the bar for more than one special attack; would probably be remedied in the full game where we would have access to more armor sets.
maybe make it so bosses in specific drop energy pick-ups ever X ammount of basic attacks landed to help the bossfights feel less passive?