A simple tweak to make Overture's combat a bit more accessible?

[masa2009]

Thanks a lot for the tip.
Knowing that now, I had to start a new game and try it.

Obviously you lose a bit of immersion by ditching mouse gestures in combat entirely. That's why I had thought of a camera lock that would keep the enemy in your sights, while still allowing to keep the mouse swipes.

But overall it's pretty good. There's a timing to it now, so if you click very briefly, you get the "poke" gesture that was previously obtained by pushing the mouse forward. And if you do a long click, obviously you get the full lateral swipe of the weapon. Thanks to this the weapon controls keep a little tactile aspect, even though it's largely diminished. But after all, the original game already had some pure click-based actions like throwing objets, so making weapons behave like that doesn't feel completely out of place.

And of course the other actions, like opening furniture and doors are still gesture-based.

It does make enemy encounters much easier, there is no doubt about it. You might still get hit (especially when using the hammer early on) since enemies have pretty fast jumping attacks and a fair bit of precision remains needed. It's just a lot less likely that you'll get mauled 3 times (what it takes to die on Normal difficulty) before you've had the time to kill the enemy first.

But if you dial up the difficulty, with 2 hits now being enough to kill you, it should still make it worth your while to play a bit stealthy.

In the end, I think you do lose a little something with this alternate control scheme, but it feels so much more intuitive that I wish I had first played the game like that. Wether it trivializes the experience or not, it just feels more natural, and that counts for immersion, too.