Since the last update, the player's ability to parry enemies was the main visible change. The parry ability can be used during a section of an enemy's attack to block damage and stun the enemy. This has been made easy to do, but the plan is to have this be a difficult ability for the player to use.
Parry Ability
The parry ability was made with two main parts, the player part, and the enemy part.
Player Part
On the player side, the parry window triggers at the very start of the animation. When adding this ability in I had originally moved the parry window further into the animation but this made hitting the timing very difficult and the ability felt like it wasn't working.

Enemy Part
Each enemy attack has three parts that go into making the parry window. Prior to the part of the attack where getting parried is possible there is a brief particle effect to give a warning that the parry window is about to start. Then there are two animation notify states, CanBeParried and Trail, that are present. CanBeParried is the window where the player can parry the enemy and Trail is a particle effect on the blade of the enemy's sword indicating that they can be parried.

The parry interaction happens when the enemy tries to damage the player by checking if the player is currently inside their parry window. If the player is parrying then it cancels the attack and starts the stun behavior.
While these are a good start for the parry ability, some changes to the enemy part could be made to make the experience better. One of the biggest issues is the particle effect that plays before the parry window opens, it is very difficult to see and react to. Changing the effect to be more visible and last longer would address this. Another change I'd like to make is adding a few frames into the animation before the enemy swings where they are frozen to give a better queue to the player that the attack is about to happen.
Going Forward
I'm uncertain about the exact place I want to go moving forward with this project. I've spent most of my time on this project working on the player and I'm thinking of moving my focus towards enemies for a while and trying to make fighting them using the player's current abilities interesting.
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