• Added a screen shake intensity setting. This defaults to 1x, and ranges from 0-10x, so please feel free to give yourself as much juice as you feel is necessary (this will probably be changed back to 0-1x with a default 0.5x in future xd)

• Increased screen shake intensity in general.

• Added an additional hitbox that is only active while blocking. (Note that grabs that go through blocks can also interact with this hitbox.)

• Reworked how stance regen works. Previously, there would be a delay before having the full regeneration rate. With the rework, regeneration now follows a curve over some duration before returning to the maximum regen rate. This results in an overall lower regeneration rate, but this works in the player's favour since you can recover most of your stance through parrying.

Because this uses curves, each boss regenerates a little differently.

Of course, none of this really matters if you're aggressive enough that they never get to regenerate, but this should make it a little less punishing overall.

(By the way, a lategame boss I'm already working on will fully recover her stance in about 6-7 seconds or so if you don't try and interrupt her, so you should get used to throwing the occasional projectile to interrupt their recovery.)

For now, these values are still WIP and will be refined later on based on more feedback.

• Tweaked movement code and configuration. The transition between directions should feel smoother now.

• Remade all running animations. (Walking animations and weapon-specific variants will have to wait for now. )

• Changed Mist Form — Leaves behind a clone that deflects attacks temporarily. If this substitute is attacked, restores some MP to you.

• Reduced Mist Form’s movement distance.

• Fixed a bug where Mist Form would not clear stance break or knockdown.

• Fixed a bug where Mist Form could be cancelled almost immediately by blocking.

• Rebalanced MP — Deflecting attacks now also restores some MP.

• Adrenaline (Parry Bonus Effect) — Duration has been reduced, but now grants stance damage reduction and restores more MP.

• Fixed a misconfiguration where Louise would spam her Excalibur attack.

• Added a short cooldown to Nia’s parry. (Don’t worry, I’ll make sure every boss after her parries everything even harder. Enjoy this mercy in the demo. )

• Removed Story Mode from the Demo. For the time being, this can be accessed again by enabling the setting in the Settings menu.

• Easy Mode has been added to Demo Mode by default. You can talk to the mysterious tutorial lady (now also in the demo hub) to turn it off or on. It simply reduces your damage taken by half. But she’ll be very disappointed in you if you leave it on.

For now, the main story and hub area will remain as a secondary game mode/hidden option.

• This may be removed in future temporarily if there are breaking changes or major overhauls to be done.

• The demo hub area is a lot smaller, so you REALLY can’t miss the level select stone. If I still see someone have no idea where to go after loading into the map then I will really be at a loss for words.

• This is mostly just an experiment in trying to address some potential drop-off points in the demo. Having it still be available via a setting is just the middle ground in letting everyone still experience the full early-game, if they choose to.

• Finally, this allows easy mode to be implemented without having to decide if it affects the story yet. Save data for this mode is separate from the main game's save data, so it won't affect any progression in story mode.