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Konami states that Rose fights with weapons spanning seven distinct categories, each with its own style and special moves. Those categories are families rather than individual items: each one holds several unlockable weapons inside it. Six of the seven have been named. The seventh has not, and it should not be guessed at.
Melee weapons carry the damage load in this game. The whip is a tool for movement and for grappling more than it is a damage source, which reverses the usual arrangement in the series.
Weapon Families
Family | Confirmed traits |
|---|---|
Sword | The starting weapon. Easy to use with solid attack power. The family holds lighter and heavier swords. |
Longsword | Balanced. Deals bonus damage when Rose attacks immediately out of a backdash. Its grapple attack slashes through the target, keeps her forward momentum, and lets her chain grapples across long gaps. |
Greatsword | Two-handed and much slower, with much higher damage. Its grapple attack is a heavy spinning strike that hits everything around her. |
Cestus | Knuckles or gauntlets. Short range and fast combos, with damage that ramps as consecutive hits land. Its grapple attack is a rising uppercut that launches an enemy into the air for follow-up hits. |
Spear | Reaches further than the swords and can be thrown across the screen, which makes it the answer to flying enemies. |
Sword and Shield | The only family with a defensive property: the shield guards and absorbs incoming hits. |
Whip-type | Implied but not confirmed. One Work of Mercy asks players to find three different whip-type weapons, and no previewer used one. Do not assume this is the seventh family. |
How Weapons Work
Every weapon has three separate layers rather than a single attack string:
A basic moveset, with attacks Rose can swing in front of her, above her and below her.
A charge attack, distinct to that weapon.
A grapple attack, also distinct to that weapon, which is what happens when she whips an enemy and closes the distance.
The grapple attack is the reason weapon choice changes how traversal feels and not only how fights resolve. Whipping an enemy pulls Rose into it, and what happens on contact depends on what she has equipped.
Getting Weapons
Weapons are not random drops. Enemies do not shed them. They come from clearing milestones or from fixed points on the map, which means the arsenal grows in a fixed order for every player rather than by luck. Bosses also hand them over: see Bosses.
Konami has not published how many weapons the game contains. A figure counted from menu slots has circulated from preview coverage and is hedged in the coverage itself, so no total is recorded here.
Named Weapons
Weapon | Family | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
Starting sword | Sword | Held from the opening | Its menu icon reads as a rapier. |
Burnt Sword of Fierbois | Greatsword | Joan of Arc | Has a charge attack. Slower than the starting sword and considerably stronger. |
Sword and shield | Sword and Shield | Medusa | Described as the kind Perseus would have carried. |
Upgrades
Weapons carry their own completion criteria and can be improved, in the same way Arcana are improved through Works of Mercy. No damage values, speed figures, scaling rules or comparative rankings have been published for any weapon, so none appear here. Stat gains that apply across all weapons are covered on Progression and Upgrades.
One absence worth noting for players coming from earlier entries: the hearts that powered sub-weapons in previous games are not in this one. Spells run on mana instead, and sub-weapons have been replaced by the Arcana.