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11 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. Five of the seven have been named. The remaining two have not, and they should not be guessed at.
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33 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.
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55 Weapon Families
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77 FamilyConfirmed traitsSwordThe starting weapon. Easy to use with solid attack power. The family holds lighter and heavier swords.LongswordBalanced. 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.GreatswordTwo-handed and much slower, with much higher damage. Its grapple attack is a heavy spinning strike that hits everything around her.CestusKnuckles 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.SpearReaches further than the swords and can be thrown across the screen, which makes it the answer to flying enemies.Sword and ShieldThe only family with a defensive property: the shield guards and absorbs incoming hits.Whip-typeImplied 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.
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99 Two points about that count are worth stating plainly, because both are easy to get wrong. The first is what the named five actually are. A hands-on account that enumerated the categories directly listed sword, greatsword, spear, knuckle and sword and shield as the five it played, and said outright that two further categories appeared to exist. That is the clearest published enumeration, and it leaves two unnamed.
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1111 The second is that the whip is not one of the seven. A hands-on account of a later public build describes Rose having a single weapon slot, with the whip sitting alongside it as an ability rather than occupying that slot. Konami's own copy also separates the two, naming the whip and then describing weapons spanning seven distinct categories as a different thing. Whatever the remaining two categories turn out to be, the whip is not among them, and the whip-type entry in the table above should be read as an unresolved reference rather than as a candidate for the seventh slot. How the whip actually works is on Whip and Traversal.
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1313 Where longsword sits is also unsettled. English hands-on accounts use it as the name of a distinct weapon; the enumeration above folds swords into a single sword category. It is listed separately in the table because its traits are documented, not because it is confirmed to be its own category.
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1515 How Weapons Work
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1717 Every weapon has three separate layers rather than a single attack string:
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1919 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.
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2121 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.
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23+ 
2324 Getting Weapons
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2526 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.
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2828 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.
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3030 Named Weapons
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3232 WeaponFamilySourceNotesStarting swordSwordHeld from the openingIts menu icon reads as a rapier.Burnt Sword of FierboisGreatswordJoan of ArcHas a charge attack. Slower than the starting sword and considerably stronger.Sword and shieldSword and ShieldMedusaDescribed as the kind Perseus would have carried.
3333 Upgrades
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3535 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.
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3737 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.