Combat System

Combat in The Hidden Ones is built on four core components: basic attack, skills, block, and dodge. It is designed as a skill-based fighting game rather than a button-masher, where the moment-to-moment loop is reading an opponent's attack patterns, managing stamina, and reacting with well-timed defense. Once you learn the controls and the flow of a fight, the system opens up into long, expressive exchanges. This page covers how those pillars fit together; for the defensive resource that ties them all together, see Stamina and Defense.

The Four Pillars

Every fight comes back to the same four actions. Basic attacks and skills are your offense, while block and dodge are your defense. Learning when to switch between them, rather than mashing one button, is what the game rewards.

Because the system leans on timing rather than raw button speed, fights tend to feel deliberate. Press hands-on impressions compared the flow to a methodical brawler with the added flair of supernatural powers layered on top.

Reading Attacks

The defining feature of combat is its color-coded attack tells. Every incoming attack is signposted by a color so the player knows how to respond before it lands. Learning to read these cues on reflex is the single most important skill, and it is what separates a clean defense from a punished one.

The blue and red cues are the foundation. A blue glow tells you the hit is blockable, so you can hold guard or attempt a parry. A red flash means the attack is unblockable, and your only safe option is to dodge it. As shown so far, these tells appear on the attacking character so you can react to each strike individually.

Breaking a Guard

When an enemy turtles up, they show a glowing white shield aura in front of their character. A standing block will stop your normal hits, so you cannot simply attack through it. Instead, a basic attack against a blocking enemy breaks the block and grapples the opponent, which opens them up for skills and combo follow-ups. In other words, basic attacks double as your guard-break and grab tool, giving offense a built-in answer to a defensive opponent.

This creates a rock-paper-scissors layer on top of the color cues: the attacker pressures, the defender blocks, and the attacker uses a grab to crack the guard, while the defender can dodge or parry instead of holding block. None of it relies on memorizing long inputs; it relies on reading the situation.

Move Vocabulary

Hands-on coverage describes a consistent vocabulary of actions that every fighter shares, even though their individual movesets differ. The table below summarizes the moves shown in previews and test builds. Exact per-character command inputs and full movelists have not been published, so this list describes the categories of moves rather than specific button sequences.

The break-away maneuver is worth singling out. You can cut your own combo short on the second or third basic attack to sidestep out of danger, which also lets you interrupt an enemy's combo. Because the sidestep costs stamina, you cannot lean on it endlessly, so it remains a deliberate defensive choice rather than a free escape.

Ultimates

Each fighter has at least one ultimate move, and unleashing them is a highlight of the combat shown so far. Ultimates are not unstoppable, though. As described in previews, there is a tiny window after a player activates an ultimate where they must land a follow-up strike, and an opponent who reacts in time can dodge the ultimate during that window. Defense always has an answer, even against the biggest moves.

Supernatural Powers

On top of the grounded martial arts, fighters channel supernatural martial-arts powers drawn from the source world's traditions of Kung Fu, Taoism, Yin-Yang Bagua, and qi. These powers are woven into the movesets framed by The Eight Secret Arts, so each fighter's style carries its own flavor of mystical technique.

The clearest example shown so far is lightning. Electric blasts appear in demos and previews as one fighter's signature supernatural attack, and they give a sense of how spectacular the powers can look in motion. Beyond that single confirmed example, the specific named techniques each character uses have not been detailed, so the safest expectation is a roster of distinct elemental and energy-based styles rather than a fixed catalog of moves.

Additional elemental powers come through the Doppelganger Loadouts system, which lets you equip spectral support abilities before a fight. That loadout layer is the main way players customize the supernatural side of their kit, and it is covered on its own page.

How It Fits Together

Put together, a typical exchange looks like this: you watch for the color cue, block the blue attacks, dodge the red ones, and time a parry on the yellow window. When the enemy guards, you grab to break it; when you have an opening, you chain a combo into a skill, then break away before you overextend. Stamina governs how aggressively you can dodge and sidestep, so spending it wisely is the difference between staying mobile and getting cornered.

1. Read the attack color and choose block, parry, or dodge.

2. Punish a successful parry or perfect dodge with your own offense.

3. Break a blocking enemy with a basic-attack grab to open them up.

4. Chain combos into skills, then break away to reset before your stamina runs low.

Because the same rules apply everywhere, these fundamentals carry across the cinematic single-player campaign and the competitive arena alike. See Game Modes for how the three modes put combat to use, and the Characters roster for how individual fighters express these systems through their own styles.