Remember Me players seem to divide into two distinct groups with a huge gap between them: those who consider the combat too easy even at the hardest difficulty level, and those who consider it quite hard even at the easiest difficulty level. Having very little inclination towards or experience with fighting games myself, I fall in to the latter group. However, as I mention in my review, there's so much more to this game than fighting that it's fair to consider the fighting parts of it just something you need to get through to enjoy the rest of the game.

On my first attempt at playing through the game I managed to button-mash may way through the first few battles, but I soon found that the combat difficulty seemed to be increasing faster than my skill. By the time I hit the invisible Leapers in Episode 3 I was utterly overwhelmed and, after what seemed like hours of trying to get through that encounter, gave up in frustration.

I decided more than a year later to come back to the game, but this time to try to devise some strategies for, if not mastering the combat, at least getting myself to the point where I could get through most of the battles at the easiest difficulty setting without too much frustration. I describe my techniques in this guide in the hope that they can help others like me get around the combat and enjoy the great story, environments and other parts of the game.


The following things in this guide might be considered spoilers by some:

• Descriptions of the more advanced combos and attacks.
  
• Descriptions of a few of the advanced non-boss enemies.

Neither of these particularly spoils the game to my mind, since you have a reasonable idea that something along these lines is coming, though you may not have guessed exactly what. That said, if you're worried about spoilers, you might consider working through the game yourself through the end of Episode 3 (or as far as you can get before that point) before reading past the "Controls" section in this guide. That will ensure you've seen most all of the general gameplay elements (in terms of your and enemy's capabilities); everything after is variations on what youv'e already seen.

One of the most important things you can do, so important that it gets its own section, is to take a break from the game when you've been trying and trying and just can't seem to get through a fight. This may seem like an obvious idea, but it's clearly not one that's easy to put in to practice, at least for me. Many's the time I've banged my head against the wall for a half hour or more and left the game almost screaming in frustration only to find that, a few hours or a day later, the battle really wasn't so tough after all.

When stuck on a battle it can also be helpful to go back and replay an earlier part of the game. (This is can be done using a separate save if you want to preserve your current position within the chapter on the main save.) Sometimes even just a change, along with a little practice of necessary techniques in easier situations, can make quite a difference.

In this guide, for convenience in typography, I use the letters used on the buttons of the Xbox gamepad (with the default mapping) to indicate what to press. The following is a table giving the canonical name of each control along with the default Xbox gamepad and PC keyboard mappings.


I mention the combos both by moves alone (e.g., Y-X-Y-X-Y) and, when necessary, also listing the Pressens to be placed on each move (e.g., Y-X:Health-Y:Health-X:Damage, to use an example where the last Pressen is unassigned).

For the rare cases where I need to talk about anything using other keys or buttons I usually say what to do (e.g., "fire a Junk Bolt"); you can look up how to do these in the in-game control bindings screen if you forget them. That said, from time to time I will say "move the stick" or something similar, which is easily translated to "use the movement keys" if you're using a keyboard instead of a gamepad.


Fighting games are traditionally played with a gamepad, and that's how I played my entire first playthrough. However I've since spent a few hours playing with the keyboard and mouse as well, and I can't say that there's a clear choice between the two control schemes.

The biggest advantage you'll see with the mouse is that you have better control over the camera. That said, don't expect the camera control to be at the level of a good FPS: while you can set the sensitivity of the mouse, the acceleration can't be changed, and I found that my medium setting ended up being a bit less sensitive than I liked for small movements and a bit more sensitive than I liked for large. Further, there's a good deal of movement smoothing on the mouse which can make it feel inaccurate and laggy. The only other advantage to the mouse/keyboard control scheme is that, if it's set up properly, there's somewhat less finger movement.

The controller, on the other hand, despite the frustrations of a tiny joystick for camera control, tends to be obvious in use. That I find the layout more comfortable may be just an artifact of my extensive use of a PlayStation in a past life, but there's no arguing that seeing "A" or "Y" pop on the screen makes it a lot more clear what button to hit than the funny symbols you're shown when using the keyboard and mouse. I also find the circular "scrubbing" motion to move the video back and forth in memory remixes to be easier on the controller.

The last major difference, where I can't decide at all which is better, is that with the mouse your view will remain where you left it, even if pointing up or down,, but with the gamepad your view will come back to level if you let the stick rest at center momentarily. This is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse.

If you have both, you can just pick one, or try each and see what works better for you. If you don't have a gamepad, however, I wouldn't feel particularly obligated to buy one for this game; it's not likely to make much difference.

Some games, such as several of those from the Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear Solid series, provide training rooms where you can practice and get feedback on individual moves. This is invaluable for beginning players: having to use multiple techniques, deal with extra enemies and the like in real combat usually creates too much of a distraction to be able to effectively learn a new technique. Sad to say, Remember Me does not provide such a facility.

This means that if the training you get naturally as the game progresses isn't enough (and if you're like me, it's not), you need to get your extra training in while playing the game. This can be done either by creating training situations as you go or by going back and replaying easier levels and battles. Obviously replaying can be a bit dull (especially with the long, unskipable cut-scenes), so I strongly encourage you, whenever combat seems to get easy for a few moments, to take advantage of the opportunity to train.

Doing this requires two things. The first is to pick the particular technique you'd like to train, whether it be dodging, a specific combo, or any other technique either described in this guide or developed by you. The second is to set up the situation such that you can get as much training as possible on it by doing minimum damage. There's obviously little difficulty here when dodging, but for combos you should take a moment to pop in to the Combo Lab and ensure that you're not using damage boost Pressens in the sequences you're practising with. It's typically best to use health Pressens for practice, as this helps to ensure you stay alive, but cooldown Pressions will work just as well otherwise. And of course remember to avoid using special attacks (S- Pressens), with perhaps the exception of Sensen Camo, which can be useful when you need a break to rest and recover yourself mentally.

Dodging is possibly the most critical skill in this game. Even in the most hectic battle situations, where you're surrounded by enemies, you can survive essentially forever if you have good (ok, great) dodging skills, and in fact it's those very situations where you are heavily outnumbered that you'll need to use dodging the most. When you're getting into trouble, typically it's because you're losing health from getting bashed faster than you can boost it back up using combos with health Pressens, and it's in this case you should fall back to dodging as many attacks as possible while using a simple health regeneration combo to try to recover.

Dodging is also one of the simplest moves in the game in terms of timing: when you see an exclamation point light up over a nearby enemy's head, you push the stick in almost any direction (or even not push it at all) and press the A button. This makes you quickly move in your chosen direction and, more importantly, it also gives you invincibility frames: during your dodge, you can pass through hitboxes of attacks without taking damage damage or getting staggered. (This normally looks like you just avoided the blow by a hair's breadth, but a few late-game attacks such as the Zorn's desperation attack make the invincibility obvious.)

Note that not touching the left stick at all during a combo is probably the easiest way of putting a dodge in the middle of a combo and continuing on with it. (Typically, Nilin will jump over the head of the enemy and continue attacking from behind.)

That it's simple is not to say that it's easy, however. This technique should be practised extensively from the very beginning of the game until you feel quite comfortable with it. Start out even in the first battle by killing all but one of the enemies (using whatever random button-mashing seems to work) and then spend some time letting the last one attack you and dodging those attacks, also looking at the effect of dodging in different directions relative to the attacker. Note particularly that if the attacker is close to you and you're facing him, dodging without directional input should jump over the enemy, leaving you in a position to hit him again immediately. (This can be used to continue combos, if you're particularly skillful.) Try both standing still and waiting for attacks and also running around the attacker and dodging around and over him.

Once you're quite comfortable with one attacker, work up doing the same with two or three in the next battle. Or even the same one; you can just let the attacker kill you and restart the battle. Even if it gets a bit dull, I encourage you to master dodging as best you can in the first battle, because the second battle (where you start with very low health) will be considerably more difficult if you're not good at dodging, since you'll also need to be doing combos in that second battle.

One last note: while the game encourages you from time to time to dodge in the middle of a combo and continue the combo on the same enemy (as mentioned above), this difficult manoeuvre isn't necessary to get through the game. I was never able to do this successfully (except perhaps by accident) myself. It's clever and beautiful, but you can get by without it if you need to.

Here are some factors characterizing this game's combat:

• You are much faster than your enemies. Even without dodging, you can run circles around them.
  
• Your attacks stun normal-sized enemies ("mooks"): if you can keep continuously hitting your target, it will be frozen and be unable to respond.
  
• Combo can be continued against only a single enemy; switching to attacking a different enemy will end your combo.
  
• Remember Me is very generous with warning you about enemy attacks: you get a large, flashing red exclamation mark, even if the enemy is out of your view.
  
• Dodging both gives you invincibility frames and takes you out of harm's way, except in two cases: when you are in a Nephilim's blast zone, and when you are so surrounded by enemies that the destination of your dodge is also in the attack range of an enemy. (In the latter case an enemy probably attack and hit you before you recover from the dodge.)

These factors mean that a fight against a single mook is trivial: you can just hit it until it dies. That's why even your first battle features multiple opponents.

Multiple enemies are much more dangerous: they can provide a constant barrage of attacks, and if you try to target one of them, its comrades will try to interrupt you. (Any blow you take will terminate your current combo and stun you for a moment.) Thus, your goal is to turn the multi-mook combat into a series of 1-on-1 battles that you can easily win. Here's how you do that.

Pick out the enemy that's the most distant from the main group. If there isn't one, run around a little, get them to break up, and perhaps use a Junk Bolt to get in some damage. If you found your outlier, move in and attack it. If you know how to do a mid-combo dodge, position yourself between your target and the main group before starting hitting it. (You can't use your movement keys during a combo without breaking it.) When the others inevitably catch up and attack you, simply dodge over your target (who is now between you and the main group, blocking them from reaching you easily) and continue the combo. If you can't do the dodge, just position your target between yourself and the main group before attacking. Once you've finished you combo, your target's died or the enemies have crowded in too close around you, use the directional dodge to escape and get your bearings. Then pick your next target, rinse and repeat.

Being able to use combos effectively is critical to getting through the game, and it's also probably the trickiest part of the game for those of us not used to fighting games. Unlike, say, a first-person shooter, which is designed to produce a hit on an enemy as close as possible to immediately after you press the fire button, pressing a button here starts an action that won't be completed for a substantial fraction of a second. In the meantime, you're expected to be readying up your next button press so that after that fraction of a second has elapsed, you can push the button for your next attack as or just after the previous attack lands.

Let's make this clear: if you're running a combo that starts out with a kick followed by a punch, you'll press the kick button, wait a short period of time, and then, as you see (or more likely, hear) the kick land you are at the same time pressing the punch button to line up a punch that will land yet another fraction of a second later on. So the time steps look like this:


This offset sequence can take some getting used to, not to mention a good deal of practice. What I'm going to try to do here is describe ways to simplify your use of combos as much as possible so that you can concentrate on the core skills you need to use them (basically, the timing) without getting bogged down in additional skills as well.

Before we get in to the details of how to learn to deliver combos in combat, there's an important point you need to understand about the length of combo sequences you deliver.

As the game explains, the further along a sequence a Pressen is, the more power it delivers. A heath boost pressen, for example, will give you 9 health when it's delivered as the second strike in a sequence, but 11 health when it's delivered as the third strike.

Though by the end of the game you'll have four combos of varying maximum lengths (3, 5, 6 and 8) available, the only factor that changes how well you do in combat is the number of hits you successfully deliver in sequence before reaching the end of a combo or being interrupted.

That is to say, delivering the first n hits of any combo, if they have the same Pressens installed, gives you the exact same result. None of the following make any difference:

• Whether you get all the way to the end of a combo or not. (There's no extra bonus for getting to the end of a combo.)
  
• Whether the combo even has Pressens installed past the point you reached.
  
• Whether an individual Pressen at any point in the sequence is an X (Punch) or a Y (Kick).

As an example, say you have the X-X-X combo loaded with two health boost Pressens, and the Y-X-Y-X-Y with its first two slots loaded also with health boost Pressens. (The subsequent slots can be loaded with anything or even unloaded, it makes no difference.) In this situation, it makes no difference at all whether you hit an enemy with X-X-X or Y-X-Y; the result will be exactly the same.

The consequence of this is that, if you're finding the longer combos confusing or difficult, you should deliberately choose to not to try to deliver the entire combo if that makes it easier to master the initial few button presses. It's not especially more difficult to get through the whole game using only the first three steps of all of the combos, if it comes to it, so don't worry too much if you're having trouble getting all the way to that sixth or eighth step.

That said, as you become better at delivering longer combos, you will want to move some of the important Pressens (especially the Chain Pressens) to later locations in the combo, though keeping them within the length you can reliably deliver. A Pressen having a high bonus doesn't do you any good if you don't actually hit it!

As a beginner, probably the trickiest part of dealing with combos (beyond the initial X-X-X combo) is properly starting combos in the heat of battle. It's very easy to get "out of sync" with the game and find that while you think you're either ready to start a new combo or at a given position in a continuing combo, the game thinks differently, and this results in you not doing combos at all.

The most common cause of this is you believing you've landed the next blow in a combo, but actually being interrupted by a hit from an enemy (which terminates your combo) or missing the blow. Even if you do realize quickly that this has happened, it's likely not fast enough that you didn't already hit the button to deliver the next blow in the combo, which then starts a new and different combo.

The easiest way to get out of this situation is to either switch to the X-X-X combo or to stop pressing the attack buttons for a moment to allow your combo status to reset. (You'll of course want to be dodging while you wait for this to happen.)

The first combo available to you, X-X-X (three punches in a row) is by far the easiest to use. This is not only because every Pressen in the combo is in the same button, but, much more importantly, because you don't need to know or adjust for the combo start point as described above. Regardless of where you are in the combo or whether or not the combo is started, pressing X will always move you forward, either starting or continuing the combo.

Because of this, this combo is invaluable to anyone who can't land the more difficult combos reliably even while under extreme pressure. Put two health boost Pressens on the X-X-X combo, consider it your "survival fallback" combo, and switch to using it exclusively (along with plenty of dodging) to bring yourself to a more stable situation when you start to get overwhelmed in combat. Though the combo won't do much damage or contribute much to cooldowns of the special attacks, it will make it as easy as possible to survive while you work out a strategy for dealing with the current battle.

This "try to survive" strategy is actually thrown upon you near the start of the game in only your second battle. Unlike most battles, where you start with whatever health you had previously, this battle starts you with almost no health in order to force you to use health boost Pressens. At the start you'll find you've got a new combo (Y-X-Y-X-Y) unlocked, which you won't be able to entirely fill, and your first two health boost Pressens, an X and a Y.

This unfortunately does not let you fill up the first combo with health boost Pressens, as you'd need two X Pressens for that. While the most efficient way of getting through the battle is to fill out your second combo as Y-X:Health-Y:Health-X:Damage, this requires a fair amount of skill make work. (If you have that much skill, you probably don't need this guide.) Feel free to try it, but unless you find yourself immediately comfortable landing combos, I suggest you instead set your first combo to X-X:Health-X:Damage and concentrate first on survival and practising until you can reliably land at least the first and second Pressens in the X-X-X combo. (You can carry on with the third if you wish, but you ought not if it distracts you from practising the second.) Remember, it's important in every battle to take all the opportunities you can to practice any moves you find difficult, since as the game goes on you'll be facing only more difficult situations in which it's harder to practise.

At the next opportunity you get to unlock an X Pressen, you should unlock a second health boost X Pressen and place that as the last Pressen in your X-X-X combo.

A total of four different combos will be unlocked as you play through the game; these are:

• (3) X-X-X
  
• (5) Y-X-Y-X-Y
  
• (6) X-Y-Y-X-Y-Y
  
• (8) Y-Y-Y-X-X-X-X-Y

(I'll refer to these by the number of steps in the combo, as (3), (5), (6) and (8).)

As mentioned in the Combo Length section above, the potential length of the combo you're using is irrelevant; only the actual distance you progress down the combo makes any difference. While if you're a skilled player you'll naturally want to be using your longest combos as much as possible in order to get maximum bonuses for the Pressens late in the combo, if you're the sort of person at whom this guide is aimed, who is mainly using only the first 3-5 steps of each combo, you'll be deciding which combos you use based not on potential length but based on how you can best set up the particular buttons and reset points.

The first thing to note is that if you don't add any Pressens to combo (6), you'll have only one combo starting with X. This makes starting combo (3) easier. When combo (6) is defined for at least three steps, pressing X-Y (presumably by accident) leaves the game expecting another Y and, when you press X, it interprets that as a failure to continue the combo and resets you to "ready to start a new combo" mode.

However, if X-Y-Y isn't defined, when the game sees the second Y it will interpret the next press as the (potential) start of an X-X-X combo, rather than as a failure to continue combo (6), which leaves you dishing out a combo sooner than you would be otherwise. Therefore, it may well be a good idea not to use combo (6) if you make particularly heavy use of X-X-X as a fallback combo. Alternatively, you might stop using combo (3) when you start using combo (6) if you find that you can deliver the first half of combo (6) as reliably as you can combo (3). A careful contemplation of the combo patterns will indicate that this principle can apply to some degree to other combos as well.

This aside, as new longer combos become available to you, you should consider moving your more important Pressen sets to the combos you find easiest.

Also keep in mind that you can you can enter the Combo Lab to edit your combos at any time, even in battle. (Since this pauses the battle, this not only lets you stop time to refresh your moves and devise strategy, but can also serve as a useful anti-panic measure.) For example, if you're hurt and starting to find some new combo changes difficult, you can always re-assign healing Pressens to the X-X-X combo at any time. Or in boss fights it might be useful to swap Pressens around during the fight (e.g., switching power and cooldown Pressens at the head of a combo as the boss' attack window opens and ends).

So far in this guide we've been focusing on defensive techniques: things to keep you alive in battle. But of course, you also need to be able to do damage to finish the battles, and significant damage at the end.

Even for players good at dealing damage via standard kicks and punches, special attacks are going to be necessary from time to time to defeat certain enemies. For players not so good at dealing damage the regular way, I suggest you make special attacks your primary method of doing damage. This means that, after enough health boosts to keep you alive in battle, your primary focus for Pressens should be cooldowns.

Unlike missing combos with health boosts, which can lead to death, missing combos with cooldown Pressens merely means you need to try again. So as you get better with longer combos, feel free to push cooldown Pressens and, even moreso, repeat Pressens, towards the end of a sequence, putting health boost pressens at the beginning. If you muff the combo, you'll still have gotten a bit of health and you'll be in the same place you were before, with the battle just taking a little longer. If you've focused on being able to dodge enemies and maintain health, as per the previous parts of this guide, this won't be a problem. (In fact, you'll be a little ahead of where you were before because the special attacks will have been cooling down at their normal rate during this time, anyway.)


While a single special attack can be significantly more powerful than even the longest damage-boosted combo, using two special attacks, one immediately after the other, gives yet another dramatic increase in power, and beyond that also gives an advantage in cooldown time because the two attacks will cool down simultaneously (and both cooldowns will be sped up by cooldown Pressens). To do this however, you're going to need to save up enough focus (which is gained through landing any kind of hit) for two attacks, which means your focus bar will have to be large enough for this. This won't be the case early in the game, but you can make the point at which this happens come sooner by making sure you collect as many of the hidden Focus Boosts as you can starting from Chapter 2.

(While I don't give out details of ways to combine special attacks here, in order to avoid spoilers, there are only a small number of different special attacks available, so figuring out which ones combine well should not be difficult.)


Because of the power of special attacks, you should be able to get most or all of the way through the entire game relying mainly on those and the X-X-X combo to keep your health up and generate focus. If you don't make extensive use of cooldown Pressens the battles will take longer, but if you're still bad at fighting even after a lot of practice, you should still be able to get through the game.

In the section above, we mentioned that the hidden focus boosts are worth looking for. The same goes for the SAT patches, which increase your health; these can also make play easier by keeping you a little further from death in stressful situations.

Though we don't mention above, using the spammer (gun), and later the junk bolt, can also help wear down enemies.

I hope this guide helps out those who are having difficulty with combat in Remember Me, and I wish you good luck. The game is really worth finishing, even if you don't like the combat or find it frustrating.

Exact damage values for Pressens and combos are given in the Combo Lab, for relative comparison between combos you build, but not for other attacks, and nor are health figures are not given for the enemies. (For Nilin and bosses, only a graphical gauge is shown, and other enemies seem to have no health indicators whatsoever.) While it's not necessary to know the exact health values of enemies, some players may find this useful (e.g., to know exactly where in a combo a full-health enemy will fall), so we provide that here. We use spoiler tags below to avoid revealing new types of enemies and attacks to those who have not plaid through the whole game yet.

Nilin's health starts at 500, in five 100 point chunks. Collecting five SAT Patches grants an extra chunk, up to a total health of 1000.

Nilin's ranged attacks are the Spammer, doing 12 damage, and the Junk Bolt, doing 200. Note that the total damage done by the spammer if you empty your charge gauge from full is the same as for the Junk Bolt; the latter just delivers it in one shot at the cost of waiting for a lengthy recharge.

Nillin's special (S-Pressen) attacks are as follows (listed in the order you unlock them as you go through the game):

Position

Attack Name

Damage

12 o'clock

Sensen Fury

varies

5 o'clock

Sensen DOS

stun

10 o'clock

Logic Bomb

300

7 o'clock

Sensen RIP

Seraphim bolt: 20; Nephilim blast: 300

2 o'clock

Sensen Camo

none

Enemy attack damage (for non-boss enemies) ranges from 10 to 30, with a modifier of x0.75 when playing on easy difficulty, and x2.0 on hard difficulty.
Basic Leaper - Claw Slash: 10
Skinner Leaper - Claw Slash: 10
Cloak/Recon. Leapers - Claw Slash: 20
Basic/Heavy/Prison Enforcer - Tonfa: 20
Heavy Prison Enforcer - Tonfa: 25
Elite Enforcers - Tonfa: 30
Seraphim - Energy Bolt: 10
Nephilim - Jump: 25
Nephilim - Explosion: 20

Enemy Health Values:
The damage of your attacks and enemy health is the same across all difficulties.
Normal-sized Leapers - 250
Skinner Leaper - 500
Enforcers - ranges from 500 to 800, from basic to most elite
Seraphim - 350
Nephilim - 400

This guide was written by Category Theory, whose bad paying inspired it, and wertuias12, a much better player who doesn't mind helping out the rest of us.