Redguard has a lot of sword based combat. The designers clearly had Prince of Persia (the 1990 game) as one of the inspirations, and the same PoP combat mechanics apply here too. In PoP you used the up arrow key to parry which 'd succeed only when timed right, and then strike the opponent once an opportunity opens, with the space bar.

Redguard is of course a 3D game, so facing the opponent is important but the basic parry/attack model applies here too. The "Alt" key is for parry, and the "space" is for attack. Hitting space couple of times quickly adds additional moves, but locks down Cyrus into attack mode for the duration.

Initially timing the "Alt" key can be frustrating, but given enough time, anyone going through the game will get hang of it.

What helps initially, is that GoG version comes with "Auto-Defend" enabled. With this tweak (can be turned off, by running <game-dir>\Redguard\Redguard.exe , a windows app), in addition to tapping the alt key, you can instead hold it down, and Cyrus will time the parry with 100% success. You can then attack whenever there's an opportunity.

This approach is far better than adding the "one hit kill" tweak through the game ini file. The action unfolds in a more natural way, and with enough health, one can instead practice timing the alt button, instead of holding it down, until the auto-defend becomes necessary. The choice is up to the player, once this mode is turned on.

Good info, thanks for that. It has been a long time since I played this last.

I don’t know, but I find the combat in Redguard random, inconsistent and obscure. Sometimes I can just stand there (sword drawn, but not blocking) with a guard swinging at me, but not hitting me at all. Then from one moment to the next, suddenly every hit connects. Hit feedback is inscrutable. Sometimes my opponent yells something, but I never know if it’s whether I hit him or whether he is just spouting some random line. There seem to be combos (according to the manual), but very often the number of times my character swings does not match the number of times I press attack. I can go into a fight with as low as 10 health and defeat my enemy within 3 seconds, or I enter a fight with full health, getting killed after 20 seconds of obviously not hitting my opponent enough or at all.

I don’t want to mess with the setting files too much, so for me it’s reload and try again most of the time. It’s very unsatisfactory and I wouldn’t lament as much if I actually understood what was going on in these fights and what exaclty my actions are doing. (And yes, I have read the manual.)