ONE/PC Ryse

About Ryse combat.

A - deflect.
X - sword.
Y - shield.
You also can pick up spears and throw them at any time (number of spears is upgradable).

You can do execution only after enemy get low on health after normal attack, or he is critically stunned (red skull) witch isn't last long (few seconds).

All the demos have nearly fully upgraded character with max health and other stuff. Game have 4 difficult setting and I don't think they shown anything above normal (2 setting).

-- Enemies who have low health and can be executed will have a white skull above their heads.

-- Shielded enemies aren't as easy to execute because they have much shorter execution windows, and will only give you a red skull over their head, which goes away faster. Your only hope is to be fast enough with your execution timing, or toss a spear at them, which will destroy their shields, making them just as easy to execute as normal enemies (white skull indicating low health that stays there)

--Number of spears is upgradeable.

-- Burning eagle mode is upgradeable (A special mode Marius enters when comboing just right and getting perfect hits.) There are 4 levels to this upgrade (recruit to legendary)

1st level - Marius enters burning eagle mode after 11 perfect hits
2nd level - Marius enters burning eagle mode after 10 perfect hits.
3rd level - Marius enters burning eagle mode after 9 perfect hits.
4th level - Marius enters burning eagle mode after 8 perfect hits.

Transcribed from Ryse SP stream

"Burning Eagle Mode is when you perfectly time blows no matter what they are, whether that be deflections, or shields, or attacks. If you're timing all of this just right, you will enter burning eagle mode after a certain number of perfect hits. When you get into that mode you start to become faster, and then at a certain threshold again you start critically stunning enemies." They describe as a really deep aspect of the combat system, and the person explaining it says that he struggles to get there often, but the better players manage it more often.

-- Health is upgradeable (you can upgrade the size of your health capsule, as well as the amount of health in each capsule. From recruit health capsule all the way to legendary health capsule upgrade

-- Focus mode is upgradeable in 3 different ways (4 levels in each, going from recruit to legendary.)

1st Focus Burn Upgrade - Decreases the burn rate on the focus capsule
2nd Focus Capsule Upgrade - Increases the size of each focus capsule.
3rd Focus Upgrade - Increase total amount of focus in the capsule.

Gains are rewards you get after scoring points in combat.

-- XP Gain can be upgraded (again in 4 levels, going from recruit to legendary)

-- Focus Gain can be upgraded (4 levels)

-- 7 skill trees worth of executions

Health based executions
Focus based executions
XP based executions
Damage based executions
Back-Facing executions
World executions (I guess these are the environment specific ones)
Co-Op (Self explanatory)

All separated into single execution categories and double executions categories. They're all tied together in the sense that as you keep buying specific ones in certain trees, they add to the ones that come before it. Basically, the combat perks that you can select during the SP, between a perk for damage, a perk for health restoration, a perk for more xp, or a perk for a boost in focus, they keep piling on like an RPG upgrade system. They keep compounding potential stat boosts in that area as you keep buying executions from that specific tree. Essentially, if you wish, you can only use executions for the purpose of restoring your health when you need to, if you only wish to use it for that. Or to increase the amount of damage you're doing, or if you want to gain more xp to purchase a skill upgrade.

That's just mostly the upgrade system. There's plenty more info on the combat that I'm too tired to point out at the moment.