Dust: An Elysian Tail guide - Tips and tricks to help you master the combat system

Dust: An Elysian Tail's strongest suit is easily its combat.

With that in mind, let's go over some combat tips to make sure you're ready to cruise through the game, even on its super-hard Cirelian Trials.

First things first - players need to learn the basic combo set. When things are tight and you're low on energy, you can always reliably whip these out:

X+X+X+X: The "Basic" Combo: This combo only requires you to mash the basic attack button over and over again. It's easy to execute so will probably be your bread and butter attack, though it isn't always the safest.

Make sure you combo it into a Dust storm or jump cancel to a new combo as the reset takes some time.

X+X+Y+Y: The "Ground Stomp" Combo: This combo has you do some basic attacks before launching into a big overhead sword sweep and finishing with a backwards kick. This can be useful when there are a lot of enemies in front of you. Even though the sweep moves you forward considerably, the kick at the end helps protect your back.

X+Y: The "Launcher" Combo: This move allows you to shoot enemies into the air to begin a series of aerial attacks. It's great to bust out when you're facing multiple enemies or to transition between air and ground enemies.

Aerial X+X+X+Y: The "Slam" Combo: Use this in the air and you'll grab an opponent and slam it to the ground, causing a good amount of damage while looking pretty cool. Very useful for elusive enemies.

Don't get hit!

While seemingly obvious, Dust offers more than just "not dying" to the pros list of not getting hit.

As you defeat enemies, you'll actually earn bonus experience as you continue to dole out punishment without receiving any in return.

This means that careful players can level up faster than those that charge recklessly into battle.

Keep enemies on one side of the screen

This goes hand in hand with not getting hit. Crowd control in Dust is best maintained when all enemies are on one side of the screen, instead of flanking you from both sides.

Keeping the enemy on one side also makes parrying easier.

The art of the parry

Parrying is awesome. If done right, it lowers an enemy's defenses and leaves them vulnerable to a powerful counter attack.

It's not always easy though. The key to nailing a parry is to hold the attack button after you've pressed it. As long as the enemy attacks before you return to your neutral stance, you'll parry it.

This is much easier than trying to tap attack as soon as an enemy attack animation is about to hit.

Air dashing

You're introduced to the dash ability pretty early on but don't forget that this move can also be done in the air.

Using dash at the right times can help you better link combos and escape danger.

Now let us know your combat tips in the comments below!