The Hidden Ones Combat System Explained: Blue, Red, Parry and Stamina

The four attack colors

Every hostile action is color-coded, and the color tells you which button is allowed. Treat the color as the question and your defensive option as the answer; guessing wrong is what turns a small trade into a full combo.

Two details matter more than the table. First, your own parry counter is itself a blue attack, so the opponent can guard it. Second, a red move cannot be parried at all: holding guard against red is the single most common beginner error, and it is punished with a guard break rather than chip damage.

Attack priority is not rock-paper-scissors

The base order is Ultimate > Red > Blue. A higher tier interrupts a lower tier, which is why an ultimate can bulldoze a blue poke and why a red risk move beats a guarded normal. Enhanced risk moves bend this triangle, and ultimates sit at the top of the mechanic rather than inside it.

In practice, priority explains two situations that look unfair:

• Your blue skill gets stuffed by a red move even though you pressed first. You did not lose to speed; you lost to tier.
• Your ultimate gets interrupted by nothing except another ultimate or a clean dodge. Its long startup cannot be canceled, so it is a commitment, not a reaction.

Perfect Parry: hold guard, then wait

A perfect parry happens when you are already guarding as a blue attack lands. A yellow bar appears, and pressing attack inside that bar turns the defense into a counter. The counter is not invincible: a forced cancel or a red risk move can still interrupt it.

Three habits make parries reliable:

1. Do not release guard. The parry is a guard state, not a separate stance. Letting go early cancels your own window.
2. Do not mash attack the instant the bar appears. The counter has startup. Press near the end of the yellow bar so the active frames line up with the opponent's recovery.
3. Only parry blue. A red move is not a parry test. Dodge it.

At a high level, opponents will bait the yellow bar on purpose. A Zhuge Qing player, for example, can read your parry rhythm and use a forced cancel to cut the counter before it becomes active. That is why the parry is a read, not a guaranteed punish.

Perfect Dodge is the stamina engine

Dodging on the exact hit is a Perfect Dodge, and it returns 2 stamina pips. That refund is the reason aggressive players can keep pressure up without running dry: the defense pays for the next attack. A normal dodge does not refund anything.

The step is not a safe button for its whole animation. Invincibility exists only at the moment you press it. Holding the stick and drifting backwards is not the same as timing a dodge, and straight backwards dodges are the easiest line for a dash attack to catch. Lateral dodges are safer because most lunges commit to a forward vector.

The stamina budget

You have 5 stamina pips and regenerate 1 pip every 2.5 seconds. Guarding and perfect guarding are free; dodging and Break Away are not. Every cancel draws from the same pool, so a flashy route that spends all five pips leaves you with no answer to the next mix-up.

The practical rule is to finish a loop with at least two pips in reserve. Two pips is one Break Away or two step cancels; either is enough to escape a bad interaction. A player sitting at zero after a combo is not "out of options" because the combo ended, but because the next defensive choice was already spent.

The three cancels and what they cost

Cancels are how you extend pressure without repeating a full string. They are not interchangeable; each has a different price and a different failure case.

Guard cancel is the cheapest and the hardest. Its common trigger points are the damage frames of the fourth normal hit on characters like Feng Baobao and Wang Ye. If you can hit those frames consistently, you get resets for free; if you cannot, a forced cancel is the honest fallback.

Pick one cancel type per loop and budget around it. Mixing all three inside a single string makes the stamina cost unpredictable, which is exactly how a player ends up at zero pips in front of an ultimate.

Break Away: the 3-pip emergency exit

Break Away, also called substitution or forced escape, costs 3 pips and has a 12-second cooldown. It interrupts the opponent's combo, but it is not a universal escape:

• It cannot be used during ultimates or cinematic sequences.
• It gives no extra protection on landing. Standing still after the escape is how you get re-comboed.
• It shares the stamina pool with dodge, so using it can leave you unable to dodge the next mix-up.

The most common misuse is spending it after two or three light hits. Good opponents expect that and immediately set up wake-up pressure, converting your escape into their next opening. Save it for long, high-damage routes; take the small combo and keep the resource.

Wake-up pressure and how to survive it

Knocking someone down is only half the job. The other half is the wake-up, and it is where beginners and veterans separate. Attackers can pressure with a normal, a blue skill, or a doppelganger; defenders can answer with guard, a blue poke, a guard-cancel throw, or their own doppelganger.

Doppelgangers are the core anti-wake-up tool. Earth-Burrowing Qilin can hit a downed target and is used specifically to steal the wake-up; Luanjin Tuo's 3-second bind is the strongest version of the same idea. If your opponent has one of these available, do not spend your whole stamina bar on a knockdown string; you will not get to play the wake-up you earned.

Watch the Protection Value. When it is nearly full, stop forcing normal attacks. The combo is about to fall apart, and the correct move is to end cleanly and prepare for the wake-up instead of chasing one more hit.

The first three exchanges are information

High-level matches are not decided by the first combo. The first two or three skill exchanges are a probe: does this player open aggressively, turtle behind guard, or fish for parries? Once you know that, you choose the counter-plan.

Zhang Chulan is the clearest example of the feint style. Swift Thunder's repeated dodges let him close distance; a fake approach pulls guard; Palm Thunder then breaks it; a backward step resets the cooldown. The damage comes from the opponent's wrong answer, not from a longer string. The same logic applies to every character: the mix-up is the threat, the hit is the receipt.

Five fixes for the first week

1. Stop guarding red. If the warning is red, the answer is a step, not a block.
2. Stop spending the fifth pip. End every loop with two in reserve.
3. Stop mashing the parry counter. Press late in the yellow bar, not at the start.
4. Stop burning Break Away on light hits. Save it for the long routes.
5. Stop mixing cancels. Learn one per character and budget around it.

Once those five are habits, the character-specific pages make more sense. The beginner's guide covers the surrounding progression, the doppelganger guide explains the 4-point budget, and the PvP guide applies all of this to 3v3 and 2v2.