Mirror’s Edge Catalyst: 5 Combat Tips for Beginners

Combat Shift

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst gives you an ability called Combat Shift, which you can activate simply by pressing the R2 button. This allows Faith to dodge in any direction you choose. The best part is, you can use Combat Shift as much as you like with no cooldown period. This also lets you get behind your enemies quickly, leaving their backs open to quick attacks.

This will come in handy against the later enemy classes, especially the ranged shooters, as you’ll be able to perform last-minute dodges that could potentially save your life. The Combat Shift also allows you to be a bit more unpredictable with your movements, so be sure to throw in your Shifts in between your kicks and punches.

Be Unpredictable

Speaking of being unpredictable, that’s actually the key to being victorious in all of your enemy encounters. If you keep trying to throw punches or perform kicks, the enemy AI will predict the move and counter it. When this happens, you’ll have to mix up your combos and perform attacks that they won’t expect. Instead of trying to execute a string of punches, break it up with a few kicks to keep your foes on their toes.

Performing a Combat Shift in the middle of your combo will also confuse them. It’s also worth noting that performing a Combo Shift usually helps to reset the enemy’s pattern recognition, so you could theoretically alternate between Shifting and punching if you’re dealing with just a couple of enemies.

Use the Environment to Build Momentum

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is all about that parkour action, so use that to your advantage when fighting enemies. Instead of just running up to them and punching them to death, consider performing a wall running kick instead. This builds up Faith’s momentum, and also gives her kicks a bit more power. By building up momentum, your attacks will deal more damage, and this will end the fights a lot faster than if you simply fight them head on.

A good trick is to run up a wall, perform a 180-degree turn, and then kick an enemy in the face. This is perfect for countering enemies that are chasing you down, and also gives your kick a great power boost too. Whenever you’re forced into a combat situation, the first thing you should do is examine your surroundings and see if there are any structures you can use to your advantage.

Build Up Your Focus Shield

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has a pretty cool mechanic called the Focus Shield. Next to Faith’s health bars, you’ll see a long white bar representing her Focus Shield. It protects Faith from taking damage, including damage dealt by ranged weapons. This bar will decrease as you take damage, and once it fully depletes, Faith’s health will start decreasing too.

A good tip to keep in mind is that you can easily build up the Focus Shield again, even in the middle of a fight. Faith will recharge a bit of her Focus Shield whenever she takes down an enemy, or by simply traversing the environment. This means that performing slides through obstacles, and jumping from one platform to another will also help to recharge the Shield. Whenever the Shield gets depleted, try running away from your foes to recharge it before heading back in.

Increase Faith’s Health

If you’re not that great at the combat in Mirror’s Edge Catalyst (don’t worry about it, I’m not very good either), it’s never a bad idea to spend upgrade points on Faith’s combat abilities. For beginners, I advise increasing her health as much as possible, just so she can take a few more hits before falling in battle. After that, consider buying the skills that decrease her damage taken from specific enemy classes.

Unfortunately, the set of skills that decrease your damage taken from classes is progressive, meaning you can’t skip over one class to get the necessary skill for another one. However, all of these skills combined with Faith’s health upgrades should help you last a lot longer in a fight.