Control Resonant – Beginner Tips

Control Resonant drops the gunplay from the first game and throws you headfirst into intense melee combat. Between mastering Dylan’s new weapon forms and figuring out a much bigger, more open map, there is a real learning curve early on.

Before you dive into Manhattan, here are the most important tips, mechanics, and progression tricks you need to know to get off to a strong start.

Note

This is part of our Control Resonant – Walkthrough Hub, so if you want more content about the game, be sure to check it out.

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Get Familiar With The Plot

Control Resonant is a direct sequel to the successful game Control, with stories and characters deeply interconnected in ways you need to understand to fully appreciate the narrative.

If you want to get the most out of Resonant and follow the plot, you have two options.

If you have the time and resources to play the original Control, you should definitely do so. Understanding the plot of the previous game is essential for getting the full context, as it gets you completely up to speed with Dylan’s story.

However, if you are short on time and simply want to jump into the new game, you can watch the in-game recap video instead. This video highlights the major events of the original story in about five minutes.

While the recap provides a solid high-level overview of the narrative, keep in mind that you will miss out on smaller lore details, subtle character relationships, and familiar returning faces that make the story resonate on a deeper level.

Understand That This Is A Different Game

Unlike Control, which was more of a shooter game, Resonant is a hack-and-slash melee-focused combat game. So whatever you are used to in the old game, it’s not going to work here.

Dylan will need to rely on his Aberrant forms to defeat enemies and time his dodges so he won’t get hit, since you barely have any ranged attacks at your disposal. There is no block or parry in this melee-focused combat, which was surprising.

At first, it will take some time to adjust to this change, but once it clicks, it clicks. You will be able to perform perfect dodges, build up enemies’ Falter (stagger meter) quickly, and perform executions and benefit from the Dominance buff.

The New Combat System

In addition to that, combat encounters rely on you defeating the Heavy enemies in order to stop them from continuously spawning small mobs. While you can ignore the regular enemies, they are still useful in their own way.

For example, when Dylan is low on health, you can defeat a bunch of small enemies, and they drop health elements that restore health before shifting the focus back to the Heavy enemy.

When you start unlocking your combat abilities, keep in mind that using them consumes Power, so you should always initiate fights with your abilities since standard melee attacks replenish energy.

Start by launching a barrage of attacks at the enemy to quickly build up Falter. Next, switch to your secondary form to generate even more Falter, then swap back to your primary form to keep up the pressure. By the time your Power fully recharges, the enemy’s guard will be nearly broken, allowing you to easily max out their Falter, trigger a stagger, and execute a deadly finisher.

That’s just some very basic combat tips that you can rely on early in the game, but the system is not that complicated, and it’s easy to pick up.

Pick Glaive With Extend As Your Starting Aberrant Form

You will have choices in which starting primary and secondary form to choose, and it can be a bit hesitant on which one to pick. Before we make our suggestion, you can always change it later at the cost of a small item.

Throughout the game, you will find yourself fighting groups of enemies and even waves of them, so having a weapon that can damage multiple enemies at once is critical and helpful.

The Glaive is a scythe with wide-sweeping attacks that strike multiple foes while knocking lighter enemies back. Meanwhile, the Extend acts as a whip with equally impressive reach. Combining these two weapons gives you unmatched crowd control on the battlefield.

While this setup may struggle against the first and second bosses early on, upgrading both weapons will allow you to handle boss fights with ease and build up Falter quickly.

Unlock The Map As Soon As You Enter A Zone

Control Resonant is more of an open world unlike the previous game, which means that now you have a bit more freedom to explore at your own pleasure.

There is still the Metroidvania aspect of specific locations you can’t access until you grab the corresponding traversal ability, but you still pretty much explore most of what you come across.

The good thing is that the game marks the locations that you are not able to access when you don’t have the ability to do so, so it would be easy for you to backtrack to them when you do.

But with the low, blurry-quality map you have, it does not help. This is why you must activate the Pylon, shown as a Map Kit icon on the map, whenever you come across them.

This will reveal the map but won’t show you points of interest. You would still need to walk around, and these points of interest will be marked on your map whenever you are within the vicinity of one.

Just like the previous game, the map here is a bit odd and not always easy to read, but it does the job, and you will still get lost like you did in Control, but that’s the fun of it.

Make Good Use Of Vendors

Each zone has a corresponding vendor that looks like an ice cream truck. On the map, it has a dollar sign, and it’s extremely useful because you can buy a bunch of materials.

These materials can be used to craft artifacts and unlock upgrades for your forms, and of course, this makes Dylan stronger and helps him during his journey.

We know that there are far more materials and confusing names, but you can always go to the Gap and pin the specific upgrades that you want to unlock. This will highlight the items for you with a yellow marker.

Now, anytime you obtain the pinned item or check the vendor, you will know what it is.

One more detail to mention: near every Vendor there is a Third Ice machine that contains one health upgrade.

Unlock Shift And Reach As Soon As Possible

After you reach Central, you will have multiple quests, and you can engage in them as you please. We highly recommend that you head to the West Incursion Zone first and complete Jesse Sightings: The Incursion Fault.

This will reward you with the movement ability Shift, which physically reorients a distorted world by changing which surfaces count as the ground.

Given how the Patterning and the Hiss have affected Manhattan, this would become handy. The reason why you need to get this is because a lot of areas will require you to have this ability in order to explore.

Reach, on the other hand, is through the Evacuation Zone, and you need to complete Jesse Sightings: The Subway Fault.

This movement ability allows you to use it as a grappling hook into certain points around the map.

Once you have both of these abilities, you will be able to explore almost all areas freely without the need to keep track of what you missed or couldn’t reach.

Take The Time To Explore

It comes without saying that you need to explore. You have all of Manhattan to see, and you have your traversal abilities, so forget about the FBC and their bureaucracy and just lose yourself in the city.

There is so much to see, multiple events to encounter, and even goodies to obtain. The Hiss will try to stop you, but they stand no chance against you.

Exploration is rewarding in the sense that you can obtain Source and crafting materials, but not only that.

Level Up Your Zones

Each zone will have a number next to it, and this indicates the Zone level. Whenever you finish a world activity or a combat encounter, you will notice you will be granted XP based on the activity, even when doing main and side quests.

This is good, as leveling up a zone will grant you buffs to that specific zone. For example, you will get increased elemental health from defeating enemies, or their drop rate will increase, and you can even obtain a Source boost.

Not only that, but certain levels will increase the Vendor level, in which you can buy more items from them, including new ones, or grant you a new artifact or a new outfit.

This is why exploration is rewarding. You get to enjoy the scenery, defeat the enemies, obtain materials to unlock and upgrade Dylan’s abilities, and gain boosts and bonuses to help you out.

Prepare Before Fighting A Resonant

One of the three main objectives Dylan has is to find a way to fix the Patterning and defeat all the Resonant entities around. These are no easy enemies to defeat, and they are the major boss fights in this game.

Before you even try to attempt one, make sure you have upgraded your Aberrant forms and have enough health and Power upgrades. Even with that, it might still take you a few tries before you can beat a Resonant.

If you find yourself struggling with regular mobs of a zone, this is your sign to change the zone and explore somewhere else and get stronger. Do side quests, craft new artifacts, change your weapons, and so on, anything to help.

Experiment With Different Builds

Control Resonant features different weapons, abilities, and builds that you can mix and match to have your own playstyle, and the game doesn’t restrict you from experimenting with them.

You can respec anytime you want at the cost of a Reset Item. You can obtain these by defeating main bosses, Resonants, or buying them from a vendor.

So don’t feel the need to stick to one form or one ability when you have many to try. Surely, some will stick with you more than others, but at least make sure you try a few of them before committing to a build.

There Is No Shame At Using Assist Mode

Control Resonant is challenging, especially early game, and you can even find yourself struggling during the first boss you encounter. Since there is no difficulty level, you would think there is no way to make things easy for you.

But there is! Just like the previous game, Resonant introduces Assist Mode to help cater the difficulty to all gamers of all skill levels.

In this Assist Mode, when you enable it through the Gameplay tab of the Settings menu, you will have three preset difficulty-type options that you can choose from. When you select an option, you will see the sliders’ numbers changing.

However, we do not really recommend that as a first option. Instead, try to think of the one thing you are struggling with. Do you need to deal more damage? Do you want to take less damage and survive more, or do you want to be immortal and blaze through everything?

Depending on the answer to that question, you can tweak the sliders to your liking and customize your difficulty. This way, you keep the game fun the way you like it to be instead of using a preset.

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And with that, we wrap up our beginner tips for Control Resonant. Thanks for checking it out!