AKAYUKI: Steel Blossoms Red katana controls and tutorial

On keyboard and mouse, press E to draw your katana, then hold the left mouse button and swipe the mouse right to attack with the sword equipped. Use WASD to move. The tutorial teaches the mouse gesture separately from equipping the sword, so its first horizontal-slice exercise comes before the “E to equip sword” prompt.

How the tutorial teaches katana inputs

The PC tutorial introduces movement, a slice gesture and sword equipping as separate instructions. Follow the prompts in this order:

1. Walk onto the straw mat using WASD. This places the movement exercise before the sword practice.
2. Practice a horizontal slice. The instruction is to click once and swipe right.
3. Press E to equip the sword. This is the explicit draw input, appearing after that initial slice exercise.
4. Walk up close, move the mouse left, then hold left click and swipe right. This brings positioning and the mouse swing together with the sword equipped.
5. Follow the subsequent instruction to move the mouse left. The practice continues with another directional mouse prompt.

The distinction between the first click-and-swipe instruction and the later hold-and-swipe instruction matters when following the tutorial. They occur at different points in its teaching sequence. For the equipped-sword attack, the practical input to remember is hold left click and swipe right.

Drawing and swinging also have separate roles: E equips the weapon, while the mouse gesture performs the attack. The rightward hold-and-swipe is used in live combat as well as tutorial practice. When moving from the exercise into a fight, keep both parts of that interaction in mind: have the sword equipped, then perform the swing.

The tutorial can be skipped, but its prompts provide the introductory practice before free combat. For broader fighting mechanics after learning these inputs, continue with the combat guide.

Iai and Dual wield have their own draw-style rules

The basic tutorial controls are useful to distinguish from the special behavior of the purchasable Iai and Dual wield draw-style gamepasses. Their draw-cut and poise rules apply to those styles specifically.

Iai uses draw-cuts only. Its cuts go through blades, but a miss can be parried. The style has increased dash length and draw speed, poise recovery on a kill, and faster sheathing. It also has no calm draw prompt. In the version 1.3.11 changes, its draw-cut cost was reduced from 57.5 to 40 poise, and its poise recovery on kills increased from 35% to 40%. These are version-specific changes to Iai, rather than costs or recovery values for the basic tutorial swing. See the Iai guide for that style’s dedicated explanation.

Dual wield draws two katanas together and swings one in each hand. Its draw-cuts go through blades, but a still guard parries them. Hits take less poise, while draws cost more. It also adds a specific keyboard action: press R for a blood flick that fully restores poise. That R action belongs to Dual wield; keep it separate from the E equip prompt taught in the introductory tutorial.