Control Resonant leaves its predecessor's third-person shooting for a more brawler/action experience. During your playthrough, you’ll be forced to make choices, such as which will be your weapons. In this IGN guide, we will break down which starting weapon is right for you in Control Resonant, and which are the best weapons overall.

The previous special gun is replaced with the Aberrant, a melee weapon that can take many shapes and forms. While your new protagonist Dylan will have many parautilitarian skills to learn, your melee weapon will be your main source of damage.

Which Starting Weapon Should You Choose?

There are three types of weapons/Aberrant Forms in Control Resonant: Primary Forms, your light attack; Secondary Forms, your heavy attacks; and Combo Finishers, the ones you can perform after your Primary Forms.

The interplay between the three weapons you choose will make a big difference in how you play, so let’s go over each type individually and think about what suits you best.

Primary Forms

The Primary Form of your Aberrant governs your light attack– square on PlayStation and X on Xbox. You will get your first weapon right at the beginning of the game, before you take control of your character, during a cutscene.

Strike

Strike has the fastest attack of any Primary Form, and it focuses on scoring critical hits. Forsaking a wide area of attack to help with crowd control, it hones in on singular opponents so you can finish them off quickly before moving on to the next mob.

It’s great for dealing Falter and for focusing on 1v1 battles.

Glaive

Glaive is the exact opposite. It swings in a wide arc that helps you attack many enemies at once and clears the space around you, but it gains that utility by losing speed and critical hit chance. Still, it’s a great weapon for battles against groups, and it deals more Raw Damage.

Cleave

Cleave is a mix of the two, with the added benefit of scoring more damage when it hits enemies from behind. If you don’t feel like betting on one style, this is the ‘balanced’ option that you are looking for.

Primary Forms Details

Each Primary Form also has its own skill tree. These are a bit overwhelming to peruse at first, but make sure you at least take a look at what each weapon does after a dodge attack. While Strike and Glaive simply do more damage, Cleave lifts enemies into the air, an early differentiator between the three choices if that’s something you like doing.

You can have more than one weapon unlocked at once if you’ve purchased them in the Weapon Skill Tree using a resource called Living Shards. However, you can only have one equipped at a time; if you want to change any weapon, you need to pause the game, enter the Loadout menu, and change your weapon.

Secondary Forms

Almost immediately after leaving the Oldest House and venturing out into Manhattan, you’ll get a second choice. This is your Secondary Form, which is performed by pressing Triangle on PlayStation or Y on Xbox.

You’ll have three different options, and all of them can be charged to do stun damage, called Falter in-game. You'll only get to select one at first.

Crush

Crush is a big hammer. It can do the highest Falter damage of the three Secondary Forms, so it’s the easiest one to stun enemies with. It does Blunt damage.

Drill

Drill attacks in a straight line, so it’s not good for clearing enemies away from you, but it can be held to do continuous damage after already striking an enemy. The hammer, on the other hand, must be charged before striking an enemy. Drill does Sharp damage.

Extend

Extend is a sectional staff that hits a wide area, and its charge attack can be timed perfectly to do extra damage. It does Raw damage, just like the primary forms.

Secondary Forms Details

These Secondary Forms also have their own skill trees, albeit smaller ones than the Primaries. Some early game changers: Crush lets you Lift enemies with its third attack, Extend gains a 360-degree swing with its third attack, and an extra-long Drill for Drill’s third attack. All three Secondary Forms also eventually learn a switch attack, which lets you press their button for a special move instead of a Combo Finisher.

Combo Finishers

Once your Aberrant Strength reaches 15, you can choose a Combo Finisher, which will be the third weapon that you can have equipped at all times. It activates if you finish a light attack combo and then continue to press the same button.

There are six Combo Finishers, and you can buy all of them if you want, but only one will be available in combat. Fortunately, they are the cheapest weapons: they cost one Living Shard.

These Combo Finishers all have their own skill trees as well, but they don’t require you to choose; there’s only one linear path of upgrades. A Combo Finisher. These types of Aberrant Forms vary wildly in Damage, Falter, and general utility.

Concussive Beatdown

Concussive Beatdown gives Dylan a series of strikes using stone gloves. It deals decent Damage and a great amount of Falter if you land every hit of it, second only to a fully charged Uppercut Surge.

As you unlock further levels, Damage and Falter increase, you do more damage to Airborne enemies, and follow-up attacks or blasts are added to the end of your combos. If you want to bulldoze through enemies, this is a great choice.

Uppercut Surge

Uppercut Surge launches enemies, giving them the Lifted state. Lifted is different from Airborne; it’s a particular status that you apply, and it will be shown with this orange marker.

Additional upgrades add the usual Damage and Falter increases, but allow you to send nearby enemies into the air with the Lifted status as well. If you like fighting in the air, or even uppercutting Lifted enemies even further into the air, you can’t go wrong here.

Wide Edge

The highest single-hit damage Combo Finisher, Wide Edge, is a wide-range swing that knocks enemies away.

Regarding its upgrades, it can become more effective based on how many enemies you hit with your primary combo leading into this finisher, increasing your multiplier on both Critical Chance and Falter. This makes the Glaive, the wide-ranging scythe attack, the best Primary Form to pair with this particular Combo Finisher.

Choose this one if you like clearing out a ton of breathing room for Dylan and dealing a ton of damage all at once.

Spin Edge

Spin Edge is like a variant of Wide Edge, as it can hit three times instead of just one, with the last hit sending enemies away. Given that each hit of this finisher does less damage than the one big hit of Wide Edge, there are multiple upgrades that increase either Power Recovery (the resource you use to cast Combat Abilities) or damage based on the amount of consecutive attacks you land with this finisher.

You can also learn Rousing Sabotage to apply the Empowered Status on Dylan, giving him extra Damage and Falter from his Combat Abilities, the ones equipped on your shortcuts on the bottom right of the screen.

Finally, the last upgrade allows Dylan to spin indefinitely, which is just very funny. This is a great choice if you like maximizing your positioning and picking your moments to be a real bull in a china shop.

Split Pivot

Split Pivot sends a small spinning blade out in front of Dylan, and while it doesn’t do a ton of Damage or Falter, the first upgrade gives a high critical chance, and further upgrades apply both Weakened and Burning to enemies, making it combine extremely well with other builds.

For instance, you can get this finisher out there, hit an enemy with one charged attack of the Drill Secondary Form (you need it upgraded to apply Weakened). This inflicts the status instantly, letting you deal extra damage instantly. Add this to further Burn and Falter upgrades along this tree, and you can stun enemies who are already weakened very quickly.

This is a great finisher if you want to apply a ton of statuses to enemies.

Split Orbit

Just like the Spin Edge finisher was a variant of the Wide Edge, Split Orbit is a different version of Split Pivot. It moves in an arc around Dylan rather than just attacking in front of him.

At first, it’s pretty underwhelming with its low Damage and Falter. But further upgrades both extend the amount of time that Split Orbit is active, make it spin faster so it hits more enemies, and increase both the Damage and Falter it inflicts. Not game-changing like some of the other upgrade trees, it just continues to get better at everything it does. Choose this finisher if you want passive damage floating around you as much as possible.

Best Combo Finishers

While the best Combo Finisher will be the one that adapts to your playstyle the most, let's select three of the six weapons that are great from the get-go.

Concussive Beatdown is great when your arsenal doesn't generate too much Falter by itself. Finish every combo with this weapon, and you should be able to stun every enemy with only a couple of combos (and only one if the Aberrant is upgraded and you apply status).

Uppercut Surge will apply Lifted, which is useful to destabilize enemies and leave them vulnerable. Only a couple of other weapons can do this (like Secondary Form Crush, but it needs a specific upgrade) and the Spike Combat Ability. With this Combo Finisher, you guarantee yourself this useful tool.

Finally, the last great Combo Finisher will be between Spin Edge and Wide Edge. The former is better for catching more enemies (especially Drone ones) with a single blow, but Wide Edge has more crowd control features thanks to the final push it produces at the end.

Control Resonant Best Weapons

Now’s the time to put it all together. Between your Primary Form choice, your Secondary Form, and your Combat Finishers, you have a ton of flexibility with how you play, and it can be overwhelming. Think of what you enjoy doing most during combat, and then make decisions to further that playstyle.

For instance, do you like to stick-and-move, doing a ton of damage to a single enemy before moving on to your next target? You might enjoy Strike for your light attack, Drill for your heavy attack, and Concussive Beatdown for your finisher. Do you like controlling space? Try Glaive for your light attack, Extend for your Heavy Attack, and Wide Edge or Spin Edge for your finisher. When doubling down to fit a particular playstyle, look to match up as many of the bolded words across your build as you can as an easy way to synergize your choices.

Alternatively, instead of focusing on doing one thing really well, you could try to diversify and cover the weaknesses of your light attack with your heavy attack or finisher. Now that you know what they all do, it’s just a matter of fiddling around with them and finding your sweet spot. You have the control here.