THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT
I'm so confused by the skill system and the chance to hit on some of the enemies is ridiculously low. An hour in and I'm kinda getting turned off by it.
that's nothing,the first dragon boss you'll fight (actualy i think the third boss might be enough!) you'll probably be able to deal only 1 damage per attack with your weapon,and then you will say that it's a crappy game,and then a matsuno fan will tell you that you are an horrible person and that you don't know how to play
anyway what most people suggest is to use a different weapon for each kind of enemies,you see for example if you use a sword against wolves,that weapon will be more effective against beast but his effect against human might decrease,so the idea is to have an anti-beast weapon,an anti-dragon weapon,an anti-human weapon,an anti-ghost weapon.....
weapon also deals 3 kind of damage,blunt,piercing or slashing,that's another thing to check when doing crappy damage,if i remember correctly this bonus is dictated by the handle of the weapon and since you can change handle's around,you should do so
to make things even worse weapon also have elemental affinities,though luckily near the middle of the game you get spells that instantly change the affinity of your weapon,so for those you don't have to worry too much but it's another thing to keep in mind
the reason you are missing a lot... you probably aren't paying attention to the risk bar,you see everytime you use a skill,the bar on the top increase,the higher that bar,the lower your chance to hit and the more damage you take (but if i remember correctly it also increase the damage you do)
there is not a lot to say about skills,all you need is timing,press the button at the right time and you'll trigger the skill,you can't use the same skill twice in a row so you need to mix it up,the easiest weapon to use for abusing skills is the crossbow,you should always keep a crossbow on yourself,you learn new one just by killing tons of enemies
as jaydubya says keeping a weapon for every kind of monster is not a bad idea but if you ask me the best thing to do is to learn those skill that let you deal damage by ignoring all that damage formula crap ASAP,the first you should be able to learn is the one that let you send 25% of the damage you receive back to the sender,if i remember correctly later on you learn one skill that let you deal damage based on how many skills you are able to use in a single attack and trust me that's way way way more usefull than anything else in the game