‘clunky’ is the end product, but the biggest contributing factor is the absolute committal nature of initiating an animation. Need to take half a step to the left to dodge an arrow? Fuck you, I’m only one second in to a 2.5 second sword twirling animation! …and actually you double clicked at the start of the animation, so I’m gonna do it again for another 2.5 seconds! …so you die, respawn, redo that fight but this time you know when the arrows are coming so you don’t use the long animations. Clear the fight, wooooo you got gud… but trying to dodge arrows and not being able to cuz your character is busy doing a dance routine is some of the least fluid combat I’ve experienced in a videogame. Any keystroke that comes with an animation is always in competition with other keystrokes that have animations.
Combat boils down to memorizing attack patterns and playing a mental macro on repeat until the enemy is dead. There’s no responsiveness from the player, you just die until you know why you’re dying, and tweak the sequence until it works. Eventually the final boss is dead.
I’ve been told that for whatever reason it feels way less clunky on a controller - I’ve only ever played it on a mouse and keyboard.
idk.
Like I said, to each their own. I’m a little jealous of whatever it is the fanbase is feeling when they play those games, but it’s a miss for me.
I get what you mean, you’re not the only one. There are generations of games that have explicitly trained you on fast twitch button mashing with graceful dodge frames and intentionally engineered safeguards so rng is in your favor to bring about the best experience. And I’m not mocking you…it’s just how it is and it gets me too. Trying to unlearn that is hard.
I also hate the ‘difficult for the sake of difficult’. I know some people get a high over doing something incredible, but I don’t get that from banging my head on the same thing over and over. Any souls, souls-like, souls-lite or weighty mechanics games like MH get a hard pass from me.
However, I really enjoyed Remnant, it’s a mp souls-like - something about witnessing everyone’s shenanigans but still being able to pick each other off the floor is a lot of fun. It feels different and more like what souls should have been (imho).
It’s not so much button mashy vs not; it’s the responsiveness. Take a step back from videogames even: if you were some medieval knight or w/e in a sword fight IRL: your sword is raising as you’re initiating an attack, and you notice your opponent moving his blade toward a vulnerable spot you just left exposed.
So do you just follow through with the attack knowing there’s a blade closing in on your axillary artery, accept your fate, take the blow, bleed out and die? Or, do you abort the attack in favor of a defensive move like lifting your shield or turning a bit so the blade hits your armor instead?
The former is what combat is like in DS (and MH… haven’t tried the others).
It’s unsatisfying flavor of difficulty… again comparable to sabotaging the controls of an otherwise not difficult at all experience (sponge taped to gameboy). Or like… say you need to do the dishes, and up the difficulty of the task by tying a toothbrush to the end of a 5’ stick and scrubbing them with that from the far corner of the kitchen. The task is difficult now, but that doesn’t make it fun, just tedious.
Just pulled up Remnant - I don’t think I’ve ever seen that game before. The Steam pics/vids look pretty great: I’m getting VERY strong Secret World Legends vibes (which is a fantastic game despite having god-awful combat). I’ll throw it on my wishlist and see if I can snag it on a good sale.
‘clunky’ is the end product, but the biggest contributing factor is the absolute committal nature of initiating an animation. Need to take half a step to the left to dodge an arrow? Fuck you, I’m only one second in to a 2.5 second sword twirling animation! …and actually you double clicked at the start of the animation, so I’m gonna do it again for another 2.5 seconds! …so you die, respawn, redo that fight but this time you know when the arrows are coming so you don’t use the long animations. Clear the fight, wooooo you got gud… but trying to dodge arrows and not being able to cuz your character is busy doing a dance routine is some of the least fluid combat I’ve experienced in a videogame. Any keystroke that comes with an animation is always in competition with other keystrokes that have animations.
Combat boils down to memorizing attack patterns and playing a mental macro on repeat until the enemy is dead. There’s no responsiveness from the player, you just die until you know why you’re dying, and tweak the sequence until it works. Eventually the final boss is dead.
I’ve been told that for whatever reason it feels way less clunky on a controller - I’ve only ever played it on a mouse and keyboard.
idk.
Like I said, to each their own. I’m a little jealous of whatever it is the fanbase is feeling when they play those games, but it’s a miss for me.
I get what you mean, you’re not the only one. There are generations of games that have explicitly trained you on fast twitch button mashing with graceful dodge frames and intentionally engineered safeguards so rng is in your favor to bring about the best experience. And I’m not mocking you…it’s just how it is and it gets me too. Trying to unlearn that is hard.
I also hate the ‘difficult for the sake of difficult’. I know some people get a high over doing something incredible, but I don’t get that from banging my head on the same thing over and over. Any souls, souls-like, souls-lite or weighty mechanics games like MH get a hard pass from me.
However, I really enjoyed Remnant, it’s a mp souls-like - something about witnessing everyone’s shenanigans but still being able to pick each other off the floor is a lot of fun. It feels different and more like what souls should have been (imho).
It’s not so much button mashy vs not; it’s the responsiveness. Take a step back from videogames even: if you were some medieval knight or w/e in a sword fight IRL: your sword is raising as you’re initiating an attack, and you notice your opponent moving his blade toward a vulnerable spot you just left exposed.
So do you just follow through with the attack knowing there’s a blade closing in on your axillary artery, accept your fate, take the blow, bleed out and die? Or, do you abort the attack in favor of a defensive move like lifting your shield or turning a bit so the blade hits your armor instead?
The former is what combat is like in DS (and MH… haven’t tried the others).
It’s unsatisfying flavor of difficulty… again comparable to sabotaging the controls of an otherwise not difficult at all experience (sponge taped to gameboy). Or like… say you need to do the dishes, and up the difficulty of the task by tying a toothbrush to the end of a 5’ stick and scrubbing them with that from the far corner of the kitchen. The task is difficult now, but that doesn’t make it fun, just tedious.
Just pulled up Remnant - I don’t think I’ve ever seen that game before. The Steam pics/vids look pretty great: I’m getting VERY strong Secret World Legends vibes (which is a fantastic game despite having god-awful combat). I’ll throw it on my wishlist and see if I can snag it on a good sale.