@Jag85 said:
@jg4xchamp said:
3. Sekiro: Shallow combat system. It's still decent, and certainly better than any western melee combat system, but the game is glorified simon says during boss fights and in a lot of encounters. Parries are an overrated mechanic and overused mechanic.
Are you suggesting Sekiro's combat system is more shallow than Souls and Bloodborne?
Yep, 100%. In Souls n Bloodborne you at least have to worry about positioning the whole fight. Sekiro's deflect mechanic makes it a non issue.
Souls leverage their depth from pretty simple aspects of how precise the combat options themselves are and enemy positioning n designs. Shit like high/low leverage actually matters in these games, where it's whatever in action/jacksons like Bayonetta n Devil May Cry n such.
While Sekiro has added more options to the players kit, they tend to fall into silver bullet design. Where they are a specific counter with no real con to specific things. Deflection for instance if your timing is down, posture is a whatever mechanic to the game. Yours will never go do down, and you can absolutely bury your enemy. Only a handful of attacks at most from the boss are going to be stuff you specifically need to dodge.
Health going down means your posture recovers less quickly is also a non point for the battle system. If your parry already protects your posture, while hurting the enemies, then the health going down also doesn't mean anything. Because that's just what you're going to do: hit the enemy, knock their health down. Instead of a scenario where you have to weigh going for health damage or posture damage, your scenario is always deflect the shit you gotta and then get your hits in. Which creates a steam roll in your favor in the long run of the fight.
Attack start ups can be cancelled into a deflect or a step-dodge. In Souls you actually are committed more to an attack Meaning the player has to be a bit more mindful or else they get whiff punished or straight up interrupted in their attack string.
In Dark Souls n Bloodborne, stamina management is part of the game. Shit in Bloodborne your parry is an actual currency, one you can actually fill up in a fight by giving up some health. Attack swings are governed by it, dodges are governed by it, and even blocking is governed by it. But deflection makes posture free, so by definition makes attacking free.
Most enemies while well designed in the game, the game still features straight boring shit like shielded enemies where you have to use the axe or they are boring. Or the zombies where you have to flame vent or you deal with their shit. Lightning counters are literally just another direct rock to another of the enemies scissor attacks. Mikiri counters have 30 frame windows, like fam, you got this lol.
Game needed more bosses like Shichimen Warrior where the player has to work around another element of the fight, so they can't just bury the boss in deflects without impunity.
This is not to say other games with parries don't also do simple things like "this is the dodge attack" and "this is the parry" attack, but relevant to the praise Sekiro got, it's wildly undeserved because it's easily From Software's weakest combat system. It isn't nearly as saucy or expressive as a Bayonetta or Devil May Cry to make up for balancing issues. It is at the end of the day a strict timing challenge, a hard one, but a timing challenge none the less. And that lacks the interesting decision making that a more expressive battle system has built around more inputs or lacks the interesting decision making of a game with simple systems but tightly designed enemies n obstacles to leverage varied responses from the player.
Make no mistake it's still a good game, obviously, and often the complaints presented on this forum about that game are straight scrub talk, but the games place among Miyazaki's best games I feel is unwarranted. It has a severe balancing issue that undermines the entire game, I'd compare it to what Umbran Climax did for Bayonetta 2. That game however isn't overrated among its community, most high level Bayonetta fans get that 2 is significantly worse.
Shallow is probably a harsh word, because we only associate that word with batman with it's glorified non combat, but Sekiro lacks depth overall as an action game is valid. And it certainly is not as deep of an action game as its predecessors as far as execution.
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