Zelda combat system is very 1998. Will it finally improve by 2030?

I usually don't really pay attention to what you're typing tbh. The day you called a legendary game like Elden Ring as SHIT, is the day you lost me, Maroxad.

Pop calling the kettle black. Classic Clown Cow move mate.

🤡🤡🤡That is how you sound.

They could make the most amazing combat system ever and it wouldn't matter if they keep that annoying ass weapon durability system.

They should work on a direct sequel to Zelda II and iterate on that type of gameplay. Bring back that badass down stab.

You mean, like, a Zelda Metroidvania? Zeldavania?

Souls combat is shit

It's just a punishing franchise if you miscalculate. Just because it's precise doesn't mean it's good. It's not on the level of DMC or NG or Bayonetta which are combat/combo focused.

It's biggest downfall for sure

Yeah, while it is precise, it is really shallow. Fights are more about mastering enemy patterns than actually mastering the combat system. I value player expression and depth. I assume you do that too :)

The player also looks incredibly stupid with all the dodge rolls. While the games you listed make the player look quite cool. Funny how Wenzen seemed to imply I look like an idiot playing Ring Fit Adventure. Yet his combat system of choice has him look like this.

In other words, it lacks both style and substance.

@Maroxad said:

@sargentd said:

Souls combat is shit

It's just a punishing franchise if you miscalculate. Just because it's precise doesn't mean it's good. It's not on the level of DMC or NG or Bayonetta which are combat/combo focused.

Yeah, while it is precise, it is really shallow. Fights are more about mastering enemy patterns than actually mastering the combat system. I value player expression and depth. I assume you do that too :)

The player also looks incredibly stupid with all the dodge rolls. While the games you listed make the player look quite cool. Funny how Wenzen seemed to imply I look like an idiot playing Ring Fit Adventure. Yet his combat system of choice has him look like this.

In other words, it lacks both style and substance.

It's very slow and simple combat. And yes I do value expression and depth in a games combat. You don't get "good" at souls combat.. like you said the skill comes into memorizing enemy patterns. I don't consider memorizing enemy paterns "combat" lol.

People talk up the Rpg elements in souls game, the weight of thier gear or range of thier weapon in a souls game.. but that's still not "combat" either. In souls games you have a very limited move set.. it's all about enemy memorization and tracking your stamina. I like the gif.. because it's extremely accurate.

Souls games have alot of things going for them, I like thier world building, the artstyle and enemy design, the fights do require planning and memorization, I'm not saying they are bad games, but are they great because they have "great combat"?? Hell no...

Ironically I'd say both Zelda and dark souls are on similar terms when it comes to combat..

I agree with you. I would argue Souls is a souped up OoT combat.

I prefer the expressiveness, interconnectedness and verticality of BotW and TotK combat over Souls combat. And I prefer the sheer depth and cool factor of DMC as well as NG and bayonetta combat over BotW and TotK combat.

Stamina management is easy too, since if you have a slither of stamina, you can roll or attack. It also replenishes really fast. To add further insult to injury enemies don't have any ways to relaly interact with your stamina, they can make you dodge, but they can't actually throw you outside of your stamina comfort zone. Like they can in a more proactive system.

Is this "expressiveness" of combat some kind of a hipster description of making a simpleton combat system sound like it has depth? What kind of a sick joke is this? Genshin Impact has more depth than totk/botw🤣Zelda has absolutely nothing going it. In totk you create an unbalanced creature that one shots everything, and that's how you express its combat system. Its laughable.

I don't grow up with Zelda and I always thought the combat in Zelda games is average at best, shit at worst. Whenever I play 3d Zelda game I tend to rush or skip enemies due to this.Tbh in Zelda BotW I played the game for 90 hours but I don't understand jack sht about the whole slow move counter and just resorted to killing everything via stealth as the proper MGS fan that I am (MGSV open world >>>>>> Zelda BotW open world) or just hack and slash till dude dead.

Its one of the worst aspect of Zelda games and one of the reason why I never picked up TotK. Others being I don't think BotW was that good its a glorified, overhyped and overinflated 1st party ubisoft tower open world game.

You remind me of the guy who said something along these lines.

"Player expression? Is that some kind of liberal nonsense?"

Dont try to move the goal post. Your expression of combat in totk is facerolling everything with dumb creations. Might as well hack the game....

Couldn't agree more, actually. Mobile combat system with ubisoft open world. Not good.

@hardwenzen: Pointing out your clear distain for palyer expression is not goalpost moving.

And while you can make awesome buildslike that, they are also really impractical. You dont have unlimited resources. That said, I do think the power up that lets you build anything anywhere at a cost did hurt the experience. But at least it was fun to do for showing off. Unlike ER's summon ashes which could kill a boss for you while you ate popcorn.

Player expression in totk is equal to genshin impact. If this is a strong point for you, you sure don't have much positive to say about the game

In TOTK you have countless emergent and viable solutions to deal with any problem. Player expression is top notch as far as SP games go. Only beaten by a few games like Dwarf Fortress. It is that good.

Countless you say. Create an op abomination, one that you've googled. Kill everything in under 5 sec. Very expressive combat system you got there.

Give me a break, Maroxad. totk is a perfect example of what NOT to do in a video game.

And run out of resources after 2 uses...

Nah, far more pragmatic about finding creative solutions on teh fly without having to resort to overkill.

That's why you google it. You do so to create some broken garbage that barely consumes the batteries, but still op af. This is your core gameplay. Just hack the game already, you get the same results anyways.

@Litchie: "A good take on combat mechanics" except it wasn't. It was a horrible take. His logic is literally Souls have 10 number of mechanics, and Zelda has 100 number of mechanics therefore Zelda combat is better. Because more number of things equals more better, right? No.

It doesn't work like that.

Zelda has 100 solutions to fight an enemy but they all suck and are implemented poorly. Sekiro, God of War, Elden Ring, Dark Souls 1-3, etc. etc. have like 3 or 4 solutions but they are are infinitely more fun, more well made, more polished, more engaging etc.

It is completely absurd to praise TOTK combat and then say Fromsoft's(the best in the business) combat was barely servicable in 2009, when as this very thread title applies, playing TOTK feels like you're playing a 20 year old game.

If more was always better then the best games ever made would be GTA:SA or Minecraft for the sheer number of things you can do. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Quality > quantity.

And FYI: I played both Nioh 1 and Nioh 2. Didn't find them hard, but I got bored after 25-30 hrs in them both. The combat was average at best and just no where near as engrossing as Sekiro's combat.

@Maroxad: When you're done zipping up Litchie's pants you can look at my other comments. I've explained it to you multiple times and you haven't had a single good argument except "but this is more", "but this gives you more freedom", having multiple boring ways to beat an enemy does not make it better than a game with fewer, more satisfying and engaging mechanics.

@Mozelleple112: combat in Nioh is more dynamic than any from software souls games.

This is true. MDK just straffing round in circles shooting shit, about 2-3 hours long. Play this every couple of years.

Whereas BOTW weapons breaking every 5 minutes, while I pause the game with 0 tension to switch to another shitty weapon, until I reach a point in the game where I get a weapon that doesn't break, so it's slightly less annoying, is not something I really want to go back to.

@uninspiredcup: I always think pacing is the key to a good game. Surprise the player with something new and keep building upon the simple foundations from before.

Mario, Donkey Kong or Half Life introduce something new for the player every level. It teaches you a new thing then trusts the player to use that to get further.

People always shit on HL2 for having simple or simplistic gunplay, but I don't care, it gets me through the game.

Suicide Squad on the other hand has a complex traversal and shooting gameplay loop and doesn't know what it wants to do with it. It teaches the player all these tricks to take care of enemies from close range then throws a dozen snipers at him, which he can't deal with.

And it never changes, the whole game is just that, zero pacing.

@Maroxad said:

@sargentd said:

Souls combat is shit

It's just a punishing franchise if you miscalculate. Just because it's precise doesn't mean it's good. It's not on the level of DMC or NG or Bayonetta which are combat/combo focused.

Yeah, while it is precise, it is really shallow. Fights are more about mastering enemy patterns than actually mastering the combat system. I value player expression and depth. I assume you do that too :)

The player also looks incredibly stupid with all the dodge rolls. While the games you listed make the player look quite cool. Funny how Wenzen seemed to imply I look like an idiot playing Ring Fit Adventure. Yet his combat system of choice has him look like this.

In other words, it lacks both style and substance.

Is that a real MMA fight, or just a parody?

There's room for improvement, but I don't have any issues with Zelda's current combat system myself. I think my only issue is enemies not being more adaptive and versatile with how they engage Link, something that Skyward Sword kinda fixes, but that's about it. Twilight Princess has the second best system since you're given the opportunity to develop Links sword skills through training.

Zelda's combat system has definitely developed since 1998, so I'm not sure why we're pretending that it hasn't....

Tell me you havent played TotK without telling me you havent played TotK.

Those uber mechs you see are Awesome but impractical. The resource cost wont make them worth it unless you want to show off.

I have no idea.

Player expression is one of the most important things in a video game. The combat in Souls is just static, relies too much on execution as opposed to creativity.

I say the combat of Souls is bad, because quite frankly it is. Why do you think the 3D soulslikes keep failing? Because they are workign of a broken template. Souls was always carried by its enemy design. The combat itself has always been mediocre at best. It is completely outclassed by Spectacle Fighters or even games like Nioh. This is why the PvP scene in Souls games is incredibly niche. Bad netcode is no excuse, just look at the fighting game genre, which has been plagued by bad netcode for ages (thought that is changing now). The problem with Souls combat is that it is too simplistic, too shallow, and the skill ceiling just isnt very high. It is a game for scrubs.

Looking at a skilled player vs an unskilled player in a Souls game and the biggest difference is that the skilled player can be more aggressive and is better at dodging, all this stuff falls at the execution level.

Compare an skilled player vs an unskilled player in TotK, BotW, or just about any competent action game, and the skilled player will pull off techniques that the unskilled player couldn't even imagine.

FromSoft's combat system wishes it could be as dynamic and fun to watch and play as something like this.

Instead FromSoft are still using a glorified OoT combat system in 2022

For the next Zelda, I hope they give link a bunch of weapons, remove the durability system but replace it with a weapon enhancement system. Link gets around 8 weapons. Find items in the world which allow him to imbue these weapons with temporary powerups. That will replicate what makes the durability system work for people like me, while not alienating those who didn't like it.

Posting clips like this as evidence TOTK has good combat is stupid because this is from someone who's clearly played for hundreds if not thousands of hours, and doesn't actually paint the full picture. For every clip like this there are 10000 TOTK clips of fucking up that came before it. Clips of fucking up because of TOTK's lousy controls, bad UI, unclear object interactions during building, and terrible difficulty balance.

It'd be like clipping a world record no glitch speedrun of a game and using that to claim it's the best game ever.

And for that matter I don't really see much of anything "dynamic" in these clips. Every single one is just finding the quickest avenue into the air so he can stunlock pathetically underequipped enemies with a trillion bows and bombs.

What makes a good combat system fun is the potential for learning and improving. That is what makes fighting games so fun for example. I will never be as good as the top players. But I have a lot of fun getting there.

And they are dynamic. The player is actively setting the terms for the fight. With the conditions changing based on both the state of the foe and the player.

In Souls atrocious combat system. There are no real mechanical interactions of any kind. Outside of a few hitstuns, you don't really have much control of the flow of the fight. You dodge the enemy when they attack, punish them after they leave openings. *Yawn*

Edit: And the controls in TOTK are fine. At least link can do more than just run and walk.

That makes ZERO sense mate. Have you seen the thousands of clips showing off how bad and unoriginal Fromsoft games are? Games like Zelda and Fromsoft don't need to hold your hand in combat. Go play a boring are Sony game if you want hand holding.

That's a way to describe em🤣They're broken, unbalance, hacks level bullshit given to you in a game where its developer doesn't give a damn about balance. This is your totk, a game i haven't played. No games with remotely decent balance would allow this kind of crap.

The fact that overpowered machines like that can occur through gameplay emergence is a strength, not a weakness.

If you are willing to spend time to farm for stones for 5 minutes of awesome, the payoff should be worth it for those 5 minutes. There is nothing wrong with having overpowered stuff in a video game if the context allows for it. The RYNO in ratchet, the BFG in doom, Super Sonic, Screw Attack in Metroid, and yes, TotK's doomsday devices are allowed to be OP.

Its not srength nor weakness. Its a developer that doesn't give a damn about what's happening in their own $70 game. Very rarely do we see a developer giving this little care to their game.

@sargentd: Its also way more arcade-y, way more game-y, less intense, less enganging, less satisfying, and feels weightless etc.

Souls combat is two levels above Nioh combat. Sekiro is three levels above.

@Maroxad: Is that video supposed to be impressive? or look fun? because it doesn't it just proves how bad the combat is and how poor the bosses are.

Being able to create your own vehicle by gluing lots of garbage together and then flying in the air and tossing homemade bombs isn't creative, it isn't fun, it isn't good, it is just plain rubbish. That's Minecraft level of combat mechanics.

Its like saying Forza is a bad racing game because you don't make your own racecar from scraps in junkyard running on homeless persons piss as fuel. Sekiro is the Bugatti Chiron of swordplay.

I prefer quality over quantity. I'd much rather have a much more limited but more refined, more polished and more precise mechanics.

I don't need 101 ways to eat soop. just give me a spoon.

Sekiro = gives you the highest quality metal spoon you can imagine, with the finest ceramic bowl and handcrafted table/kitchen chair.

Zelda = you go out in the forrest and pick flowers and create a chair out of rotten bark that you chopped down and then you use cornstalk as a custom made straw and then eat your soup out of a leather pouch that you stitched together from 7 different animal carcuses. Wooow so fucking creative.

Just give me a spoon. (the finest spoon ever made that is)

Way less engaging is a good way of describing Zelda's combat system when compared to Souls. When its not engaging, it feels bland, and bland isn't very exciting. This is the Zelda's combat system.

Yea let me stop you there because this is not correct at all. That's like saying pokemon has the best RPG combat because you can theoretically learn an entire encyclopedia's worth of pokemon, abilities, and moves, but really when you boil away the statistic clusterfuck, it's just a very simple turn based 1 move for 1 move game.

Breadth of option is not breadth of depth or quality.

Link doing flippy flips a hundred times and fartblasting himself up into the air to do a 360 noscope with 50 bomb arrows on a stunlocked opponent is cool only on paper. In practice the sloppy UI, poor framerate, dumb controls, and enemies who are fully incapable of challenging anything but basic swordplay and vehicles, drain most of the actual interest from what's displayed. This is a fireworks show where the actual ToTK moment to moment gameplay is a sparkler.

The TOTK combat doesn't benefit enough from the option pool to justify it's clear shortcomings. Plain and simple.

There's no need to be upset little boy. I didn't like your favorite toy as much that's all.

"Link doing flippy flips a hundred times and fartblasting himself up into the air to do a 360 noscope with 50 bomb arrows on a stunlocked opponent"

Jesus Christ you made its combat system sound so bad.🤣

Expression of its combat system.

Thats ok mate, plenty of hand holding games out there. Zelda is for the immersive creative nature gamer, not a please tell me how to gameplay fanboys. Sony is your friend mate, go play that weak trash.

@mesome713: Go back posting on IGN, bro.

Its a dev who cares about making a fun experience. Overbalancing has killed so many games. Emergent gameplay is king. And overbalancing can at times lead to mechanics becoming less emergent, because they patch out interactions that make certain stuff OP.

The most memorable experiences in gaming are those where you improvise, and discover new strategies you didn't know even existed. And come out feeling atthe top of the world. Simply executing something well does not provide a good experience.

First of all what is best is subjective. But as far as RPG combat goes. Pokemon has one of the most popular combat systems and unlike Souls it actually has a relevant competitive scene. In fact Pokemon, World of WarCraft and Lost Ark are the only RPGs I can think of with a relevant competitive scene today. In all these games listed, what makes them deep is not people finding some obscure effect others overlooked, but people adapting to common threats. And what is good and what isn't. A good marker for depth is a dynamic meta.

In TOTK people are still discovering new techniques to utilize in combat, particularly how X synergizes with Y. And the UI and controls are fine, what the hell are you even talking about? The way those stuns operate is by causing a massive ammount of damage in a short time frame. Its stylish, and it is fun to execute and fun to watch.

Your entire premise falls apart in your first sentence, and the rest is just nonsense.

Good battle systems rely on player expression (see the RPGs that have actual competitive scenes). Bad combat systems (see FromSoft) rely on execution.

And here we have it, people outright admitting they hate depth and emergent gameplay.

Forza actually has fun core mechanics. Zelda's mechancis while not as tight as some other action games nonetheless allow for immense player expression. Take two top players running the same build or loadout, if their play styles vary radically. You got a good combat system (this happens in both BotW and TotK). Making builds does not make a good system, being emergent, and adaptable does.

When you are bringing up Forza, you are discussing build making, which does not make actual racing deeper. Depth that I am looking for is found in the moment to moment gameplay.

When I can use bombs in a myriad different ways the devs had not forseen. You have a hallmark of a deep, and rewarding to learn combat system. Interactions is where depth comes in, and that is where Zelda gets its options. You only have 5 abilities, they just have so much depth to them, each one gives you far more tools than entire toolkits in lesser games provide.

Fun for whom? A 13y old that enjoys using cheat codes in GTA3? When you have such unbalance in the game, its the same as playing on Very Easy. And do you know what happens when you play a game where the developers allows you to faceroll in their game? It makes all the little side mechanics and things you can do completely irrelevant because they don't matter when you have access to legal hacks, which are those creations that are all over tiktok and youtube shorts. Its cheesy, goofy, and cannot be taken seriously. Totk is simply not a game for someone to be immersed by.

I dunno if we still use the term. But back then we used to use the phrase Josh Sawyerism a lot to describe your mentality. Emphasizing potential for emergent gameplay over balance is one of the reasons Divinity: Original Sin completely eclipsed Pillars of Eternity.

Hell, if Larian were to balance Baldur's Gate 3, unless they are very careful around it. I can assure you, the community would react very poorly.

If you think Souls combat is great? More power to ya. But I prefer games with actual depth. Not trash with static metas, next to no emergent gameplay, little player expression, almost no verticality, and low levels of interaction and comboability.

Zelda's combat isn't perfect. For the next Zelda they should ditch the durability, as it hurts the flow of combat. Link's basic swordplay could use more moves, to make it more interesting at a low level of play, enemies need to be more aggressive and links flurry rush still needs nerfing.Right now Link is too fast and agile for his opponents.

BG3, just like ER, offers so much built potential that its impossible to balance, so don't even try to compare these two to simpleton games like totk. And as someone who has spent an unhealthy amount of time on BG3, making sure to not follow any kind of team comp that makes the game easy, while also not using the rest system, the game was challenging, and not as easy as Divinity 2 after first half of the second act, or Divinity 1 straight up after the first act.

If you consider Zelda's combat system as Perfect, you might want to try this game. On a side note, your gpu will handle it as well, so you're lucky.