Install Raid for Free ✅ IOS/ANDROID/PC: t2m.io/Raid_BeeG and get a special starter pack with an Epic champion ⚡Tallia⚡ Available only for new players Shout out to the people as well who told me about the audio issues.
thank you so much for saying this. souls slow paced and no variance combat does not belong in action games it only drags them down nor does the rpg systems that shoves meaningless fluff. gow ragnarok has a lot of enemies that utterly destroy the pacing sometimes. they just make it approachable and simple for any casual YUCK
People who say these games are mashers need to understand that you play these games for variety, it's like only using the Phillips Head Screwdriver on a Swiss Army Knife and saying you can only screw in things with it.
It's not even like soulsborne combat is mashing either. If you mash R1, you're going to die immediately. The problem is they fundamentally misunderstand the genre as a whole and think, "it's an action game, so it must be brainless"
There are some where you can legtiamately mash but most you mash, get bored, try a new move and have your mind blown being like oh this is pretty cool.... oh I can do this after that and combo!? And then you begin to have fun while getting through the game. Bayonetta being a dancer i think encapsulates it the most because you dance through combat predicting enemy actions, preparing your counter attack with dodge offset and just styling with it in general. In general with action games each move is a tool. Otherwise just play the old LoZ with just the sword with its basic swing. Nope you solve the puzzle of combat with each move and character action games let you go off with that to have fun being overpowered.
@@tbc1880 that's the problem. If I get bored with the game I'm not looking for a different way of playing it. I just uninstall the game and blame it on developer. Because it's not my fault that DMC 5 for example has bad enemy design. That's on developers. People play these games for self expression? Good for them. But unique enemy design which encourages use of all your tools will never hurt that "self expression" combat people praise so much. Now of course, not all action games are button mashers. Bayonetta 2 and Hi-Fi Rush for example are really good in my book. In these games I can never be careless because enemies are not punching bags. In bayonetta 2 some enemies can be only juggled during witch time, Hi-Fi Rush requires you to always stay on beat to avoid and deal damage. Combat is both stylish AND engaging unlike dmc or recent ff xvi.
@@klaym-lee2863 how does dark souls encourage use of all your tools? i swear to god i beat ds1 and 3 without using anything other than dodge, m1 and estus
@@tiagoraya6969 @tiagoraya6969 I never said that ds forces you to use all of your tools. I didn't even mention ds in my comment. Don't put words in my mouth please. But since you mentioned it, here is what I have to say. Ds had plenty of optional mechanics that I don't like and consider to be flawed design. Stuff like insane amount of consumables. But combat... combat is ridiculously simple compared to dmc and yet much more engaging than dmc. The reason is that in ds your performance in combat is a result of your decision making. You have to earn every single hit you land just like you have earn every single dodge you time. Ds or Sekiro do not need flashy combos to make me enjoy battles. Dmc on the other hand fails to entertain me even though it has very deep combat. And it fails to do so even when I am using combos and switching weapons. My problem with dmc is that it gives you very interesting tools but never gives you an interesting problem to solve which to me is flawed design. And let me repeat again that I don't think this is the problem of action games, just dmc. Hi Fi Rush is my GOTY of 2023 so far. Bayonetta 2 (I'm playing it currently) is a game I enjoy a lot. These games do not have problems that DMC has.
The souls combat formula was made for action RPGs and not for pure action games. Souls combat works because of the level design and the atmosphere of the games its in. You can't just throw this combat in an action game and expect it to work. Moreover, souls combat is designed for 1v1 but action games usually revolve around you battling a room full of enemies.
I heard Tim Rodgers say a while ago that Demon souls was originally more similar in speed to kings field, but a producer or something kept asking them to increase the speed, which seems right cause the bosses were more puzzle based in that game.
And the worst part of every souls/souls like games are when you’re fighting multiple enemies at once. Every single type of these games struggles in this regard, fundamentally because of the sub genre itself.
@@id1550 I can't agree completely. Ofcourse you will struggle with multiple enemies in a genre where enemies actually want to kill you unlike in character focused action games. That doesn't mean they are the worst part. Fun gank fights depends on these three things: aoe, mobility and staggerable enemies. Recent souls games like Elden Ring and Sekiro both have that, making fighting multiple enemies quiet fun. Older souls games lack these aspects, however there is rarely a scenario where you fight multiple enemies. Some of the duo bosses in the souls genre are also great.
@@lapostetu9337"multiple enemies in a genre where enemies actually want to kill you" literally proves that those games aren't designed to accommodate for that type of encounter . I.E it's bad design lmfao turns out having to fight multiple enemies in a genre with very limited maneuverability and a stamina system is just incredibly bad for dealing with mob fights cause what ends up happening is the player just spams dodge , throws an attack or two in, then repeat that process. This isn't good design. It's an annoying game of hit and run because the games themselves do not accommodate for fighting multiple enemies very well except exactly Sekiro. Also are you implying enemies don't also want you dead in games like devil may cry or Bayonetta ? Cause man do I have some bad news for you if that's what you believe.
I've had this same thought for a while, videogames shouldn't be criticized for being "button mashers" when in reality those games usually are giving you the ability to get creative and try whatever you want. Imagine if Mario Odyssey didn't have the movement options that set it apart from other platformers, it would be super stale. It's the same thing with games like FF16 or DMC and its combat.
@@Rahnonymousnot even that’s a button smasher, it’s just guns that are broken so people don’t bother with the rest, y’all need to cut a game put together in 6 months by one guy some slack
@@Rahnonymousgenerally speaking you can be pretty creative in dmc2 but I agree with the above^ guns are just too good to not spam sometimes lol again dmc2... Is a game of all time surely buy it has things you can do if you take the time to learn it just like with every other DMC like 4 inertia is godly when mastered.
I always say, every action game is a button masher if you suck enough. On a low enough difficulty, with an absolute lack of initiative or creativity on the player's end, by completely ignoring key mechanics, a great many action games can be reduced to the lowest common denominator of play.
In regards to DMC 2, it has that issue imo where people can argue it’s a button masher and it’s kinda true. Spamming the shoot button for sure at least, some bosses you really can’t do anything but spam the shoot button. The difference between a game like DMC 2 and DMC 3 is that DMC 2, while it gives you a few options to get creative, usually doesn’t give you the chance to do whatever you want because the enemies die so quickly or require you shoot them (looking at you three heads.)
Action games have a very different reward system is all, and people aren't aware of it. In (most) other genres, the goal is to beat the level/boss/game whatever. In action games, the goal is to master the mechanics. When I finished my first action game (Bayo 1) I initially thought it was mediocre because I "beat" the game while somehow not learning any depth to it (obviously it's goated now that I actually get the genre). For those people who simply aren't aware of the whole point of the genre, these games ARE shallow.
dmc player here, currently playing through the whole series, touching a controller for the first time, i can say that every boss fight taught me something new and helped me get better at a mechanic
It also has to do with motivation, DMC and games like it are for more intrinsically motivated people (people who want to get better at the game for the sake of getting better at the game) while games that aren't like that tend to be for more extrinsically motivated people (people who want to get better at the game to complete a certain objective)
This reminds me a lot of the Underthemayo vs. the Ultrakill community thing that happened last year. Mayo is one of those people who cares more about difficulty over variety and even says freedom of expression is a bad thing. So when he reviewed Ultrakill, a game made by a huge DMC and God Hand fan, he had some very spicy opinions and it upset a lot of people. He also made a lot of very unwarranted attacks towards the community, which only contributed to how poorly his videos were received. I understand wanting more difficulty from games, I wish DMC would let you play on SoS when you start the game, but I also don't want to be doing the exact same move over and over again just to win.
UnderTheMayo also made a fucking fool of himself when he tried to talk about Vanquish, which is in a similar vein to Ultrakill (though I haven't played the latter). Plenty on high-level techniques and toys in Vanquish went by completely unnoticed or were underplayed in Mayo's review. Basically saying the game is a gimmicky cover-shooter where the central mechanic (the suit) isn't actually useful in creating variety or depth in the game. Not only does Vanquish satisfy the difficulty end of the equation (God Hard will kick everybody's ass), but it's also just amazingly fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Localized damage to enemies, Boost canceling, LFE gun, shooting grenades in midair, etc.
Underthemayo thinks unless the game actively FORCES the player to use a certain move/gun, the game design is bad. Like when he complains that Ultrakill could be fineshed with just the pistol but that is boring. Geez, it is almost a if you are meant to use all guns but can use only the pistol for speedrun/challegenge reasons if you want...
@@Noperare The older I get, the more I value intrinsic motivation in games over extrinsic. Hell, that's why Vanquish is probably one of my ten favorite games ever. I don't need to be told how to have fun, in fact I don't even like being told how to have fun. Even if a game slaps me with a bad score or a low ranking, if I enjoyed pushing myself through the mechanics, it's always a win.
I stopped taking Souls fans seriously after they claimed nioh 2 was "bad game design" because they couldn't just spam the dodge button through every boss fight. They acted like they had some universal street cred that made them experts on all combat systems and got absolutely filtered when the game told them to press something besides B to roll. Every post complaining about an easy boss would start with "I have 5000 hours in the souls series, but.." Same thing happened with Wo Long and Sekiro, people just thinking dark souls combat is all you need to beat every game ever made and override the developers intent. Several of the bosses they complained about being stuck on "for days" I beat on my first attempt by just actually using all of the different mechanics.
The truth is, Souls games are some of the simplest and easiest games ever made. They are extremely punishing and tedious so people have a wrong idea of what the word ''hard'' really means. Soulsborne fans are actually the filthiest of casuals. People with shattered ego and no accomplishments who feel the peak of their life by bragging about a boring game and deflect all criticism with ''git gud'' to keep their delusion going.
The souls community is one of the filthiest and worst I've seen in gaming, you think of narcissism, you think of Souls fans, they're the kind of people who think they're always on the right and they're the masters at gaming for achieving the impressive challenge of beating the most average action game ever with a free invincibility button, and somehow that's an achievement worth bragging about, and it gives them the right to shit on other games because "Dark souls is perfect, git gud". But I can see how they can't take in games like Nioh 2, Devil may cry or Bayonetta, can you really ask a Souls fans to press more than 2 buttons at the same time? give them a break, don't you see it takes 500 iq to roll - roll - hit and repeat until every enemy and boss is defeated?
@@cantstandurbs876 Couldn't said it better myself. In general surface level games that immediately make you feel like a pro or like you accomplish something, as opposed to games that actually do that on the long run, tend to do much better. Hence why Souls games is such a hit imo for example. It's fun, challenging and feels great from the get go. But once you really get into it, it's all very basic and shallow.
They aren't button mashers. Its finger tapping...with style. And carpal tunnel. And maybe some mashing for crazy combos but thats an exception. Great to hear some commentary in your recent videos too.
Thank you Beeg this is something I hate about the mindset of many game reviewers (Underthemayo is a good example) they think that if a game doesn't force you to use all the options then it might as well not have them and giving the player the ability to experiment with them as they want even if it means the player spams the same options is bad.
if the player spams, that's on them, but if they can spam the entire game, their perception of the game could change and they assume the game has no variety, when it clearly gave you opportunities to experiment, and the player didn't choose to do so, and they'll just end up finishing the game or quitting it, and saying it had no variety
I think that can be bad, e.g. FF13 dripfeeds you its genuinely-deep combat system over the first half of the game and then never requires even a fraction of it to actually be utilized in mandatory fights, so the extended tutorial feels very put-upon you; if it actually required that you use it, it would feel less of a chore to go through the tutorial. (And would also filter out 90% of the potential playerbase as soon as they arrived at Gran Pulse, which is likely why it does not require you to master it to finish the game.) That's more of an execution issue than a concept issue though.
Nah Mayo has a point, I heavily prefer dmc 3's campaign over 5 for that reason due to the much more threatening enemy ai that pushes you to learn the combat system better. All while still being a stylish game ultimately
@@onceyougozach2607 I think they're better in the order you play them, 5 just has more options to experiment with, while 3 sets you to how much you should be focusing
@@SansBadTime I think 3 is the by far best game is the series, so I disagree. 5 has the better combat sandbox to experiment and obviously modern presentation but other wise I think 3 is the stronger game. And no bias, I played 5 first.
Since audio issues got fixed, might as well repost what I posted before. There's one thing I noticed while developing a certain game and having a few playtesters. A lot of players, from my experience, really don't bother to learn deeper game mechanics. I have a friend who I tried to introduce to the Devil May Cry series, and the biggest complaint was that it was too difficult and didn't feel satisfying... Until he turned on the auto mode. Then he said, "Now it feels more fun, and at least I am not dying. It's more than just a matter of the Soulsborne genre, it's a matter of a person who comes to action games with a different mindset, I feel. No amount of hints, no amount of game design is going to change the fact that people don't want to experiment or do combos. That is why simple games work better for most people. There's less to learn and more satisfaction from the simple actions. They reward you for doing simple things, and that's fine. But I really wish people would look at action games as something more than that, instead of destroying their review score just because they had a different expectation/mindset going in. Eh, the last part kind of reminds me of DMC:POC, the game that used to be very complex, and now feels like a Honkai 3rd clone, to appeal exactly to that. People who prefer more casual games that don't require a lot of effort. Shucks.
We all start somewhere. The first time u played DMC did u do that well? Did u actually experiment and learn that much without an outside source giving you extrinsic motivation to want to get better? I highly doubt anyone here was just naturally inclined to experiment with action games like this video purports is the whole point of them, most everyone starts off these games pretty trash and spamming the same attacks which are effective to get thru it and that's expected of you, there's a reason you don't start with all the moves and have to work towards it. You definitely saw a Donguri or Sakaki video or whoever it may have been, and they motivated u to get better and experiment. It wasn't the game that gave u this desire because there isn't really a way to motivate someone to want to put that much effort into anything intrinsically if they don't already have it or are heading into that direction and that's fine to not go there. Look at how most developers play their own action games, they play it simply, i think of Itsuno's gameplay demo of DMC5. He was just vibing on the game using what moves he wanted and showing off how it played, not trying his hardest to show of everything... because that wasn't the point. He wasn't combat director and the point of any game is what u set it personally, games are about expression and the only way to express yourself isn't by pushing the game to it's limits and treating it like a vast sandbox, they don't actually expect u to use all the moves in DMC games if they did u would see the gameplay trailers showing that instead of looking like an average gameplay showcase. They show what average gameplay will look like because that's what people can expect if they just play the game casually without sinking hundreds or thousands of hours, no game expects u to put in that much time You can also express yourself by playing simply and efficiently, preferring substance over style, and that's a valid way to experience the game. Auto mode is there for a reason, and it allowed someone who might not have been able to get into the game enjoy it, and possibly pave the way to them wanting to experiment more and learn to play without it. The more you try to invalidate people who want to just sit back and have a fun casual time on auto mode, the more they will feel turned off from ever trying to get more into the games u want them to be more into, because what reason would they have to? To please people who are so judgmental over how they choose to play a game? nah they will just move on and play another game with a better community which is more welcoming and accepting of people having different experiences with it instead of blaming everything on games journalists
The thing about learning those combos is, that you aren't just learning them for the sake of it. Mastering them will make the game easier in the long run. Like mastering Izuna Drop in Ninja Giaden Black/Sigma is a game changer. Variety than comes from learning new combos with new weapons and styles.
it is really weird that people who play a game like dark souls which for a character action game has possibly the most brain dead gameplay can call other character action games "mashers".
You’ve honestly perfectly described how I’ve learned to enjoy games, as in actually experimenting with their mechanics and trying to experience it in the way the developers created it to be. I don’t think stuff shouldn’t be criticized, but it should be done in a way that’s constructive and actually suggests ideas to improve and build upon what the game presents. Most of the time people don’t want to actually take the time to enjoy the game or even understand what it’s trying to do by itself and just want to bitch about how it’s not like some other widely beloved game that’s vaguely similar.
Oh my god such facts. Most "criticism" nowadays is "this part of the game is REALLY annoying to me and I'm gonna bitch and bitch about it because it hurts my experience and bothers me so much", and imo stuff like this is not valid criticism or a real complaint. A lot of people have such a horrible mentality towards media in general being very cynical and easily harshly critical of any small element of a game. If you go into an experience ready and willing to be negative, you will end up subconsciously looking for more and more things to pick apart/find a reason you don't like this or that, and it just becomes a spiral. I miss the days when criticism actually included "here's what the developers could do better in their next game, and here's what they did well in this one!" while fully acknowledging real flaws of an experience. This is especially not frequent in fanbases like FF. In general, if a video game isn't exactly the experience someone wants it to be, they will just tear it apart. Really sad honestly. And all of the same people resort to the same exact argument of "You criticize the things you love because you want them to be better" when they say all this BS lmao
Dude you literally read my mind with these videos. I also feel like this has become a huge issue. Souls-like games are fine, but I don't want every game to devolve into soulsborne-esque combat. Thank you so much for giving me inspiration for making my own videos as well. You're a real one my dude.
Why "devolve" though? Combat in soulsborne games, which are action rpgs, is pretty elaborate on its own, and is so different from hack n slash games that I don't think it's even useful in any way to compare the two. If one prefers one genre over the other, sure thing. Like, why would one compare mordhau and dying light? Just cuz they are melee focused games where you occasionally shoot a bow? Same thing here, as in I don't really understand the necessity of saying that one of the two approaches is supposed to be better
@@Spiderella3959 I think people are comparing WAY too much. It's like apples and oranges, you pick one and you enjoy. You can't compare them because they are 2 different things
@@randomidoit9605Soulsborn combat focus more on you studying the boss and memorizing it's moveset, while games like dmc5 are basically the opposite, me personally, I prefer else ring's combat since it's straight forward and makes each move you do feel rewarding
@@GravitonLance “else” ring’s combat is just good enough for me, the enemies though? They all feel like challenge over fun. I never feel like I accomplished something when I beat a boss, the runes will just go towards a single level up, which I can just grind for at caelid with the dogs. Any rewards I get would most likely be not applicable to my build, worse then what I already have, or can be better if I spend the time I spent leveling up my current weapon to level the new one. DMC on the other hand? Beat enemies to get red orbs to get new skills to beat enemies. And get this: most of the enemies are fun to fight.
@@randomidoit9605 it depends on what you like, me personally, i just like how the game forces you to learn the boss, once you learn them it almost feels like a dance, with dmc5 I was just doing combos since the enemies weren't really anything special
@@GravitonLance I’m not gonna spend hours fighting the same boss to figure out it’s attack pattern only to have to spend hours fighting another boss to figure out it’s attack pattern, and oops! Looks like you died in a boss arena! Looks like you’re gonna have to fight the boss until you either forget to recollect your runes because you’re too focused on playing the game or you beat the boss, which is *very* unlikely. Sure DMC 5’s enemies can be perceived as non special, but pulling off combos just feel so good! I mean, have you seen what’s possible online?
Thank you BeeG for calling out the "Did you know, only X amount of people are subbed to the channel?" brainlets. Honestly, I wish the whole fad would just go away
i like playing soulsborne games as stylishly as possible cause of dmc. its...kinda hard... but you can weapon switch after specific combos. memorizing attack animations. and canceling...also bloodborne having 2 active quick selects lets you use items and magic in their own stylish mid combat ways
This is why I get bored pretty quickly in soulsborne games when trying a new build. Those games just don't encourage you to do stuff like that and you get punished hard for attempting it.
Give Nioh 2 a try. It's as if souls and dmc had a baby. It got stances, combos, clever stamina recovery system, and so much customization. Damn you feel so fancy once you master if because when even big bossen run out of stamina, they can be combod
>FF16 gives you absolute combat freedom so you can play however you want; The only limit to the combat is your imagination >People choose to button mash >People complain the game is just a button masher This is the equivalent to: >Dad leaves you with $100B giving you the opportunity to live life however you wish; The only limit to you living comfortably is your imagination >You choose to only accept $5 >You complain that your dad only left you with $5
This is what I've been seeing and thinking as well. I feel like "character action" games are easier to learn harder to master while souls games are harder to learn but easier to master. 100 hours in on Elden Ring and most fights have become much easier and less engaging. 100 hours in on DMC and Bayonetta and I'm on new difficulties trying to Platinum/ S rank every stage.
This feels EXACTLY like the Under the Mayo and Ultrakill controversy. He refused to except that a game can give you the freedom to experiment and learn the hidden systems instead of forcing you to play the way the game wants you to. Also, to anyone reading this, PLEASE PLAY ULTRAKILL IT IS SO GOOD!!!
Both action game archetypes feature different types of intrinsic motivation as the main fun factors. Soulsborne games encourage the player to continuously play until they are good enough to succeed, while character action games encourage the player to experiment through different weapons and combos and see what they are able to pull off. It seems like the main difference is in implementation; in Soulsbornes, you must get better at the game in order to beat it, but character action games almost never force the player to experiment. I do wonder how mainstream audiences would react to a character action game that leans more aggressively into the concept of moveset experimentation to the point of essentially forcing it. What if it were like Smash, where your moves are put into a queue after you use them, and they get much weaker when you spam them? Mechanics like this could make some players put the game down, but it also may be more successful in making others intrinsically motivated.
I see you brought up the dangling keys 😂. Yeah action games will always have a bad rep because there are people who need a clear path laid out for them to follow. Which isn't bad but then they project their thoughts into other games. Which everyone will parrot until devs start listening and end up changing their game to cater towards these people. It's really sad to see. Also great job on this video bro. You've given me an idea on what I would like to talk about in the future.
You know, of the last years I've been seeing in depth the designs and details that are in the games of Character Action, not only with regard to the combat system and everything it can offer the player, but also in how it is related as a narrative resource or what it tells us about the character. And something that I've realized about these games, and most likely you have, is that this genre is not about the player getting into the game itself, but rather that the player meets the playable character and adopts his way of being through the mechanics of the game. Something like a character study in the interactive medium. While journalists and reviewers seek that videogames are at the service of the player with missions and campaigns that they last for weeks, with scenes of a visual spectacle that can only be summarized in a limited QTE or rail section, and customization systems and personalization of avatars for their self-insertion. The Character Action invites players to take on the role of an actor, and through the gameplay and its design makes it an intrinsic challenge to interpret the character, with some offering a margin of experimentation to improvise (DMC, Bayo, Assault Spy, etc.), or being more strict or/and limited in actions but compensated by demanding greater mastery in mechanics (Fury, Sekiro, Ninja Gaiden, etc.). But keep in mind that in the end it is the character who defines and marks the action with his identity, just as other unconventional games like Gungrave, [PROTOTYPE] and Aeon Must Die do (or without going as far as they can be seen with the characters of Lady and V in DMC).
As a fan of both soulsborne and DMC, and other action games, i completely agree with you man. Like just because souls and DMC are action games doesn't mean they have to be the same combat they are difrent and they have difrent motivations to play.
as someone who has every flavour of action among my favorites, when i see people hate on a game without even really understanding it saying something among those lines of "just mashing" i remember squidward holding up "the rules of art"
I have a single caveat for the 'games don't need to force you to make use of everything' point - the games that decide not to directly force you to use mechanics need to set up situations that force creativity in general. Like the fury in dmc5 - there's a whole ton of ways to handle that enemy but you cannot treat it like anything other than the fury.
DmC just changed how i play action games(haven't played the game until recently and fell in love with it),now I'm always trying to do combos and style on the enemies.
This is kind of where we all start in some form lol. I'd say that the series itself influenced what i want out of my action games (the fun factor of having a good arsenal of moves and the freedom of using whatever in said arsenal, even if the creative process in picking those feel very intimitating sometimes).
As a soulsborne enjoyer, I completely agree with the retardation of game journalists comparing completely different games with each other. As opposed to what some people may believe, I find soulsborne more enjoyable for its level and exploration designs and not combat, so comparing it to games like DMC, which is centred on gameplay, is stupid.
A lot of final fantasy fans haven’t come to terms with the genre change. They don’t understand that prescribed gameplay is almost the antithesis to action games, which is to be creative. You don’t need enemies to tell you what moves to use, you decide that yourself. I don’t wanna be antagonistic but if they weren’t gonna engage with the mechanics even after how streamlined the game is compared to dmc or bayo, then Suzuki might as well have went all out and gave Clive 100+ moves.
This is the exact kind of sentiment you will see a lot in the places like r/finalfantasy, where their you will find an incredible amount of people complaining about things like “why is their no elemental weakness”, not realizing how mechanics like that are a big no no for good action game design. Though their reasoning is less about dark souls and more about them expecting 16 to have more typical turn base combat mechanics, despite the trailers showing otherwise…
Dude the FF Reddit actually gives me brain rot about this game. I had a guy complaining Torgal was useless and wanted Magic to auto charge without the charm and was thinking “bruh those are the points to optimise the game”.
Trying to imagine what FF16 would play like with elemental weaknesses. It would utterly break the game and make every encounter either 1) an unbearable slog or 2) a tedious exercise in guesswork.
DMC3 had elemental weaknesses, they were just somewhat minor. Emphasis on somewhat, they were small enough that you probably wouldn’t notice them if you weren’t paying attention but they were big enough that it’s worth going out of your way to use them. Elemental weaknesses are not inherently bad in character action games as long as they aren’t a major mechanic that you have to structure your gameplay around like in an RPG, (or like in DmC) if it’s like DMC3 and it’s just damage buffs that is in my opinion good character action game design. That question by itself is not bad, I would assume the problem is everything else they are saying along with it. If FF16 doesn’t have elemental weaknesses at all, not even as a minor mechanic as a nod to the previous games, that is something I would be somewhat annoyed about, if that was a major part of the older games (I wouldn’t know, I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game). DMC3 is also definitely not the only character action game with elemental weaknesses, it’s just the only one I can remember at this time.
@@assassinonprozac Elemental Weaknesses are a decently significant part of most FF combat systems. That doesn’t make it particularly deep in most FF games, and I don’t think it’s such an iconic mechanic to make it an FF staple the way you are describing. Besides, until you start mastering abilities, you only have at max access to 3 elements without Eikon abilities and the game’s story/pacing means they can only hand out Eikons at certain points in the story (but I do think the game does a great job of organically and evenly spreading them out).
Not really a criticism, but if not for DS3, I don't think I would've jumped outside of my comfort zone and played DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Nioh etc. Before, my gaming diet consisted of Wrasslin, Sanic, and Warframe (lol). Outside of that, this is an interesting video, I watched the other one before it was deleted.
The funny thing about people who complain about action games are the same ones who can't do nothing in dmc besides doing the Basic 3 hit combo of Dante in dmc games
I feel this as a huge JRPG fan who loves turn based games. Every turn based JRPG gets slammed by reviewers for being boring and a "mash x simulator", but praise action JRPGs with little system depth. Yeah, the game is boring if all you do is level up attack and do basic attack moves for every character in the same way that DMC 5 is boring if you just use Rebellion and Ebony & Ivory the whole game. FF16 is awesome, and exactly how an action JRPG should be
switching elements of eikons and combining them together in unique ways as using Titan to launch in the air, then a blizzard, or garuda to keep stylish in the air then finish off with bahamut or phoenix was insanely cool. The director combat wise worked on a lot of games and i beat bosses when i was underleveled. I think all games incluiding turn based are fun, BG3 can also be fun. You gotta give it time.
I'm really glad you touched upon this topic and delivered a very clear and concise argument over the horrible misconception from the general audience of these types of games. Great shit as usual.
I think the one valid criticism beneath it all is that often on the default or highest accessible at the start of the game difficulty, the game is just easy, even for someone completely new to action games. I feel like having the option to choose a difficulty that really forces you to at least gain some degree of competence relatively quickly with the full combat system’s options is reasonable, as players are lazy and will not try any harder than they have to. I’ve seen decently valid complaints most recently on FF16 with how on Action mode enemies just die too quickly. I personally had more fun on FF mode with the combat mechanics. It’s strange because Square had this figured out as early as KH2FM with Critical mode and how that actually starts you with more combat options and is decently challenging from the get go if you want the action in action RPG to really shine.
Totally agree, XVI's biggest failing is its lack of a Hard mode available from the beginning. Ultimanic mode is brutal, strategic and fun for dedicated action fans, but you shouldn't have to beat this 40-hour game just to unlock it.
Funny thing is, most games nowadays have this consistent mindset where you have to constantly dodge the bosses' attacks first before hitting them with miserable damage while they're open. Then you have to back away as they recover and repeat this terrible pattern over and over. I'd rather take button-mash than have that. And these game journalists are pure vampires trying to suck out for any content of the story more than the gameplay. THAT is their downright inhumane behaviour. They want a movie by default in their settings, not an action game. And they expect movies from those games.
@@billyboleson2830Yeah, when I was looking up Eldin Ring guides for gear, I only saw stuff like: “This build will make the game easy!” “This build one shots bosses!” And the other option was dragging my feet through boss after boss, bosses that feel more like brick walls I have to slam my head against to break instead of actually fun game bosses. I’m not against hard bosses, I loved the Kingdom Hearts post game bosses, but having an entire game full of “hard” bosses just makes me not feel joy when I defeat a boss.
@@LaloBalteus Have you ever face Lingering Will? It doesn’t matter how hard or easy you view Kingdom Hearts, the point is that Eldin Ring is difficulty over fun, the challenges mean nothing because you’ll face another just like it around the corner, completely desensitizing me to any sense of accomplishment. In games like Kingdom Hearts, the hard challenges mean something… Because they’re harder, they stand out more, and they’re more fun, and they feel like I accomplished something.
Technical action games pretty much share the same barrier of entry as fighting games. This is why I think the Souls Borne horde comes down on them. Watching anyone transition from a game like Dark Souls 3 to a game like Nioh1 or Nioh 2 almost always has some trouble. Because in order to succeed in a game like Nioh 2 or DMC 4/5, you kind of have to study the character like a fighting game character. Its not good enough to just know the enemy weak points and punish moments. You have to also be familiar with all of the characters combos, tech, cancels, parries, just frames yada yada yada. Its a different kind of experience that gets overlooked because its not what they expect.
DMC might honestly be the first game I remember ever experiencing and immediately falling in love with and in turn with the spectacle fighter genre. They are literally the case of "easy to learn, hard to master", the one thing these games subtly teach you is, here is a toybox full of fun stuff, have fun with it. The problem journalists and... sadly lots of gamers today that are not fans of this genre have is, they simply take out one toy and stick with it the whoooole hog, eventually becoming bored of it, even though there is a box still full of fun things they didn't even attempt to try. I adore the idea of being given tons of moves and it being left up to me to see what, how and if it chains in a satisfying way. Example, me and my mates bought Nioh 2 and let me tell you, that game's combat system ... mmmmmhhhhmmmm... *chef's kiss*. The moment I sunk my teeth in there and saw all the skill moves and discovered there are hidden ones you can get as drops, my brain entered GIGA mode. I spent hours upon hours in the training dojo playing around with combos. 100 hours of fun and me hitting New Game+++ later, my mates were like "Hey, dude, this game hard, let's co-op" and I thought, sure, why not? And then I witnessed the horror of their gameplay... one attack chain, over... and over... and over... and over... and over again. One was using one of the weapons I was, and when I bounced around and sliced and slashed in what I would describe as the only way Vergil would be proud of I hear "That's cool, how you do that?" _insert explanation here_ "Nah, that too many buttons, too hard, not worth damage"... Like what the actual fuck? Couple days later they complained the gameplay got boring and both of them quit... MFers made the game boring for themselves and got mad at the game. Literally, missed the nail and blamed the hammer.
I think the biggest reason I clicked so much with the Devil May Cry series compared to some other action games I've played is how much the ranking system rewards variance. I feel too many action games have the problem of having a "best combo" that can carry you through most of the game with you only needing to switch things up if an enemy is immune to "best combo". DMC however not only gives you an extensive movelist but encourages you to utilize it if you want a great score. I actually wanted to upgrade weapons for new moves and try out all the different attacks to see what I could pull off instead of sticking with the handful that did the most damage. It's not limited to the action genre, since a lot of games have the problem of "this attack does the most damage, why bother with anything else?" and if you want a game with extensive options, you need to overcome that hurdle of not making any one combo or weapon or skill "the best".
Fr, I feel you. People can't grasp the freedom and choices you can do with DMC. Especially, since it isn't bogged down or reliant on stats or builds. In the end, it's up to ourselves to push through- before burnout wears ourselves out like it did me. It's like how many opportunities and chances a fighting game's combo mechanic gives you. Although, with DMC and similar titles you can mash and slash to victory even on hard. But, you still can't go full smooth brain. You can autopilot with a handful of moves, yet spamming stinger can be quite the endrunner. Also, people like DSP believe DMC2 is a good game because of blind nostalgia, Dante's "CoOl JAcKet", and WaLLrUNnINg.
DMC2 is absolute fucking trash, to find out that DSP likes it is pretty funny and surprisingly unsurprising. HOWEVER, you gotta admit Dante has a really cool jacket in that game.
Calling these games "button mashers" is actually braindead. You control the buttons you press, the lack of self awareness from these people is astounding. Then they try to say if the game doesn't make them use other moves then the combat is bad. But isn't he point of games having fun? How are you having fun mashing 1 button and actively refusing to do anything else? They love praisng souls games for build and weapon variety but then refuse to have any variety in their gameplay. How does that make any sense?
Thanks a lot for making a video about this. Very hot take, but Forspoken actually had a very fun and enjoyable action combat system. And yet it was victim to all these complaints, “you just spam the basic attack to win” and “you don’t need to use all your tools to win” - despite the fact that high level Forspoken gameplay was actually pretty damn high level and incredibly fun.
Very well said, I really like Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3 as action games but people still shit on them as button mashers while playin on the easiest difficulty and still not being able to do optional bosses.
I wouldn't say it's soulsborne' fault, would say it's quite the opposite, the games offers varieties of weapons to choose from. It's a ever present sentiment that lots of people have since early 2010's. Like not even just action games, i remember having arguments about MGSV back in release with people calling the gameplay boring but refusing to use anything but suppressed Tranq Sniper and the sneaking suit
I feel that's a problem of signalling the game's intentions. Many games present themselves as problem-solving exercises. Find the solution to the problem, then execute it. If a player finds an efficient, reliable and safe solution to a gameplay challenge, they will feel like they've done what the game was asking them to do. Even moreso if the game has a strong narrative element, because their character would probably be looking to solve their problems as efficiently, reliably and safely as possible too. Their character wouldn't be playing around with their tools in the middle of a mission, or doing silly shit just to see what happens. To many players, exploring their options would feel like actively defying the game's intent. So unless the game forces them into a situation where they have to reconsider their approach, they're unlikely to ever do so.
@@tbotalpha8133 Not that every is a perfect fully polished masterpiece but i see this as a player mentality problem not the games. It makes sense someone who started playing games pre 2010's to think more like that, games used to be more linear and focused, but nowadays with most games going open world and expanding in options(even when it's not needed) that refusing to experiment or simply use strategies you normally don't use just for fun is like actively trying to ruin/limit your experience. On my example about MGSV, one of the best stealth games to this day, full of options and mechanics to get a hold from, even if you limit yourself to non lethal no detection playstyle, there so many ways to achieve just that there is no excuse to not have fun with it
@@ricardomiles2957 Players can play games however they like. If players go to games looking for a challenge, and they find a braindead strat that works 100% of the time, they're going to feel disappointed. It doesn't matter if the braindead strat exists because the game is intentionally forgiving enough to allow experimentation. Some players want the catharsis of overcoming an obstacle. The game developers (and/or their marketing team) need to communicate to the player what their game is actually about. Then it's up to the players to decide if that's the experience they want. Some people will always be dumb or lack media literacy, of course. But sneering at people for not playing games the way you personally think is best is myopic.
@@tbotalpha8133 they can, and in fact i have no problem with someone sticking to one single strategy or even cheesing(i will never fight demon of hatred legit, ever). My point is, very specifically, that if you are invested enough in the game to express you are bored out of a strategy and not just dropping the game or whanot and actively refusing to explore the tools the game is giving you, with modern games meaning a lot of them, the problem is exclusively on you. A linear game will force you very clerly to explore and open world/rpg games will show a pop everytime you unlock something or even show a quick tutorial.
You just said everything that I've ever wanted to say. I kinda feel like this kinda mindset of "If a game doesn't force me to use other moves it's a shiddy button masher." Is kinda killing people's enjoyment with video games. And also why are people listening to what DSP has to say lol.
The damage numbers and RPG elements don't make up for it anyway. Repetitive combat with no depth whatsoever is just objectively bad gameplay design and it belongs in the 1990 era.
The annoying thing is when people say things like this they’re always looked at as “elitists”, “gatekeepers”, etc. when it’s just actually true. Especially when you said 99% of people will just see cool planned sequences and think it’s the greatest thing ever when they’re missing the heart of the game which is the combat. Wether it’s doom eternal, DMC, bayonetta or any other type of game with a deep combat system they always get overlooked and most people will dislike them because they make you think in a different way from the rest of the industry. I always appreciate it when let’s players try even a bit to understand the mechanics of such games because it is such a pleasant watch to see people discover what makes those games so special. Like 99% of let’s players who played DMC 5 looked at cool cutscenes and a neuron was activated in their brain when they don’t realize they can do even crazier shit themselves in the game. Instead they spam stinger in DT and stay on swordmaster then call the game shallow •_• like it’s so frustrating. What’s even worse is they go back to playing the same 5 shitty games over and over again then call gaming dead like yeah I’d think that it was too if all I played was Fortnite, COD, valorant, CS:GO, LOL, etc. Anyways great video as always BeeG!
@@avoryeda7606 So the solution is force people to play the game the devs want them to right? Doom Eternal did just that and people called it dogshit because of it. There is no pleasing people ISTG. You make a game too easy people start acting smart and say “wEll iT’s thEir faUlt theY allOwed ThAt tyPe oF playstYle tO bE posSible iN tHe fIrst pLace!!!”, you make a game force the player to play the way the game is intended and harder the majority will call it “restrictive” and “the dark souls of X genre” because it’s slightly hard.
@@the_msecompletely with you lol. I’ve seen way too many people like those. There’s no way to please this crowd. Make the base game too easy with liberty and they complain “the devs shouldn’t have let me do so”. Then you force the players to adapt to the game and they’re all like “well I should be able to play my game however I want”
@@examplify4248 exactly. I don’t know when the gaming industry became this bad but Jesus Christ it is very bad currently. I just feel bad for the devs honestly.
There's nothing wrong with criticizing, people should just learn to accept criticism as a fact of life. Everyone is a critic sometimes and asking people to "just chill out and enjoy games for what they are" is asking for the death of nuance and subjectivity instead for mindless blob of consumerist identity. what games are is what u make of them yourself as an individual and how u choose to express yourself in it and how you personally experience it, that's what matters and people shouldn't just "chill out" and shut up about how they saw things that's stupid there is no objective critique of games for everything people think is objectively bad there is someone out there who enjoyed it for some reason and their experience is just as valid
@@Lin_Eileen You took my comment way too seriously, but I can rethink it for a more serious approach here. People can obviously critique games, who am I to tell critics to stop reviewing, but my impression is that in recent days people go overboard with it. Bad games deserve critique of course. My comment is also mostly a response to what the video is about, and I think I have a point there. How much weight does critique have to a developer who has a vision for a different kind of audience than that which is giving the critique? Thanks for the response though, my comment was a bit too direct.
Its sad cuz there is so much variety in action games. Like from DMC, Nioh 1/2 and other games that encourage completely custom strings of attacks or Implosion, Wo Long, Elsword, Vindictus, etc that have 2 main buttons for a normal attack string but alternate timings of the presses change your attack string and can feel rhythmic along side your dodging mechanisms, there are so many ways to implement variation and give the user the freedom to fight in their own way. Part of the gratest travesties that have been committed against action games is the fact that due to a certain game's level of popularity, most game devs don't try to improve upon already existing combat systems. It always ends up being a simplification of what we had before.
I call it calculated button-mashing; I'm definitely mashing buttons, but I'm having fun because I know what I'm doing, as opposed to someone only mashing the attack button and getting bodied.
I already know I'm about to agree with this man. Dude has never had a bad action game take and I will blindly side with him when it comes to action games because he is basically an action game god.
a great example of your point is people being like "whoa I didn't know you could launch enemies in ff16!" it takes all of 5 minutes messing with abilities outside of training mode to figure this out but people don't even want to do that. you're on the mark with the difficulty point too. reviewers, journalists and YTers alike, make blanket statements on every game of every genre without exploring any nuance at all. like playing crash team racing and calling the handling bad because you can't turn a corner. or playing ff16 and calling the combat boring because you can't do anything aside from the basic 4-hit combo and abilities. more than ever, games are providing stats and information in-game and holding the player's hand, but you can't do anything if the player refuses to engage with you in the first place.
Let's look at another discourse surrounding a game inspired by Devil May Cry. Ultrakill or as it has been affectionally dubbed Devil May Quake. Underthemayo trashed the game in short he got by just fine using an upgrade to the starting weapon and the starting weapon remains viable. He also argues for the inclusion of an ammo count on the guns. Ultrakill is inspired by Devil MAy Cry. It is not about conserving resources it is about creating gun combos. An Ammo count would defeat the whole point of the game by limiting what kind of combs you can make. What he clearly thinks is that if a game doesn't do enough to force you to use variety then the variety it does have is bad.
The funniest thing to me is that the people who complain about a game letting you use the mechanics to tackle the situation in whatever way you feel like, can also be the same people that complain when the game forces you to use certains mechanics in certain situations, arguing that it limits player freedom and expression.
But here’s the real question, everyone always talks about how mechanically deep DMC5 is however no one is willing to teach how to actually learn/improve at the game.
there is more indepth guides for dmc5 than rest of the other dmc games combined lol,and they are not hard to find on youtube,might even have the guides up on steam community pages like dmc4 has.
Honestly, it's kind of upsetting that I almost did not buy FF16, thinking that the combat was going to be a snooze fest due to the "Button smashing" complaints. I'm glad I saw your combo video to change my mind.
this video made me realize why i am very strict about the types of games i play i like games that let you experiment and eventually let you turn the game into your personal sandbox of expression but i also want it to feel rewarding both to finish a game and to replay it with the knowledge you have now when i buy a game i don't just play it once and leave it no i stay in that game and learn the tech and eventually become too good at it
me too, i always like games that propose an improvement to our innate "mechanical skills" rather than stat buffing like every souls and triple aa games nowadays, putting rpg mechanics into anything
As a souls enjoyer, the combat of those games, soulslikes, is actually quite shallow by comparison. Its servicable at best. That aside, i can argue playing within limitations drives creativity another. Or, the better argument, Character Action Games are closer to one on one fighters. To get adept at the game requires setting aside time to memorize and perform feats with the character. Thats really cool and all, but not why im there. I played Devil May Cry & Mortal Kombat for the spectacle, beat the campaign and moved on. I am more interested in experiencing new stories so gaining mastery over a game's mechanics isnt as important to me.
I totally agree that character action games are more akin to fighting games than action RPGS or Soulsborne. Sure, you can beat up the CPU all day in a fighting game just spamming the same move over and over, you could even beat some human opponents like this. But this strategy won't work forever, and you're completely missing the point of the game by playing like that. It's the same deal in CA games. You're meant to experiment and learn how those tools can be used in tandem with one another.
I had a dialog with my friend the other Day about FF16. He said, that everyone He have watched played this game with button mashing. In responce, i sent him some ComboMad video from 16 and told him: "If they want to play FF16 as a Batman Arkham series, let them. Developers intended it to be DMC style of game."
I think some people's brain are just wired differently. I remember the first time I encounterd this and being equally weirded out. I was looking for a DMC 3 playthrough and I found this guy who was basically playing DMC 3 as if it were Dark Souls. Just refusing to do any combos or engage with the combat in any meaningful way because he thought it was "stupid to seek for the game's approval", he was basically trying to rebel against the game giving him a score because he just couldn't understand the idea of people exploring and experimenting with a game's combat out of their own interest, because they think it's fun. It's odd but there are people like that.
There is NOTHING more sick than me pressing DODGE against the boss!!!111 It's the SICKEST most HARDCORE feat in all of gaming!!!11 All these spoiled Animal Crossing Candy Crush FEEEMALES don't understand the COMPLEXITY and DEPTH of muh SOULSBORNE gamez!!!! *strokes neckbeard*
Good vid man. It always kind of annoys me the way people approach action games like DMC and Bayonetta with the shallow unga bunga button mash mentality. These games do so much to encourage you to be flashy and experiment. They put you in the perspective of a character that does insane feats casually, they have a system that is constantly telling you how flashy/stylish you should be, the entire theming of the games are clearly built around flashy/ creative gameplay and yet people seem to still say they're not encouraged to try and diversify their playstlye, simply because they weren't literally barred from progressing. Where's the fun in face rolling and winning man?
it takes a while for me to find anyone streaming who doesn't have that mentality and it somewhat frustrates me, they always beat the game once and then move on to a different game
@@SansBadTime It's an extremely unhealthy mindset. Must consume to consume more. They don't even try to enjoy the game they're playing, and they don't realize how much they're missing. I've had this mindset, recognized it, and have tried to break away from it. What's the point of playing a game if you're already thinking about what game you should be playing next.
100% Agree. I don't blame Soulsbourne games as I enjoy them too, but everything you said is still true. Both players and developers are to blame as whenever a game with deep combat gets released, barely the 1% of gamers will engage with said depth of gameplay. People will resort to the simlest thing and then rely on set pieces that "anyone" can enjoy. There's a reason Bayo 1 is still better than 2 and 3. There's a reason Nero exists. There's a reason for NG3 to be what it is.
As a huge soulsborne fans, I cannot express how much I agree with this video. I grew up with action games, some of my fav childhood games are games like devil may cry 3. So it annoys me to no extent how every game tries to replicate the souls formula these days and the worst part is they don't understand the fundamentals of souls either. I absolutely hated the new god of war because of this. The freedom we had in the previous games is completely lost and it genuinely made me sad as I kept playing that game. It's fine if people like it, but it was extremely barebones and took all the charm from the god of war games. That's why I absolutely adored Hi-Fi rush this year, such a breath of fresh air. It should have gotten more recognition. Discover your channel today through a random recommendation. Banger video.
It seems to me due to popularity of soulsborne games, people make it as if Boss fights are the highlights of action games. In reality fighting the hordes are where your creativity is actually test out. Trying to combo while anticipating enemies coming at you is harder and more unpredictable than fighting a one and one boss you already remember the pattern.
That heavily depends on the game. In your comment, it is suggested that both DMC and Soulsborne games can both be subsumed under action games, and in Bloodborne (the only offical soulsborne I've played thus far), bosses are the highlight. What you wrote in your comment can apply to BB, but to a much lesser extent than it would in DMC, and it would seem such is true in the other soulsborne games as well, from what I can tell.
This kinda thing heavily depends on the game you are playing, the whole idea of an action game is interactions, and again depending on the game bosses might have way more interactions than a mob fight or vice versa, it's not particularly about what is the highlight it's about what the game is trying to push as the highlight
This video is exactly what I thought when people started saying these action games are "button mashers". Just because the game doesn't shove the mechanics in your face, doesn't mean they shouldn't be utilized in combat at all. When I first got into action games such as yakuza, all I ever did was mash the same rush combo and called it a day. And because of that mindset I thought the combat was just a "button masher" and nothing else to it. However, I decided to go back into the game and actually take the time to look at the moves and quirks of each style/character. I soon found myself loving the combat and I personally believe its got one of the best combat systems I have ever experienced. This revelation I had, made me realize that these journalists just do mash they're way through the game as fast they can so they can get a review out. despite the fact that they didn't even bother to look at the meat and bones that these action games provide. Anyway, I love your videos and keep up the stylish combos!
You put into words exactly how I felt going from games like Quake and Doom and Titanfall 2, to Doom Eternal. It feels like it's just a game of simon says with complications, it feels restrictive in how it wants you to play.
Mixing today's gameplaying with TH-cam gaming is all about money now. It is not about a sharing experience in what the gamer is showing to their audience for quite sometime now. Thanks TH-cam for degrading the quality and mindset of the Yotubers, overall. Good video, BeeG.
I was never too into the soulsborne stuff. Like yeah, I put a decent amount of time into DS3 but it pales to how much I've played DMC. The amount of freedom you have in games like DMC is wonderful and why I keep coming back.
The irony of me playing Dark Souls while watching this lmao. But yeah I'd like to add that I think there's a huge problem ingrained in people over the last decade. The challenge run genre has honestly done a lot of detriment towards how people use their tools. If you aren't handicapping yourself to inflate your ego, then you're not gaming. There's a reason why people hate on BOTW/TOTK and it's because they're now forced to go beyond just sitting on one weapon which is what Elden Ring allows and so people don't change up their playstyles really. A common strategy is the first order dominant strategy and people will always gravitate towards what plainly works without much effort. Then it's a pedantic race to describe what is and what isn't skill based on the same variables without realizing that a game like Souls is greater for more than the sum of it's parts and not just the stamina combat. But the general populous are filled with egos and pushing the goal posts. Another thing that's disheartening is how people say things like "I could never get this good at the X's combat" because they limit themselves while also going in depth in other series which is depressing personally. It's not even about practice but how it sometimes feels a bit willful to ignore things like enemy step and dodge offset because let's be real, they wanna sell the game to you or relate to the base experience which can be fair but actual game dicussion sucks online. For example P3 is always sold as a RPG but it's a life sim just as much as it is a RPG. DMC is a wacky action game but like you've stated, it's only something played through once and I think a core problem isn't just the one and done reviews/playthroughs. It's that difficulties aren't unlockables anymore. People like to rush the hardest difficutly and do all the content to mix max and get a perfect run so they can talk about everything online without just realizing that you can just sit down and play a game and not need to know everything about it at the first chance. Online wiki culture has honestly ruined people because it constantly fills them with information and a lack of an urge to ever pick the game up to learn anything.
I agree. Souls games, or any game really for that matter, shouldn't simply be known for its "challenge runs"... Personally, I find myself switching between weapons only a few times in these games. As much as I love them--fromsoftware is probably my favorite developer--I wouldn't mind seeing them take an approach that rewards or even forces players to vary their playstyle. It would be even funner that way, and automatically would require a bit more creativity from the player (which is there already to an extent, but some more never hurts!)
@@gigabit6226 I really agree with you. It's a fun aspect to partake in but there's no reason that should be thing people instantly think about when they talk about Souls. It does a huge disservice to whole game.
The term "Button Masher" seems to have become an insult when describing a game that has you mashing buttons most of the time. But let's be real, a good chunk of video games are button mashers, but it depends on what kind of button mashing you are doing. The strategic or the mindless. It's not even in action games you can find this dichotomy, you can look towards turn-based JRPGs as well. Some of them allow you to get past fights just by mashing the attack command while others actually require to use every skill to your disposal. In the former, sure I can use this magic ability or that magic to make a battle more interesting, but it's not required of me because I can just mash the same command to win. So how do I make it more strategic? By giving my enemies more strength and abilities and different tactics that require prioritization. There's also FPS games as well, particularly DOOM 2016 versus Eternal. DOOM 2016 gives you all these weapons with various attachments, but the best weapon in the whole game is the SSG, which has no attachments, as it's very powerful, has a huge ammo capacity, and can kill a Baron of Hell, the strongest non-boss demon in the game, in just about 3-4 shots. Why would I use any other weapon other than the SSG at this point? Eternal doesn't let you do that, it actually requires you to use more than just the SSG to get through combat encounters since Eternal places emphasis on weapon switching through extremely limited ammo capacity. You try playing Eternal the same exact way playing 2016 just using one weapon and your going to get wrecked even on Hurt Me Plenty (Normal mode). As for character action games like DMC and Soulsborne, first up it's dumb trying to compare the two because one is a spectacle fighter and the other is an action RPG. Instead I'd use DMC and Ninja Gaiden as a better example. DMC is all about expression but to be honest, I rarely ever played stylishly in DMC growing up because up until DMC5 with Dante's Quad-S function, I never saw a real reason to even with the style meter present, I always fought the demons in a survival sense. If I did something cool, it was usually by accident. Ninja Gaiden on the other hand actually requires you to play well because the enemies are fast and relentless, so being fast and over the top is not an option, but a requirement, and the games properly ease you into them as well. Same goes for FFXVI which honestly wasn't that good in terms of it being a spectacle fighter. It's pacing is already diabolically bad due to the high amount of cutscenes and filler dialogue, but moreever even if the game that actually shows what moves and combos you do in the real-time combat, it bugged me why there was no combo meter to actually reward you with playing stylishly, but it's not even a requirement either because the game is too easy, even on action, which is why many saw it's a mindless button masher, because it is. Yea I can probably do sick combos in it, but it's not a requirement for me to beat the game, nor am I mechanically rewarded for it, so why bother? It doesn't help the fact that games like DMC, FFXVI, and Bayonetta lock their hard modes behind NG+, which never sat right with me as that doesn't invoke confidence from the developers in the player's ability to handle challenge should they want it. You should never, EVER, have to beat a game once to unlock a challenging difficulty, and if said challenging difficulty is too hard, you can always lower it down to normal or easy just like in Stranger of Paradise, a Soulsborne game that has difficulty options. Difficulty options are never a bad thing, but they should not be an excuse for a game's normal intended difficulty to be easy.
Yup been telling people the same. I have even been saying that DMC has a much higher skill cap than Soulsborne games. First of all games like DMC, Bayonetta, FF VXI are furthest away from button mashing. They have got a super high skill cap and when you know how to play every single button you press is deliberate and you need deep understanding and knowledge, not to mention practice.
Higher skill cap but lower skill floor which is imo the biggest issue with these games. It's like the devs are just not confident in their games hitting home with their target demographic and want to avoid it flopping so they go with the casualization route which is very dumb. Elden Ring is only 1 difficulty and it's hard from the get go but it still sold a metric shitton because it resonated strongly with its core audience and that attracted more attention towards it. Same case with Resident evil 4 Remake. That game is no joke on difficulty (unless you play on baby mode) and it's on track to be the best selling game in the franchise. Really wish dmc devs would take notice and stop with the piss easiness to appeal to the masses design they've been doing.
@@bruhder5854 the only action games to have both is maybe doom, Ultrakill sort of and Ninja Gaiden but that game has the opposite issue of dominant strategy where there no point in experimenting since one option is so much better then the rest
My favorite style of action game is Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, the upcoming Stellar Blade, etc. I don’t consider the Souls games good action games. They’re trying to mix action with RPG, but they’re just not as fun as a pure action game. Sekiro came close, but the whole game was about parries, not combos.
“Has the dev team never learned from Elden Ring?” - NightSkyPrince complaining about the difficulty. Literally dude the game isn’t even easy on FF mode it’s only easy if you truly mastered the game just like every other action game in the entire world. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it needs to be a fucking souls game.
So, funnily enough about a day before this was uploaded I beat DMC1 for the first time ever, which is my first experience with one of these kinds of games. It was satisfying, fun, challenging but fair and has given me a newfound interest in a style of game I had never given much thought to before. It's left me wanting more, which is why I'm already halfway through DMC3 now. Of course something I learned very quickly was that button mashing was probably the worst way to approach the encounters in the game and frankly I have a hard time believing most critics even manage to beat these games if all they're managing is Dante's little platformer ass three hit combo.
I’m kinda torn on expecting reviewers to consider multiple playthroughs when evaluating games. On the one hand, in most genres, a second playthrough is treated as a bonus, not a requirement, even if you have the option of taking different paths or NG+ exclusive stuff. So I can’t really blame people for approaching games like that as their default, as in a lot of cases they really won’t be missing out on much. On the other hand, there are absolutely games where I’d consider the first playthrough to be the tutorial, in a sense. I don’t play many character action games (though I enjoy watching them,) so my go to example for that is Star Ocean; an action-RPG series with insane depth to its subsystems that are doled out in pieces throughout the campaign. On your first playthrough, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing at first and just experiment bit by bit, until you start seeing the bigger picture near the very end. But if you start the game over, you can take that understanding and plan ahead, making use of all the little tricks you learned last time and break the game in half. (It’s to the point where the game unlocks higher difficulties after the first clear, but doesn’t have NG+ because you don’t need the boost. All you need is the knowledge of how the game really works.) But most people don’t expect that from an RPG so they never even know to look for it, much less try a second playthrough, and so they miss out on a huge aspect of the series. But is that on them for not noticing it? Or is it on the games for not cluing them into it hard enough? It’s really hard to say because it’s so heavily influenced by the expectations a person brings to the game, not just the game itself. And XVI being an action RPG brings with it the same expectation for many.
I'm getting flashbacks from UnderTheMayo's review of Ultrakill... This man was saying the game was bad because the game doesn't force you to use any weapon other than the starting revolver... That's the game where you can ricochet your railcannon off a coin to hit an enemy multiple times, parry your own shotgun shots and even ride your own rockets. I guess some people just can't have fun unless they're literally forced into the fun zone... Anyway, related to the Soulsborne argument, I'll admit I recently started playing Yakuza games again after spending way too much time in Soulsborne games, and I kind of started thinking like these game journalists for a bit. I was thinking that, perhaps, the combat in Yakuza games just isn't good... Until I finally realized that it's not bad at all, it simply offers a different kind of fun. When I'm playing Dark Souls, the most fun part is fighting a challenging but fair boss that forces me to play perfectly... But when I'm playing Yakuza? I'm having the most fun when beating up random goons on the street. The boss fights are fine, but usually too limiting. I have fun just coming up with fun ways to bully goons and I never get tired of all the brutal heat actions the various protagonists can execute... It's a different kind of fun and I appreciate it.
I've been a DMC fan ever since I got the demo on my PS2 copy of RE: Code Veronica and the combat gameplay stuck with me ever since. Then I was lucky to play Dragon's Dogma and my standard for combat went sky high; I started FF16 and when I got to fight I felt that DMC "oomph" in the movements, yes, you can mash to win but the Eikon system and the ability to switch mid battle is godlike. I've spent more hours grinding flashy combos on the training mode than on the main quest, and all I can say to those that believe FF16's combat sucks is; git gud.
I see takes that says "well the combos in training mode doesn't matter anyway cuz you can't do them in the main game" when being able to pull off those combos in the first place is a form of player skill expression and is part of the experience. I really hate how people sideline training modes in action games like that.
I have noticed that usually the most unpopular fights in games with a focus in combat are the ones where you need to do things very differently from the rest of the game. Sometimes it's warranted but often it seems that the average gamer can only go on autopilot and hates it when they have to think once in a while.
Electic underground is unironically one of these game journalist types, despite always throwing shade at them while doing the same exact thing they do. Instead of saying "its just like dark souls" just replace dark souls with shmups, and thats exactly what he does. He throws shade at these modern games and acts like shmups are the seed for all gaming genres and everything is like it. The ultimate genre and only genre we should be playing
@@dc7981 funny part is, he acts like games like final fantasy 16 have "too much fat" in them, but then acts like these shallow linear arcade shmups have all these mechanics and play styles, when all it really boils down to is literally dodging bullets and holding in the fire button. Final fantasy 16 absolutely destroys any shmup or arcade beatemup with its variety in gameplay/combat options it's not even funny. Bro just doesnt like story/atmosphere in games at all and acts like it's a crime
Well made, Beeg! And I agree with everything you said, it made me sad the way how critics like Kotaku were slamming on FF16 and calling it a stupid button masher. Action games are awesome and the creativity you can do with them is near limitless.
My only real criticism with the combat was that I wish the base sword combat had more combos/moves. Later on when you have more eikonic abilities you feel it less but its always a little awakward when you have to default back to the same 4 or 5 base sword moves after using all your eikonic abilities on a prior combo. Also kind of wish the ranged magic outside of the charged shots was more useful.
Games Journalists: I can't breeze through this game on the hardest difficulty instantly and feel good about myself on the easiest difficulty, but this guy can? Must be a bad game. Me, a newer DMC player: I'll get there eventually. Until then, YES I'M SHIT AT IT! THAT'S WHY I PLAY!
First time watcher! I've also been thinking (and discussing this with my friends) exactly this - how I think the Souls series has messed up "action" games. What was telling was when I mentioned how Elden Ring had a pretty mediocre action, they immediately went "was it too hard for you?" or some variation of that. They somehow couldn't grasp the idea that my thinking the game had subpar action (which thematically fits very well with the RPG & exploration aspect) was not related to me not "gitting gud" enough. They had to insist the game had "deep mechanics" because you have to look at telegraphs and...yeah I'll stop. Soulsborne are great ARPG games for sure, don't get me wrong. But it being held as some standard of what an "action" game is supposed to be is...tragic, I guess. One thing I want to disagree though is that I actually don't think it's a "game journalists" problem, seeing how this type of (lack of) understanding of action mechanics is often screamed loudest by Souls fanboys. And we see how they still complain how "the game journalists want easy mode" or "the game isn't for mainstream casuals" and all. In a sense, I think character action genre's design of fairly easy base difficulty (that you also mentioned) is kinda closer to so-called game journalist position than the Soulsborne mindset of thou-must-die-repeatedly game design so...are we the one more journo-like? It's kinda funny how game journos is almost like every gamers' boogieman. lol Point is, I think it's more of a broad problem of people not understanding different game design/game balance philosophy, rather than "game journalists bad." Not to say that the journo/reviewers are not amplifying the problem, of course, since they should be the one correcting this sort of misconception, not giving even more weight to it. It's probably why I tend to characterize Souls/Elden Ring as "'hardcore action' for action game casuals," in a good way to be clear. The positive of Soulsborne genre is obviously that it has successfully mainstreamed the concept of more "difficult" action games, by making a mechanically friendly/accessible, but still very challenging action game experience. Even if their version of "difficult" ended up hurting character action games' design in the public eye and gave birth to some annoying tryhard action game gurus/journos, it still let me sell DMC to friends who played ER/Souls so...that's a plus? hahaha Ah well, sorry for the long comment. Anyway, I have subscribed, please don't send me to hell. :)
"What was telling was when I mentioned how Elden Ring had a pretty mediocre action, they immediately went "was it too hard for you?" or some variation of that. They somehow couldn't grasp the idea that my thinking the game had subpar action (which thematically fits very well with the RPG & exploration aspect) was not related to me not "gitting gud" enough. " This, this, a thousand times this. You cannot have a conversation about souls because any criticism is met with "git gud".
As a soulsborne fan, I would like to say. Holy shit the community is trash, ever since elden ring that is. It's like the only point to play is to be called a "pro gamer" and fit in the community rather than having fun, exactly as the video said. Dodge, no not with bloodhound step! Only basic rolls! Attack, no not with that strong boss weapon! Only the sigma chad ones. Grrr how dare you call for help! You can only do it solo! So now, freedom in games is illegal
The funny thing is that every challenge runner who’s actually good at the games are always wholesome and chill, I do it because it’s just fun, obviously there are some who do it as a way to show off but that’s a minority of losers. People who say “git gud/skill issue” aren’t actually good at the games, I mean souls games aren’t even difficult, once you memorize the boss/enemy movesets they become cake walks and there’s nothing mechanically difficult to execute but it is satisfying nonetheless. Honestly I gotta say that I only consider ER and Sekiro to be good games, all the rest were very mediocre and boring imo.
its always funny that souls fans act like the most hardcore of hardcore gamers and yet if any action game is too hard and requires them to press more then two buttons, then its "unbalanced" or "actually unfair" then play on the easiest difficulty (something that they make fun of other for wanting) and then say its too easy
The reason why the Souls combat worked in the Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor is because Cal was no Obi Wan or Ahsoka. It made you feel like there was danger at every turn and little to no room for mistakes. That being said, I really hope we get more MGR/DMC style combat in a Star Wars setting that’s before the Empire. Maybe Old Republic!
I see so many people valuing games forcing the player into the fun zone. That’s a line people use to justify saying soulslikes are better than action games with player expression or Doom Eternal is better than Ultrakill. If you like the former examples more, that’s fine but why do people need to be forced to have fun?
I think one of the problems people have with action games is that for the casual player they don't have actual replayability. What I mean by this is that people don't feel compeled to keep experimenting once they beat the final boss of the game. Like you said, people like you and me have hundreds of hours in this games buuut most people don't and so they can't truly talk about it. This translates strictly to reviewers. To take an example from other genres, reviewers put fighting games reviews with glowing 10/10 in games with less than 4 hs of play in them and if you know the genre you also know that it just doesn't work like that. Same with action games but at the end of the day it is what it is. I'm just happy that the genre keeps going strong.
We should revolutionize enemy ai for the “this game didn’t force me to use my moves” people. By that I mean create a “careful what you wish for” situation where the enemies will soft lock them by memorizing the order in which they combo said moves and countering
3:38 Omg, from here ownward especially, I am so glad to finally hear someone say. Like, nothing makes me wanna chug Jack Daniels more than hearing someone say "ThE gAmE dOeSnT fOrCe Me To UsE aLl My MoVeS oR sTyLe On EnEmIeS sO iTs BaD". Like, *do you not know how to have fun, and use your brain??? Do you not know what intrinsic motivation is??* It's exactly what I heard UnderTheMayo say when he was talking about DMC, and I wanted to Minecraft myself so goddamn hard.
Ironically the dumbest part about all the Souls stuff is that when a developer actually comes along and takes the concepts and turns them into a great action game (Nioh) the most hardcore From fans seem to have a brain meltdown. I've seen so many online arguments that amount to "Nioh combat mechanics aren't better, screw you" and you ask why and the response is basically "uh um uhm uhhhhh um because there is no impact when you hit enemies, so it's bad." It's like really man? a) that isn't even true and b) I was talking about the actual combat mechanics, not the combat "feel." Harsh reality is most people don't really think much about actual gameplay mechanics. That's why Bayo and DMC are "exactly the same games" which is a sentiment you see even with people who do enjoy action games. Hell I even fell for the meme, first time I played Bayo (was very late to the party) I went in with a DMC mindset and I thought the game was pretty mediocre and didn't understand why people enjoyed it. It's honestly not much of a surprise the FF16 devs decided to shine a spotlight (or jingle the keys as you put it) on the Eikon Battles. They know it gets casual butts in the seats. On the plus side at least in the case of game journos their days are numbered. Most of these sites are always facing layoffs/outright shutting down. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned.
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thank you so much for saying this. souls slow paced and no variance combat does not belong in action games it only drags them down nor does the rpg systems that shoves meaningless fluff. gow ragnarok has a lot of enemies that utterly destroy the pacing sometimes. they just make it approachable and simple for any casual YUCK
@@HellBreaker aka passiveness
People who say these games are mashers need to understand that you play these games for variety, it's like only using the Phillips Head Screwdriver on a Swiss Army Knife and saying you can only screw in things with it.
It's not even like soulsborne combat is mashing either. If you mash R1, you're going to die immediately.
The problem is they fundamentally misunderstand the genre as a whole and think, "it's an action game, so it must be brainless"
There are some where you can legtiamately mash but most you mash, get bored, try a new move and have your mind blown being like oh this is pretty cool.... oh I can do this after that and combo!? And then you begin to have fun while getting through the game. Bayonetta being a dancer i think encapsulates it the most because you dance through combat predicting enemy actions, preparing your counter attack with dodge offset and just styling with it in general. In general with action games each move is a tool. Otherwise just play the old LoZ with just the sword with its basic swing. Nope you solve the puzzle of combat with each move and character action games let you go off with that to have fun being overpowered.
@@tbc1880 that's the problem. If I get bored with the game I'm not looking for a different way of playing it. I just uninstall the game and blame it on developer. Because it's not my fault that DMC 5 for example has bad enemy design. That's on developers. People play these games for self expression? Good for them. But unique enemy design which encourages use of all your tools will never hurt that "self expression" combat people praise so much.
Now of course, not all action games are button mashers. Bayonetta 2 and Hi-Fi Rush for example are really good in my book. In these games I can never be careless because enemies are not punching bags. In bayonetta 2 some enemies can be only juggled during witch time, Hi-Fi Rush requires you to always stay on beat to avoid and deal damage. Combat is both stylish AND engaging unlike dmc or recent ff xvi.
@@klaym-lee2863 how does dark souls encourage use of all your tools? i swear to god i beat ds1 and 3 without using anything other than dodge, m1 and estus
@@tiagoraya6969 @tiagoraya6969 I never said that ds forces you to use all of your tools. I didn't even mention ds in my comment. Don't put words in my mouth please.
But since you mentioned it, here is what I have to say. Ds had plenty of optional mechanics that I don't like and consider to be flawed design. Stuff like insane amount of consumables. But combat... combat is ridiculously simple compared to dmc and yet much more engaging than dmc. The reason is that in ds your performance in combat is a result of your decision making. You have to earn every single hit you land just like you have earn every single dodge you time. Ds or Sekiro do not need flashy combos to make me enjoy battles.
Dmc on the other hand fails to entertain me even though it has very deep combat. And it fails to do so even when I am using combos and switching weapons. My problem with dmc is that it gives you very interesting tools but never gives you an interesting problem to solve which to me is flawed design. And let me repeat again that I don't think this is the problem of action games, just dmc. Hi Fi Rush is my GOTY of 2023 so far. Bayonetta 2 (I'm playing it currently) is a game I enjoy a lot. These games do not have problems that DMC has.
The souls combat formula was made for action RPGs and not for pure action games. Souls combat works because of the level design and the atmosphere of the games its in. You can't just throw this combat in an action game and expect it to work. Moreover, souls combat is designed for 1v1 but action games usually revolve around you battling a room full of enemies.
I heard Tim Rodgers say a while ago that Demon souls was originally more similar in speed to kings field, but a producer or something kept asking them to increase the speed, which seems right cause the bosses were more puzzle based in that game.
And the worst part of every souls/souls like games are when you’re fighting multiple enemies at once. Every single type of these games struggles in this regard, fundamentally because of the sub genre itself.
@@id1550 I can't agree completely. Ofcourse you will struggle with multiple enemies in a genre where enemies actually want to kill you unlike in character focused action games. That doesn't mean they are the worst part. Fun gank fights depends on these three things: aoe, mobility and staggerable enemies. Recent souls games like Elden Ring and Sekiro both have that, making fighting multiple enemies quiet fun. Older souls games lack these aspects, however there is rarely a scenario where you fight multiple enemies. Some of the duo bosses in the souls genre are also great.
@@lapostetu9337"multiple enemies in a genre where enemies actually want to kill you" literally proves that those games aren't designed to accommodate for that type of encounter . I.E it's bad design lmfao turns out having to fight multiple enemies in a genre with very limited maneuverability and a stamina system is just incredibly bad for dealing with mob fights cause what ends up happening is the player just spams dodge , throws an attack or two in, then repeat that process. This isn't good design. It's an annoying game of hit and run because the games themselves do not accommodate for fighting multiple enemies very well except exactly Sekiro.
Also are you implying enemies don't also want you dead in games like devil may cry or Bayonetta ? Cause man do I have some bad news for you if that's what you believe.
@@justsomeguy727THANK 👏🏾 YOU 👏🏾
I've had this same thought for a while, videogames shouldn't be criticized for being "button mashers" when in reality those games usually are giving you the ability to get creative and try whatever you want. Imagine if Mario Odyssey didn't have the movement options that set it apart from other platformers, it would be super stale. It's the same thing with games like FF16 or DMC and its combat.
the only button masher is dmc2, and that's why it's dogged on (rightfully so)
@@Rahnonymousnot even that’s a button smasher, it’s just guns that are broken so people don’t bother with the rest, y’all need to cut a game put together in 6 months by one guy some slack
@@Rahnonymousgenerally speaking you can be pretty creative in dmc2 but I agree with the above^ guns are just too good to not spam sometimes lol again dmc2... Is a game of all time surely buy it has things you can do if you take the time to learn it just like with every other DMC like 4 inertia is godly when mastered.
I always say, every action game is a button masher if you suck enough.
On a low enough difficulty, with an absolute lack of initiative or creativity on the player's end, by completely ignoring key mechanics, a great many action games can be reduced to the lowest common denominator of play.
In regards to DMC 2, it has that issue imo where people can argue it’s a button masher and it’s kinda true. Spamming the shoot button for sure at least, some bosses you really can’t do anything but spam the shoot button. The difference between a game like DMC 2 and DMC 3 is that DMC 2, while it gives you a few options to get creative, usually doesn’t give you the chance to do whatever you want because the enemies die so quickly or require you shoot them (looking at you three heads.)
Action games have a very different reward system is all, and people aren't aware of it. In (most) other genres, the goal is to beat the level/boss/game whatever. In action games, the goal is to master the mechanics. When I finished my first action game (Bayo 1) I initially thought it was mediocre because I "beat" the game while somehow not learning any depth to it (obviously it's goated now that I actually get the genre). For those people who simply aren't aware of the whole point of the genre, these games ARE shallow.
exactly! beating the game means nothing, it's not the point
Agree 100%
I agree, mastering the mechanics are always fun to play around and experiment
dmc player here, currently playing through the whole series, touching a controller for the first time, i can say that every boss fight taught me something new and helped me get better at a mechanic
It also has to do with motivation, DMC and games like it are for more intrinsically motivated people (people who want to get better at the game for the sake of getting better at the game) while games that aren't like that tend to be for more extrinsically motivated people (people who want to get better at the game to complete a certain objective)
This reminds me a lot of the Underthemayo vs. the Ultrakill community thing that happened last year. Mayo is one of those people who cares more about difficulty over variety and even says freedom of expression is a bad thing. So when he reviewed Ultrakill, a game made by a huge DMC and God Hand fan, he had some very spicy opinions and it upset a lot of people. He also made a lot of very unwarranted attacks towards the community, which only contributed to how poorly his videos were received.
I understand wanting more difficulty from games, I wish DMC would let you play on SoS when you start the game, but I also don't want to be doing the exact same move over and over again just to win.
UnderTheMayo also made a fucking fool of himself when he tried to talk about Vanquish, which is in a similar vein to Ultrakill (though I haven't played the latter).
Plenty on high-level techniques and toys in Vanquish went by completely unnoticed or were underplayed in Mayo's review. Basically saying the game is a gimmicky cover-shooter where the central mechanic (the suit) isn't actually useful in creating variety or depth in the game.
Not only does Vanquish satisfy the difficulty end of the equation (God Hard will kick everybody's ass), but it's also just amazingly fun if you approach it with the right attitude. Localized damage to enemies, Boost canceling, LFE gun, shooting grenades in midair, etc.
Underthemayo thinks unless the game actively FORCES the player to use a certain move/gun, the game design is bad. Like when he complains that Ultrakill could be fineshed with just the pistol but that is boring. Geez, it is almost a if you are meant to use all guns but can use only the pistol for speedrun/challegenge reasons if you want...
oh dear I lost this pearl, I just saw what he said of DMC and left after 2 minutes because I knew I would be wasting my time
@@Noperare The older I get, the more I value intrinsic motivation in games over extrinsic. Hell, that's why Vanquish is probably one of my ten favorite games ever. I don't need to be told how to have fun, in fact I don't even like being told how to have fun. Even if a game slaps me with a bad score or a low ranking, if I enjoyed pushing myself through the mechanics, it's always a win.
He's the worst
I stopped taking Souls fans seriously after they claimed nioh 2 was "bad game design" because they couldn't just spam the dodge button through every boss fight. They acted like they had some universal street cred that made them experts on all combat systems and got absolutely filtered when the game told them to press something besides B to roll. Every post complaining about an easy boss would start with "I have 5000 hours in the souls series, but.." Same thing happened with Wo Long and Sekiro, people just thinking dark souls combat is all you need to beat every game ever made and override the developers intent. Several of the bosses they complained about being stuck on "for days" I beat on my first attempt by just actually using all of the different mechanics.
The truth is, Souls games are some of the simplest and easiest games ever made. They are extremely punishing and tedious so people have a wrong idea of what the word ''hard'' really means.
Soulsborne fans are actually the filthiest of casuals. People with shattered ego and no accomplishments who feel the peak of their life by bragging about a boring game and deflect all criticism with ''git gud'' to keep their delusion going.
The souls community is one of the filthiest and worst I've seen in gaming, you think of narcissism, you think of Souls fans, they're the kind of people who think they're always on the right and they're the masters at gaming for achieving the impressive challenge of beating the most average action game ever with a free invincibility button, and somehow that's an achievement worth bragging about, and it gives them the right to shit on other games because "Dark souls is perfect, git gud".
But I can see how they can't take in games like Nioh 2, Devil may cry or Bayonetta, can you really ask a Souls fans to press more than 2 buttons at the same time? give them a break, don't you see it takes 500 iq to roll - roll - hit and repeat until every enemy and boss is defeated?
@@cantstandurbs876 Couldn't said it better myself. In general surface level games that immediately make you feel like a pro or like you accomplish something, as opposed to games that actually do that on the long run, tend to do much better. Hence why Souls games is such a hit imo for example. It's fun, challenging and feels great from the get go. But once you really get into it, it's all very basic and shallow.
They aren't button mashers. Its finger tapping...with style. And carpal tunnel. And maybe some mashing for crazy combos but thats an exception.
Great to hear some commentary in your recent videos too.
Thank you Beeg this is something I hate about the mindset of many game reviewers (Underthemayo is a good example) they think that if a game doesn't force you to use all the options then it might as well not have them and giving the player the ability to experiment with them as they want even if it means the player spams the same options is bad.
if the player spams, that's on them, but if they can spam the entire game, their perception of the game could change and they assume the game has no variety, when it clearly gave you opportunities to experiment, and the player didn't choose to do so, and they'll just end up finishing the game or quitting it, and saying it had no variety
I think that can be bad, e.g. FF13 dripfeeds you its genuinely-deep combat system over the first half of the game and then never requires even a fraction of it to actually be utilized in mandatory fights, so the extended tutorial feels very put-upon you; if it actually required that you use it, it would feel less of a chore to go through the tutorial. (And would also filter out 90% of the potential playerbase as soon as they arrived at Gran Pulse, which is likely why it does not require you to master it to finish the game.)
That's more of an execution issue than a concept issue though.
Nah Mayo has a point, I heavily prefer dmc 3's campaign over 5 for that reason due to the much more threatening enemy ai that pushes you to learn the combat system better. All while still being a stylish game ultimately
@@onceyougozach2607 I think they're better in the order you play them, 5 just has more options to experiment with, while 3 sets you to how much you should be focusing
@@SansBadTime I think 3 is the by far best game is the series, so I disagree. 5 has the better combat sandbox to experiment and obviously modern presentation but other wise I think 3 is the stronger game. And no bias, I played 5 first.
Since audio issues got fixed, might as well repost what I posted before.
There's one thing I noticed while developing a certain game and having a few playtesters. A lot of players, from my experience, really don't bother to learn deeper game mechanics. I have a friend who I tried to introduce to the Devil May Cry series, and the biggest complaint was that it was too difficult and didn't feel satisfying... Until he turned on the auto mode. Then he said, "Now it feels more fun, and at least I am not dying.
It's more than just a matter of the Soulsborne genre, it's a matter of a person who comes to action games with a different mindset, I feel. No amount of hints, no amount of game design is going to change the fact that people don't want to experiment or do combos. That is why simple games work better for most people. There's less to learn and more satisfaction from the simple actions. They reward you for doing simple things, and that's fine. But I really wish people would look at action games as something more than that, instead of destroying their review score just because they had a different expectation/mindset going in.
Eh, the last part kind of reminds me of DMC:POC, the game that used to be very complex, and now feels like a Honkai 3rd clone, to appeal exactly to that. People who prefer more casual games that don't require a lot of effort. Shucks.
DMC:POC?
@@RagnellAvalon pinnacle of combat, the mobile dmc
We all start somewhere.
The first time u played DMC did u do that well? Did u actually experiment and learn that much without an outside source giving you extrinsic motivation to want to get better? I highly doubt anyone here was just naturally inclined to experiment with action games like this video purports is the whole point of them, most everyone starts off these games pretty trash and spamming the same attacks which are effective to get thru it and that's expected of you, there's a reason you don't start with all the moves and have to work towards it.
You definitely saw a Donguri or Sakaki video or whoever it may have been, and they motivated u to get better and experiment. It wasn't the game that gave u this desire because there isn't really a way to motivate someone to want to put that much effort into anything intrinsically if they don't already have it or are heading into that direction and that's fine to not go there.
Look at how most developers play their own action games, they play it simply, i think of Itsuno's gameplay demo of DMC5. He was just vibing on the game using what moves he wanted and showing off how it played, not trying his hardest to show of everything... because that wasn't the point. He wasn't combat director and the point of any game is what u set it personally, games are about expression and the only way to express yourself isn't by pushing the game to it's limits and treating it like a vast sandbox, they don't actually expect u to use all the moves in DMC games if they did u would see the gameplay trailers showing that instead of looking like an average gameplay showcase. They show what average gameplay will look like because that's what people can expect if they just play the game casually without sinking hundreds or thousands of hours, no game expects u to put in that much time
You can also express yourself by playing simply and efficiently, preferring substance over style, and that's a valid way to experience the game. Auto mode is there for a reason, and it allowed someone who might not have been able to get into the game enjoy it, and possibly pave the way to them wanting to experiment more and learn to play without it.
The more you try to invalidate people who want to just sit back and have a fun casual time on auto mode, the more they will feel turned off from ever trying to get more into the games u want them to be more into, because what reason would they have to? To please people who are so judgmental over how they choose to play a game? nah they will just move on and play another game with a better community which is more welcoming and accepting of people having different experiences with it instead of blaming everything on games journalists
The thing about learning those combos is, that you aren't just learning them for the sake of it. Mastering them will make the game easier in the long run. Like mastering Izuna Drop in Ninja Giaden Black/Sigma is a game changer. Variety than comes from learning new combos with new weapons and styles.
it is really weird that people who play a game like dark souls which for a character action game has possibly the most brain dead gameplay can call other character action games "mashers".
Most of them dont even want to switch lighter weapons against a clearly faster enemies and just bang their head to the wall 😂
You’ve honestly perfectly described how I’ve learned to enjoy games, as in actually experimenting with their mechanics and trying to experience it in the way the developers created it to be.
I don’t think stuff shouldn’t be criticized, but it should be done in a way that’s constructive and actually suggests ideas to improve and build upon what the game presents. Most of the time people don’t want to actually take the time to enjoy the game or even understand what it’s trying to do by itself and just want to bitch about how it’s not like some other widely beloved game that’s vaguely similar.
Oh my god such facts. Most "criticism" nowadays is "this part of the game is REALLY annoying to me and I'm gonna bitch and bitch about it because it hurts my experience and bothers me so much", and imo stuff like this is not valid criticism or a real complaint. A lot of people have such a horrible mentality towards media in general being very cynical and easily harshly critical of any small element of a game. If you go into an experience ready and willing to be negative, you will end up subconsciously looking for more and more things to pick apart/find a reason you don't like this or that, and it just becomes a spiral. I miss the days when criticism actually included "here's what the developers could do better in their next game, and here's what they did well in this one!" while fully acknowledging real flaws of an experience. This is especially not frequent in fanbases like FF. In general, if a video game isn't exactly the experience someone wants it to be, they will just tear it apart. Really sad honestly. And all of the same people resort to the same exact argument of "You criticize the things you love because you want them to be better" when they say all this BS lmao
This is a comment that smash players needs to read
Dude you literally read my mind with these videos. I also feel like this has become a huge issue. Souls-like games are fine, but I don't want every game to devolve into soulsborne-esque combat. Thank you so much for giving me inspiration for making my own videos as well. You're a real one my dude.
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@randomidoit9605 cool story bro
@@TheFabledDavidah, the duality of man
Why "devolve" though? Combat in soulsborne games, which are action rpgs, is pretty elaborate on its own, and is so different from hack n slash games that I don't think it's even useful in any way to compare the two. If one prefers one genre over the other, sure thing. Like, why would one compare mordhau and dying light? Just cuz they are melee focused games where you occasionally shoot a bow? Same thing here, as in I don't really understand the necessity of saying that one of the two approaches is supposed to be better
@@Spiderella3959 I think people are comparing WAY too much. It's like apples and oranges, you pick one and you enjoy. You can't compare them because they are 2 different things
I enjoyed playing my fair share of Soulsborne games, but I will always prefer action games like DMC, MGR, NMH when it comes to combat.
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@randomidoit9605Soulsborn combat focus more on you studying the boss and memorizing it's moveset, while games like dmc5 are basically the opposite, me personally, I prefer else ring's combat since it's straight forward and makes each move you do feel rewarding
@@GravitonLance “else” ring’s combat is just good enough for me, the enemies though? They all feel like challenge over fun. I never feel like I accomplished something when I beat a boss, the runes will just go towards a single level up, which I can just grind for at caelid with the dogs. Any rewards I get would most likely be not applicable to my build, worse then what I already have, or can be better if I spend the time I spent leveling up my current weapon to level the new one. DMC on the other hand? Beat enemies to get red orbs to get new skills to beat enemies. And get this: most of the enemies are fun to fight.
@@randomidoit9605 it depends on what you like, me personally, i just like how the game forces you to learn the boss, once you learn them it almost feels like a dance, with dmc5 I was just doing combos since the enemies weren't really anything special
@@GravitonLance I’m not gonna spend hours fighting the same boss to figure out it’s attack pattern only to have to spend hours fighting another boss to figure out it’s attack pattern, and oops! Looks like you died in a boss arena! Looks like you’re gonna have to fight the boss until you either forget to recollect your runes because you’re too focused on playing the game or you beat the boss, which is *very* unlikely. Sure DMC 5’s enemies can be perceived as non special, but pulling off combos just feel so good! I mean, have you seen what’s possible online?
Thank you BeeG for calling out the "Did you know, only X amount of people are subbed to the channel?" brainlets. Honestly, I wish the whole fad would just go away
i like playing soulsborne games as stylishly as possible cause of dmc. its...kinda hard... but you can weapon switch after specific combos. memorizing attack animations. and canceling...also bloodborne having 2 active quick selects lets you use items and magic in their own stylish mid combat ways
I do the same, I always try to find ways to style on enemies, and I've found guite a few :D
There is no excuse to not be stylish at all times, doesn't matter what game it is.
This is why I get bored pretty quickly in soulsborne games when trying a new build. Those games just don't encourage you to do stuff like that and you get punished hard for attempting it.
Give Nioh 2 a try. It's as if souls and dmc had a baby. It got stances, combos, clever stamina recovery system, and so much customization. Damn you feel so fancy once you master if because when even big bossen run out of stamina, they can be combod
@@alfonshedstrom9859Nioh 2 is so peak. My favorite souls like
>FF16 gives you absolute combat freedom so you can play however you want; The only limit to the combat is your imagination
>People choose to button mash
>People complain the game is just a button masher
This is the equivalent to:
>Dad leaves you with $100B giving you the opportunity to live life however you wish; The only limit to you living comfortably is your imagination
>You choose to only accept $5
>You complain that your dad only left you with $5
This is what I've been seeing and thinking as well. I feel like "character action" games are easier to learn harder to master while souls games are harder to learn but easier to master. 100 hours in on Elden Ring and most fights have become much easier and less engaging. 100 hours in on DMC and Bayonetta and I'm on new difficulties trying to Platinum/ S rank every stage.
This feels EXACTLY like the Under the Mayo and Ultrakill controversy. He refused to except that a game can give you the freedom to experiment and learn the hidden systems instead of forcing you to play the way the game wants you to.
Also, to anyone reading this, PLEASE PLAY ULTRAKILL IT IS SO GOOD!!!
Both action game archetypes feature different types of intrinsic motivation as the main fun factors. Soulsborne games encourage the player to continuously play until they are good enough to succeed, while character action games encourage the player to experiment through different weapons and combos and see what they are able to pull off. It seems like the main difference is in implementation; in Soulsbornes, you must get better at the game in order to beat it, but character action games almost never force the player to experiment.
I do wonder how mainstream audiences would react to a character action game that leans more aggressively into the concept of moveset experimentation to the point of essentially forcing it. What if it were like Smash, where your moves are put into a queue after you use them, and they get much weaker when you spam them? Mechanics like this could make some players put the game down, but it also may be more successful in making others intrinsically motivated.
That would be ninja gaiden. Game is prolly the toughest action game ive played lol.
tbh most people probably wouldn't notice
U gotta play nioh man literally what you described above. The game forces you to combo because it's so brutal
@@trollaseum6174 true, ninja gaiden black on master ninja
@@crisschan2463 og ninja gaiden 1 and 2 on master ninja were the only times in gaming where my ass was clenched the entire playthrough lmao
I see you brought up the dangling keys 😂.
Yeah action games will always have a bad rep because there are people who need a clear path laid out for them to follow. Which isn't bad but then they project their thoughts into other games. Which everyone will parrot until devs start listening and end up changing their game to cater towards these people. It's really sad to see.
Also great job on this video bro. You've given me an idea on what I would like to talk about in the future.
You know, of the last years I've been seeing in depth the designs and details that are in the games of Character Action, not only with regard to the combat system and everything it can offer the player, but also in how it is related as a narrative resource or what it tells us about the character.
And something that I've realized about these games, and most likely you have, is that this genre is not about the player getting into the game itself, but rather that the player meets the playable character and adopts his way of being through the mechanics of the game. Something like a character study in the interactive medium.
While journalists and reviewers seek that videogames are at the service of the player with missions and campaigns that they last for weeks, with scenes of a visual spectacle that can only be summarized in a limited QTE or rail section, and customization systems and personalization of avatars for their self-insertion.
The Character Action invites players to take on the role of an actor, and through the gameplay and its design makes it an intrinsic challenge to interpret the character, with some offering a margin of experimentation to improvise (DMC, Bayo, Assault Spy, etc.), or being more strict or/and limited in actions but compensated by demanding greater mastery in mechanics (Fury, Sekiro, Ninja Gaiden, etc.).
But keep in mind that in the end it is the character who defines and marks the action with his identity, just as other unconventional games like Gungrave, [PROTOTYPE] and Aeon Must Die do (or without going as far as they can be seen with the characters of Lady and V in DMC).
As a fan of both soulsborne and DMC, and other action games, i completely agree with you man. Like just because souls and DMC are action games doesn't mean they have to be the same combat they are difrent and they have difrent motivations to play.
as someone who has every flavour of action among my favorites, when i see people hate on a game without even really understanding it saying something among those lines of "just mashing" i remember squidward holding up "the rules of art"
I have a single caveat for the 'games don't need to force you to make use of everything' point - the games that decide not to directly force you to use mechanics need to set up situations that force creativity in general. Like the fury in dmc5 - there's a whole ton of ways to handle that enemy but you cannot treat it like anything other than the fury.
DmC just changed how i play action games(haven't played the game until recently and fell in love with it),now I'm always trying to do combos and style on the enemies.
This is kind of where we all start in some form lol. I'd say that the series itself influenced what i want out of my action games (the fun factor of having a good arsenal of moves and the freedom of using whatever in said arsenal, even if the creative process in picking those feel very intimitating sometimes).
As a soulsborne enjoyer, I completely agree with the retardation of game journalists comparing completely different games with each other.
As opposed to what some people may believe, I find soulsborne more enjoyable for its level and exploration designs and not combat, so comparing it to games like DMC, which is centred on gameplay, is stupid.
Exactly this, I find that the strength of the Fromsoft games are in their level design and not particularly combat.
@@Sincleaverthen armored core 6 came out
A lot of final fantasy fans haven’t come to terms with the genre change. They don’t understand that prescribed gameplay is almost the antithesis to action games, which is to be creative. You don’t need enemies to tell you what moves to use, you decide that yourself.
I don’t wanna be antagonistic but if they weren’t gonna engage with the mechanics even after how streamlined the game is compared to dmc or bayo, then Suzuki might as well have went all out and gave Clive 100+ moves.
This is the exact kind of sentiment you will see a lot in the places like r/finalfantasy, where their you will find an incredible amount of people complaining about things like “why is their no elemental weakness”, not realizing how mechanics like that are a big no no for good action game design.
Though their reasoning is less about dark souls and more about them expecting 16 to have more typical turn base combat mechanics, despite the trailers showing otherwise…
Dude the FF Reddit actually gives me brain rot about this game. I had a guy complaining Torgal was useless and wanted Magic to auto charge without the charm and was thinking “bruh those are the points to optimise the game”.
Trying to imagine what FF16 would play like with elemental weaknesses. It would utterly break the game and make every encounter either 1) an unbearable slog or 2) a tedious exercise in guesswork.
DMC3 had elemental weaknesses, they were just somewhat minor. Emphasis on somewhat, they were small enough that you probably wouldn’t notice them if you weren’t paying attention but they were big enough that it’s worth going out of your way to use them. Elemental weaknesses are not inherently bad in character action games as long as they aren’t a major mechanic that you have to structure your gameplay around like in an RPG, (or like in DmC) if it’s like DMC3 and it’s just damage buffs that is in my opinion good character action game design. That question by itself is not bad, I would assume the problem is everything else they are saying along with it. If FF16 doesn’t have elemental weaknesses at all, not even as a minor mechanic as a nod to the previous games, that is something I would be somewhat annoyed about, if that was a major part of the older games (I wouldn’t know, I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game).
DMC3 is also definitely not the only character action game with elemental weaknesses, it’s just the only one I can remember at this time.
@@assassinonprozac Elemental Weaknesses are a decently significant part of most FF combat systems. That doesn’t make it particularly deep in most FF games, and I don’t think it’s such an iconic mechanic to make it an FF staple the way you are describing.
Besides, until you start mastering abilities, you only have at max access to 3 elements without Eikon abilities and the game’s story/pacing means they can only hand out Eikons at certain points in the story (but I do think the game does a great job of organically and evenly spreading them out).
@@meathir4921 I literally said I have never played a Final Fantasy game, I know absolutely nothing about them.
Not really a criticism, but if not for DS3, I don't think I would've jumped outside of my comfort zone and played DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Nioh etc. Before, my gaming diet consisted of Wrasslin, Sanic, and Warframe (lol). Outside of that, this is an interesting video, I watched the other one before it was deleted.
The funny thing about people who complain about action games are the same ones who can't do nothing in dmc besides doing the Basic 3 hit combo of Dante in dmc games
I feel this as a huge JRPG fan who loves turn based games. Every turn based JRPG gets slammed by reviewers for being boring and a "mash x simulator", but praise action JRPGs with little system depth. Yeah, the game is boring if all you do is level up attack and do basic attack moves for every character in the same way that DMC 5 is boring if you just use Rebellion and Ebony & Ivory the whole game. FF16 is awesome, and exactly how an action JRPG should be
switching elements of eikons and combining them together in unique ways as using Titan to launch in the air, then a blizzard, or garuda to keep stylish in the air then finish off with bahamut or phoenix was insanely cool. The director combat wise worked on a lot of games and i beat bosses when i was underleveled.
I think all games incluiding turn based are fun, BG3 can also be fun. You gotta give it time.
I'm really glad you touched upon this topic and delivered a very clear and concise argument over the horrible misconception from the general audience of these types of games. Great shit as usual.
I think the one valid criticism beneath it all is that often on the default or highest accessible at the start of the game difficulty, the game is just easy, even for someone completely new to action games. I feel like having the option to choose a difficulty that really forces you to at least gain some degree of competence relatively quickly with the full combat system’s options is reasonable, as players are lazy and will not try any harder than they have to. I’ve seen decently valid complaints most recently on FF16 with how on Action mode enemies just die too quickly. I personally had more fun on FF mode with the combat mechanics.
It’s strange because Square had this figured out as early as KH2FM with Critical mode and how that actually starts you with more combat options and is decently challenging from the get go if you want the action in action RPG to really shine.
Totally agree, XVI's biggest failing is its lack of a Hard mode available from the beginning.
Ultimanic mode is brutal, strategic and fun for dedicated action fans, but you shouldn't have to beat this 40-hour game just to unlock it.
@@Eziokilla9595 I don’t think Ultimaniac needs to be accessible because it’s pretty brutal, but certainly FF should be.
tbf KH2FM was the execption not the rule considering they botched all the subsequent critical modes
@@neobahumuth6 At least they let you PICK Critical.
@@meathir4921 that wasn't my point
Funny thing is, most games nowadays have this consistent mindset where you have to constantly dodge the bosses' attacks first before hitting them with miserable damage while they're open. Then you have to back away as they recover and repeat this terrible pattern over and over. I'd rather take button-mash than have that.
And these game journalists are pure vampires trying to suck out for any content of the story more than the gameplay. THAT is their downright inhumane behaviour. They want a movie by default in their settings, not an action game. And they expect movies from those games.
Well that’s why these same people opt for using the “insane 1 million damage one shot builds 😮😮😮😮”
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@billyboleson2830Yeah, when I was looking up Eldin Ring guides for gear, I only saw stuff like: “This build will make the game easy!” “This build one shots bosses!”
And the other option was dragging my feet through boss after boss, bosses that feel more like brick walls I have to slam my head against to break instead of actually fun game bosses. I’m not against hard bosses, I loved the Kingdom Hearts post game bosses, but having an entire game full of “hard” bosses just makes me not feel joy when I defeat a boss.
@@randomidoit9605 you can do a level 1 run and be ok even with unupgraded weepons bcs the game is not hard
@@LaloBalteus Have you ever face Lingering Will?
It doesn’t matter how hard or easy you view Kingdom Hearts, the point is that Eldin Ring is difficulty over fun, the challenges mean nothing because you’ll face another just like it around the corner, completely desensitizing me to any sense of accomplishment. In games like Kingdom Hearts, the hard challenges mean something… Because they’re harder, they stand out more, and they’re more fun, and they feel like I accomplished something.
Technical action games pretty much share the same barrier of entry as fighting games. This is why I think the Souls Borne horde comes down on them. Watching anyone transition from a game like Dark Souls 3 to a game like Nioh1 or Nioh 2 almost always has some trouble. Because in order to succeed in a game like Nioh 2 or DMC 4/5, you kind of have to study the character like a fighting game character. Its not good enough to just know the enemy weak points and punish moments. You have to also be familiar with all of the characters combos, tech, cancels, parries, just frames yada yada yada.
Its a different kind of experience that gets overlooked because its not what they expect.
DMC might honestly be the first game I remember ever experiencing and immediately falling in love with and in turn with the spectacle fighter genre. They are literally the case of "easy to learn, hard to master", the one thing these games subtly teach you is, here is a toybox full of fun stuff, have fun with it. The problem journalists and... sadly lots of gamers today that are not fans of this genre have is, they simply take out one toy and stick with it the whoooole hog, eventually becoming bored of it, even though there is a box still full of fun things they didn't even attempt to try.
I adore the idea of being given tons of moves and it being left up to me to see what, how and if it chains in a satisfying way. Example, me and my mates bought Nioh 2 and let me tell you, that game's combat system ... mmmmmhhhhmmmm... *chef's kiss*. The moment I sunk my teeth in there and saw all the skill moves and discovered there are hidden ones you can get as drops, my brain entered GIGA mode. I spent hours upon hours in the training dojo playing around with combos. 100 hours of fun and me hitting New Game+++ later, my mates were like "Hey, dude, this game hard, let's co-op" and I thought, sure, why not? And then I witnessed the horror of their gameplay... one attack chain, over... and over... and over... and over... and over again. One was using one of the weapons I was, and when I bounced around and sliced and slashed in what I would describe as the only way Vergil would be proud of I hear "That's cool, how you do that?" _insert explanation here_ "Nah, that too many buttons, too hard, not worth damage"... Like what the actual fuck?
Couple days later they complained the gameplay got boring and both of them quit... MFers made the game boring for themselves and got mad at the game. Literally, missed the nail and blamed the hammer.
dark souls and its consequences have been a disaster for action games
I think the biggest reason I clicked so much with the Devil May Cry series compared to some other action games I've played is how much the ranking system rewards variance. I feel too many action games have the problem of having a "best combo" that can carry you through most of the game with you only needing to switch things up if an enemy is immune to "best combo". DMC however not only gives you an extensive movelist but encourages you to utilize it if you want a great score. I actually wanted to upgrade weapons for new moves and try out all the different attacks to see what I could pull off instead of sticking with the handful that did the most damage.
It's not limited to the action genre, since a lot of games have the problem of "this attack does the most damage, why bother with anything else?" and if you want a game with extensive options, you need to overcome that hurdle of not making any one combo or weapon or skill "the best".
Fr, I feel you. People can't grasp the freedom and choices you can do with DMC. Especially, since it isn't bogged down or reliant on stats or builds. In the end, it's up to ourselves to push through- before burnout wears ourselves out like it did me.
It's like how many opportunities and chances a fighting game's combo mechanic gives you.
Although, with DMC and similar titles you can mash and slash to victory even on hard. But, you still can't go full smooth brain. You can autopilot with a handful of moves, yet spamming stinger can be quite the endrunner.
Also, people like DSP believe DMC2 is a good game because of blind nostalgia, Dante's "CoOl JAcKet", and WaLLrUNnINg.
DMC2 is absolute fucking trash, to find out that DSP likes it is pretty funny and surprisingly unsurprising. HOWEVER, you gotta admit Dante has a really cool jacket in that game.
As bad as dmc2 is the art direction is still at least as good as dark souls which is saying a lot
Dmc2 is an ok third person shooter lol
Calling these games "button mashers" is actually braindead. You control the buttons you press, the lack of self awareness from these people is astounding. Then they try to say if the game doesn't make them use other moves then the combat is bad. But isn't he point of games having fun? How are you having fun mashing 1 button and actively refusing to do anything else? They love praisng souls games for build and weapon variety but then refuse to have any variety in their gameplay. How does that make any sense?
Thanks a lot for making a video about this. Very hot take, but Forspoken actually had a very fun and enjoyable action combat system. And yet it was victim to all these complaints, “you just spam the basic attack to win” and “you don’t need to use all your tools to win” - despite the fact that high level Forspoken gameplay was actually pretty damn high level and incredibly fun.
Very well said, I really like Kingdom Hearts 2 and 3 as action games but people still shit on them as button mashers while playin on the easiest difficulty and still not being able to do optional bosses.
😂
I wouldn't say it's soulsborne' fault, would say it's quite the opposite, the games offers varieties of weapons to choose from. It's a ever present sentiment that lots of people have since early 2010's. Like not even just action games, i remember having arguments about MGSV back in release with people calling the gameplay boring but refusing to use anything but suppressed Tranq Sniper and the sneaking suit
I feel that's a problem of signalling the game's intentions. Many games present themselves as problem-solving exercises. Find the solution to the problem, then execute it. If a player finds an efficient, reliable and safe solution to a gameplay challenge, they will feel like they've done what the game was asking them to do.
Even moreso if the game has a strong narrative element, because their character would probably be looking to solve their problems as efficiently, reliably and safely as possible too. Their character wouldn't be playing around with their tools in the middle of a mission, or doing silly shit just to see what happens. To many players, exploring their options would feel like actively defying the game's intent. So unless the game forces them into a situation where they have to reconsider their approach, they're unlikely to ever do so.
@@tbotalpha8133 Not that every is a perfect fully polished masterpiece but i see this as a player mentality problem not the games. It makes sense someone who started playing games pre 2010's to think more like that, games used to be more linear and focused, but nowadays with most games going open world and expanding in options(even when it's not needed) that refusing to experiment or simply use strategies you normally don't use just for fun is like actively trying to ruin/limit your experience. On my example about MGSV, one of the best stealth games to this day, full of options and mechanics to get a hold from, even if you limit yourself to non lethal no detection playstyle, there so many ways to achieve just that there is no excuse to not have fun with it
@@ricardomiles2957 Players can play games however they like. If players go to games looking for a challenge, and they find a braindead strat that works 100% of the time, they're going to feel disappointed. It doesn't matter if the braindead strat exists because the game is intentionally forgiving enough to allow experimentation. Some players want the catharsis of overcoming an obstacle. The game developers (and/or their marketing team) need to communicate to the player what their game is actually about. Then it's up to the players to decide if that's the experience they want.
Some people will always be dumb or lack media literacy, of course. But sneering at people for not playing games the way you personally think is best is myopic.
@@tbotalpha8133 they can, and in fact i have no problem with someone sticking to one single strategy or even cheesing(i will never fight demon of hatred legit, ever). My point is, very specifically, that if you are invested enough in the game to express you are bored out of a strategy and not just dropping the game or whanot and actively refusing to explore the tools the game is giving you, with modern games meaning a lot of them, the problem is exclusively on you. A linear game will force you very clerly to explore and open world/rpg games will show a pop everytime you unlock something or even show a quick tutorial.
You just said everything that I've ever wanted to say. I kinda feel like this kinda mindset of "If a game doesn't force me to use other moves it's a shiddy button masher." Is kinda killing people's enjoyment with video games. And also why are people listening to what DSP has to say lol.
why are people listening to what journalists have to say either
@@SansBadTime I 100% agree sans.
my biggest gripe with this is how instead of trying to work on the combat devs just throw some damage numbers and rpg elements to make up for it.
The damage numbers and RPG elements don't make up for it anyway. Repetitive combat with no depth whatsoever is just objectively bad gameplay design and it belongs in the 1990 era.
@@SolonGaming I agree, but devs do it because they know that will be enough to appeal to the masses who don't really appreciate nuanced combat design.
@SolonGaming
What’s bad about combat in the 1990 era? Streets of Rage, Alien vs Predator, Guardian Heroes put most action games to shame.
The annoying thing is when people say things like this they’re always looked at as “elitists”, “gatekeepers”, etc. when it’s just actually true.
Especially when you said 99% of people will just see cool planned sequences and think it’s the greatest thing ever when they’re missing the heart of the game which is the combat. Wether it’s doom eternal, DMC, bayonetta or any other type of game with a deep combat system they always get overlooked and most people will dislike them because they make you think in a different way from the rest of the industry. I always appreciate it when let’s players try even a bit to understand the mechanics of such games because it is such a pleasant watch to see people discover what makes those games so special. Like 99% of let’s players who played DMC 5 looked at cool cutscenes and a neuron was activated in their brain when they don’t realize they can do even crazier shit themselves in the game. Instead they spam stinger in DT and stay on swordmaster then call the game shallow •_• like it’s so frustrating. What’s even worse is they go back to playing the same 5 shitty games over and over again then call gaming dead like yeah I’d think that it was too if all I played was Fortnite, COD, valorant, CS:GO, LOL, etc.
Anyways great video as always BeeG!
@@avoryeda7606 So the solution is force people to play the game the devs want them to right? Doom Eternal did just that and people called it dogshit because of it.
There is no pleasing people ISTG. You make a game too easy people start acting smart and say “wEll iT’s thEir faUlt theY allOwed ThAt tyPe oF playstYle tO bE posSible iN tHe fIrst pLace!!!”, you make a game force the player to play the way the game is intended and harder the majority will call it “restrictive” and “the dark souls of X genre” because it’s slightly hard.
@@the_msecompletely with you lol. I’ve seen way too many people like those. There’s no way to please this crowd.
Make the base game too easy with liberty and they complain “the devs shouldn’t have let me do so”.
Then you force the players to adapt to the game and they’re all like “well I should be able to play my game however I want”
@@examplify4248 exactly. I don’t know when the gaming industry became this bad but Jesus Christ it is very bad currently. I just feel bad for the devs honestly.
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@randomidoit9605 I tried sekiro and couldn’t get into it. I don’t find doing the same boss for 4 hours until I can get a single hit in fun
It's no game's fault. People should chill out and enjoy games for what they are, instead of trying to be critics.
There's nothing wrong with criticizing, people should just learn to accept criticism as a fact of life. Everyone is a critic sometimes and asking people to "just chill out and enjoy games for what they are" is asking for the death of nuance and subjectivity instead for mindless blob of consumerist identity. what games are is what u make of them yourself as an individual and how u choose to express yourself in it and how you personally experience it, that's what matters and people shouldn't just "chill out" and shut up about how they saw things that's stupid there is no objective critique of games for everything people think is objectively bad there is someone out there who enjoyed it for some reason and their experience is just as valid
@@Lin_Eileen You took my comment way too seriously, but I can rethink it for a more serious approach here. People can obviously critique games, who am I to tell critics to stop reviewing, but my impression is that in recent days people go overboard with it. Bad games deserve critique of course. My comment is also mostly a response to what the video is about, and I think I have a point there. How much weight does critique have to a developer who has a vision for a different kind of audience than that which is giving the critique? Thanks for the response though, my comment was a bit too direct.
Its sad cuz there is so much variety in action games.
Like from DMC, Nioh 1/2 and other games that encourage completely custom strings of attacks or Implosion, Wo Long, Elsword, Vindictus, etc that have 2 main buttons for a normal attack string but alternate timings of the presses change your attack string and can feel rhythmic along side your dodging mechanisms, there are so many ways to implement variation and give the user the freedom to fight in their own way.
Part of the gratest travesties that have been committed against action games is the fact that due to a certain game's level of popularity, most game devs don't try to improve upon already existing combat systems. It always ends up being a simplification of what we had before.
I call it calculated button-mashing; I'm definitely mashing buttons, but I'm having fun because I know what I'm doing, as opposed to someone only mashing the attack button and getting bodied.
I already know I'm about to agree with this man. Dude has never had a bad action game take and I will blindly side with him when it comes to action games because he is basically an action game god.
he's part of the small group of people who can factually respond with "skill issue" if he wanted to XD
a great example of your point is people being like "whoa I didn't know you could launch enemies in ff16!"
it takes all of 5 minutes messing with abilities outside of training mode to figure this out but people don't even want to do that.
you're on the mark with the difficulty point too. reviewers, journalists and YTers alike, make blanket statements on every game of every genre without exploring any nuance at all. like playing crash team racing and calling the handling bad because you can't turn a corner. or playing ff16 and calling the combat boring because you can't do anything aside from the basic 4-hit combo and abilities. more than ever, games are providing stats and information in-game and holding the player's hand, but you can't do anything if the player refuses to engage with you in the first place.
Let's look at another discourse surrounding a game inspired by Devil May Cry. Ultrakill or as it has been affectionally dubbed Devil May Quake. Underthemayo trashed the game in short he got by just fine using an upgrade to the starting weapon and the starting weapon remains viable. He also argues for the inclusion of an ammo count on the guns. Ultrakill is inspired by Devil MAy Cry. It is not about conserving resources it is about creating gun combos. An Ammo count would defeat the whole point of the game by limiting what kind of combs you can make. What he clearly thinks is that if a game doesn't do enough to force you to use variety then the variety it does have is bad.
The funniest thing to me is that the people who complain about a game letting you use the mechanics to tackle the situation in whatever way you feel like, can also be the same people that complain when the game forces you to use certains mechanics in certain situations, arguing that it limits player freedom and expression.
But here’s the real question, everyone always talks about how mechanically deep DMC5 is however no one is willing to teach how to actually learn/improve at the game.
You do that with playing the game my dude, Thats the point. EXPERIENCE THE ACTUAL GAME
there is more indepth guides for dmc5 than rest of the other dmc games combined lol,and they are not hard to find on youtube,might even have the guides up on steam community pages like dmc4 has.
@@owyemen9367 I have been experiencing the game, I’m still terrible at it though! Lol
Honestly, it's kind of upsetting that I almost did not buy FF16, thinking that the combat was going to be a snooze fest due to the "Button smashing" complaints. I'm glad I saw your combo video to change my mind.
I’m pretty sure I could beat that game just mashing the attack button over and over
this video made me realize why i am very strict about the types of games i play
i like games that let you experiment and eventually let you turn the game into your personal sandbox of expression
but i also want it to feel rewarding both to finish a game and to replay it with the knowledge you have now
when i buy a game i don't just play it once and leave it no i stay in that game and learn the tech and eventually become too good at it
agreed
me too, i always like games that propose an improvement to our innate "mechanical skills" rather than stat buffing like every souls and triple aa games nowadays, putting rpg mechanics into anything
"Daam this race game doesn't have any RPG elements to it therefore its a bad game" -IGN or smth
As a souls enjoyer, the combat of those games, soulslikes, is actually quite shallow by comparison. Its servicable at best.
That aside, i can argue playing within limitations drives creativity another.
Or, the better argument, Character Action Games are closer to one on one fighters. To get adept at the game requires setting aside time to memorize and perform feats with the character. Thats really cool and all, but not why im there. I played Devil May Cry & Mortal Kombat for the spectacle, beat the campaign and moved on. I am more interested in experiencing new stories so gaining mastery over a game's mechanics isnt as important to me.
I totally agree that character action games are more akin to fighting games than action RPGS or Soulsborne. Sure, you can beat up the CPU all day in a fighting game just spamming the same move over and over, you could even beat some human opponents like this. But this strategy won't work forever, and you're completely missing the point of the game by playing like that. It's the same deal in CA games. You're meant to experiment and learn how those tools can be used in tandem with one another.
I had a dialog with my friend the other Day about FF16. He said, that everyone He have watched played this game with button mashing. In responce, i sent him some ComboMad video from 16 and told him:
"If they want to play FF16 as a Batman Arkham series, let them. Developers intended it to be DMC style of game."
"You have to be very lucky that Ultrakill wasn't made by you because it would suck!"
- Arsi Patala "Hakita"
I think some people's brain are just wired differently. I remember the first time I encounterd this and being equally weirded out. I was looking for a DMC 3 playthrough and I found this guy who was basically playing DMC 3 as if it were Dark Souls. Just refusing to do any combos or engage with the combat in any meaningful way because he thought it was "stupid to seek for the game's approval", he was basically trying to rebel against the game giving him a score because he just couldn't understand the idea of people exploring and experimenting with a game's combat out of their own interest, because they think it's fun. It's odd but there are people like that.
There is NOTHING more sick than me pressing DODGE against the boss!!!111 It's the SICKEST most HARDCORE feat in all of gaming!!!11 All these spoiled Animal Crossing Candy Crush FEEEMALES don't understand the COMPLEXITY and DEPTH of muh SOULSBORNE gamez!!!! *strokes neckbeard*
Lol was it lobosjr
Good vid man.
It always kind of annoys me the way people approach action games like DMC and Bayonetta with the shallow unga bunga button mash mentality. These games do so much to encourage you to be flashy and experiment. They put you in the perspective of a character that does insane feats casually, they have a system that is constantly telling you how flashy/stylish you should be, the entire theming of the games are clearly built around flashy/ creative gameplay and yet people seem to still say they're not encouraged to try and diversify their playstlye, simply because they weren't literally barred from progressing. Where's the fun in face rolling and winning man?
it takes a while for me to find anyone streaming who doesn't have that mentality and it somewhat frustrates me, they always beat the game once and then move on to a different game
@@SansBadTime It's an extremely unhealthy mindset. Must consume to consume more. They don't even try to enjoy the game they're playing, and they don't realize how much they're missing. I've had this mindset, recognized it, and have tried to break away from it. What's the point of playing a game if you're already thinking about what game you should be playing next.
100% Agree. I don't blame Soulsbourne games as I enjoy them too, but everything you said is still true. Both players and developers are to blame as whenever a game with deep combat gets released, barely the 1% of gamers will engage with said depth of gameplay. People will resort to the simlest thing and then rely on set pieces that "anyone" can enjoy. There's a reason Bayo 1 is still better than 2 and 3. There's a reason Nero exists. There's a reason for NG3 to be what it is.
As a huge soulsborne fans, I cannot express how much I agree with this video. I grew up with action games, some of my fav childhood games are games like devil may cry 3.
So it annoys me to no extent how every game tries to replicate the souls formula these days and the worst part is they don't understand the fundamentals of souls either. I absolutely hated the new god of war because of this. The freedom we had in the previous games is completely lost and it genuinely made me sad as I kept playing that game. It's fine if people like it, but it was extremely barebones and took all the charm from the god of war games. That's why I absolutely adored Hi-Fi rush this year, such a breath of fresh air. It should have gotten more recognition.
Discover your channel today through a random recommendation. Banger video.
It seems to me due to popularity of soulsborne games, people make it as if Boss fights are the highlights of action games. In reality fighting the hordes are where your creativity is actually test out. Trying to combo while anticipating enemies coming at you is harder and more unpredictable than fighting a one and one boss you already remember the pattern.
That heavily depends on the game. In your comment, it is suggested that both DMC and Soulsborne games can both be subsumed under action games, and in Bloodborne (the only offical soulsborne I've played thus far), bosses are the highlight.
What you wrote in your comment can apply to BB, but to a much lesser extent than it would in DMC, and it would seem such is true in the other soulsborne games as well, from what I can tell.
This kinda thing heavily depends on the game you are playing, the whole idea of an action game is interactions, and again depending on the game bosses might have way more interactions than a mob fight or vice versa, it's not particularly about what is the highlight it's about what the game is trying to push as the highlight
This video is exactly what I thought when people started saying these action games are "button mashers". Just because the game doesn't shove the mechanics in your face, doesn't mean they shouldn't be utilized in combat at all. When I first got into action games such as yakuza, all I ever did was mash the same rush combo and called it a day. And because of that mindset I thought the combat was just a "button masher" and nothing else to it. However, I decided to go back into the game and actually take the time to look at the moves and quirks of each style/character. I soon found myself loving the combat and I personally believe its got one of the best combat systems I have ever experienced. This revelation I had, made me realize that these journalists just do mash they're way through the game as fast they can so they can get a review out. despite the fact that they didn't even bother to look at the meat and bones that these action games provide. Anyway, I love your videos and keep up the stylish combos!
rush weave cancel combos my beloved
@@sliippy2152 for real
You put into words exactly how I felt going from games like Quake and Doom and Titanfall 2, to Doom Eternal. It feels like it's just a game of simon says with complications, it feels restrictive in how it wants you to play.
Mixing today's gameplaying with TH-cam gaming is all about money now. It is not about a sharing experience in what the gamer is showing to their audience for quite sometime now. Thanks TH-cam for degrading the quality and mindset of the Yotubers, overall. Good video, BeeG.
I was never too into the soulsborne stuff. Like yeah, I put a decent amount of time into DS3 but it pales to how much I've played DMC. The amount of freedom you have in games like DMC is wonderful and why I keep coming back.
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@randomidoit9605 Bro is copying this and replying it under every top comment lmao
The irony of me playing Dark Souls while watching this lmao. But yeah I'd like to add that I think there's a huge problem ingrained in people over the last decade. The challenge run genre has honestly done a lot of detriment towards how people use their tools. If you aren't handicapping yourself to inflate your ego, then you're not gaming. There's a reason why people hate on BOTW/TOTK and it's because they're now forced to go beyond just sitting on one weapon which is what Elden Ring allows and so people don't change up their playstyles really. A common strategy is the first order dominant strategy and people will always gravitate towards what plainly works without much effort. Then it's a pedantic race to describe what is and what isn't skill based on the same variables without realizing that a game like Souls is greater for more than the sum of it's parts and not just the stamina combat. But the general populous are filled with egos and pushing the goal posts.
Another thing that's disheartening is how people say things like "I could never get this good at the X's combat" because they limit themselves while also going in depth in other series which is depressing personally. It's not even about practice but how it sometimes feels a bit willful to ignore things like enemy step and dodge offset because let's be real, they wanna sell the game to you or relate to the base experience which can be fair but actual game dicussion sucks online. For example P3 is always sold as a RPG but it's a life sim just as much as it is a RPG. DMC is a wacky action game but like you've stated, it's only something played through once and I think a core problem isn't just the one and done reviews/playthroughs. It's that difficulties aren't unlockables anymore. People like to rush the hardest difficutly and do all the content to mix max and get a perfect run so they can talk about everything online without just realizing that you can just sit down and play a game and not need to know everything about it at the first chance. Online wiki culture has honestly ruined people because it constantly fills them with information and a lack of an urge to ever pick the game up to learn anything.
I agree. Souls games, or any game really for that matter, shouldn't simply be known for its "challenge runs"...
Personally, I find myself switching between weapons only a few times in these games. As much as I love them--fromsoftware is probably my favorite developer--I wouldn't mind seeing them take an approach that rewards or even forces players to vary their playstyle. It would be even funner that way, and automatically would require a bit more creativity from the player (which is there already to an extent, but some more never hurts!)
@@gigabit6226 I really agree with you. It's a fun aspect to partake in but there's no reason that should be thing people instantly think about when they talk about Souls. It does a huge disservice to whole game.
The term "Button Masher" seems to have become an insult when describing a game that has you mashing buttons most of the time. But let's be real, a good chunk of video games are button mashers, but it depends on what kind of button mashing you are doing. The strategic or the mindless.
It's not even in action games you can find this dichotomy, you can look towards turn-based JRPGs as well. Some of them allow you to get past fights just by mashing the attack command while others actually require to use every skill to your disposal.
In the former, sure I can use this magic ability or that magic to make a battle more interesting, but it's not required of me because I can just mash the same command to win. So how do I make it more strategic? By giving my enemies more strength and abilities and different tactics that require prioritization.
There's also FPS games as well, particularly DOOM 2016 versus Eternal. DOOM 2016 gives you all these weapons with various attachments, but the best weapon in the whole game is the SSG, which has no attachments, as it's very powerful, has a huge ammo capacity, and can kill a Baron of Hell, the strongest non-boss demon in the game, in just about 3-4 shots. Why would I use any other weapon other than the SSG at this point?
Eternal doesn't let you do that, it actually requires you to use more than just the SSG to get through combat encounters since Eternal places emphasis on weapon switching through extremely limited ammo capacity. You try playing Eternal the same exact way playing 2016 just using one weapon and your going to get wrecked even on Hurt Me Plenty (Normal mode).
As for character action games like DMC and Soulsborne, first up it's dumb trying to compare the two because one is a spectacle fighter and the other is an action RPG. Instead I'd use DMC and Ninja Gaiden as a better example. DMC is all about expression but to be honest, I rarely ever played stylishly in DMC growing up because up until DMC5 with Dante's Quad-S function, I never saw a real reason to even with the style meter present, I always fought the demons in a survival sense. If I did something cool, it was usually by accident. Ninja Gaiden on the other hand actually requires you to play well because the enemies are fast and relentless, so being fast and over the top is not an option, but a requirement, and the games properly ease you into them as well.
Same goes for FFXVI which honestly wasn't that good in terms of it being a spectacle fighter. It's pacing is already diabolically bad due to the high amount of cutscenes and filler dialogue, but moreever even if the game that actually shows what moves and combos you do in the real-time combat, it bugged me why there was no combo meter to actually reward you with playing stylishly, but it's not even a requirement either because the game is too easy, even on action, which is why many saw it's a mindless button masher, because it is. Yea I can probably do sick combos in it, but it's not a requirement for me to beat the game, nor am I mechanically rewarded for it, so why bother?
It doesn't help the fact that games like DMC, FFXVI, and Bayonetta lock their hard modes behind NG+, which never sat right with me as that doesn't invoke confidence from the developers in the player's ability to handle challenge should they want it. You should never, EVER, have to beat a game once to unlock a challenging difficulty, and if said challenging difficulty is too hard, you can always lower it down to normal or easy just like in Stranger of Paradise, a Soulsborne game that has difficulty options. Difficulty options are never a bad thing, but they should not be an excuse for a game's normal intended difficulty to be easy.
Yup been telling people the same. I have even been saying that DMC has a much higher skill cap than Soulsborne games.
First of all games like DMC, Bayonetta, FF VXI are furthest away from button mashing. They have got a super high skill cap and when you know how to play every single button you press is deliberate and you need deep understanding and knowledge, not to mention practice.
Higher skill cap but lower skill floor which is imo the biggest issue with these games. It's like the devs are just not confident in their games hitting home with their target demographic and want to avoid it flopping so they go with the casualization route which is very dumb.
Elden Ring is only 1 difficulty and it's hard from the get go but it still sold a metric shitton because it resonated strongly with its core audience and that attracted more attention towards it. Same case with Resident evil 4 Remake. That game is no joke on difficulty (unless you play on baby mode) and it's on track to be the best selling game in the franchise.
Really wish dmc devs would take notice and stop with the piss easiness to appeal to the masses design they've been doing.
@@bruhder5854 the only action games to have both is maybe doom, Ultrakill sort of and Ninja Gaiden but that game has the opposite issue of dominant strategy where there no point in experimenting since one option is so much better then the rest
My favorite style of action game is Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, the upcoming Stellar Blade, etc. I don’t consider the Souls games good action games. They’re trying to mix action with RPG, but they’re just not as fun as a pure action game. Sekiro came close, but the whole game was about parries, not combos.
Haven't even watched it yet, but TALK TO EM!!
“Has the dev team never learned from Elden Ring?” - NightSkyPrince complaining about the difficulty.
Literally dude the game isn’t even easy on FF mode it’s only easy if you truly mastered the game just like every other action game in the entire world. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it needs to be a fucking souls game.
So, funnily enough about a day before this was uploaded I beat DMC1 for the first time ever, which is my first experience with one of these kinds of games. It was satisfying, fun, challenging but fair and has given me a newfound interest in a style of game I had never given much thought to before. It's left me wanting more, which is why I'm already halfway through DMC3 now. Of course something I learned very quickly was that button mashing was probably the worst way to approach the encounters in the game and frankly I have a hard time believing most critics even manage to beat these games if all they're managing is Dante's little platformer ass three hit combo.
When I quit Eldin Ring, I literally played the entire DMC series while never going back. Eldin Ring is overrated as all hell.
@@randomidoit9605 I get your opinion but why did you have to spam it under every single comment
@@gigabit6226 I just want to know how people have fun in Eldin Ring, I want to like the game, but I don't know how to.
@@gigabit6226 Good point.
I’m kinda torn on expecting reviewers to consider multiple playthroughs when evaluating games.
On the one hand, in most genres, a second playthrough is treated as a bonus, not a requirement, even if you have the option of taking different paths or NG+ exclusive stuff. So I can’t really blame people for approaching games like that as their default, as in a lot of cases they really won’t be missing out on much.
On the other hand, there are absolutely games where I’d consider the first playthrough to be the tutorial, in a sense. I don’t play many character action games (though I enjoy watching them,) so my go to example for that is Star Ocean; an action-RPG series with insane depth to its subsystems that are doled out in pieces throughout the campaign.
On your first playthrough, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing at first and just experiment bit by bit, until you start seeing the bigger picture near the very end. But if you start the game over, you can take that understanding and plan ahead, making use of all the little tricks you learned last time and break the game in half.
(It’s to the point where the game unlocks higher difficulties after the first clear, but doesn’t have NG+ because you don’t need the boost. All you need is the knowledge of how the game really works.)
But most people don’t expect that from an RPG so they never even know to look for it, much less try a second playthrough, and so they miss out on a huge aspect of the series.
But is that on them for not noticing it? Or is it on the games for not cluing them into it hard enough? It’s really hard to say because it’s so heavily influenced by the expectations a person brings to the game, not just the game itself. And XVI being an action RPG brings with it the same expectation for many.
I'm getting flashbacks from UnderTheMayo's review of Ultrakill... This man was saying the game was bad because the game doesn't force you to use any weapon other than the starting revolver... That's the game where you can ricochet your railcannon off a coin to hit an enemy multiple times, parry your own shotgun shots and even ride your own rockets. I guess some people just can't have fun unless they're literally forced into the fun zone...
Anyway, related to the Soulsborne argument, I'll admit I recently started playing Yakuza games again after spending way too much time in Soulsborne games, and I kind of started thinking like these game journalists for a bit. I was thinking that, perhaps, the combat in Yakuza games just isn't good... Until I finally realized that it's not bad at all, it simply offers a different kind of fun. When I'm playing Dark Souls, the most fun part is fighting a challenging but fair boss that forces me to play perfectly... But when I'm playing Yakuza? I'm having the most fun when beating up random goons on the street. The boss fights are fine, but usually too limiting. I have fun just coming up with fun ways to bully goons and I never get tired of all the brutal heat actions the various protagonists can execute... It's a different kind of fun and I appreciate it.
Bro downloaded a voice patch just to set the record straight
I've been a DMC fan ever since I got the demo on my PS2 copy of RE: Code Veronica and the combat gameplay stuck with me ever since. Then I was lucky to play Dragon's Dogma and my standard for combat went sky high; I started FF16 and when I got to fight I felt that DMC "oomph" in the movements, yes, you can mash to win but the Eikon system and the ability to switch mid battle is godlike. I've spent more hours grinding flashy combos on the training mode than on the main quest, and all I can say to those that believe FF16's combat sucks is; git gud.
Hell yeah brother, I like this mindset.
I see takes that says "well the combos in training mode doesn't matter anyway cuz you can't do them in the main game" when being able to pull off those combos in the first place is a form of player skill expression and is part of the experience. I really hate how people sideline training modes in action games like that.
I have noticed that usually the most unpopular fights in games with a focus in combat are the ones where you need to do things very differently from the rest of the game. Sometimes it's warranted but often it seems that the average gamer can only go on autopilot and hates it when they have to think once in a while.
Anyone who uses the term "button masher" doesn't know shit about good video games.
Electic underground is unironically one of these game journalist types, despite always throwing shade at them while doing the same exact thing they do. Instead of saying "its just like dark souls" just replace dark souls with shmups, and thats exactly what he does. He throws shade at these modern games and acts like shmups are the seed for all gaming genres and everything is like it. The ultimate genre and only genre we should be playing
Yeah bout time someone mentioned him
@@dc7981 funny part is, he acts like games like final fantasy 16 have "too much fat" in them, but then acts like these shallow linear arcade shmups have all these mechanics and play styles, when all it really boils down to is literally dodging bullets and holding in the fire button. Final fantasy 16 absolutely destroys any shmup or arcade beatemup with its variety in gameplay/combat options it's not even funny. Bro just doesnt like story/atmosphere in games at all and acts like it's a crime
@@dc7981 sad thing is, people like him dont like variety in games and dont like to actually use the problem solving side of their brains
Well made, Beeg! And I agree with everything you said, it made me sad the way how critics like Kotaku were slamming on FF16 and calling it a stupid button masher. Action games are awesome and the creativity you can do with them is near limitless.
My only real criticism with the combat was that I wish the base sword combat had more combos/moves. Later on when you have more eikonic abilities you feel it less but its always a little awakward when you have to default back to the same 4 or 5 base sword moves after using all your eikonic abilities on a prior combo. Also kind of wish the ranged magic outside of the charged shots was more useful.
Games Journalists: I can't breeze through this game on the hardest difficulty instantly and feel good about myself on the easiest difficulty, but this guy can? Must be a bad game.
Me, a newer DMC player: I'll get there eventually. Until then, YES I'M SHIT AT IT! THAT'S WHY I PLAY!
gigachad mindset
People who complain DMC is button masher gonna be enjoying Raid Shadow Legends cause you don't even need to push any button. 😁
First time watcher! I've also been thinking (and discussing this with my friends) exactly this - how I think the Souls series has messed up "action" games. What was telling was when I mentioned how Elden Ring had a pretty mediocre action, they immediately went "was it too hard for you?" or some variation of that. They somehow couldn't grasp the idea that my thinking the game had subpar action (which thematically fits very well with the RPG & exploration aspect) was not related to me not "gitting gud" enough. They had to insist the game had "deep mechanics" because you have to look at telegraphs and...yeah I'll stop. Soulsborne are great ARPG games for sure, don't get me wrong. But it being held as some standard of what an "action" game is supposed to be is...tragic, I guess.
One thing I want to disagree though is that I actually don't think it's a "game journalists" problem, seeing how this type of (lack of) understanding of action mechanics is often screamed loudest by Souls fanboys. And we see how they still complain how "the game journalists want easy mode" or "the game isn't for mainstream casuals" and all. In a sense, I think character action genre's design of fairly easy base difficulty (that you also mentioned) is kinda closer to so-called game journalist position than the Soulsborne mindset of thou-must-die-repeatedly game design so...are we the one more journo-like? It's kinda funny how game journos is almost like every gamers' boogieman. lol
Point is, I think it's more of a broad problem of people not understanding different game design/game balance philosophy, rather than "game journalists bad." Not to say that the journo/reviewers are not amplifying the problem, of course, since they should be the one correcting this sort of misconception, not giving even more weight to it. It's probably why I tend to characterize Souls/Elden Ring as "'hardcore action' for action game casuals," in a good way to be clear. The positive of Soulsborne genre is obviously that it has successfully mainstreamed the concept of more "difficult" action games, by making a mechanically friendly/accessible, but still very challenging action game experience. Even if their version of "difficult" ended up hurting character action games' design in the public eye and gave birth to some annoying tryhard action game gurus/journos, it still let me sell DMC to friends who played ER/Souls so...that's a plus? hahaha
Ah well, sorry for the long comment. Anyway, I have subscribed, please don't send me to hell. :)
"What was telling was when I mentioned how Elden Ring had a pretty mediocre action, they immediately went "was it too hard for you?" or some variation of that. They somehow couldn't grasp the idea that my thinking the game had subpar action (which thematically fits very well with the RPG & exploration aspect) was not related to me not "gitting gud" enough. "
This, this, a thousand times this. You cannot have a conversation about souls because any criticism is met with "git gud".
As a soulsborne fan, I would like to say. Holy shit the community is trash, ever since elden ring that is. It's like the only point to play is to be called a "pro gamer" and fit in the community rather than having fun, exactly as the video said.
Dodge, no not with bloodhound step! Only basic rolls!
Attack, no not with that strong boss weapon! Only the sigma chad ones.
Grrr how dare you call for help! You can only do it solo!
So now, freedom in games is illegal
The funny thing is that every challenge runner who’s actually good at the games are always wholesome and chill, I do it because it’s just fun, obviously there are some who do it as a way to show off but that’s a minority of losers.
People who say “git gud/skill issue” aren’t actually good at the games, I mean souls games aren’t even difficult, once you memorize the boss/enemy movesets they become cake walks and there’s nothing mechanically difficult to execute but it is satisfying nonetheless.
Honestly I gotta say that I only consider ER and Sekiro to be good games, all the rest were very mediocre and boring imo.
its always funny that souls fans act like the most hardcore of hardcore gamers and yet if any action game is too hard and requires them to press more then two buttons, then its "unbalanced" or "actually unfair" then play on the easiest difficulty (something that they make fun of other for wanting) and then say its too easy
They also avoid multiplayer games
Deep down inside souls fans know they are filthy casuals but they have to keep lying so they can keep they ego high
The reason why the Souls combat worked in the Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor is because Cal was no Obi Wan or Ahsoka. It made you feel like there was danger at every turn and little to no room for mistakes.
That being said, I really hope we get more MGR/DMC style combat in a Star Wars setting that’s before the Empire. Maybe Old Republic!
Fallen order yes but survivor not so much lol
@@MILDMONSTER1234Fair enough.
I see so many people valuing games forcing the player into the fun zone. That’s a line people use to justify saying soulslikes are better than action games with player expression or Doom Eternal is better than Ultrakill. If you like the former examples more, that’s fine but why do people need to be forced to have fun?
I think one of the problems people have with action games is that for the casual player they don't have actual replayability.
What I mean by this is that people don't feel compeled to keep experimenting once they beat the final boss of the game.
Like you said, people like you and me have hundreds of hours in this games buuut most people don't and so they can't truly talk about it.
This translates strictly to reviewers. To take an example from other genres, reviewers put fighting games reviews with glowing 10/10 in games with less than 4 hs of play in them and if you know the genre you also know that it just doesn't work like that.
Same with action games but at the end of the day it is what it is. I'm just happy that the genre keeps going strong.
3D Hack n Slash/ Spectacle fighters > soul likes
We should revolutionize enemy ai for the “this game didn’t force me to use my moves” people. By that I mean create a “careful what you wish for” situation where the enemies will soft lock them by memorizing the order in which they combo said moves and countering
I'd be so down for this
3:38 Omg, from here ownward especially, I am so glad to finally hear someone say.
Like, nothing makes me wanna chug Jack Daniels more than hearing someone say "ThE gAmE dOeSnT fOrCe Me To UsE aLl My MoVeS oR sTyLe On EnEmIeS sO iTs BaD". Like, *do you not know how to have fun, and use your brain??? Do you not know what intrinsic motivation is??*
It's exactly what I heard UnderTheMayo say when he was talking about DMC, and I wanted to Minecraft myself so goddamn hard.
Ironically the dumbest part about all the Souls stuff is that when a developer actually comes along and takes the concepts and turns them into a great action game (Nioh) the most hardcore From fans seem to have a brain meltdown. I've seen so many online arguments that amount to "Nioh combat mechanics aren't better, screw you" and you ask why and the response is basically "uh um uhm uhhhhh um because there is no impact when you hit enemies, so it's bad." It's like really man? a) that isn't even true and b) I was talking about the actual combat mechanics, not the combat "feel."
Harsh reality is most people don't really think much about actual gameplay mechanics. That's why Bayo and DMC are "exactly the same games" which is a sentiment you see even with people who do enjoy action games. Hell I even fell for the meme, first time I played Bayo (was very late to the party) I went in with a DMC mindset and I thought the game was pretty mediocre and didn't understand why people enjoyed it.
It's honestly not much of a surprise the FF16 devs decided to shine a spotlight (or jingle the keys as you put it) on the Eikon Battles. They know it gets casual butts in the seats. On the plus side at least in the case of game journos their days are numbered. Most of these sites are always facing layoffs/outright shutting down. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned.
Imo souls games are way more button mashy because all your doing essentially is dodging and attacking with like 4 to 6 attacks