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That's interesting. I'm fairly sure I played on Hard, although this was years ago so my memory may be rusty. Some parts of the game were definitely 'hard', but

by dsuth 13y ago

That's interesting. I'm fairly sure I played on Hard, although this was years ago so my memory may be rusty. Some parts of the game were definitely 'hard', but seemed artificially so. Like the last boss eschewing all of the tactics learned prior to it, or a generically drawn 'maze' level which was just confusing for the sake of filling in game time. My main gripe with this game, and others like it, is that even if the difficulty can be ratcheted up, the result is not engaging gameplay. It doesn't generally require more skill, or novel tactics, or using the right tool for the job, just better timing or more patience. This is the point I was trying to make, although sloppily. Well-design hard games draw you in with the surprising complexity of thought or skill required to beat their challenges, hidden under a deceptively simple surface. For example Monster Hunter's weapons involve maybe 3 or 4 combos, whereas God of War's had more than I could easily memorise. But using combos in GoW didn't matter anyway because just mashing the buttons had the same effect. Using the wrong combo in MH will likely leave you exposed to a brutal attack, a quick death, and a long walk (or simple failure of the mission, goodbye 50 minutes of game time, you get nothing). Same story in Dark Souls, except you might be able to fight your way back to reclaim the stuff you lost. You really need to think about how you're attacking things, what your positioning is, what you're attacking etc etc. That is the complexity underneath the 'simple' combat systems that makes these games engagingly difficult.

Dewie 13y ago
You're right that the different difficulties is implemented in quite a lazy way - usually with just boosting the attack and health of your enemies, and vice versa for yourself. The hardest difficulty is often something like only having one HP. The next level is having more enemies spawn, but it often doesn't go further than that. As far as fighting in hack-and-slash games are concerned, I find the Onimusha series more interesting (you're a samurai in feudal Japan fighting demons). That's partly because they have the "issen" (critical strike) attack which is triggered either by blocking the attack of the enemy at the last second and countering (relatively easy to learn) or attacking (countering) the enemy at the last split second before his attack lands ("real" issen, more difficult more risky and does more damage). You also have the ability to chain issens by pressing the attack button at the exact time the first issen stops. This is pretty hard to do in Onimusha 3 (too easy in Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, though), because of the hard timing and maybe partly because the animations of the issens can take different amounts of time to complete. (The issen attack has been in the game since instalment one. But curiously the manual said nothing about issens, which meant that I got very confused when all of the sudden I got lucky and one-shot one of my enemies by cleaving them in half. Issen will one-shot grunt enemies and do a lot of damage to other enemies, and give you more souls (similar to orbs in God of War). I found that this gameplay mechanic was very rewarding to learn to master, because it is very effective and it is satisfying to one-shot enemies (or maybe even take down three at a time) with those sleek animations. By contrast, God of War is much more, like you say, about button mashing since which combo you choose doesn't matter so much (it's mostly about whether you have time for the heavy attaks and if you want to do area of effect damage or single damage). When it comes to difficulty settings, one of the settings in Onimusha 3 involves playing through the game where the only damage that the enemies can suffer are through issens. They are not hard games to beat, though.

by dsuth 13y ago

Dewie 13y ago

You're right that the different difficulties is implemented in quite a lazy way - usually with just boosting the attack and health of your enemies, and vice versa for yourself. The hardest difficulty is often something like only having one HP. The next level is having more enemies spawn, but it often doesn't go further than that. As far as fighting in hack-and-slash games are concerned, I find the Onimusha series more interesting (you're a samurai in feudal Japan fighting demons). That's partly because they have the "issen" (critical strike) attack which is triggered either by blocking the attack of the enemy at the last second and countering (relatively easy to learn) or attacking (countering) the enemy at the last split second before his attack lands ("real" issen, more difficult more risky and does more damage). You also have the ability to chain issens by pressing the attack button at the exact time the first issen stops. This is pretty hard to do in Onimusha 3 (too easy in Onimusha Dawn of Dreams, though), because of the hard timing and maybe partly because the animations of the issens can take different amounts of time to complete. (The issen attack has been in the game since instalment one. But curiously the manual said nothing about issens, which meant that I got very confused when all of the sudden I got lucky and one-shot one of my enemies by cleaving them in half. Issen will one-shot grunt enemies and do a lot of damage to other enemies, and give you more souls (similar to orbs in God of War). I found that this gameplay mechanic was very rewarding to learn to master, because it is very effective and it is satisfying to one-shot enemies (or maybe even take down three at a time) with those sleek animations. By contrast, God of War is much more, like you say, about button mashing since which combo you choose doesn't matter so much (it's mostly about whether you have time for the heavy attaks and if you want to do area of effect damage or single damage). When it comes to difficulty settings, one of the settings in Onimusha 3 involves playing through the game where the only damage that the enemies can suffer are through issens. They are not hard games to beat, though.