Rafiki wrote:


I was going to mention how I like brawlers and then probably fail to meaningfully tie that in to anything else I was going to say, but I haven't played any Devil May Cry games, any of the modern Ninja Gaidens, and I have a copy of God Hand sitting around somewhere that I've only gotten to level 2 on so you may as well call me a liar. I did play the original Bayonetta, but only because it came (HEH. HEH HEH. HEH HEH HEH HEEHEHEHEHEHEhHEHEEHEHE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH GET IT!??!) with the 2nd. So I guess this post is from someone who doesn't know shit about anything modern brawlers.


So I think the premise of the combat system is to give you a pile weapons and combos to mix and match and "stylishly" wipe out hordes of enemies? Sure, why not. I find the hundred jillion combos to be too overwhelming to the point that it sort of lends itself to button mashing. I guess they just want you to go nuts and let beginners feel like they're wrecking shit? It's frustrating because loading screens let you practice moves and combos and track how many times you've performed them, but since there's so many it winds up being impractical for me to memorize them and work them into any sort of coherent strategy. Instead all those billion moves reduce down to timing dodges, using the special move to knock an enemy into the air when it's convenient, drop-kicking them back to into the ground when it's convenient, switching up weapons depending on what enemies I'm fighting and what the medal requirements are, and then just randomly spamming the shit out of punch and kick and watching animations happen. I will admit I'm enjoying myself, but there's some depth missing that's bugging me. Maybe if I were to really focus in on getting Pure Platinum on every level on the hardest difficulty that would change. I will also admit that it took me the entire first game plus up through chapter 9 in this one for me to finally realize to keep my FUCKING hand off the control stick when I want to lock a target on an enemy. I have this natural tendency to try and keep the control stick pointed in the direction of the enemy I'm attacking, and dodging and knocking the enemy around would cause the game to retarget nearby enemies and fuck up my attacks. So I could very easily just really suck at this game, brawlers, life. Also, my appreciation for weapons other than the swords has slowly grown over this game, since different hordes/Verses have different combo/time requirements, so in the levels I've replayed to try to get Pure Platinum I've had to make sure I don't pick too powerful weapons and wind up with a low combo but also not too weak weapons so I don't take too much time. But there's still the problem of the button mashiness. As long as you can recognize enemy attacks and have good enough reflexes to dodge, there doesn't seem (to me) any reason to favor any particular attacks or combos on various enemies.