From Khazan to Wukong to even Elden Ring: Long gone are the days of very methodical, deliberate combat like in Dark Souls 1 or even Dark Souls 3.
I’m not sure if it can be exactly pinpointed to it, but with the release of Bloodborne, the genre experienced a noticeable change towards fast-paced combat that doesn’t give much breathing-room, considering DS3 as well as Elden Ring are noticeably faster with their combat compared to previous entries. Games like Khazan, Wukong or Wuchang take it even further, leaning more so in the direction of third-person action games like Devil May Cry.
Boss fights with huge strings of combos, wide-reaching attacks, leaving barely any time to prepare for the next wave of attacks, are what comes to mind. In Khazan, for example, I felt well-prepared for these because Khazan can be equally flashy with his combos - it’s a more even playing field. However, in Elden Ring, I was struggling quite a lot, personally, because the tools I have access to aren’t congruent with the amount of BS hurled my way with some enemies.
How do you like this evolution in combat? Do you prefer the slower, more methodical gameplay from earlier entries, or do you welcome the change of pace, adapting to modern audiences?
I love souls-likes, but nothing about them has ever felt organic go me. I view them as akin to rythm games. You learn the attacks, the inputs to counter those attacks, and the timing at which to do those inputs, then just grind it out like a song and dance.
With that view, an attack added in to punish a roll isn’t cheap, it’s just the wrong input, like playing the wrong note in Guitar Hero. (Which is a huge simplification, but you get the idea)
I also love rythm games.
It’s fun nailing the timings of those. “Oh, he’s doing that big grab to piledrive me. If I dodge through it, there’s just enough of a recovery animation to get a flask in”. Like, get fucked, warrior demigod twice my height, you whiffed and I just stood behind you sipping some refreshing juice