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 think it depends on the spirit of the game. Bloodborne and Sekiro were upfront with how they wanted players to approach the gameplay vs DS (even poking fun at the use of shields). Overall the mechanics of the game matched the enemies that were faced.
If the flow of combat is supposed to be fast, the player should have gameplay mechanics to match that speed. If it’s slower, it needs to have mechanics that keep things interesting. If there’re special cases where there’s an atypical boss, then there needs to be something we’re supposed to realistically exploit.
ER was pretty good about this in the base game, but the DLC felt different, especially the final boss. It had such long attack chains and a large moveset that made it difficult to tease out what was needed just to get to phase 2. Then after getting to phase 2 I had to relearn phase. I’m debating if I preferred the Fume Knight to that fight.
They took everything too far with PCR. I love ER, dlc is great but I reach the end and my enjoyment diminishes.