I’ve been on a bit of a Hack and Slash kick this past year. I’m working my way through the entire DMC series atm, almost done with one, I’ve beaten 5 a handful of times. I also beat Metal Gear Rising Revengeance for the first time. I just kinda wanted to nerd out about some moves that whenever i do them, i always go “hell yeah” in my mind. Most of these are from action games, but honestly if anybody gets the same feeling from another genre, share it!!! i love getting inspiration from things that seem so insanely unrelated. thats how you make something truly unique.
I’ve mentioned it a few times on the forum, but in DMC 5 I love Nero’s Exceed mechanic. Basically, his sword can be revved like a motorcycle, which can get up to 3 charges. Attacking with his sword uses a charge and deals some bonus damage, alongside a nice little flaming effect. Special moves however, use up all available charges to deal more damage and also get modified. His dash attack goes from a forward slash to instead becoming a series of three spinning flame slashes in quick succession. The part that really ties it together though, is how if you rev the sword with perfect timing on an attack, you can gain 3 charges instantly. Rough timing gains you less, and bad timing gains you none. This creates this constant minigame during combat where you’re timing your revs in-between each move.
Here’s a video showing off how this works, note that there’s technically spoilers
Most of what im talking about is in the “Red Queen” section of that video. All the “EX moves” are with Exceed charges.
I also just really like stance swapping in any game, and Dante’s moveset is no exception. In most DMC games, Dante can swap between his weapons on the fly. Each weapon has its own unique moves and abilities, so you basically have a “gameplay swap button”. Ideally you flow between weapons as you combo, or to deal with specific enemies.
For MGR:R, I absolutely love both the Glory Kill and Parry mechanics.
Basically, in MGR:R there’s this mechanic where you can slow down time and enter a directional slicing mode. If you hit a certain part of a weakened enemy in this state, you perform a glory kill on them and gain both health and energy. You can also chain this, which can lead to some pretty sick moments like this.
I also love how the Parry feels in MGR:R.
The important thing to note is that in some games Parrying is a complete reversal, stunning the enemy and causing you as the player to perform a counter attack. In MGR:R, the parry is sometimes a counter attack, but is typically a block.
To perform a parry in MGR:R, you need to flick the movement stick in the direction of the enemy’s position relative to your own (and your camera). This can get a little tricky when certain enemies dance around you and flank you, or when the camera pans to a direction that might through you off. None of those things are really annoying though, its just a little bit of added friction. This little flick added a tiny level of depth that made landing it sooo satisfying. I’m honestly a sucker for motion inputs.
My favorite parry in any game has to be in Zenless Zone Zero.
In this game, parriable attacks flash yellow, while non-parriable attacks flash red. Performing a character swap with the right timing against a yellow flash will perform a counter attack, and the new character will do a special move. The previous character stays on field for a little bit before leaving. Non-parriable attacks need to be dodged, but perfect dodging will cause a Dodge Counter which deals a good amount of damage, and a little slow down effect.
The most satisfying character in ZZZ in my opinion becomes the starter gunslinger, Billy Kid. While he’s firing his guns he can tap any direction to perform a unique dodge counter, which deals more damage than most and is a little more stylish since he does a mid-air barrel roll. Billy still has access to his standard dash counter too! So you can choose a riskier, higher damage counter with his gun dodge, or just dash counter. You can even combine these when things get rough for an even safer double dodge. You can also animation cancel out of these dodge counters to perform an EX move in quick succession, which also feels really cool to land.
I recorded a little clip showing this off with one of the most difficult boss fights in the game, these duo bosses that are trying to constantly bait out your dodges and also hit with misleading animations and have some of the shortest parry windows in the game. Sometimes they even frame-trap you, hitting you in the middle of your counter attacks. You can best see Billy’s dodge in action around 16 seconds in, before i die half a minute later.
Theres a real nuance between when and if you should dodge-counter or swap-counter in ZZZ, which i find pretty sick. Especially when playing Billy since he has two kinds of dodge counters. I really dig the parry of MGR:R, flicking the directional stick feels really cool, but i wish there was (more often) a bit more thought behind whether i should stand my ground and parry, or if i should dodge.
if you guys have any other equally “hell yeah” moves, let me know. I think i might try and play some more Nier Automata soon, i remember really digging the dash in that game with all the afterimages. I’d also probably dig Bayonetta’s witch time.
Maybe one day I could (or someone else) find the best combination of all these “hell yeahs” and make the sickest rule of cool action game to ever exist. it would probably break your fingers though. but thats a small price to pay
