Topic: 3D Combat Balance in Castlevania--what engenders action-platforming?

[RichterB]

So I've played through the LoS Demo and replayed parts of Castlevania 64 recently, and a question came to mind. What kind of combat best serves Castlevania in 3D? What engenders a balanced game design of action-platforming? Combo/option-heavy, or simple. Hear me out: I won't deny that LoS' combat system is fun and very cool-looking, but I also found a surprising amount of variety in CV64's simplicity. To illustrate, I'll use two examples. Gabriel vs. Lycans and Reinhardt vs. Skeletons.

*With Gabriel, with the right timing, you can spam a Lycan by knocking it into the air and coming around with a spinning whip slam that eliminates the foe. (Or you can throw a knife and watch it explode). Later on, magic comes into play.
*With Reinhardt, you whip a skeleton, go into a slide tackle, and come up with a short-ranged blade swipe. (Or, jump in, whip, and then hit with the holy water or sub-weapon of choice). In LoD, you can upgrade sub-weapons to do more damage.

Now, it seems to me that the pre-programmed button-press combos of LoS make the game more about calculation, and less about player ingenuity. Also, the amount of combos, and the power within them, lessen (almost negate) the importance of sub-weapons. More importantly, the simple combat of CV64 means most enemies take less hits, which in turn makes for scenarios like Level 2 of CV64 where you have to platform-jump while dealing with medusa heads, bats, bone pillars (and their projectiles), as well as crumbling/flipping platforms and falling guillotines.

Meanwhile, heavy combo-centric combat doesn't naturally engender the gameplay rhythm necessary to dodge structural obstacles AND fight the enemies. In fact, it emphasizes the "fight action," resulting in more arena-type scenarios, and less strategic enemy placement (bone-throwers on broken bridges) and free-form pursuing enemies (like the Forest of Silence's running skeletons). The former scenario is also where sub-weapons come most in handy, yet if the scenario is lacking, the sub-weapons again dip in their importance. As a result, the sections of action and platforming seem to become stratified and separated in LoS as I understand it, which isn't the Castlevania norm.

All that said, I think, as fun/cool as the combos are, they might need to be pared back some and more lessons taken from CV64/LoD. That would go a long way to helping future Castlevanias capture the full essence of its franchise gameplay premise. Thoughts?

[e105beta]

I agree on the combo point, but not about the ingenuity. Way too many times I felt myself frustrated because I couldn't pull off a full combo either because the enemy was too weak or too strong. At the same time, it motivated me to get the right angle on the boss or wait for the right moment so I COULD pull off a full combo. Ultimately, though, I found myself sticking to a few, highly useful moves and trying to use them in different situations.

Mixing enemies with platforming is a tough one in 3D, IMO. Most of the time, it just seems like they're an undue annoyance usually because of poorly functioning or non-existent targeting system. Flying objects even more so, just because they have what seems like an infinite number of places to go and it can become hair pullingly difficult to kill them. It's like the Ninja Gaiden bird, only in 3D. However, I liked the bone towers in LoD. Some more of that kind of platforming would have helped LoS.

I mean, if they could just take the clocktower segment from LoS, then use the elements in it in more platforming through out the game while adding the occasional werewolf or gremlin on the platforms, the platforming would have been much better. More platforms and less ledges. I don't mind the occasional slow ledge crawl, but it seemed like the only actual platforming section was in the clocktower.

[bobby digital]

I think the big problem with subweapons in LoS is you never had enough until late in the game.  The first few chapters are full of werewolves that can be killed with 1 dagger, yet for the majority of that portion of the game you have only 5 daggers.  Having 4 subweapons mapped to the dpad is fine, but I think they really needed to balance them differently-not quite as powerful but still a good alternative to just whipping AND give you more to be able to use.