That tends to depend on the player and the Metroidvania in question. At the beginning of SotN you're a lot more limited in your weapon selection and attack possibilities. By the end you have tons of different weapons with unique hitboxes to choose from with their own unique properties and you don't have to remain using one weapon for the whole game. More than likely you'll go through at least 10 or more as the game progresses. Any one fight might have limited number of attacks unless you're using the Shield Rod, Heavenly Sword or a few other weapons with tons of different attacks or you switch weapons in the battle itself, but over the length of the game you end up with a lot. If you look at any one battle in SotN, it might not look all that varied, but then through the whole game the amount of variation due to weapon changes adds up.
But that's typical of any gear system, and its separate from the combat system. Besides, all the gear really changes is attack length, speed, and damage, things that new combos in a single-weapon combo system do, and those can be used on the fly.
In beat em up combat with the main weapon, the depth is created within one weapon or a small selection of weapons and the multiple ways of using it. In Metroidvania combat with the main weapon, the depth is created by offering a large selection of weapon hitboxes and attack styles that go with those weapons over the course of the game--unless you're CotM or HoD
But again, those aren't things you're changing up on the fly. It's a conscious decision made in a preparation phase, not a combat phase. Sure, it adds more depth to the game than say Fatal Fury, but that's gear depth. It doesn't make the combat any more complex.
Also, other games have different numbers of potential attack variations in any one battle without swapping equips--with PoR for example, you have Jonathan's main weapon, his sub, Charlotte's main weapon, her sub, and a dual crush. You could count Jonathan's jump kick and uppercut if you're really a player who wants tons of variation in attacks, but I doubt the typical player uses them that much.
I thought PoR made a pretty nice stride in Metroidvania equipment layout, but the magic system didn't recharge so fast that using your main weapon wasn't more economical most of the time.
Correct. What would've made it more tedious is that Gaibon and Slogra would've likely had 300% more HP to allow you to engage in the 'fun' of comboing them for longer periods. If they didn't change their HP though, adding comboing would not have made the fight more tedious.
Judging by the apostrophes you've placed around fun, I think I'm getting to the crux of the issue. You don't like more in-depth combat systems, which is, as I said earlier, perfectly acceptable, but it keeps aspects of this discussion from going past "I think..."
Sure, I don't want a early level fight to take forever, but I personally don't mind extended combat in the case of a boss.
That's because you didn't appear to remember potential facets of what could be called "combat depth" in earlier CVs and Metroidvanias, so I merely wanted to insert potential candidates for thwacks and cracks in addition to whacks.
Even with that, I still don't consider Classicvanias or Metroidvanias to have very much combat depth. Enemies in Classicvanias are merely extensions of the level design, and the difficulty of the bosses is based around your ability to platform and approach a midst patterned movement and projectile spam, rather than spacing, blocking, dodging, and combo management. As for Metroidvanias, with the platforming reduced and the introduction of long hallways and taller, HP heavy enemies, the "how much damage can I output" aspect increased without the actual means of dealing in complexity beyond gear variety. It was most effective to simply equip your most powerful weapon unless it just really didn't jive with your play style. Bosses required less platforming ability, and more "Can you dodge this attack? Good, now lay into me."
Correct and I recognized that when your statement was being made (who wouldn't know that?), but I didn't really think it changed much. I mentioned dodging because in your description of beat em up combat you included a "dodge" whereas in the Metroidvania description, it's just whackwhackwhackwhackwhack. Gotta have a dodge or two in there too.
Fair enough.
You're to some extent assuming play styles there. Just because some people may play the game that way does not mean everyone will. With some games we're talking about, though, like the early CVs, you will indeed be limited because of heart limitations and won't be able to play the game any other way. But in something like HoD, PoR, or DoS with easily regained and rather fast regenning MP, you can use those attacks quite frequently. That's one of the things that made HoD's "just the whip" more tolerable for the length of the game--tons of spells that can be used in regular combat.
I will agree that you could use the extra-abilities more often in the later Metroidvanias, with AoS probably being the best about this, but what it added to the combat was variety, not not necessarily on the fly versatility. You could have 1-2 active abilities equipped at once, and only a few of them weren't "forward ranged attack numbers 1-7" They adjust how you approached a situation, but not the adaptations you could make in the middle of that situation.
But special moves are still part of the combat system, whether in LoS or in a Metroidvania, so naturally I mentioned them. It's quite obvious that the Metroidvanias don't have a combo system beyond perhaps OoE (and I'm not really sure that qualifies as a full combo system), so comparing the combo system in LoS to the "combo system" in say AoS wouldn't really make any sense.
I was leaving them out because leaving them in completely eliminates the "enemies take forever" aspect in LoS which we're discussing. Used properly, sub-weapons and magic special moves allow Gabriel to decimate normal enemies extremely quickly.
I agree with all of that. It's possible they could include a combo system and have it not lead to MoF being strictly a beat em up or too "beat em uppy." I just pointed out earlier however, that it would be a strange design decision, at least from my perspective, to include a combo system in the game if the enemy HP is still on the level of a typical 2D platformer. Not necessarily something a dev would do in their first Metroidvania. Maybe their 5th or 6th to add variation.
The HP wouldn't still be on the level of a typical 2D platformer, but it wouldn't be to the "is this still going on?" extent of Devil May Cry, to give a 3D example.
Though thinking about it now, in the first 2D beat-em-up that comes to my mind, X-Men, enemies went down fairly fast. That diidn't make the combat any less simplistic, but compared to most of today's 3D action games, the enemies died relatively quickly.
That isn't necessarily what I'm thinking of when I think "combo system." OoE does that, provided each glyph in your left and right hand are different lengths. What I'm thinking of is "You must wail on this regular enemy X X X Y L2 X /\+Y X for 12 seconds to kill it. Repeat ad nauseum."
That's not really an accurate reflection of LoS's combat beyond the stronger enemies and boss battles, and even the stronger enemies start going down quick once your comboing gets better. But then again, like I said earlier, it sounds like you don't enjoy 3D action combat.
If I wanted to, I could say that, OoE was to "X Y X Y every enemy until it's dead, and do it as fast as possible before it gets to you. Repeat ad nauseum." What made it hard was the relentlessness with which they'd throw things at you.
I don't so much mind a couple enemies that take too many hits once every 10-20 mins or so. What I mind is being locked in a room with 10 of them every 3 minutes and forced to kill them all. Like I'll fight in the "large enemy" rooms in Metroidvanias most of the time instead of flying over them (they're "in the way" after all), but if most rooms were "large enemy" rooms then I'd start skipping tons of them. Also another type of room I wouldn't want to be locked in and forced to kill every enemy in would be something like the Ghost Dancer rooms in AoS or DoS. There'd simply be no point to it--even if the Ghost Dancers' HP didn't change.
Again, the strong enemies rooms weren't that common in LoS, and there were actually a fair few battles that could be skipped if you could pull it off, but even then, LoS wasn't a platformer. MoF should be, so while I suspect there may be a few of those rooms, I can't see it happening often.
If something has beat em up style combat, does that not make it a beat em up? Deep philosophical question there. I lean towards yes, but there might be some exceptions, and obviously it might be a compound genre game like a "Beat Em Up RPG platformer" or something.
Anyway, saying SotN has "beat em up style combat" is still sort of a problem for me because I'd call it 2D platformer Metroidvania style combat. There are no combos, so it loses a few "beat em up" classification points if it doesn't have those, the varied number of weapon hitboxes aren't a thing that beat em ups typically do in their combat systems--typically a character will have a either one or a couple weapons for the whole game and you get to know them well, rather than tons of weapons that are each only a passing fancy. If there is an upgrade system, it typically adds different styles of attacks with that weapon rather than changing to a different weapon. It also has most regular enemies dying in a smaller amount of hits than typical beat em ups which de-emphasizes the combat. There are probably a few other things I'm overlooking in the actual act of combat itself rather than the design surrounding a typical game with that combat style.
I'm not sure if you're trying to make fun of me, I lean towards yes, but no, no it doesn't.
A "beat-em-up" is a game that focuses on literally nothing but beat-em-up combat, like River City Ransom and Fatal Fury of old, and they don't typically have combos. They're "Mash buttons until it dies", which Metroidvania games many times devolve into. Sure, enemies die faster, and jumping and projectile dodging is involved which is the reason why I think Casltevania games are fun. But perhaps my definition of beat-em-ups hasn't evolved with time.
I also still think you're giving the "different hitboxes" too much emphasis on how much they change playstyle, mostly considering how while each weapon is equipped you're limited to 2-3 very similar hitboxes, where the shorter ones are usually the weaker one. Thinking DoS, you've got the sword and the katana, which have the same hitbox, the knives and the fist, which are just shorter sword hitboxes, the spear, which is nice long hitbox, the axe, the hammer, and the greatsword, which all have the same over the head hitbox, and the range weapons, which suck. That's like 3 truly unique hitboxes, 4 if you count the fists as their own.
That was a necessary extrapolation for my "why Metroidvanias are not beat em ups" dissertation even if you ended up not needing said dissertation.
Again, I never said Metroidvanias were beat-em-ups.
I might agree, but I'm a bit leery on "having Lords of Shadow's combat system," because I'm not sure exactly of the details of how they'd implement Lords of Shadow's combat system in 2.5D. I'd have to see the implementation in a gameplay vid before I judge I'd think. I'd be closer to agreement if that was "having a combo system similar to Lords of Shadow's."
It's a fair reservation, though if you can't judge it as not being a beat-em-up before you see it, then you can't judge it as being a beat-em-up before you see it.