Devil May Cry [PS2] + R2VKMF: Polygonal Action Daishingeki

[Kriegor]

Mercenaries mode basically boils down to playing the game exactly the same as RE4 Mercenaries, except now you're spamming parry qte counters (AKA the LEAST interesting new addition).

RE4 mercenaries is about getting those juicy combo bonuses and capitalizing on them BIG with grenades and sniper rifle shots. You need to kill and kill fast, as there are no limits to the number of enemies, only time is the limit. It's better if you keep your combo chain going though it's very much ok to have several big chains and not just one. It's very limited and not much scored because of:
- how simple it is
- how shitty the inventory is, constantly stopping the action
- the lack of content (4 maps, 5 characters)

RE6 scoring system is based on RE5 Reunion, so scoring is all about:
- having a 150 combo (mandatory). Unlike 5, there are more than 150 enemies on each map but the game ends at 150
- killing the boss(es) at the end (also mandatory). Keeping the boss(es) alive and dealing with their attacks while keeping the combo going is very important as the bonus points you get from a boss for killing it at the end is phenomenal. In some map, you absolutely need to know where some of the enemies spawn as keeping 3 or more bosses alive will seriously affect how long you need to wait for another basic enemy to reach you.
- ending the game with as much time as possible left on the clock by maximizing kills through melee attacks. Order of importance is: "grenade de grace" > counter > coup de grace > standard melee. Here it's a small deviation compared to 5 since in 5, every melee kills is worth +5 sec no matter the technique used.

So it's very different than 4. You actually don't care about the combo bonuses at all as they award (a very minor amount of) points only for the first 10 kills of your chain (so you just need to break one, at the very beginning, and only if you lose less than 5 seconds in the process).
You never use grenades outside coup de grace setup and you only use sniper rifles for specific setup and dealing damage to bosses. Aiming is not a very important skill to have in 6. There's actually a way to reach very high scores without even touching your right stick/mouse outside moving the camera around.

It's more played than 4 for scoring but still much less than 5 since it's:
- a lot easier (you've got a ton of time for keeping your chain going, enemies are less agressive, the playable characters are much more mobile, ending the chain properly doesn't require perfect routing)
- less proactive than 5 (you're fishing for counters a lot)
- less technical (inventory management is a lot simpler, no such thing as using items on the floor to evade incoming attacks, no RNG when it comes to mutation)

Ninja Gaiden also has a much bigger emphasis on memorizing strict (and often complex) combo chains, while DMC lets you improvise more. Part of why I never really got on with 3D Ninja Gaiden games; I don't even trust belt-scrollers with more than 3 buttons.

That ridiculous NG3 move list gives me fucking anxiety.

I don't agree on the complex part. You very rarely perform a combo of more than 6 inputs (not the case of the DMCs at all) being mostly X Y and timing in 3D Ninja Gaidens is incredibly lenient, being for performing string hits or even stuff like Sabaki, Steel on Bone, Cicada Surge. I'd say the most complex input might be OLUT and it's still a lot easier than some basic stuffs in DMC like Reving, Jump cancelling, Just releases etc. Being good in the Team Ninja games is all about crowd control, AI behavior manipulation, positioning, using on field resources smartly (most notably the souls)... A lot of patience as well for the hardest stuff (soloing those ultimate trials, you gotta wait for entire minutes at time, just running around, before landing a single hit). But comboing? Most 3D beat'em up I know offer harder/stricter inputs.

The skills you need in DMC depend on the game (the first one put a lot more emphasis on positionning), but timing is always key cause your defensive moves are universal (and very strong) and your offensive options are very complex. The allure of the DMCs is all about mastering your playable character. The attraction of the Ninja Gaidens comes entirelly from tactically dealing with those encounters.

[Sima Tuna]

Ninja Gaiden also has a much bigger emphasis on memorizing strict (and often complex) combo chains, while DMC lets you improvise more. Part of why I never really got on with 3D Ninja Gaiden games; I don't even trust belt-scrollers with more than 3 buttons.

That ridiculous NG3 move list gives me fucking anxiety.

Eh, I wouldn't say so.

A lot of the combo chains are just for filler or show. Most weapons have like 2 or 3 short strings which are what you're going to be using 90% of the game.

Ninja Gaiden 2 ESPECIALLY because the obliteration system makes the game absurdly lethal and you're often killing enemies in 2 hits.

Yeah, most of the combos in NG are just there to play with. I've been making steady progress in Sigma again and you pretty much use the same sorts of moves on specific enemies. It's more about finding an opening or creating one with movement, and then doing a very simple string of a couple hits. Most weapons don't have 360 degree coverage, so standing there while you combo some asshole is a great way for his buddies to murder you.

Forward Y into Blade of Nirrti is a good example of a staple string. Super easy to input and remember. Remembering moves isn't where the skill comes in for NG. The hard part is managing your movement correctly. You have to stay mobile, but move with the correct rhythm, so lingering enemy attacks don't clip you. With big crowds, I use a lot of wall movement so I can pick out the target I want next without being vulnerable to attacks on the ground.

And yeah, NG2 doubles down on the speed of the combat and how hard it bones you for fucking up.

[Air Master Burst]

I meant "complex" in the sense that there are dozens of variations and they all have silly ninja names I can't remember. I didn't have much trouble beating Ninja Gaiden but I mostly ignored the move list and just used the same 3-4 combos the whole game.

DMC actually lets me look cool instead of just trying to kill me every 30 seconds. I love them both!

[Squire Grooktook]

RE4 mercenaries is about getting those juicy combo bonuses and capitalizing on them BIG with grenades and sniper rifle shots. You need to kill and kill fast, as there are no limits to the number of enemies, only time is the limit. It's better if you keep your combo chain going though it's very much ok to have several big chains and not just one. It's very limited and not much scored because of:
- how simple it is
- how shitty the inventory is, constantly stopping the action
- the lack of content (4 maps, 5 characters)

RE6 scoring system is based on RE5 Reunion, so scoring is all about:
- having a 150 combo (mandatory). Unlike 5, there are more than 150 enemies on each map but the game ends at 150
- killing the boss(es) at the end (also mandatory). Keeping the boss(es) alive and dealing with their attacks while keeping the combo going is very important as the bonus points you get from a boss for killing it at the end is phenomenal. In some map, you absolutely need to know where some of the enemies spawn as keeping 3 or more bosses alive will seriously affect how long you need to wait for another basic enemy to reach you.
- ending the game with as much time as possible left on the clock by maximizing kills through melee attacks. Order of importance is: "grenade de grace" > counter > coup de grace > standard melee. Here it's a small deviation compared to 5 since in 5, every melee kills is worth +5 sec no matter the technique used.

So it's very different than 4. You actually don't care about the combo bonuses at all as they award (a very minor amount of) points only for the first 10 kills of your chain (so you just need to break one, at the very beginning, and only if you lose less than 5 seconds in the process).
You never use grenades outside coup de grace setup and you only use sniper rifles for specific setup and dealing damage to bosses. Aiming is not a very important skill to have in 6. There's actually a way to reach very high scores without even touching your right stick/mouse outside moving the camera around.

It's more played than 4 for scoring but still much less than 5 since it's:
- a lot easier (you've got a ton of time for keeping your chain going, enemies are less agressive, the playable characters are much more mobile, ending the chain properly doesn't require perfect routing)
- less proactive than 5 (you're fishing for counters a lot)
- less technical (inventory management is a lot simpler, no such thing as using items on the floor to evade incoming attacks, no RNG when it comes to mutation)

Yeah I don't care too much about the math behind the scoring or the meta of it, I just find the totally wasted moveset to be frustrating* and the counter fishing to be awful.

Mercenaries is just a good example because it removes all the shitty level design, gimmicks, etc. and just lets you play with the - supposedly - best part of the game: the combat. But even there the moment to moment combat just makes me want to play RE4 again instead.

*that feeling when a game makes you angrier than if it was completely worthless because it actually has fun ideas that could be used fantastically in a better game but are either not used or used in excruciating ways.

DMC actually lets me look cool instead of just trying to kill me every 30 seconds. I love them both!

Yeah the way I'd characterize it is that dmc is a shmup focused on doing cool scoring tricks while NG is a punishing oldschool survival shmup.

I'd still say dmc is the more fighting game influenced between the two of them. Honestly dmc doesn't have much fighting feel to me beyond the combo mechanics.

[Kriegor]

Ninja Gaiden is the more 3D FTG inspired one, with an emphasizes on mind games and dial-a-combos, while DMC goes more into the 2d FTG style, more execution heavy. It's surprising how little had to be changed to insert Dante in MvC.

Mercenaries is just a good example because it removes all the shitty level design, gimmicks, etc. and just lets you play with the - supposedly - best part of the game: the combat. But even there the moment to moment combat just makes me want to play RE4 again instead.

I'd argue Resident Evil 4's mercenaries restrict the gameplay of the main game even more, if you play optimally (and if you don't, then there's no debate). If you want to mitigate the flaws of RE6's mercenaries, you can go for No Mercy where counters shouldn't be more than 50% of your kills, unless you're managing your resources pretty badly.

My favorite mode actually was the one heavily inspired by Puyo Puyo. Basically, you're playing mercenaries while another human is playing mercenaries on the same map, but seperate from you, and everytime you end a chain, or when you reach a 20 combo, you send special annoying enemies to your opponent. The entire thing perfectly played on the strengths of RE6's gameplay. You can't just spray and pray cause you're gonna burn through your resources too fast. Throwing is important to manage those, crowd control, and kill one enemy while damaging the others. You're not fishing for counters but using them when opportunity presents itself is a time effective killing tool, and you can optimize the ones with AOE with good positionning and anticipation. You need to play fast and smart to keep making your opponent's game a living hell, slowing him down in the process. It was very fun but nowadays, your only chance to enjoy it is having friends.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Enemies being able to do "mix ups" with grapples when you get too defensive means the game does a much better job of forcing you to constantly stay on the move and mind your spacing against both single target bosses and mobs.

Honestly I'd characterize it completely opposite. Devil May Cry is the game about using a toybox of various moves to find increasingly creative ways to continuously damage enemies/bosses while nullifying their attacks.

NG forces you to stay on the move, sure, but where you stand at any particular moment is not super important, just so long as it's not near something that can grab you. "Movement" is distinct from "position". The fact that Dante can effectively choose a position and hold it while Ryu can easily be forced out of any spot is a big part of why I say position matters more in DMC. You have a high degree of control of positioning in DMC, and comparatively little control in NG.

Look at Stinger and it's nearest counterpart, Flying Swallow. Stinger is not a good attack for killing enemies. It does mediocre damage, is bad at hitting multiple enemies, and is fairly laggy with limited cancel options. It is a strong move because of its value in repositioning Dante and repositioning enemies. Flying Swallow on the other hand, is "okay" for moving around the screen, but Ryu can roll and jump around quickly and safely without it. No, the reason you use Flying Swallow is because it's a safe attack that can hit and stun multiple targets and often leads to quick kills. Or look at uppercuts. Dante uppercuts an enemy to disable and reposition them, and doing so is usually a sacrifice of damage potential; Ryu uppercuts an enemy because it gives him access to a particular attack (Izuna Drop). This is how it goes for most of Dante's movelist. His moves are useful primarily for how they change (or maintain) the current position of Dante or his targets.

Ninja Gaiden also has a much bigger emphasis on memorizing strict (and often complex) combo chains, while DMC lets you improvise more. Part of why I never really got on with 3D Ninja Gaiden games; I don't even trust belt-scrollers with more than 3 buttons.

That ridiculous NG3 move list gives me fucking anxiety.

In NGB I totally agree, that game feels like you need to memorize combo strings and it's a pain (or just spam Izuna Drop and UTs on everything and be in boredom instead of pain). In NG2, I think the game strongly discourages ever using the combo strings lol, because the dismemberment system encourages you to do short little 1-2 pokes until your instakill button becomes available, and the mob tactics of the enemies discourage you from ever using high-commitment options.

But NG3's expansive movelist is a bit different. There's a lot to learn but I wouldn't call it memorization cuz it's so flexible. Between that enormous movelist and some of the other changes, you can really go to town with long flowing combos and improvisation. It's the saving grace that allows you to squeeze some fun out of vanilla NG3. Don't actually do that of course, just play Razor's Edge instead, vanilla is basically an early alpha build of Razor's Edge anyway. (I'm up to Razor's Edge now in my big series replay, notepad in hand, so that Razor's Edge post is coming "soon")

[Squire Grooktook]

NG forces you to stay on the move, sure, but where you stand at any particular moment is not super important, just so long as it's not near something that can grab you.

Same could be said about every 3d game.

The extra dimension and all the issues it brings means 3d positioning will never be as tight or intricate as 2d position.

The fact that Dante can effectively choose a position and hold it while Ryu can easily be forced out of any spot is a big part of why I say position matters more in DMC. You have a high degree of control of positioning in DMC, and comparatively little control in NG.

Look at Stinger and it's nearest counterpart, Flying Swallow. Stinger is not a good attack for killing enemies. It does mediocre damage, is bad at hitting multiple enemies, and is fairly laggy with limited cancel options. It is a strong move because of its value in repositioning Dante and repositioning enemies. Flying Swallow on the other hand, is "okay" for moving around the screen, but Ryu can roll and jump around quickly and safely without it. No, the reason you use Flying Swallow is because it's a safe attack that can hit and stun multiple targets and often leads to quick kills. Or look at uppercuts. Dante uppercuts an enemy to disable and reposition them, and doing so is usually a sacrifice of damage potential; Ryu uppercuts an enemy because it gives him access to a particular attack (Izuna Drop). This is how it goes for most of Dante's movelist. His moves are useful primarily for how they change (or maintain) the current position of Dante or his targets.

I'm...not seeing any of this tbh. None of this has anything to do with "exact" positioning in "neutral". Most of Dante's moves like uppercut move you around for the purposes of combos and chaining to different moves to keep combos or offense going, not for the sake of in-depth footsies or intricate 2d style spacing.

DMC is the last game I'd play for "footsies", but Ninja Gaiden absolutely would be my go to as far as 3d action games are concerned. Not to say NG's spacing is anything like a 2d game, but you have to put a helluva lot more thought towards the "neutral game" then dmc where you are mostly a flying death machine mowing down enemies even on harder difficulties.

[Kriegor]

NG forces you to stay on the move, sure, but where you stand at any particular moment is not super important, just so long as it's not near something that can grab you. "Movement" is distinct from "position". The fact that Dante can effectively choose a position and hold it while Ryu can easily be forced out of any spot is a big part of why I say position matters more in DMC. You have a high degree of control of positioning in DMC, and comparatively little control in NG.

Look at Stinger and it's nearest counterpart, Flying Swallow. Stinger is not a good attack for killing enemies. It does mediocre damage, is bad at hitting multiple enemies, and is fairly laggy with limited cancel options. It is a strong move because of its value in repositioning Dante and repositioning enemies. Flying Swallow on the other hand, is "okay" for moving around the screen, but Ryu can roll and jump around quickly and safely without it. No, the reason you use Flying Swallow is because it's a safe attack that can hit and stun multiple targets and often leads to quick kills. Or look at uppercuts. Dante uppercuts an enemy to disable and reposition them, and doing so is usually a sacrifice of damage potential; Ryu uppercuts an enemy because it gives him access to a particular attack (Izuna Drop). This is how it goes for most of Dante's movelist. His moves are useful primarily for how they change (or maintain) the current position of Dante or his targets.

Flying Swallow is a safe attack in the original Ninja Gaiden or on lower difficulties in NGB and NG2. I FS more often away from the enemies (it's an excellent way to quickly put some distance, and thus avoid a difficult situation, reposition your enemies and/or charge an UT) than toward them.

In DMC, you only Stinger to the enemies because you need to close the gap. You're stronger up close than at a distance, while they might have very good projectiles. You never stinger away from yout enemies (you even cannot because of the stupid lock-on mechanism ). It would make no sense. You're perfectly safe rubbing against your foes at all times since you have plenty of ways to instantly avoid and punish their patterns (5 is the most guilty of that).

Position in DMC is mostly "am I at sword range or not". There is not as big a crowd control aspect as in Ninja Gaiden for simple reasons (safer attacks, stronger defensive options). Actually I never run around in DMC3-4-5. I'm always on the offensive. I agree that movement is not position but running around in Ninja Gaiden does have a purpose, this purpose being landing an attack safely, at some point, and you'll gain this opportunity by achieving a relative position in relation to your enemies that allows that.

Launching an enemy in the Ninja Gaidens can very much be used to quickly dispatch someone while being safe after your initial move. In NG1, going after a seperated enemy, and launching him before his friends have joined you both is such a reliable tactic. But you're right that this move is just too effective in the first two Ninja Gaiden and you often launch just because ID deals a ton of damage. The Sigma are especially guilty of this.

In the DMC, launching is mostly a combo extender. You don't need that to keep attacking while remaining safe and you're not necessary safe in the air (especially in 3). It's a stupidly broken effective tactic in the reboot though, since you can gain a lot of altitude, and remain in the air forever, so most battle situations can be trivialised by just staying well above the crowd and grappling your foes one by one toward you (or you could remain on the ground, demon dodge and kill, this game offers no challenge whatsoever).

But NG3's expansive movelist is a bit different. There's a lot to learn but I wouldn't call it memorization cuz it's so flexible. Between that enormous movelist and some of the other changes, you can really go to town with long flowing combos and improvisation. It's the saving grace that allows you to squeeze some fun out of vanilla NG3. Don't actually do that of course, just play Razor's Edge instead, vanilla is basically an early alpha build of Razor's Edge anyway. (I'm up to Razor's Edge now in my big series replay, notepad in hand, so that Razor's Edge post is coming "soon")

The thing with Razor's Edge is each move is balanced around a ton of properties: damage, range, frame data, delimb rate, accuracy, evasiveness... On the well balanced move sets such as DS and SM, I personnally believe learning the entire thing bears fruits. For example with SM XXX... has a very low accuracy but is completely safe while ->XXX has a ton of accuracy against enemies running towards you. X->XX helps staying away from the crowd while sporting decent DRs and XX->XX is crazy evasive and a good damage dealer. XY is insanely strong but inacurrate, you need to put your enemies in a vulnerable situation. XXY is an offensive dodge. XXXYY has an insane DR etc. You can even react on the fly like from XX (X is your poke): avoid an immediate attack with Y, avoid an incoming attack with ->XX, go for a delimb with XYY (and then throw and Sob), go aerial with XXY...

Knowing all this makes you faster and more consistant. I had 41 world record only using SM on the rerelease of Razor's Edge mainly thanks to this knowledge (and the lack of competition ).

Same could be said about every 3d game.

The extra dimension and all the issues it brings means 3d positioning will never be as tight or intricate as 2d position.

That's so right.

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah I think an important point you touch upon is Dante - once learned - is just too fucking powerful.

I think Itsuno described the ethos of the gameplay as "it's a slasher movie, but you're the slasher". It doesn't really channel the fighting game footsies feel because you're on such a level above everything that exists in the game aside from a few boss fights. Enemies are mostly slow, dumb, with lumbering telegraphed attacks and basic patterns which can quickly be nullified by a million different toys in Dantes toybox. You don't hang back patiently waiting for the right time to strike, you instead choose one of your one billion different methods of attacks to blow through whatever the enemy is currently doing. The goal of the game isn't just to survive, it's to make enemy defeats humiliating.

[Sima Tuna]

Fighting mixed enemies in Ninja Gaiden Black/II demonstrates the footsie aspect. The way the enemies complement each other is beautiful. Even packs of imps can cover each others' blind spots and post-attack negative frames with their own overlapping strikes. But then you bring in a mixture of enemies, some who work better at range, others who fight up close, and still others (like spider clan ninja) who can function at all ranges... The action seems chaotic at that point, but it's not. It's just complex.

Spoiler

Sure, you can use certain cheese strats at lower difficulties. But that's true of every game. Importantly, they don't work once you crank the difficulty, and they tend to work a lot less well (even on normal difficulty) when a few more enemies get thrown into the mix. Flying swallow doesn't seem like such an awesome spam technique (at least, not when aimed at the opponent) when that enemy type has a high tendency to auto-block it.

I spend a lot of time in Ninja Gaiden just positioning. That doesn't happen in DMC3 or Bayo, at least not that I remember. Bayo has witch time on demand and Dante has instant air trick. If an enemy is attacking you, you just initiate i-frames. I-frames in ninja gaiden don't work that way. The reverse wind has very specific i-frames, and it's common for newish players to get caught trying to roll. The jump doesn't have significant i-frames, as far as I can tell. Fireballs often swat Ryu out of a roll jump if the timing is wrong. Only a few actions have large i-frames. Now, unfortunately, one of those is UTs. I really don't like the UT system, since it seems to encourage stationary charge cheesing. But I know some like it. Other ways of going invincible are very specific. Izuna drop requires an airborne enemy, which means you have to create an opening and launch an enemy, then time the drop to go invincible when you would normally take damage. Off-the-wall flip-jump attacks have some invul, but require a wall and can be punished on whiff. FS has invul but gets punished super hard when blocked or whiffed unless spaced correctly.

With DMC, I find myself in either "attacking phase" or "dodging phase." Either it's my turn to attack or the enemy is attacking now and I get to spam my i-frames. Ninja Gaiden seemlessly blends the two. Attacking IS defense. Movement IS attacking. There isn't a rigid shift between phases on bosses. Alma is a great example of that. She's always attacking. That airship fatass with the gun is the same way. Enemies don't get winded and let you pound on them after x amount of attacks you've dodged. Whereas, I mean, that's literally DMC3 Joker. Run through his little hoops in the order he wants and then he'll stand there and do fucking nothing.

Edit: Doing Rachel's final fiend challenge now and it really highlights how shit she is as a character, and how she doesn't fit with Ninja Gaiden's design. Her final fiend challenge should be pathetically easy. One mage and two samurai, repeated endlessly. But she doesn't have any mobility. She can't flip over the samurai because they autoblock that, and she can't flip the mages because they teleport. She's too fucking slow to deal with ninja. She's fine against Fiends (after all, she is a Fiend Hunter) because Fiends never block and can't stop the "flips over you, cuts off your head, nothing personnel kid" strategy. But she gets totally outplayed by Samurai. She can't block them because they guard break her. Can't flip them because they're immune. Can't really use strings because her Warhammer is slow as fuck. Can't maneuver around the arena well because her mobility is beyond gimped compared to Ryu. Her subweapon is a trash version of Ryu's Windmill Shuriken and she doesn't have any choice of ninpo. Seems like her gameplay sections are made for you to abuse UTs, and I just don't enjoy that style of play at all. I would rather die a bunch trying to figure out the non-UT way to win than to spam UTs over and over.

TL;DR Rachel in Sigma 1 sucks. She's much improved in Sigma 2.

[Volteccer_Jack]

My response to "You can't cheese Master Ninja Mode":

Spoiler

Sure, you can use certain cheese strats at lower difficulties. But that's true of every game. Importantly, they don't work once you crank the difficulty

I assure you on my first playthrough of NGB Master Ninja mode I used NOTHING BUT cheese strats. They absolutely work, on all difficulties. Flying Swallow works just fine on most non-bosses, enemies block it more but who cares, just do it again. I only stopped using it when I figured out "The Strat". Here's The Strat: roll and jump around at random, safe in a cocoon of i-frames. When by pure chance you land near an enemy and it is safe to attack, do a single X slash: if it missed, go back to rolljumping, if it hit, press YXXXY to Izuna Drop. Hold block during the Izuna recovery and resume rolljumping at the earliest possible moment. "The Strat" works on every enemy that can be launched, without fail, and will methodically and safely solve such encounters. Against any enemy without projectiles, UT spam forever. If there's a corner to hide behind while charging then even projectiles don't matter. In that entire playthrough the only time positioning came to mind was "get far enough away to charge UT" and "I need to be in this general area in case the boss decides to do that one really tricky attack".

In NG2 it's so much worse because of things like dismemberment abuse or backtrack-UT (the only thing more broken than essence-UT). Flying Swallow got insanely buffed to the point of being a god button. And the improved camera means we can more easily abuse the camera to manipulate enemy behavior. There's actually a Master Ninja No-Damage run of NG2 on youtube, it's 8 straight hours of only the most heinous cheese.

With DMC, I find myself in either "attacking phase" or "dodging phase." Either it's my turn to attack or the enemy is attacking now and I get to spam my i-frames.

Spamming iframes until it's my turn to attack is exactly what I just described doing on MNM of NGB. I would call this kind of play "bad" or "lame" or "cheese" in either game.

Ninja Gaiden seemlessly blends the two. Attacking IS defense. Movement IS attacking. There isn't a rigid shift between phases on bosses. Alma is a great example of that. She's always attacking. That airship fatass with the gun is the same way.

Yes there is. Nearly every humanoid boss in 3D Ninja Gaiden can be boiled down to "block and dodge until the boss leaves an opening, insert your pre-determined optimal punish string, then block and dodge until they leave another opening." The airship boss is a great example. Dodge until you can get close, do short attack string, block or dodge his counter, do another short attack string, block or dodge his next counter, repeat till he dies. As for Alma, she's pretty much the most poorly designed boss in the entire franchise, or close to it. My MNM strategy was to stay far away, never interact with her in any way, and do Flying Swallow whenever I was sure she couldn't punish it. The most depressing thing in the world was when I looked up experts to see how they fight her and saw that they do the exact same tedious stupid bullshit, and even loudly complain in their video commentary about how random the fight is, the only difference being they use a couple other moves in addition to Flying Swallow, like DS hold Y.

Seems like her gameplay sections are made for you to abuse UTs

The karma system implies that the entirety of NGB and 2 are made for you to abuse UTs.

Yes of course you can cheese Ninja Gaiden, please stop spreading this myth. NG2 seems like Itagaki intentionally filled it with as many cheese tactics as possible, TBQH.

In DMC, you only Stinger to the enemies because you need to close the gap. You're stronger up close than at a distance, while they might have very good projectiles. You never stinger away from yout enemies (you even cannot because of the stupid lock-on mechanism ). It would make no sense.

If the only reason you use Stinger is to gap close then you probably shouldn't because there are better gap closers available, such as Dance Macabre, Reverb Shock, Trickster moves, etc. Closing gaps is just one of a bunch of reasons you should use Stinger. Often Stinger is used to CREATE gaps, similar to the Shotgun. Dante is perfectly fine fighting at a distance, many of his best tools are ranged. For example, the three strongest weapons in DMC3 are all ranged: Nevan, Spiral, and Kalina Ann.

You can Stinger away from an enemy, in all 3 games, and DMC fans were pissed that the feature got nerfed in DMC5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnW-pgVnoog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJceVn67qic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF0nbsL6qKg
This technique became much more well-known in DMC4 due to the huge amount of options it opens up for Nero's gameplay. DMC5 severely limited the technique in order "to prevent accidental inputs". People quickly modded the PC version to revert this change; the DMC5 footage there is of unmodded "vanilla" reversals. I Stinger away from enemies all the time, and often to avoid attacks, although usually it's simpler and more efficient to target a second enemy rather than empty air. When dealing with a group of Enigmas for example, bouncing from one to the next with Stinger is an effective way to disable them while avoiding damage.

You're perfectly safe rubbing against your foes at all times since you have plenty of ways to instantly avoid and punish their patterns (5 is the most guilty of that).

If you really believe Dante is "perfectly safe" being near enemies, I have to assume that you've never taken damage from any attack in any Souls game or Sekiro, since all of them give you more generous i-frames than DMC. And that's before considering that in Dark Souls you can block. DMC's defensive abilities are weaker than most 3D action games, and that includes NG. Ryu can block most attacks with little effort and no timing demand, he can buffer automatic guard-cancels instead of needing to manually time every dodge, and he can spam i-frames better than Dante thanks to his massive list of invincible moves that can chained or looped rapidly, many of which are even attacks. The "mixup" element of NG is a consequence of Ryu's defensive abilities being very powerful. There's little in the way of mixups in DMC because there's no need for enemies to circumvent a block button that doesn't exist.

Take a look at this fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdEIHF6bwjA
In this entire fight, involving iirc 25 enemies, Dante only uses i-frames to avoid damage 2 times, and both of those were very intentionally allowed to reach him because the player wanted the enemy to get as close as possible. Dante is safe not because of any strong defensive abilities, but because he orchestrated events so that he never needed strong defensive abilities. What's powerful about Dante is his overwhelming array of crowd control and position control abilities, which let him pick and choose when to dodge, or even if he will dodge at all.

Actually I never run around in DMC3-4-5. I'm always on the offensive.

Look back at the video above. The fight starts with an enemy right in front of Dante, already attacking. Does the player dodge? Does the player counterattack? No, the FIRST thing the player does is RUN to a more advantageous position, because the correct position makes his offense far more effective. There's almost no distinction between repositioning and being on the offensive in DMC3/4/5. Unlike Ryu, Dante can freely aim any attack in any direction (this fact alone makes Dante more capable at crowd control than Ryu). Dante can angle his attacks to "walk" around an enemy even as he combos them, he can guide a combo in whatever direction he chooses, to achieve better positioning. DMC4's Lucifer is designed around this concept; it uses basic attacks to "walk" around and between enemies, evading threats and herding foes where you want them, setting up elaborate and flashy combos against entire groups with its bombs. It's not a coincidence that the weapon has a dancing theme to it, dancing is exactly what you're meant to do with it. Attacks in DMC are done to control positioning as much or even moreso than to deal damage.

If you look at later missions in the same run as that previous video, the player uses the move Free Ride quite a lot. Free Ride is really bad for almost all purposes, it does pathetic damage, doesn't build much style, and wastes a lot of time. So why would someone use such a move during a very difficult challenge run that puts major pressure on the player to end fights quickly? Simple, because it allows him to reposition both himself and a target enemy anywhere he wants on the stage. It's the most powerful repositioning tool in the game, so the player practically spams it, because he knows that positioning is king in DMC3.

(Gah, stop making me defend DMC3, it hurts my soul)

In the DMC, launching is mostly a combo extender.

Absolutely not. Dante can combo infinitely and easily on the ground, he doesn't need help to 'extend' combos, and comboing on the ground is more efficient for both damage and style points thanks to the larger selection of moves available at ground level. Launching in DMC represents a sacrifice of damage potential for a longer stun effect. If you intend to focus on a single target then a long stun is unnecessary. Launches are used for one of two purposes. Either to reposition, because the player has decided that lifting the enemy and/or Dante to a higher position is desirable, even at the cost of less efficiency. Or to split focus, the long stun time freeing up the player to attack a second target.

[Kriegor]

You can Stinger away from an enemy, in all 3 games, and DMC fans were pissed that the feature got nerfed in DMC5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnW-pgVnoog

I didn't even knew it was possible! That's saying how much it's needed! And I've hundreds of hours on DMC3 (it's my favorite non Ninja Gaiden 3D beat'em up). Actually, I like it even more than the first NG. I've finished BP with all possible styles and weapons (I like to run a very weak but very cool Cerberus+Nevan+Trickster build).

If you really believe Dante is "perfectly safe" being near enemies, I have to assume that you've never taken damage from any attack in any Souls game or Sekiro, since all of them give you more generous i-frames than DMC.

You still need to learn the patterns. It took me many hours to no damage Inner Ishin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LII6YDbSUUI). But yeah, there's no depth. It's just pure Simon Says. You're never ever proactive in any boss fight, and other fights are all about making them one on one situations. It's not unenjoyable (hell, I love Super Punch Out), but it's not deep, it's not tactical. At all. (Dark Souls a bit more)

Now DMCs are quite considerably above that. It's well above any releases from Platinum Games as well in that regards. So when we (or I) say the Ninja Gaiden have a much more proactive gameplay, we're not saying like the DMCs are braindead. It's not as intensive in that regards that's all.

Do that without constantly moving, repositionning and patiently waiting for a more favourable enemies' placement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMby-XrvEpo

You can say Dante has a much weaker defense, the fact is he could have plowed through not moving an inch and just using RG with perfect timing (especially Dante from DMCV where they have made RG completely OP).

Absolutely not. Dante can combo infinitely and easily on the ground, he doesn't need help to 'extend' combos, and comboing on the ground is more efficient for both damage and style points thanks to the larger selection of moves available at ground level. Launching in DMC represents a sacrifice of damage potential for a longer stun effect. If you intend to focus on a single target then a long stun is unnecessary. Launches are used for one of two purposes. Either to reposition, because the player has decided that lifting the enemy and/or Dante to a higher position is desirable, even at the cost of less efficiency. Or to split focus, the long stun time freeing up the player to attack a second target.

As I've played DMC3 to 5, I've always used this kind of moves as combo extender. Not necessarily for making more damage but because it looks cool and makes the ways I deal with my enemies more varied. If I want to feel safe, I stay on the ground so I can parry or dash through the next attack. And that way of thinking carried me through all BPs multiple times so if the games wanted me to feel otherwise, they failed.

I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, at all. It was very interesting to read. And there are way better people at DMC than I am (Donguri for instance). But maybe the problem here is that Ninja Gaiden forces you to mind your relative position in relation to your enemies, while you can finish the hardest challenges in the DMCs again and again without thinking too much about it.

[BIL]

Excellent posting ITT. I appreciate it, as someone who put basically all his gaming time into 2D stuff, the last fifteen years or so.

[Sima Tuna]

Now DMCs are quite considerably above that. It's well above any releases from Platinum Games as well in that regards. So when we (or I) say the Ninja Gaiden have a much more proactive gameplay, we're not saying like the DMCs are braindead. It's not as intensive in that regards that's all.

Do that without constantly moving, repositionning and patiently waiting for a more favourable enemies' placement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMby-XrvEpo

You can say Dante has a much weaker defense, the fact is he could have plowed through not moving an inch and just using RG with perfect timing (especially Dante from DMCV where they have made RG completely OP).

Yeah, that's what I mean. I'm not trying to shit on DMC. The way you move is just different. With NG, I'm always mobile, always rolling, jumping, sliding off walls etc. If you stand still, you're gonna get stunlocked real fast. Ryu can block, but later enemies have lots of unblockables, guard breaks and throws. In packs of enemies, you have to keep moving. You won't get a clear opening to attack, because even if that particular enemy has a gap in its strings, the other ones will cover it. So you have to create gaps with movement, positioning and offense.

Dante doesn't move the same way. You can use Royal Guard, you can Quicksilver, or just jump in place. But you're not flying around the arena. What I remember from playing the harder difficulty levels is a lot of stunlocking/fastkilling big groups and then jump canceling or instant air tricking when an attack came my way. The NG equivalent might be spamming the Lunar combos and then doing a single roll whenever enemies attack you. That strat can be used sometimes, but aggressive grapplers and enemies with lingering hitboxes (dinos, for example) will catch you if that's all you do.

Bayonetta had a similar tempo to DMC IIRC. Stand there and combo, witch time in place whenever an attack comes, then continue the string with slo-mo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UGwrr_jZq8

Awakened Alma seems pretty consistent to me, at least.

Raeng
4 years ago
I'm a bit surprised you didn't mention Windmill Slash (>X) into Violent Gale (running XX) to i.frame through her dash. Works pretty solidly once you get the timing down. Also dodging her dash and then punishing with XXY with the Kitetsu or >Y with the Dabi into Inferno is a true punish since she cannot dodge in that recovery for whatever reason. Though maybe you're saving this for the follow-up? Since it is more dangerous stuff.

I'm okay with the humanoid bosses in NG. Doku, Alma, Murai... Great bosses. Really it's only the gimmick bosses like the worms that piss me off. The gimmick bosses are easy but they're really lame and boring to fight. NG2 Genshin added the much-needed rival battle.

Of course you can beat any boss in Ninja Gaiden that doesn't autoblock FS by spamming FS with spacing that prevents punishing it. The game has such a strong utilization of spacing that what attacks can be punished vs not punished are reliant upon yours and the enemy's spacing.

I should also clarify that I pretty much never UT. I think the UT system is dumb, for the most part, and I don't like engaging with it. I don't enjoy watching cutscenes when I'm playing a character action game. Devil Trigger is a far superior mechanic imo, since it's active the whole way through and generally confers a smaller benefit. Max Anarchy's system of attack modifiers is another way to add a "power meter" to a character action game in a way that doesn't slow or substantially distort the balance of combat.

[Mischief Maker]

Any thoughts on Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS?

Besides being the most beautiful game on the platform, NGDS ruined The World Ends With You for me thanks to its faster and more responsive touchscreen action controls.

The starting difficulty is super easy, but I'm curious if anyone delved into the harder difficulties that unlock after you beat it the first time.

[NYN]

NG DS is fun enough, if you are comfortable utilizing only one weapon (that's what players hated with NG3). Made by the first Team Ninja.
Never played the Zelda DS's to compare the controls. It's fast and mostly precise to inputs (attacking in strokes can sometimes result in rubbing the screen to charge for a UT). I cleared every difficulty (including the hidden Momiji) except the final, that's how tough it is. I am not beyond that, just have to get back to it.

[Mortificator]

Geez, I think Dragon Sword's a contender for the worst Ninja Gaiden. Mandatory touchscreen controls AND almost all content being regurgitated from the Xbox game.

I think the UT system is dumb, for the most part, and I don't like engaging with it. I don't enjoy watching cutscenes when I'm playing a character action game. Devil Trigger is a far superior mechanic imo, since it's active the whole way through and generally confers a smaller benefit.

Yeah, I generally dislike ~cinematic~ attacks in any action genre. One of the things cementing God Hand as an entertaining kusoge is that a minute will never pass without you becoming invincible.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Do that without constantly moving, repositionning and patiently waiting for a more favourable enemies' placement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMby-XrvEpo

That you linked this video makes it clear to me that your understanding of "proactive" and "position" are very very different from mine, LOL. If your idea of "proactive" is running away from the enemies 95% of the time then there is very little we will agree on, probably not even the definition of proactive. (but it does explain why you like DMC3 so much, ah it feels good to go back to shitting on DMC3 )

The audacity to say Sekiro lacks depth and then link to a video of someone abusing UTs, Flying Swallows, and Izuna Drops for 30 fucking minutes. This video showcases not depth but the absence thereof. It's an audiovisual tour of the glaring design flaws that plague 3D Ninja Gaiden and prevent it from ever reaching the full glory it deserves. And I say all that as someone who rates Razor's Edge among the best action games. It's things like this dumb video that reduce it to "among" the best when it could have been "the best".

Also it's a tangent but DMC5 RG is very weak. Royal Guard was extremely brokenly OP in DMC3, and DMC3 speedrunners use RG almost exclusively as a result. It was then drastically nerfed for 4 and 5, and basically nobody uses it for anything but showing off or score-milking anymore. The only time DMC5 speedruns use Royal Guard is to make it slightly easier to set up Real Impact on one of the bosses. RG requires timing to within a few frames, which makes it way more difficult than all of Dante's other options and not at all worth the effort when most of those other options are also more powerful/efficient. You think that Kasumi player is using precise timing lol? Dude's just mashing that slide input without a care. If you put DMC5 Dante in a similar challenge, he sure as hell wouldn't waste his time with Royal Guard, he'd just do some easy crap like Cavaliere super armor with DT, or ranged options like Dr Faust and Kalina Ann.

It took me many hours to no damage Inner Ishin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LII6YDbSUUI). But yeah, there's no depth. It's just pure Simon Says. You're never ever proactive in any boss fight, and other fights are all about making them one on one situations. It's not unenjoyable (hell, I love Super Punch Out), but it's not deep, it's not tactical. At all. (Dark Souls a bit more)

That's what we call a you problem. You have vastly more mobility than in any Souls game, yet you stand around like a lump most of the time. You don't press the attack either, you CHOOSE to sit back and play Simon Says, and in the process make the fight much harder for yourself; you dragged out a 3 minute boss for 6 and a half minutes. It's true what they say: You can lead a man to a sick-nasty action game, but you can't make him play it.

Here's two examples of people fighting Inner Isshin proactively and tactically, and believe me I could dig up more and varied ones (I don't even particularly like this boss btw, there's way more interesting ones in Sekiro):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBe2rywb_rE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EfZ9OOXbxM

The biggest problem with Sekiro is that being proactive is TOO strong, the enemy AI tends to crumble under sufficient pressure. A great many enemies and bosses, Isshin included, are too easily controlled, or even pressured into simple AI loops like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gAfXpsIrqk

But you're not flying around the arena.

If you played DMC4/5 or Bayo1/2 and you weren't flying around the arena, that says more about you than about the game.
DMC4 Dante using the style that is all about standing still:

Spoiler

God, Royal Guard is fun.

I'm okay with the humanoid bosses in NG. Doku, Alma, Murai... Great bosses. Really it's only the gimmick bosses like the worms that piss me off. The gimmick bosses are easy but they're really lame and boring to fight. NG2 Genshin added the much-needed rival battle.

My problem with Alma is that she's a gimmick boss like the worms. The bone dragon you fight before Alma is more fun and interesting than Alma is IMO. I generally like the humanoid duel bosses just fine. I don't like Genshin much cuz he's really hard if you try to be creative but super easy if you just hold block and wait your turn, so I feel like I'm being forced to fight him in a really boring way. But the other bosses have better ways to punish you for being complacent and have a lot of nuance to them so its fun to try different tactics and approaches. Doku and Volf are my favorite bosses from the first two games respectively.

Of course you can beat any boss in Ninja Gaiden that doesn't autoblock FS by spamming FS with spacing that prevents punishing it. The game has such a strong utilization of spacing that what attacks can be punished vs not punished are reliant upon yours and the enemy's spacing.

Spacing out a move to not be punished is only the most basic usage of spacing so color me unimpressed. Ryu is not very good at making small positional adjustments. He can do them to some extent (shurikens help), and he's better at it in NG3, but he primarily moves in leaps and bounds. There is one and ONLY one thing I like about playing as Rachel in the Sigma games: flipping over to the other side of an enemy is a really strong tool for making small but impactful adjustments to positioning. They kinda-sorta made Ryu's slide work like this in NG3, which is awesome. Generally though, if Ryu is slightly to the left of where he would like to be, it is difficult to get there without putting himself in danger. It's usually simpler to abandon the position entirely, jump away to a safe distance, and then try a completely different approach, and you lose out on positional nuance that way.

Dante on the other hand, practically specializes in these small adjustments. He has a ton of ways to make short-distance movements and full control of direction and distance in many cases. His pistols are way better than Ryu's shurikens for controlling enemies and moving himself around. He has numerous defensive abilities which each have unique movement properties. Something worth talking about is the fact that Dante's sideroll gives him more generous invincibility than any of his other defensive moves (except for the wallrun from DMC3), and is by far the easiest way to avoid most attacks. Despite this, everyone who plays DMC knows that jumping is usually better, because jumping lets you control your position and maintain your offense more easily. Ryu can't control his position in the same way. In DMC5, Nero gets a jog instead of Dante's slow walk while locked on, a new side-step dodge in addition to the old side-roll, and the ability to fire his gun during the roll. These abilities seem minor at first, but they have a major ripple effect and make Nero's ground game completely different from Dante's.

One thing I really like about Steel-on-Bone chaining in RE, despite the issues with that mechanic, it how much it emphasizes positioning. Manipulating enemies to attack in certain places at certain times is highly rewarding, and you're even incentivized to stay near dangerous enemies so you can chain SoB onto them for a quick kill.

Stand there and combo, witch time in place whenever an attack comes, then continue the string with slo-mo.

The thing about Bayonetta 1 is that it basically only has two difficulty settings: Non-Stop Infinite Climax, and Baby Mode For Babies. On NSIC dodges don't grant Witch Time, and enemies are faster, more aggressive, and more resistant to getting staggered or stunned. You basically never want to be near enemies on NSIC. For playing Bayo1 on Normal or Hard I recommend using Evil Harvest Rosary or playing as Jeanne, both of which restrict your access to Witch Time.

Platinum did catch on to Witch Time being OP, and Bayonetta 2 overhauled and rebalanced the entire mechanic and designed enemies around Witch Time, so it's quite a bit different from the first game.

[Squire Grooktook]

Ryu can block, but later enemies have lots of unblockables, guard breaks and throws. In packs of enemies, you have to keep moving. You won't get a clear opening to attack, because even if that particular enemy has a gap in its strings, the other ones will cover it. So you have to create gaps with movement, positioning and offense.

Yeah this is what it comes down to for me. Ninja Gaiden is the only game among my favorites (besides, ironically enough, Zone of The Enders) that has a true attack/block/throw triangle, and with that you have much more motivation to move around, dodge stuff, and mind your distance and momentum against enemies.

NG is the game I play when I want the hardcore fighting game experience emphasizing mobility, spacing, and fundamentals in order to survive intense gauntlets. DMC is what I play when I want a manic arcadey score chaser where you continuously challenge yourself to do cooler and cooler things.

Bayonetta is what I play when I want a rhythm game with some platforming in it.

[Air Master Burst]

Bayonetta is what I play when I want a rhythm game with some platforming in it.

P.N.03 is right over there, and I've been looking for an excuse to mention it in this thread!

Also GunValkyrie, which I guess is finally backwards compatible. I hope that includes a remap option, great game but clicking the sticks constantly like that never quite felt natural.

[Sima Tuna]

My problem with GunValkyrie is the control scheme seems designed to break my fucking controllers, and I'm not about to risk that.

[Volteccer_Jack]

P.N.03 is right over there, and I've been looking for an excuse to mention it in this thread!

https://stinger-magazine.com/article/pn ... orization/

You are playing P.N.03

Congratulations, for you are one of the few. However, is this a blessing or a curse?

PN03 is one of those games that makes me feel like an elitist by the mere fact that I have played it. I still need to get around to finishing the Papillon run though.

[Air Master Burst]

PN03 is one of those games that makes me feel like an elitist by the mere fact that I have played it.

I feel this way about Cosmic Smash whenever anyone starts talking about how dope Virtua Tennis was.

That's the best defense of P.N.03 I've ever seen that wasn't just from a weird crazy rando on a forum like me. I've always preferred it over Viewtiful Joe, Killer7, and RE4. Does anyone know how well it plays in Dolphin?

[Kriegor]

The audacity to say Sekiro lacks depth and then link to a video of someone abusing UTs, Flying Swallows, and Izuna Drops for 30 fucking minutes. This video showcases not depth but the absence thereof.

Think about it though. What do you need to understand to be as good as I at Sekiro?
If the enemy uses an estoc: press the dash button
If the enemy uses a standard move: press the block button
If the enemy uses a sweaping attack: press the jump button
If the enemy uses an AOE: run backward
Between each of those steps, you can at most attack twice using the attack button. Never do a third one. It's not necessary to attack, so you can skip this last step entirely.

And that's it. I've explained everything there is to Sekiro's fighting system. Now obviously, going through the hardest fights without taking a hit like me requires memorizing each patterns, and you can play with the gadget system or the consumables to make it easier, but here you have the awesomely complex mechanics I had to master.

Now what about Razor's Edge? It's just UT, FS and ID spam right? Ok then, when do you need to use UT exactly? You need to think about which enemies you are fighting, where they are compared to you, do you have the time to charge it, if it's charged, what risks there is about a projectile coming your way, do you release it or do you cancel it, will it be blocked, or avoided? And so on.
You can't just say, when enemy does that X attack, then you press the Y button.

Also it's a tangent but DMC5 RG is very weak. Royal Guard was extremely brokenly OP in DMC3, and DMC3 speedrunners use RG almost exclusively as a result. It was then drastically nerfed for 4 and 5, and basically nobody uses it for anything but showing off or score-milking anymore. The only time DMC5 speedruns use Royal Guard is to make it slightly easier to set up Real Impact on one of the bosses. RG requires timing to within a few frames, which makes it way more difficult than all of Dante's other options and not at all worth the effort when most of those other options are also more powerful/efficient. You think that Kasumi player is using precise timing lol? Dude's just mashing that slide input without a care. If you put DMC5 Dante in a similar challenge, he sure as hell wouldn't waste his time with Royal Guard, he'd just do some easy crap like Cavaliere super armor with DT, or ranged options like Dr Faust and Kalina Ann.

I don't like speedrunning beat'em up so I didn't take that into account. Thanks for these insights. Actually there are some 2D BTU I wouldn't play without trying to achieve a good time like Streets of Rage 2 or Night Slashers, otherwise, they are boring, but most of the time, I just don't like it.

That's why for me RG in DMC 5 is broken. In this one, if you don't get the timing right, you don't lose health, you just lose some of your DT gauge. And when you do it right, you regain some of your DT gauge. So even if you're really bad at it, and like miss the timing half the time, as long as you do it cautiously (a bit earlier), you'll be fine. I had to restrain myself from using it all the time so I at least get into the other stuff. If you're bad at RG in 3 or 4, your life will go down very quickly just using it. What I'm mentioning only applies to playing these games on the hardest setting without caring about how long it takes. Trying to finish them as fast as possible on the easy mode is a completely different experience.

About the precise timing needed in the 3D Ninja Gaiden, there are none. Even God of War 3 requires stricter timing. I usually put a distinction between 3D BTU that heavily relies on strict timing, and DMC3-5 (especially 4) are by far the most demanding games when it comes to that, and crowd control heavy games like the Ninja Gaidens. So yeah, your Kasumi player is not and will never use precise timing. He is mashing slide just like you say because what he needs is to place himself, and he needs to do that constantly.

That's what we call a you problem. You have vastly more mobility than in any Souls game, yet you stand around like a lump most of the time. You don't press the attack either, you CHOOSE to sit back and play Simon Says, and in the process make the fight much harder for yourself; you dragged out a 3 minute boss for 6 and a half minutes. It's true what they say: You can lead a man to a sick-nasty action game, but you can't make him play it.

Yeah, but I don't need to move or attack. And no, it doesn't make the game easier, if you just focus on reacting, you're much more likely to avoid stupid mistakes like overextanding and stuff, even if that makes the fight a bit longer.

Here's two examples of people fighting Inner Isshin proactively and tactically, and believe me I could dig up more and varied ones (I don't even particularly like this boss btw, there's way more interesting ones in Sekiro):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBe2rywb_rE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EfZ9OOXbxM

They're using a tons of consumables. I've done it this way as well but I prefered to upload a clean run. Going through a move with the designated counter or a consummable is just making it look different, not making it play different.

If you played DMC4/5 or Bayo1/2 and you weren't flying around the arena, that says more about you than about the game.
DMC4 Dante using the style that is all about standing still:

What you're showing is called Royal Guard Inertia. It's a very complex technics that very very few people know how to use, even among the dedicated fan base. Its sole purpose is showing off. It sports a very high risk and a very low reward. Even Donguri, who has thousands of hours in DMC4 alone, has to play the same fights again and again to make it look like he can RGI around the enemies and bosses moves.

You're purposely making the game harder by tapping into RGI. You can do stuff that you won't be able to without it, makes super cool the floor is lava combo videos, but that's just showing off. A good player with 100 hours on DMC4 will most likely be able to complete Bloody Palace in a more efficient and, more importantly, reliable way than a player with 10000 hours abusing RGI. Though the later will make a much cooler video. And I get it, DMC4 and 5 are fantastic when it's about expressing yourself. I'm just the type of player who's more interested into beating the game on the hardest setting and with the harshest restriction possible. I'm an achiever.

The thing about Bayonetta 1 is that it basically only has two difficulty settings: Non-Stop Infinite Climax, and Baby Mode For Babies.

I'd add to that using Pulley's Butterfly. It makes the game so much easier. You could argue about Pillow Talk as well. If you don't use either of them and go for the Lost Chapter, it's a very hard experience, easily around the hardest I've gone through in any 3D BTU. Not as stupidly hard as some things in the Ninja Gaidens but harder than anything the DMCs throw at you.

I tend to share the same opinion as Squire Grooktook: even in Infinite Climax and with restrictions, Bayonetta is more a Simon Says than the DMCs. You still have powerful counters and dodge offset after all. But it's so frenetic at times, you better bring a very agressive game.

Bayonetta 2 overhauled and rebalanced the entire mechanic and designed enemies around Witch Time, so it's quite a bit different from the first game.

Yeah, this one made so many wrong moves. I hope 3 will be a better game.

[Sima Tuna]

I've heard a number of people express the opinion that Bayonetta 2 made significant changes to the combat system, and that those changes were negative. But having not played the game, I can't comment on that. It does seem to me, based on my extensive bayo 1 playtime, that some changes were necessary for the combat engine. I still hold firm to my opinion that Bayo 1 combat, as fun as it is, largely boils down to doing an infinite combo while standing in place, then dodging whenever an attack comes, getting a free Witch Time and continuing the string. The fact that alternate characters and higher difficulty nerfed Witch Time just underlines how overpowered it was as a system. I haven't played Bayo 2 yet, but I do look forward to playing it whenever I finish with Ninja Gaiden Sigma.

I've now started up NG Black, so I can play it alongside Sigma for the true hipster wine-sampling experience. I must say that I had forgotten how bad the camera in older Ninja Gaiden was. It's just about tolerable in Black, but I can't find a setting to fix left/right/up/down rotation at my preferred settings (left/right normal, y axis inverted), which leads to me rotating the wrong way constantly. Then there's the matter of needing to hit R3 to enable camera rotation. This isn't in itself a problem, but it resets every time you load a save or quit to the main menu. So if you fuck up a boss run, go back to the main menu and load your save, you will then need to hit R3 again after regaining control. You have to do this every single time you load. Accidentally getting first-person view in the middle of combat is not desirable in a game that moves this fast. I also feel the camera speed is too slow to keep up with the action.

Sigma, by comparison, features pretty much entirely modern/standardized camera control, with a suite of options. Ninja Gaiden being Ninja Gaiden, it still provides plenty of shit camera angles, but adjustments are much easier. I may be imagining things, but the Sigma camera feels like it tracks Ryu's movements a little faster than the Black camera does. I'm not sure. I'm currently on Chapter 18 of Sigma, so I'm almost finished. The Vigoor emperor fight is some jank-ass kusoge. I wouldn't have minded if the Sigma version had excised this boss entirely in favor of killing him in a cutscene. His design isn't difficult so much as baffling.

All in all, nearing the end of Sigma, I'm positive towards it. The Rachel chapters are complete shit and the boss refight against Baron Fatass Laser Harkonnen was unnecessary. But you can fire arrows while jumping (trivializing the tanks and other shitty bosses), camera controls are much improved, the game looks a bit prettier (nothing major) and there's a new weapon that's kinda neat. So hey, at the cost of some terrible (but short) Rachel chapters, the Ryu stuff is all about as good as it was in Black, if not a little better. I'd definitely rank it worse than NGB if you were required to clear the Fiend Challenges in Rachel's chapters, but you aren't. So just skip that shit, because it isn't worth doing. The worst thing about Sigma is the forced Gamov fight, which suuuuuuucks.

Once I wrap up Sigma and NGB, it'll be on to NG2 and Sigma 2. I have much less playtime in NG2 than Black. I couldn't resist playing a couple levels in Sigma 2, but stopped after realizing that trying to play both NG2 and NG1 (at the same time) was fucking me up, since the tempos are so different.

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Witch Time isn't so much overpowered as it is a crutch. It exists as a tool to get less-experienced players hooked on the game, but ultimately Bayonetta isn't completely designed and balanced around it: the highest difficulty is the "real" game, as it is in almost all the games Kamiya directed, and there it becomes clear that enemies were actually balanced around the consideration that the player won't have witch time. Whether hiding the real game behind multiple playthroughs is a good decision is definitely up for debate, but it is the standard in this genre, anyway: basically all the Devil May Crys are guilty of it as well.

Bayonetta 2 is still a solid game but it's not the masterpiece the first was: all of its system changes are poorly considered and serve to make it a much simpler action game for all skill levels, whether you're just aiming to survive cleanly through stages or experimenting with combos and juggling. As has been pointed out, the general Platinum action concept - one-button i-frame dodges - is already marginal, difficult to design a complex and rich system around. I feel like Platinum got everything they really could out of that with the first Bayonetta, and 2 ends up being entirely unable to make thoroughly interesting enemy designs around the constraints of having to actually balance their one-button i-frame dodge game around witch time (unlike the first game, again, which recognized that it was better not to try and smartly balanced the proper game around normal combat).

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I just can't fully get behind Itsuno-era Devil May Cry (3-5). DMC1 is a masterclass, though ultimately surpassed by later games in the genre, but I really think that you simply cannot make a thoroughly interesting action game without having combat - the core appeal of the genre, of course - be consistently interesting and exciting. Itsuno's games, though still very good, do not understand that; he's happy to let the star of the show be Dante's excellent toolset and hopes that the player will go on to make their own fun by noodling around from there. But the most important part of these games is the pressure placed on you by enemies and bosses to make the most of that toolset to begin with, and Itsuno's games consistently lack in exciting enemy design versus other top genre entries (especially DMC3, which is an absolute mess). I go back and forth on whether DMC4 or 5 is the best in the series (after 1) but certainly neither of them can stand up to Bayonetta 1 or Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2.

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Gunvalkyrie is a truly awesome game. My only disappointment with it is that it only reaches its real potential in its final few stages and boss fights - if it had had more intensity throughout it could have been an all-time classic. As it is it's still got fun movement and is fun to try to play efficiently. PN03 never clicked with me though (which is sad to admit as a huge fan of Mikami's games). Its action felt bland and simple all the way through, very rote.

But a game can both be shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit and character action. There are pretty good examples here.

I’m not saying I would classify as it, just got curious. I always considered RE4 and 5 (and Mercenaries 3D)’s battle system as Final Fight reimagined in 3D. That would make RE6 Captain Commando (adds faster movement, an optional moving chain system, and expands cancel options through deathblow) centered around Knights of the Round’s directional “two-timing” parry mechanic. Just like the two of them though, it also ends up being slower, less energetic, than the very aggressive style of RE4/5/FF. You don’t combo throw your way out of the crowd, you move around, pick your fights and buff parries.

It's still strictly ground based so it depends where we draw the line. We’ve not quite reached the point where we could say we have the Alien vs. Predator of the Biohazard family (and since this arc is closed, we never will). It’s more free form (and less braindead) than Onimusha, but the feeling of old school beat’em up ‘s still stronger than something like DMC.

I missed out on this conversation but this is a really interesting perspective, I think. Mikami did later say he was a fan of Final Fight (which is why the unfortunate Final Fight: Streetwise ultimately inspired him to avenge the series with God Hand) so there's grounds to believe its combat was a source of inspiration for him. I would ultimately agree that RE4 does have more in common with how crowd control works and how the player views enemies as a part of that than DMC games, even if DMC is aesthetically closer to classic brawlers just by being melee-based.

[Air Master Burst]

I just can't fully get behind Itsuno-era Devil May Cry (3-5). DMC1 is a masterclass, though ultimately surpassed by later games in the genre, but I really think that you simply cannot make a thoroughly interesting action game without having combat - the core appeal of the genre, of course - be consistently interesting and exciting. Itsuno's games, though still very good, do not understand that; he's happy to let the star of the show be Dante's excellent toolset and hopes that the player will go on to make their own fun by noodling around from there. But the most important part of these games is the pressure placed on you by enemies and bosses to make the most of that toolset to begin with, and Itsuno's games consistently lack in exciting enemy design versus other top genre entries (especially DMC3, which is an absolute mess). I go back and forth on whether DMC4 or 5 is the best in the series (after 1) but certainly neither of them can stand up to Bayonetta 1 or Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2.

I mostly agree with your assessment of these games, and yet I rank DMC4 and DMC5 above Bayonetta and all the NG games. I think it's because I prefer looking cool to hardcore challenge in these sorts of games; if I want to get my ass kicked I've got the Final Fight 1CC attempt to keep me busy.

For me personally, ranking the top genre entries looks something like this:

Otogi
ZOE/A.C.E.
DMC 1, 4, 5
NG 1, 2
Bayonetta

I probably would slot GunValkyrie and P.N.03 above Bayonetta as well (and probably above at least one of the NG games), but it's been too long since I've played either of them to really give them a fair ranking here. I also dearly love Stranglehold and the Bright Memory games, but those are different enough I hesitate to rank them against more traditional character action fare.

ETA: Has anyone tried the updated BloodRayne games? Apparently the original developers fixed them both up for modern systems a couple years back, curious if they're finally living up to their potential.

[Sima Tuna]

I regret not having put a large amount of play time into Otogi. I've had terrible luck with original xbox consoles. The first one I bought had a failed drive, which I replaced. Then the drive on that one started going bad years later, so I bought another system. From day 1, this new system has been finicky about disc read errors. I'm pretty sure it ALSO has a fucked-up disc drive that's slowly failing. The original xbox system (hardware) is such a massive piece of shit that playing Otogi on original hardware is more obnoxious than it should be. I love the og brick's library and fondly remember many an evening spent hunched over Jade Empire and Halo: CE, but god damn did I have to work to keep my system running.

However! I did do a quick google search and it seems Otogi is now backwards compatible! As of 2021, the games are supposedly BC. That's a huge plus, if so. Man, it's been years since I enjoyed some Otogi goodness. Along with Kuon and Armored Core 3, it forms the holy trinity of From games. I might just have to play Otogi before I move from NG Black/Sigma to NG2.

The only aspect of Otogi I really remember are some fantastic boss battles. Some of the most impressive of that era.

[Air Master Burst]

However! I did do a quick google search and it seems Otogi is now backwards compatible! As of 2021, the games are supposedly BC. That's a huge plus, if so. Man, it's been years since I enjoyed some Otogi goodness. Along with Kuon and Armored Core 3, it forms the holy trinity of From games. I might just have to play Otogi before I move from NG Black/Sigma to NG2.

The only aspect of Otogi I really remember are some fantastic boss battles. Some of the most impressive of that era.

Otogi also might have had the best graphics on the console, which is saying something.

I've never tried Kuon but that's high praise; my personal top 3 From games would probably be Otogi, King's Field 4, and whichever Armored Core I'm feeling the most when you ask me. That said, I still haven't tried Metal Wolf Chaos.

[Sima Tuna]

However! I did do a quick google search and it seems Otogi is now backwards compatible! As of 2021, the games are supposedly BC. That's a huge plus, if so. Man, it's been years since I enjoyed some Otogi goodness. Along with Kuon and Armored Core 3, it forms the holy trinity of From games. I might just have to play Otogi before I move from NG Black/Sigma to NG2.

The only aspect of Otogi I really remember are some fantastic boss battles. Some of the most impressive of that era.

Otogi also might have had the best graphics on the console, which is saying something.

I've never tried Kuon but that's high praise; my personal top 3 From games would probably be Otogi, King's Field 4, and whichever Armored Core I'm feeling the most when you ask me. That said, I still haven't tried Metal Wolf Chaos.

Kuon is not an action game, it must be said. It's a survival horror game in the same vein as Silent Hill or Resident Evil 2 (not the remake.) But where I think Kuon becomes transcendent and surpasses most other horror games in the genre is in its presentation. The story happens on a very small scale, in a single location, at a particular moment in time. It captures a slice of history and fantasy in a way few games do. It's also one of a very few titles within the "horror" genre which is genuinely scary (alongside its ps2 brother, Siren.)

However, the game is obviously still on ps2 hardware. The visuals are muddy and its gameplay bears the hallmark limitations of its tank control subgenre. Even so, I think those limitations heighten the experience. I find blurry, indistinct monsters more frightening than hd-megatextured monstrosities. Combat is a frantic, flailing affair, just as in Silent Hill. The music is also singularly atmospheric. Every aspect of the game supports its theming and mood. For example, the way you save is by writing your sins on a little paper boat and sailing them down the river. The whole game is like that. Every item, interaction, enemy and character is steeped in Shinto mythology and Heian style.

Having rambled at length, I must reiterate Kuon is not in any way a character action game. Which makes it unsuitable for PAD experts looking for their next fix of hard 3d hackin' and slashin'. FYI, do not try to buy a copy of Kuon legally. Just emulate it.

Otogi and Ninja Gaiden Black are probably about even on visuals when it comes to original xbox games. Otogi just has more style. Dead or Alive 3 was also a very technically impressive title at that time. The xbox wasn't a bad action gaming platform at all, back in those days.