The fast paced combat of Hyrule warriors in mainstream Zelda

[Dio]

Hyrule Warriors introduced a fast paced combat style which was visually spectacular and fun to use and I cant help but think that combat in the canon series is pretty slow paced and not visually very exciting.

When you have a big action hero like link he should have a fighting style to match his status, something that leaves the player in awe and leaves them feeling great after they pull off a spectacular move. Currently Link fights with a pretty basic style and enemies therefore have to fight pretty sluggishly to compensate which doesn't feel or look good, the damage they dish out these days is virtually nonexistent as well which makes alot of them seem weak and pathetic. It leaves me thinking. Why is link doing this? My gran could beat these guys.

What do you think. Should fighting be fast paced and more of a spectacle. This is a fantasy series after all and I for one wouldn't mind Link performing some outlandish feats on the battlefield in future.

 

[snakeoiltanker]

I don't think my issue is so much the pace as it is the overall boring combat. He only has two attacks (bar TP) a slash and a jump attack. What need to change is the combat. He need more moves. TWW did a cool thing where you could hit the attack button a few times and the swings kept up, and actually looked like a combo with the big upswing where he kind of spins. That's what I think we need. Combos, but not loose how well the shield works. Maybe work the shield work for you on the offensive as well.

As far as pace, I think it's just the enemies that need to up the pace. I'm so tired of waiting for an enemy to attack so I have a window to attack. It's so boring to only be fighting one enemy at a time. Rarely does more than one enemy attack you at a time. I'm not saying fight a ton of enemies at once like in Hyrule Worriers. But at least numbers that makes you feel there is a chance you may not survive. One enemy in Zelda we all know is not difficult by any means. Hell even bosses have no difficulty to them. So if they can't give us smart enemy's that can actually do some damage, throw more of them at us. At least enough to justify using combos, or a better combat system.

 

[DekuNut]

I think it sounds like a good idea. The series should evolve with the available technology.

 

[AncientPoe]

If you don't bother with the parry attack, Wind Waker had a really good combat system. But to get a lot out of it you have to abandon what you've been taught, to an extent. Can't tell you how many times i've been surrounded by Bokoblins, striking at one as much as possible, before dropping my Targeting and rolling to the side to narrowly avoid an attack from behind, only to come up instantly from my roll and dole out attacks to a new target. But yeah, if you waste time with the parry then combat slows to a crawl.

Something I'd like to see is a real parry, unrelated to the WW one. Perfectly time your guard or parry to intercept an incoming attack, and deflect the blow to knock your opponent off balance. I know it's used a lot in many games, but that doesn't change the fact that it feels very rewarding when you do it right. But enemies need to come at you much more, and really, enemies need to start doing a lot more damage. A lot more damage.

 

[Link Floyd]

I think it should be a part of the game, but not entirely. I feel like most of the game should be like a standard Zelda game but at certain parts there could be character interaction and giant battles like the ones in HW. I think Kingdom Hearts did something similar to this.

It's possible Nintendo might include something like this in Zelda U.

 

[Dio]

If you don't bother with the parry attack, Wind Waker had a really good combat system. But to get a lot out of it you have to abandon what you've been taught, to an extent. Can't tell you how many times i've been surrounded by Bokoblins, striking at one as much as possible, before dropping my Targeting and rolling to the side to narrowly avoid an attack from behind, only to come up instantly from my roll and dole out attacks to a new target. But yeah, if you waste time with the parry then combat slows to a crawl.

Something I'd like to see is a real parry, unrelated to the WW one. Perfectly time your guard or parry to intercept an incoming attack, and deflect the blow to knock your opponent off balance. I know it's used a lot in many games, but that doesn't change the fact that it feels very rewarding when you do it right. But enemies need to come at you much more, and really, enemies need to start doing a lot more damage. A lot more damage.

Metal gear Rising had a great party system and was really satisfying. You move the control stick in the direction of the atttack whilst performing your own attack to do the parry.

There is one instance where a boss teleports at you from all different angles and landing all the parrys feels great to do.

 

[Salem]

Yeah, I like the fast paced combat of HW, but the thing is, there's too many special abilities that essentially do the same thing. That's the one thing that's like "whatever".

 

[AncientPoe]

Yeah, I like the fast paced combat of HW, but the thing is, there's too many special abilities that essentially do the same thing. That's the one thing that's like "whatever".

Well in that game it's necessary because it's expecting one player to essentially master 20something different characters. There has to be some overlap.

 

[snakeoiltanker]

The thing is, if you were to compile every combat skill that Link has learned over the course of the series into one game, you got yourself a great variety of skills, mix them into some combos or whatever and you got yourself a warrior.

 

[SinkingBadges]

The idea I'd be more partial to would actually encourage slow combat, funnily enough. It's one of the things I think 3D Zeldas, probably the only ones this conversation is relevant to, could learn from the souls games.

To explain better: make every option the player has access to so it has pros and cons. The souls games pretty much live by this in things like the difference between using a straightsword (faster but weaker, different types of swings that work better for different situations) or a greatsword (slower but stronger, longer reach to the front and sides depending on type of swings allows for sweeps or gap closing) and in how every situation seems to account for as many of these options as possible. My main reason for saying that is because I'm tired of how the items only seem to serve as puzzle keys most of the time; to me, combat in 3D Zelda always looks so biased in favor of the sword, so eventually most people just fight mostly the same way without the game ever really actively rewarding other approaches.

One last thing on combat speed: I said it would encourage it to go slower, but that would be mostly for telegraphing's sake. For all I know there's some other way to make this type of thing work without making it slow.

The biggest drawback I can think of in this idea would be that it's ill-fit for the puzzle-solving they've been doing so far. I wouldn't mind the puzzle-solving being cut off since I haven't found it fun in ages myself, but I don't know if others would.

Also might be worth mentioning I haven't played Hyrule Warriors, so I'm not sure if it does some of this already. I just thought the topic was interesting since I had those thoughts floating around for a while. Hopefully it's not too off-topic.

 

[AncientPoe]

The idea I'd be more partial to would actually encourage slow combat, funnily enough. It's one of the things I think 3D Zeldas, probably the only ones this conversation is relevant to, could learn from the souls games.

To explain better: make every option the player has access to so it has pros and cons. The souls games pretty much live by this in things like the difference between using a straightsword (faster but weaker, different types of swings that work better for different situations) or a greatsword (slower but stronger, longer reach to the front and sides depending on type of swings allows for sweeps or gap closing) and in how every situation seems to account for as many of these options as possible. My main reason for saying that is because I'm tired of how the items only seem to serve as puzzle keys most of the time; to me, combat in 3D Zelda always looks so biased in favor of the sword, so eventually most people just fight mostly the same way without the game ever really actively rewarding other approaches.

One last thing on combat speed: I said it would encourage it to go slower, but that would be mostly for telegraphing's sake. For all I know there's some other way to make this type of thing work without making it slow.

The biggest drawback I can think of in this idea would be that it's ill-fit for the puzzle-solving they've been doing so far. I wouldn't mind the puzzle-solving being cut off since I haven't found it fun in ages myself, but I don't know if others would.

Also might be worth mentioning I haven't played Hyrule Warriors, so I'm not sure if it does some of this already. I just thought the topic was interesting since I had those thoughts floating around for a while. Hopefully it's not too off-topic.

I really, really don't agree with any of this. The entire point of the Souls games is difficulty through unforgiving combat. It also involves a lot of pouring over your character menu, which slows the pace of a game considerably, and I don't think adding that kind of decision making improves a Zelda game. Don't get me wrong, it's a novel idea and I'm all for exploring other games and genres for ideas, but this just doesn't strike me as a good one.

 

[SinkingBadges]

I really, really don't agree with any of this. The entire point of the Souls games is difficulty through unforgiving combat. It also involves a lot of pouring over your character menu, which slows the pace of a game considerably, and I don't think adding that kind of decision making improves a Zelda game. Don't get me wrong, it's a novel idea and I'm all for exploring other games and genres for ideas, but this just doesn't strike me as a good one.

With character menu you mean stats, right? I don't see why it has to be that way. In the souls games, I always thought the stats were really just a way for the game to let the player bias their character towards one playstyle at the cost of other playstyles. It's really just there to make every character build different from others, which isn't what I was talking about. None of this is even about difficulty and I'd personally argue that neither are the Souls games, but I digress.

The main thing in my post are the pros and cons some items have. I would give you that maybe the sword bias thing was an unrelated tangent, but I do think that the games often sacrifice chances to make the combat more interesting without any need to do so. One of the things that brought this whole thing to mind for me was when I remembered how some of the 3D games after Ocarina handled shields: they automatically change your equipped shield to the newest one, and I just can't help but ask why. They could give advantages and disadvantages in combat to one shield that are not shared with the other shield. It just looks like a waste of interesting gameplay opportunities to me. These are the kind of things that would open up the number of ways players can make their own combat style and have all of them be equally viable ways to beat the game.

I also don't think the idea is that novel, some of the games have taken steps (however small) in this direction already. One of the reasons I was optimistic about Skyward Sword back before it was released was the fact that shield-breaking seemed to be a core element of the combat, meaning that a player who hides behind the shield too much will get some sort of punishment for it. Also, most of the reasons I started thinking around the sword bias thing go back to one time I was talking to a friend about the Zelda U teaser when one of us noticed how much focus was put on the bow, almost as if it would be the new main weapon.

I can understand why me using the souls games as an example would set off some alarms, but I did not mean that I want Zelda to be Souls. I just thought of a problem I have with the series as it currently is and used the Souls games as an example because they happen to do that thing really well. Other than that, I can admit there are probably much better ways to improve the games. Mine just happens to come from a distaste for the way the games handle stuff like combat and player options.

I understand the disagreement, but I also hope you understand where I'm coming from.

 

[snakeoiltanker]

I would have to say that what @SinkingBadges is onto is interesting. I don't think we should take him literally when speaking of using a demon souls type combat system. The system is almost flawless. You are rewarded for mastering, and punished for playing like a noob. Something all games should do. Also he means to open us to the idea of different weapon and fighting style options. This does not mean it has to be as hard as Dark Souls (hard being subjective, just like Zelda 2), but the difficulty curve will come in the form of mastering Swordplay (also like Zelda 2).

 

[the8thark]

I don't think the combat was any faster paced in HW than in the average Zelda game. The big difference in my opinion is in HW you are facing literally hundreds on enemies at once but in the average Zelda game it's a few enemies at most. The panic that ensues when you have to complete tasks but hundreds of enemies are in your way is what creates the false sense of faster paced action.

 

[Spirit]

I've always enjoyed the combat in Zelda but I've always wished that the enemies could take more punishment and that Link had more moves (loved TP for that).

Outside of having more moves, if the enemies could stand up to more punishment, i'd quite like to see (if not the HW style of combat) but some sort of combat mechanic to string moves together like in Devil May Cry i think that'd be really fun for Zelda to do but I'm also fine with the combat we have.

I hope Zelda U goes the TP route of giving Link a good move set