Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Yes. A feature shared by many of the greatest video games ever created.

Was that also present in TP? I can't remember...

Yeah, Wind Waker was great... But the combat and some puzzles were garbage.

Whaaaat. Wind Waker had best combat.

@SpookyMeths: Nah, when I played it on Wii U, I felt that too many enemies were "run up to it and mash B" enemies. The boss fights were really good, though, as well as some of the tougher enemies, but I feel like Zelda in general has too many enemies that just become general annoyances after a while.

Of course, some of you would say the same about Skyward Sword BECAUSE of the fact that it won't let you beat every little deku baba without thinking about it. But in my opinion, the fact that it always makes you think about which direction to slash reduces the mundanity of common enemies by a lot in the latter half of the game.

Hahahahaha how, my friend? Press Attack and dodge! That's all it was. It was only good during the last boss fight.

Still better than Skyward Floppysword.

...most Zelda games are like that though

Still worse than Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time's combat.

Huh, how?

It's pretty much the same, plus the random "press a to awesome".

The counter button. It put more emphasis on timing and attentiveness. There was also enemy weapons, which were kind of fun, but never really needed. The whole package was more polished than Ocarina of Time's combat too, better movement animations, better feel, etc. I like Ocarina of Time more overall, but Wind Waker definitely has better combat. And it was the last time, to me, that 3D Zelda combat didn't feel bloated or excessive.

Though Twilight Princess was probably the last bastion of good combat in mainstream action games before God of War and then Arkham Asylum came along and ruined everything forever.

Oh please, that's such a "blame the originator" fallacy (and yes I just made that fallacy up). Arkham Asylum shouldn't be blamed for the fact that 100 games stole its fighting style and it became oversaturated. Blame those other games who were too lazy to do something original. If that fighting style had just remained in the Arkham series, it would've been fine.

Uhhh... Bayonetta 1 & 2 has the best combat in gaming. Not the overrated Batman games.

Bayonetta is a button masher...as in you mash the buttons hard to get that firey feeling of destroying enemies in a rage!

Playing Bayonetta on tough difficulties is amazing and a pure test of skill.

There are many modern action games with great combat, but none of them are mainstream in the way that Zelda, God of War, or Batman are. Devil May Cry is probably the highest profile action game series with deep, rewarding combat.

So, so good. Not that Zelda needs or should have combat like that.

Speaking of Itsuno PS3 games, Dragon's Dogma is one that would really benefit from a remaster on current gen consoles, and that may be in the works already with the PC port hitting in January. Great game, but performance limited by its hardware.

I blame mainly western developers. It's like all of western culture took one look at a samurai sword, said "Whelp, we can't top that," and proceeded to create guns forever. The same principal applies to their games (with a few exceptions like Ninja Theory).

I just like games where movement and attack movement is consistent and predictable so that positioning can is a part of your strategy. Also, I like having immediate control over my character in that the animations don't run too long, causing me to feel detached from my character (Far Cry). The only variable / contextual animation I love in Zelda is the roll attack in Wind Waker / Twilight Princess that allows you to turn mid-roll.

The Wind Waker's rolling counter, though, was too randomly automatic for a Zelda game. It being made an immediate, trigger-able ability in Twilight Princess made it feel 300% better to me. Contextual counter moves can get lost in da woods.

I would definitely generalize that Japanese developers are better at melee combat while Western developers are better at gunplay (with a few exceptions), but that's more just culture, sensibilities, and what consumers want more than whatever else.

Sort of on that topic, The Order 1886 is on sale on PSN for $20 right now and I'm sort of tempted to pick it up just because I've heard that the feel of the gunplay is very satisfying, even though the game itself is pretty weak overall. $20 is still a little too high for impulse purchase territory though. Will be busy for the next 57 days with FFXIV anyway (which has 10 year old WoW combat, while we're on that subject, but I'll forgive it because it's a super cool game).

Xenoblade Chronicles X — December 4th, 2015

Truth. But it's not really a problem. There are worse crimes than being derivative. Not being fun is one of them. WoW and many of its imitators are fun.