I enjoyed TEVI, but Combat is a slog next to 99% of metroidvanias

[Shotgun Justice]

-Decided to edit the OP, seeing as my conclusions have evolved somewhat-


I'll preface by saying that I did ultimately enjoy TEVI (and Rabi-Ribi), but that it was a rocky love/hate relationship.

I enjoyed the exploration and level design in TEVI, but it was constantly hindered by having to stop and button mash enemies. The combo-style combat system and how grindy that felt even on many basic enemy types made the whole thing cumbersome. When i finished the game, i was split on whether to finish 100%'ing the map, or just move on to another game, because of how repetitive mashing X on a single enemy over and over again gets. That's a slight exaggeration, but for the most part you're basically repeating the same 5 combo's while mashing the X button, while also peppering in your projectile and shoulder attacks.

You know what works better than mashing X in videogames for combat? Pressing X once and it doing a sword slash that hits for the same amount of damage as 10 presses of it. It feels infinitely better, and as a result is the most commonly used gold standard. But TEVI is one of those games that dares to try something different, and i respect that. I think the game is very cool actually, and part of me is still impressed by both the novelty, polish and accessibility of its combat.

Some games that I've enjoyed that used a combo system would be Super Smash Bros. Melee and a metroidvania called 'ato'.

Games like these, where your combo's aren't mostly composed of mashing the same button repeatedly + direction. In Smash, it's a single button press + direction. It isn't convoluted. In ato, enemies don't take excessive inputs of the same button to dispatch.

Another gripe I had with the combat system was the backflip that you use a lot to get i-frames. It was quite awkward. There were plenty of times where I would go to use it but I'd be locked into a combo attack and it just wouldn't activate. The sigil that you can equip to animation-cancel ground combo's is a poor mans solution to this. It wants you to press an extra button (down) to cancel out of your current combo, as well as needing to attack again before you can activate the backflip. Infinitely better would be if whenever you used your backflip, it overwrote whatever you were doing and actually worked (Like how i-frame dashes work in most games now).



This thread was originally talking about boss fights, which I'll leave below for posterity, but its a simple/outdated take. I initially came to the realisation that combat was a slog during those boss fights. ..But that was simply a symptom of the combat system itself, and over time I got pretty bored with fighting even regular enemies in the overworld as well:

-----------------OP--------------------
Boss fights tire me out
I was initially playing on Expert, because I preferred the increased enemy difficulty, however this would cause me to need to lose at boss fights a number of times to better learn their patterns.

What I quickly discovered is that fighting any boss in this game even once is very tiring on my hand, because im mashing X almost the entire time. So to die on a boss multiple times until I had perfected avoiding enemy attack patterns was insufferably fatiguing.

I went and turned it down to normal+, and now most regular enemies have been pushovers and i'm not having to be too careful.

I think this highlights 2 problems.

1. I wish dropping the difficulty had a bigger impact on lowering boss HP, and less on the enemies on the overworld.

2. The fatigue of this combat system versus bosses with large hp pools.

How are you guys finding this? I've played 150 metroidvanias and can't think of one where a single boss attempt always results in my hand getting tired.

**EDIT** The suggestion to use the 'hold x' combo more often has definitely helped with #2

[Fuzzabee]

I'm not having an issue with this, at least at the moment, as with how the controls are for the controller at least (may be this way on keyboard but I'm not sure) I can just hold X down to do a combo, so a lot of the time I'm holding down X to perform the combo, and at the end of the combo I decide whether I jump or do another combo. I weave Y in when I'm at 100% to do a charged shot and most of the time I'm just looking elsewhere for what I need to dodge.

If you haven't been holding attack down, I'd give that a try. I don't know if it was intended to just be able to hold X but I do appreciate it, as it makes things a lot more manageable for me. Then again, I have (fortunately) been 1 shotting bosses so I can't say anything about doing multiple attempts. I know when I played the demo and had to fight the harder version of the boss in there, I had to amp myself up because the first time was a long fight, so I sort of understand how doing it time after time would be annoying.

[Shotgun Justice]

thanks for the response, i'll see if holding X works out better when I have another session tonight.

[Croudo]

While I'm not suffering from hand fatigue the way you are, I agree that expert bosses are a slog and that the difficulty balancing is off. Normal and Hard remove and simplify so many mechanics while completely nerfing enemy HP, defense and damage while buffing yours. I love weaving my way through the complex bullet hell boss fights but it's a drag that bosses just go on and on and on with 4 health bars and later health bars having even more HP than the earlier ones. I feel like reducing their health pools in expert would go so far.

[󠀡󠀡]

Try rebinding melee and ranged attacks to triggers, mashing triggers is less tiring than mashing X

[Meng]

I think the bosses in this game just have too much HP tbh.

Personally would much rather they just gate difficulty by spamming me with hard patterns while the boss is invuln, then let me do their whole health bar while the boss is recharging. (as opposed to mid tier patterns repeated, while I break the X button on my pad)

[Moon Rabbit]

Agreed. The bosses just beat you down though attrition. Way too much health, with adds who also have ridiculous health. It wouldn't be so bad if leveling was more traditional and you had different weapons or improvements but I'm on the Egyptian boss and boy it's not fun.

[nnzsz]

I am on Hard mode(Expert mode might have been more difficulty but I guess just worst bullet hell and the general story/game play would be similar) and currently finishing Chapter3. My opinion is that the Boss fights were too lengthy and not very satisfying/rewarding. Most of the time I beat the boss between 1-4 attempt and the fights were just repetitive or some of the time frames I just have to keep dodging instead which is kinda of one sided and a bit boring. I mean the game is ok but so far I feel like once I finish the game it doesn't provide anything more unless you want a better bullet hell experience.

[Asakura Shinichi]

Actually, expert teaches you that mashing button will end with you getting more often hit than not, losing HP for spamming attack, instead bouncing of a boss and shooting at them are required more often as the moment you break the boss can also impact if you will be able to fully use it to deal lots of damage.
Also from what i remember you just have to press and hold x for a full combo being made.

[Meira]

Did any of you played Rabi-Ribi before? No idea how it will go in the future since I just started on the game. But if you are getting tired from a fight you picked to do on a higher difficulty and then blame the game design on that is pretty silly IMO, it's possible to lower the difficulty in this game to fit it to your needs. You could always revisit the fight in another playthrough on an higher difficulty

Also if the combat goes into as much depth as Rabi-Ribi you could string together huge combos with Amulet + boost resets in an opening and that made it possible to skip a lot of attacks in most non-post game fights.

[Shotgun Justice]

You apparently didn't read this thread at all (Or even the OP) and typed a kneejerk response, jumping to conclusions. Well done!

[Sukaiba]

You can do full combos by just holding the Button, although granted, you'll end up using the two Alt combos, but that shouldn't be no problem if you are carrying the Cancel Badge

Although yeah, I'm just on Hard and I can already feel the Bosses drag on, maybe because the close quarters combat is REALLY stale until now (Chapter 2 lmao)

Atleast with RR I had more fun because by now I'd have the Bnuuy Strike, the Air Whirl and the Air Drill, so I can atleast pretend I'm being combo silly and can also MOVE during my actions

Here I'm still stuck with just a rolling slash, a backflip and an uppercut
I really hope the backflip isn't the only combo attack that allows you to move... that would be REALLY lame, coming off of RR where you could do all sorts of nutty stuff using momentum, even the footstool distance is normalized in this game man...

And also because of the Break mechanic, that means the bosses barely react to your attacks besides getting delayed

[SpZ]

I'm not personally having this fatigue problem but I'm also more used to this kind of thing from years of fighting games. I will say that bosses aren't dragging on too much to me, even on expert. One thing I would suggest is making sure to find available items and to use synergistic sigils. Also, coming from rabi-ribi, that game's harder difficulties were pretty much balanced around rarely if ever getting hit and only really equipping damage badges. I've been playing like that and pretty much haven't used any defensive sigils, just the strongest offensive ones I could with a focus on combos. That hasn't made boss fights short by any means, but they haven't overstayed their welcome in my opinion.

[Asakura Shinichi]

Boss fights dont tire me at all, the amount and length of the cutscenes do. I dont remember when was the last time i seen a metriodvania that takes around 30% of time on cutscenes. This is closer to a visual novel with gameplay than an actual metroidvania.

[weiss]

i think OP does not play many/often games o.o
i have no issues either with the game, i played for 4 hours straight yesteday and and fell´d fine.

tho i agree with the waffle easter egg (aka asakura xD iunno if he/she gets it x3), the cutscenes are VERY long. the one with the grease robot was so far the most annoying one and was (in my opinion) really not needed. but atleast theres voice acting =3.

[Shotgun Justice]

I've played thousands of games Weiss, probably more than you or anyone I am likely to encounter. I will admit that combo-style combat is not something I typically play, though I do love metroidvanias.

The suggestion someone made of holding X to break up the mashing of X has certainly made the boss fights less fatiguing, but i still feel they drag on a bit.

Ideally, i could have the difficult enemies on the overworld still without being forced to master the combat system for the bosses, i just don't feel there is a sweet spot difficulty-wise for me.

If i drop the difficulty too much, the monsters on the overworld are harmless. If I raise it too much, i might have to repeat the boss fights over and over, and they kind of drag for me. I won't pretend to be great with the mechanics of the combat system, but I certainly wouldnt want to master the bosses on a hard difficulty just to make the overworld threatening, that wouldn't be fun to me.

I just wish i could have increased threat in the overworld without the added side-effect of bosses taking up 95% of my playtime. Feels like there is no optimal difficulty setting.