It's a long rant but just watch from where I timestamped.
I love it how whenever the guy starts sounding angry and frustrated footage of Maliketh is playing on the background.
He makes some good points. In ER the combat degenerated too much into "press B at the right moment", but I blame Dark Souls 3 for this sad state of affairs. To me one of DS3 greatest darling bosses is the exact moment when things took a turn for the worse: Dancer of The Boreal Valley, the original 360º ultra unfair blender. Dark Souls appealed to me because it brought semi-realistic motions for swinging weapons and combat felt like a fun semi-fantastic duel. However, by the time Dark Souls 3 reaches its midpoint things start to change and enemies become more anime, with long combos and no respite in between. Completely different from their alleged inspiration, Knight Artorias. That guy actually gives you plenty of time to do things and he can be staggered out of his buff, which makes him feel a lot more "fair".
Fast forward into DS 3 and we start seeing more and more "rules for thee, but not for me" crap. Multi-hit combos are a BIG issue in a game where you can't swing your sword more than a couple times before running out of stamina. DS 1, 2 and 3 (up until a certain point) didn't have this issue, as bosses would chain 3, 4 MAX attacks, with time in-between for you to sneak a hit or heal. They gave you a "turn" in between their hits, so long as you knew what action could "fit" in that mini "turn". DS2 complicated things further with Agility, a mechanic I consider to be interesting, but apparently everyone hated. ER bosses and even some mobs have relentless attack chains with small intervals in between. It's like the "mini turn" we had previously in-between boss attacks is now the
only turn we're allowed and the feeling of unfairness increases.
Another egregious bullshit not mentioned in the video is the introduction of "no, fuck YOU" attacks. Boss does something that clearly looks like an opening, you go in and BAM, tail swipe, say good bye to 60% of your HP, SUCKER. We're introduced to this crap right at the beginning of the game, with Margit's infamous knife attack. That shit doesn't seem to have any "rules", Margit pulls his knife whenever he feels like he should end your "turn". DS 3 brought some of this crap, but ER perfected the art of imposing arbitrary gameplay onto the players. While DS 1 felt rewarding because most concepts were universally valid through the game, so much so that Black Knights basically teach you how to demolish Gwynn, ER does the opposite and forces you to learn
every enemy individually, with no common ground between them other than "press B at the right time". There's no feeling of "I'm getting better at this" because everything you learned fighting X becomes useless once Y comes around and brings a slightly different delay, larger hitboxes and more blatant input reading.
ER also introduced us to a new bullshit: enemies that backstep away from you right when your "turn" was supposed to start. This is hands down THE MOST INFURIATING THING I found through my playthrough. Whoever designed those fire breathing eagles deserves nothing less than death. Many other enemies pull similar crap, including the final boss, a monstrosity that almost forces you to switch to ranged due to his bullshit constant kiting. To me that was not a problem, since I was playing the top "meta" build (INT/DEX Moonveil + Staff) so I could easily pew pew him to death. But a dedicated melee character probably found that fight to be ridiculous.
And last but not least, we have the tried and true method of STAT BLOATING. When creativity runs out, just triple HP, double the damage and DONE. The kiddies will feel validated once they beat Bullshit Blender #37. Some fights have such an absurd amount of damage bloat they render the Vigor stat obsolete. This is THE biggest issue I have with both Nioh and Sekiro. Once the game degenerates into "hit this enemy 50 times to kill it, get hit twice and you die" my incentive to play it goes out the fucking window. Not only do I feel like it's a complete waste of my time, I also scoff at the notion of how the game expects me to believe such a wimpy, weak and useless character beats so many overpowered enemies. It's the extreme opposite of a power fantasy. People who enjoy that kind of thing REALLY need to try hiring a Dominatrix to step on their balls and peg them with a dildo while they scream "Lady Butterfly, why?".
