FfXV most recently for sure. It's outright terrible.
Morrowind may win out overall however. Very clunky and unsatisfying.
Morrowind may win out overall however. Very clunky and unsatisfying.
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WORST combat system of any game?
- Thread starter Firmament1
- Start date
Yeah it's awful. It's deep and complex on the surface level, but after it's all said an done and all the layers are finally there during hour 60-70, you realize that combat encounters usually play out exactly the same and all of this complexity is a facade. It's really just convoluted.
It's not the worst, but from what I've played, the Dragon Engine RGG Studio games (Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 2, Judgment) have some of the floatiest and least responsive / satisfying combat. I'm finally playing Judgment, and it has improved (thanks primarily to Yagami's superior mobility options compared to Kiryu), but it's still mediocre. I had a miniature meltdown when it was revealed that Yakuza 7 would feature turn-based combat for the first time in series history, but the closer we get to release, the more I find myself excited at the prospect of playing a game on this engine without the subpar combat.
The enemies just don't attack you, and it feels so sluggish and delayed. I know people don't like Arkham, but that destroys Dragon Engine combat, imo.
The enemies just don't attack you, and it feels so sluggish and delayed. I know people don't like Arkham, but that destroys Dragon Engine combat, imo.
Idk, turn based stuff in video games is just not for me personally. I can't get into any video games with that combat system
I'm still salty about Hydlide NES.
It LOOKS like TLOZ, but combat in that game involves physically *running into* monsters on the world map with your body.
You will take damage from this.
So many fights are running straight into monsters, taking horrendous damage until one of you dies, then (assuming you survive) fleeing back to a grassy area to sloooowwwwly regenerate HP.
Madness
It LOOKS like TLOZ, but combat in that game involves physically *running into* monsters on the world map with your body.
You will take damage from this.
So many fights are running straight into monsters, taking horrendous damage until one of you dies, then (assuming you survive) fleeing back to a grassy area to sloooowwwwly regenerate HP.
Madness
Yea I've never liked the combat in the older AC games and Origins made the combat in those games even worse for me.
The first Ni No Kuni was rough. Anything that tries to combine real-time and turn-based is always going to run into trouble. Nothing ever felt right about it and this combat also featured some of the absolute worst team AI I've ever seen.
White Knight Chronicles was another negative standout. That shit was just slow and boring.
White Knight Chronicles was another negative standout. That shit was just slow and boring.
There's probably a boatload of shovelware games but the first time I literally hit the attack button in Vampyr I went "oh noooooo."
This is why I sold my copy. I really wanted to like the game but I was DREADING gameplay
This is why I sold my copy. I really wanted to like the game but I was DREADING gameplay
Count me in as another vote for Xenoblade 2. To summarize:
Xenoblade 2's combat is exceedingly convoluted with how long it takes to set up elemental orbs, and how many steps are involved in doing so. Hence, since breaking elemental orbs is the only way to deal any degree of decent damage in Xenoblade 2, most normal enemies take far too long to defeat. In Xenoblade 1, you can defeat a normal enemy in 15 or seconds, whereas a similar task in Xenoblade 2 can take literal minutes, especially in the early game.
And yet, since breaking elemental orbs is the only way to deal any degree of decent damage in Xenoblade 2, its combat is simultaneously exceedingly complicated and exceedingly simple. There is barely any room for variation or improvisation in your strategy, as the damage dealt from any strategy that doesn't involve elemental orbs is minimal. This is worsened by the fact that arts in Xenoblade 2 only really have 3 effects: pure damage, healing of some sort, and progressing the driver combo. Xenoblade 2 has no arts whatsoever that apply buffs to the party, or debuffs to the enemy, and arts that don't fall into one of the three aforementioned categories are very few and very far between.
Compare this to Xenoblade 1 (much less ground combat in Xenoblade X), where Shulk alone has arts that can deal damage, inflict Break (Stream Edge), restore health (Light Heal), reduce the opponent's defence (Slit Edge, Monado Enchant also increases attack power for the party), reduce the opponents damage in two ways (Air Slash and Monado Armour), remove enemy buffs, and improve evasion (Monado Speed). A single character in Xenoblade 1 has four ways of either buffing his allies, or debuffing his enemies.
A good example of a fight that really exposes how little variation there is to Xenoblade 2's battle system would be the fight with the power supply lines at the end of Chapter 5. On paper, this is a decent fight testing your ability to handle spike damage. In practice, since there are no arts that can mitigate spike damage in Xenoblade 2 (Xenoblade 1 had Monado Purge and Mind Blast), the only way to beat this fight would be to equip Aux cores that reduce spike damage.
Xenoblade 2's combat is exceedingly convoluted with how long it takes to set up elemental orbs, and how many steps are involved in doing so. Hence, since breaking elemental orbs is the only way to deal any degree of decent damage in Xenoblade 2, most normal enemies take far too long to defeat. In Xenoblade 1, you can defeat a normal enemy in 15 or seconds, whereas a similar task in Xenoblade 2 can take literal minutes, especially in the early game.
And yet, since breaking elemental orbs is the only way to deal any degree of decent damage in Xenoblade 2, its combat is simultaneously exceedingly complicated and exceedingly simple. There is barely any room for variation or improvisation in your strategy, as the damage dealt from any strategy that doesn't involve elemental orbs is minimal. This is worsened by the fact that arts in Xenoblade 2 only really have 3 effects: pure damage, healing of some sort, and progressing the driver combo. Xenoblade 2 has no arts whatsoever that apply buffs to the party, or debuffs to the enemy, and arts that don't fall into one of the three aforementioned categories are very few and very far between.
Compare this to Xenoblade 1 (much less ground combat in Xenoblade X), where Shulk alone has arts that can deal damage, inflict Break (Stream Edge), restore health (Light Heal), reduce the opponent's defence (Slit Edge, Monado Enchant also increases attack power for the party), reduce the opponents damage in two ways (Air Slash and Monado Armour), remove enemy buffs, and improve evasion (Monado Speed). A single character in Xenoblade 1 has four ways of either buffing his allies, or debuffing his enemies.
A good example of a fight that really exposes how little variation there is to Xenoblade 2's battle system would be the fight with the power supply lines at the end of Chapter 5. On paper, this is a decent fight testing your ability to handle spike damage. In practice, since there are no arts that can mitigate spike damage in Xenoblade 2 (Xenoblade 1 had Monado Purge and Mind Blast), the only way to beat this fight would be to equip Aux cores that reduce spike damage.
What a bad take. Unless you actually did this because that would explain a lot.
It would be like saying all fighting games have bad combat systems because you can just mash low kick to win.
in most souls pvp you will see an r1(rb) spam. I do it all the time.
If you explain every battle system in a reductive way like this then you can argue every battle system is awful and boring.
Final Fantasy 8 has one of the most egregious battle systems I have ever had the misfortune of playing. The battle speed is painfully slow and your normal attacks do very little damage for a good chunk of the game. The only way to really do any meaningful damage and quickly win fights is to just spam overly long summoning attacks over and over again. The junction system is also painfully convoluted and yet somehow so simple to the point that you can trivialize most encounters, but I digress. I have a myriad of issues with FF8 but man that battle system was painfully boring and made me want to take so many naps.
The Witcher 3 might not be stellar, but try playing Witcher 2 on hard. It makes TW3 feel like DMC.
It's hard to overstate how much of an improvement that game is over its predecessor.
It's hard to overstate how much of an improvement that game is over its predecessor.
Yeah lol even as a massive Witcher fan I hate Witcher 1's combat so much.
The worst combat system of any game comes from by far the worst game I've ever played:
The Last Rebellion. Its horribly bland story couldn't be saved by its atrocious and poorly designed combat system. I struggle to even understand why they decided to release the game over here when it was that incredibly bad.
The Last Rebellion. Its horribly bland story couldn't be saved by its atrocious and poorly designed combat system. I struggle to even understand why they decided to release the game over here when it was that incredibly bad.
Ramsay said it better. But having to spend two minutes getting to the point where I can actually do damage is far more boring than selecting a command and, ya know, it doing the thing. It's why Legend of Dragoon was terrible - "hey you know what would be awesome? If we required the player to perform a series of inputs in order to make a standard attack do actual damage!"
I still don't know how I feel about W1's combat. It's super simplistic, but there is something, I don't know, calming (?) about getting into the rhythm of swinging the sword. I know it's not "great" but I can't help but enjoy it in some weird way.
Most battles are less than 2 minutes, and the ones that are more than 2 minutes are the boss fights and the early ones that you dont even have access to combos to begin with. In fact there was lot of times I couldnt even use the special blade attacks because you kill the enemies too fast. There are a lot of ways to do damage without combos in Xenoblade2
It can't be helped because none of those games have anything resembling a combo system to chain R1 attacks to do anything else.
These games also actively encourage you to play more cautiously so why wouldn't you just use the safest move at your disposal?
That said of all the R1-spammers, Bloodborne at least let you chain from one weapon form into another weapon form without breaking the 'combo'.
Sure, trash mobs go down easy enough, but again that's just auto attacking until you can use the specials (it's been a long time since I played it so I forget what the terms are), and you don't even need to get into the more technical things like launch and combos. So even though you can do those things they're not necessary for trash mobs, and then with bosses you're basically waiting around for those things to be ready. Until then you're just trying to outheal any damage being done to you.
To be fair, the combat is only initially this monotonous, once you unlock 3 blade slots and some of the basic upgrades it really spices things up and the combat starts feeling legitimately strategic and exciting.
It isnt just auto attacking. There is stuff like auto canceling, art canceling, art driver combos that by themselves do a lot of damage. Depending on the blades you use (hint: abuse mythra) you get specials so fast that you basically you dont have to wait.
Morrowind (or one of the older ES games) had to be up there if we are talking about bad combat in high profile series.
ds2 has the best combo breakers. but that's me being biased and off topic.
*shrug* none of that ever felt necessary when most regular battles just didn't need the extra input, and boss battles felt more like just trying to capitalize on elemental orbs.
But hey if you liked it, then that's cool. Just wasn't for me.
Can I recommend to you the Chronicles of riddick: escape from butcher bay..
Yeah i am not asking you to like it but I just think calling it worse combat system very baffling
No one has played every game, so no one here is gonna have an objective take. It's certainly one of the worst that *I* have played, IMO.
Put me down for Skyrim. I have no idea how this game became so popular with combat this awful.
What sucks the most is that there's a lot of cool potential with all the different things you can do in combat, it's just that none of it is actually fun to do.
What sucks the most is that there's a lot of cool potential with all the different things you can do in combat, it's just that none of it is actually fun to do.
I'm not a fan of any of the From Soft combat systems. Those games and any game that tries to do the Souls formula just instantly dies in my mind. Jedi Fallen Order was an exception, but that was me forcing myself because of Star Wars. Any game that relies too heavily on parrying/dodging and getting fucked up with one stupid mistake.