Games

I JUST SAW AN ARTICLE 2 MINS AGO DAYING ITS THE BEST THING IN VIDYA GAMES

Depends on the game. Parrying in the opening moments of Witcher 2 is a fucking pain, because it consumes 1 bar of stamina, as does rolling dodge, and you only have 2 stamina at that point, which also takes forever to regenerate. If the enemy isn't dead after 2 parries, you're fucked for 20 or so seconds because you have no way to actively avoid damage other than running away

On the other hand, the parries in the Batman Arkham games and Shadow of Mordor feel great.

parries your article

Lmao get rekt

give me parry or give me death. If I can't run around in my loincloth and boots with a parry tool and a stick and beat the game with timing alone I'd rather die.

Breaking: video game journalist who's bad at video games offers objectively incorrect insight

People (especially fucking game journalists) need to figure out that not liking something doesn't mean it's objectively bad

I will take it one step further:

Timing is not the only skill that is fun and developers should acknowledge this.

The reason we talk about parrying this way is it's everywhere now and people have decided it's what's needed to make turn based games compelling, but it isn't.

The reason they think that is that people have decided that timing a thing is the only exploit-free, skill-driven action you can have at the core of gameplay.

But it isn't.

I find it a bit lazy to default to this approach on everything and it's certainly on everything. Timing is a big part of gaming, particularly in real time action stuff, but there are other tools in the toolbox.

Here's an observation: the reason people keep trying to make metroidvanias and being worse than SotN and its handheld sequels is that modern designers can't get over adapting Soulslike combat where the Igavanias were more concerned with giving you a ton of options. Timing is there, but there's a ridiculous amount of self-expression through tool selection. You can go for a tanky build, you can break DPS and movement a hundred different ways. Getting good at those games makes them look like a broken mess, but it's self-expressive and fun.

Timing a marker to a yellow bar in Clair Obscur or trying to guess when the ridiculous fifteen second windup animation of an enemy is going to trigger a five frame active window is not self-expressive and fun. It's a QTE.

Clair Obscur's combat has other issues with balance beyond that, and you can certainly spec to trivialize the parry even without changing the difficulty level, but the annoying part is the focus everybody puts on the timing minigame versus the actual (pretty solid) turn based game design running underneath.

I haven't played it in a while (due to performance issues,) but I remember parrying in Deadlock being really satisfying. The timing was so generous, and led to mind games, fakeouts, mixups and all kinds of shenanigans about when you parry, bait parry, hold parry so the enemy doesn't know if you'll parry, training the enemy to expect when you'll parry before changing when you parry. And because melee isn't the only focus in combat, it made it a nice skill expression without being a win button.

I dont understand why some people think every video game should be catered to their playstyle preferences. It's ok to not like every single video game. It's ok if some people like video games that you dont like. Just play what you like and ignore the rest. It's so easy.

I really prefer dodging to parrying or blocking, so I don't like it when a game is set up so that parrying is necessary or overly rewarded in a way that makes the fights much longer or more difficult if you choose to not play that way.

Nah gamers are

They lost me during the bit about "Do you want to have to not just learn about but care about ticky-tacky coder stuff when you are just a person trying to play a video game?"

In fighting games for example, frame data is essential for learning the game. It's like knowing what the pieces do in chess. They just want to move the horsey around and not worry about all these pesky mechanics. Not all games need to be like that, but it's absolutely appropriate in certain genres.

Parries we're awesome in Sekiro because the entire game was built around them. The parry window was wide and the whole game was built to be a sort of rhythm combat game. It's important to note that the parry wasn't the only tool you were supposed to use. You had to react with Mikiri counters and jumps as well. The whole game came together to make the incredible duels that feel like a dance.

If they wanted to say that developers saw Sekiro's popularity and started shoving parries in where they don't belong then I could see that argument. There's some nuance there that this blanket statement of parries bad misses though.

Why the two opposite articles?

After giving it some thought I kinda agree with the author. Not in the hyperbolic sense that it's the worst thing ever, nor in the sense that I don't like parrying because I suck at it, but I agree on the point where he's talking about fencing.

There's so much more creative freedom and depth in actual martial arts, HEMA, fencing etc. that is just completely missing from most games. You don't get the contact feel of your opponent, you can't physically feel what your opponent will do. You can't really gauge how far your attack will reach or, more importantly, how much range your opponents have. You can't choose your angle of attack and, again more importantly especially in the context of parrying, choose how you defend. Your attacks are generally just a button click at which point the character does whatever attack has been programmed. Your defense is just a button click that generally blocks all attacks in front of you. Your parry is also just a button click that if timed right just parries (and sometimes automatically ripostes as well). All the nuance of melee combat is simplified to "one button for blocking/parrying and one button for attacking".

So yeah, parrying does suck until we can turn it into something more engaging than just timing a button press.

2 articles with opposite opinions on the same site, posted at the same time. Ok, interesting

I hate parrying so much. I can never get the hang of it in any game. I can play twitch shooters at a decent level, I can play the most challenging platformers without any issue, my reaction time is OK for someone of my age, but give me a parry mechanic and it all falls apart. For some reason, my brain cannot handle video game parrying.

I ended up downloading a mod that extends the parry window by 500% in Claire obscure. I still fucking fail at it at times. It completely ruins the game for me :(

I can absolutely understand it, not everyone has the time to invest hours into learning attack patterns or parry rhythms.

It is very normal that people only have a few hours a month for gaming, a hour here a hour there, with maybe days in-between.

Counterpoints: Mordhau, Nine Sols

Obviously this is hyperbole, because water is the worst thing in video games, but I do agree that parrying really is a pain in the ass.

Skill issue

I like parrying in RPGs. Forcing item use is stupid, since the item use is inevitable. It adds a layer of skill to combat, making it something other than menu with cursor. Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are phenomenal examples. I do not like it in real-time games, unless it's a core mechanic. The point is it should be a core mechanic, and not something thrown in because other games are doing it.

In my two examples, parrying is no different from blocking/dodging. The difference is simply tighter timing with a higher risk. This is fine, since this is the only thing that's going on. If it's real time, however, I now have this list of things to worry about--enemy positions, my own position, my health, the surrounding environment, being literally pelted with attacks. It's fine in real life, but with a controller? Hell no.

Expedition 33 is great because it's dead simple--a set of dodges and blocks, with a limited move set which just uses face buttons and the triggers, in contrast to Final Fantasy's dozens and dozens of spells. The simpler a game is, the better. See Celeste. It has move, jump, climb, dash. VVVVVV is even simpler--move and flip. Tetris is move and rotate. Paper Mario is just timing with button prompts. Undertale is just a standard RPG, but you move a soul to collect friendliness pellets. Even Horizon is relatively straightforward, with basic movement, aiming, shooting, and a variety of weapons which utilise these mechanics in different ways.

Occam's razor.

It’s the QTE debate all over again. If it’s a forced mechanic, meaning there’s no alternative than to learn the pattern and parry effectively, I agree with this guy that it sucks. But I haven’t seen many games where that’s the case.

Modern accessibility standards seem to be doing a better job of making games enjoyable by a wider range of players, giving options to disable QTEs entirely on one end, or offering alternative solutions to fights besides mastery of timing dependent actions on the other.

Third Strike parry is peak gaming. I also enjoy Street Fighter 6 parry. However, my brain feels real good landing them in Third Strike

At least he knows his opinions are bad lmao

Sekiro did it pretty well (almost as a rhythm action game), but in everything else it’s a bit shit. Usually you have to press a button within a particular timing window, except the actual timing can either be incredibly obscure (necessitating trial-and-error) or insultingly transparent and generous (i.e. the Assassin’s Creed model).