Side scrolling melee combat sucks! What is a good example?

[Chazore]

LegitHyperbole said:

Yeah, but it's also the direction through space, you have two options, move left or right and sometimes up. When it comes to a boss it just seems so... basic. Like what can the developers do to creat a big differential between bosses. Oh, I gotta jump three times now to avoid this attack, that two whole more Jumps, like wow. 

Dust An Elysian tail is one of my favourite games ever BTW this is a new realisation to me. I suppose I went on too much of a soulsborne binge lately and now 2d just seems overly simplified in my mind and easy to my fingers. I suppose after Nioh 2 every games is gonna seem piss easy. 

But that's the thing, it doesn't need to have added artificial depth for the sake of adding depth. Some genres just work with simplicity and some don't, but side-scrollers are what they say they are, a game where you scroll from left to right, up and down, and it's a formula that has worked well for decades. 

Some of them will feature back tracking (Castlevania, sometimes Megaman, etc), which can add a form of depth. There are some bosses that come in stages where you have to avoid certain attacks or transverse moving terrain, and that becomes it's own form of depth. With side scrollers, you won't really get 3D levels of depth because then it wouldn't really be a side scroller if it had to abandon one of it's core principles. 

Don't forget, there are also plenty of 3D games where combat is made super simple (and there's honestly nothing wrong with that, not every game has to be hard or a souls-like), and some that aren't, but it's how you go about adding in those systems and mechanics to benefit the player or to compliment the game's flavour. 

Dust is also one of my personal faves, along with Guns Gore & cannelloni, and both of those aren't really that deep, but they each have their own types of flavours and mechanics that add a bit of spice to make them interesting and which allows them to stand out from the crowd. 

See for me personally, as I've grown older, I still find myself choosing "normal" mode, and never really stray further than that. I play games mainly as a form of entertainment. The only time you'll see me wanting to challenge my brain is when I'm playing RTS, because I like to run "calculation simulations", which to me is akin to white noise (I can play most RTS that aren't Starcraft with half my brain focused on something else while just issuing orders/building most of the time).

I think if you're really into challenging yourself, you should look around for games like Super Meat boy, or just try playing some side scrollers than contain perma death/extra hard modes to ante up the stakes. personally I'd just play them a few times over, then call it a day (much like I do for open world and RPG games these days).