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

[Airaku]

Viewtiful Joe has amazing side-scrolling combat, probably one of the best for the genre. Hollow Knight was a banger. There's a lot of good side-scrolling games for melee combat and brawlers, it just also happens to be true there are a lot that only have one or two basic melee attacks and it all comes down to timing the distance and not much more.