Hack and Slash - Likes and Dislikes

2. Fighting


The key aspect and the make or break part of the games. Now both games have some merits here and some things can be chalked up to source material, but I still have preference. To me hack and slash should be simple to learn with some intricacies to separate beginners and more advanced players.

What I like

In Bleach you have 4 ways to attack
1. Square does base attack
2. Triangle does a light spirit attack that drains a bit of your spirit gauge
3. Circle does a strong spirit attack that drains a lot of your spirit gauge
4. When in super mode you can press L2 to release and do an ultimate attack

Why does this work for me?

Well, being simple means I can dive in and know good and well what every button press will do. No miss communication at all from the first time I played it. You truly learn and build when to use which attacks in certain scenarios to better your combos and overall ratings.

What I do not like

In Ken's Rage you have a fast attack, a strong attack and a signature move. To me the big difference was I tended to input combos more finding a particular move that was the most effective leaving the rest to rot. So while Ken's Rage has more moves I tended to find many to be rather useless. Also, the signature move is mainly for bosses, which is fine but means no real awesome mass crowd control attack that I found. I will say do get more of a sense of impact with Ken than Bleach so give it credit there.



Neutral

I should note the games also have block features which is fine, but for me these games are more about a constant onslaught. If you prefer slower paced more methodical then there you go; I like fast and frenetic.

4. Leveling up



Man, do I love level progression in games. That sense of growth and improvement is why I have loved RPGs for years and like seeing it implemented in other genres.

To level in both games there is a grid where points accumulated during missions are spent to improve attributes. Yet, again, I found favoring one way of handling this over another.

What I like


In Bleach you gain points by killing enemies, breaking objects and then end mission bonuses like your time and all. So, you get 500 points and can spend it on attack, defense, life, spirit gauge or special abilities. Two aspects to touch on here, one I liked, one I have mixed feelings on.

The grid is laid out so all characters are placed on it. So, when you start with a character you are on their area and must get so many upgrades to unlock and move other areas of the board. A criticism of this system some have levied is that to unlock all the upgrades you are forced to play as many of the characters.
Now, I’ll concede this could be bothersome, but two facts mitigated any annoyance I experienced.

1. You do not have to play with everyone as multiple paths so crappy characters (Barragan…) can be avoided.

2. You only need to play a few times with most to “unlock” their area and go back to your favorites leveling up.

I actually am fine with this as I tend to try out characters anyway and this just added a bit as to why you would bother on trial basis with everyone. Could it be scaled a bit better? Sure, but I was okay with it.

What I do not like

In Ken’s Rage you acquire skill points from battle, but the best place I found is via item drops. So, on replays of missions you come to memorize where these drops are as they are very valuable as expediting leveling. Leveling is handled on a grid, but everyone is completely segregated so no overlap. That is fine; except I found in leveling I pretty much leveled any character in similar fashion due to less options on paths. When you add that leveling becomes increasingly difficult because I found that while cost increased I was accruing about the same amount of points as always did.

Honestly, it is very possible I was handling this game wrong, but that was my experience.

can you make you images smaller? It's kinda stretching the board.

Is "Fist of the North Star Musou" that bad? No.2 is coming out soon.
I pass on this cause there's not enough female characters
Only Kenshiro interest me and that only girl in game(?).
And the whole thread seems to be about what you like and don't in Hack Slash games.

It is okay, it has its merits, just does not appeal to me




That is exactly what the thread is about. I thought I stated that in the first post. So, what do you like and dislike about these type of games?

I would like your thoughts on it.

Of course, I was stating how the movement played into other aspects (environment and combo meter) of the game.

Here is what I was hoping. For everyone to state a game in the genre they like or dislike (one of each be nice) and why they feel that way. No right or wrong here, just expressing opinions.