post-reboot gow has about as much to do with dmc as persona has to do with dark souls. gow is a linear, story driven, cinematic arpg with simplistic melee combat, dmc is a combat oriented experience with minimalistic progression and a complex array of combo strings/abilities. they are complete opposites in almost every regard except for the fact that they both have real time melee combat.
so the fact that you are comparing them as if they are similar just shows you dont know what you're talking about. also these low iq posts of people trying to shoehorn random blatantly unaffiliated games into being "CAG" just because they have real time action combat are ruining the integrity of this subreddit.
Is English not your first language or something ?
Do you know the definition of adjacent ?
First of all, I wasn't comparing GoW to DMC.
Even then, reboot GoW as many staples of CAGs.
Juggling enemies, pause-combos, a meter that rewards constant aggression, a ranged weapon that you can mix in with your melee tools, weapon-switching, a move-list that spans several dozens of different attacks, a fair bit of combo potential and it even has more exploitable enemy's hit reactions than DMC games.
That doesn't make the games better, more complex or anywhere near identical to DMC games but there's enough similarities to call them CAG-adjacent. You can be a CAG and still have shitty combat. And I'm not even calling them CAGs. If you don't know what adjacent means, just look it up in the dictionary before you post another piece of nonsense, making things up that I never implied in my previous posts.
what do you think i meant by "complete opposites"? does that equate to "adjacent". use your brain, if you have one.
>Juggling enemies, pause-combos, a meter that rewards constant aggression, a ranged weapon that you can mix in with your melee tools, weapon-switching, a move-list that spans several dozens of different attacks, a fair bit of combo potential
so basically every other game that features real time combat and isn't distinctly a soulslike! lets completely ignore the heavy focus on arpg elements, the cinematic "walk-and-talk" structure, the simplistic and grounded combat mechanics, lack of rankings. like i said, they have basically nothing meaningful in common besides real time action combat. gow 2018 and ragnarok objectively have far more in common with a game like the last of us or uncharted than dmc. you're wrong and you're also contributing to the decay of this subreddit by diluting the genre to the point where it means nothing. not going to bother wasting time debating a clown anymore, end of discussion.
I get that some posts are frustrating, but surely you can see that you're just as bad - if not worse IMO - for making these arsey comments with zero substance to them. You are not even explaining the cause of this impotent anger.
Get a grip of yourself, and then speak properly man
This sub despises new God of War lol but the combat still has more depth and combo potential than the vast majority of melee action games.
Most people here wouldn’t have an aneurysm if you described Nioh as CAG adjacent and that’s a hardcore ARPG with no air combat, no style ranking, etc. GoW combat has significantly less depth than Nioh though and leans harder into the cinematic elements but still, it’s not nearly as bad as people claim.
Keep in mind most of the people shitting on the combat played it for 10 minutes and dropped it. For what it is it’s solid and on max difficulty it’s pretty intense but from a genre perspective I’d still say no, it’s not really CAG adjacent. They’re too accessible and you can pretty much master the entire combat system in one playthrough. They are fun games though with way better and more interesting combat than all the souls clone timing simulators out there.
Instead of making assumptions that most people criticizing Norse GoW only "played it for 10 minutes", how about making some objective arguments why you think it is/isn't a CAG?
The only one I can see is "well it has more 'depth' (whatever that means) than this game that ppl think is a CAG!?" Which isn't really a compelling argument.
Why not talk about Nioh 2's specific mechanics that encourage aggressive play in the same way a style meter does, like stance changing during a Ki Pulse for Stamina regeneration or how high-hit combos fills Anima more quickly? And then talk about Norse GoW mechanics that prove the argument you're trying to make?
I know we don't have a set-in-stone definition of what a CAG is on this sub, but I'd like to think that people don't think it's a matter of "good combat = CAG, bad combat = not CAG."
You're honestly no better than the people you think are dismissing it if you're just going to essentially say "Norse GoW combat has more depth" for very vague reasons.
For me, the missing ingredient that keeps 2018 from true CAG-status is the lack of any systemic motivation and progressional reward for doing flashy combos every fight.
In classic GoW, higher combo count meant more red orbs (rewards). So yes, you were objectively encouraged to play stylishly and keep the combo count up. GoW Ascension took this further with the Rage Meter that gave you more moves for playing stylishly, and is probably the most CAG entry in the series.
Can you do flashy combos in 2018/Rag? Sure. But does the game encourage you / reward you for doing so? Nope. Other than some move-specific milestone bonuses that you unlock ONCE, the game doesn’t care whether you do cool combos or just stall on the side and spam axe throw all day. That’s the core of a CAG to me, and the Norse games sorely lack it.
That’s why as much as I can appreciate some things about Norse GoW’s combat (dodge offset, Vaporize Frost / Extinguish Flame to lightly encourage switching weapons), the most I would call it is CAG adjacent.
I'll play devil's advocate and say that old GoW's combo meter was functionally just an aggression meter, which Norse GoW also has with its weapon elemental buff system.
It's a gauge that builds up when you chain hits, degrades when you take damage and you can even maintain it with Boi arrows which rewards players that use them deliberately, as opposed to just spamming them whenever they remember that they exist.
I think the point you're missing is what that "aggression meter" leads to (or in Norse GoW's case, doesn't lead to).
In classic GoW, hitting certain combo counts granted Red Orb bonuses that the player can use to unlock new abilities. So that's an intrinsic motivator for the player to engage with the combo system: why wouldn't they want more abilities?
In Norse GoW, you'll need to be more specific which meter you're referring to, because there's no combo meter. If you're referring to Permafrost/Immulation from Ragnarok, those are nice in-the-moment motivators to attack with the same weapon while not getting hit, but the ultimate result is just more powerful attacks that lets you kill enemies faster. A time-saver, so to speak. It's different from Ascension's Rage Meter, where you gain access to new moves for playing well. And maybe more importantly, it doesn't directly influence you unlocking more skills.
That's the problem. Even though there is an XP system that lets the player unlock more skills over time, it's sadly not directly tied to combat performance. It's tied to static ARPG things that don't account for stylish play.
The game just cares that you killed a certain number enemies, for example; it really doesn't care how.
Just to be clear, I don't like those games so I'm not really trying to defend them.
I'm well aware of the way Greek GoW games work and how they reward you for engaging in an aggressive playstyle.
I agree that Norse GoW's upgrade system is subpar at best (XP rewards not being dependent of combat performance) and downright tedious at worse (mix-maxing stats, leveling up armor, asinine combat task list...).
I also agree that the mechanical reward for engaging with the weapon buff gauge is meager.
However for that kind of mechanics, I don't think that the extrinsic reward is more important than the way it encourages players to improve their tactics.
In Norse GoW, trying to keep the Permafrost/Immulation gauge up makes you more aggressive, more mindful of your actions and in Ragnarok it even encourages more frequent weapon swapping because inflicting an elemental status makes enemies more vulnerable against the opposite element.
The fact that there's an incentive at all to behave this way ends up being far more impactful than how you're rewarded for your efforts.
For example you don't stop engaging with DMC's style meter and ranking system as soon as you've unlocked everything in the shop either.
Sure it adds to player motivation at the beginning but it the end you're likely so self-impose that challenge anyway because it adds so much to the thrill of combat, which is more important than just how fast you can unlock moves.
In God Hand, playing on hard mode disables the ranking system (since in that game it acts as a dynamic difficulty slider, so hard mode locks it up to max).
It doesn't stop the game from being a CAG, nor does it stop players from trying their best to pull off something cheeky either (as long as they're not getting their ass kicked of course).
On the opposite side, I don't care about Ninja Gaiden Black's scoring system, not because it has no tangible reward but because it nudges me towards a playstyle that I don't enjoy.
I don’t think what we’re saying is fundamentally all that different.
As I said, I think Ragnarok added some great mechanics that create opportunity for stylish play. I just think it’s disappointing that there’s really no universal system in the game that encourages it.
For example, Permafrost & Immulation let you kill enemies faster (time saver). For the majority of the game, though, that doesn’t matter. Only time it literally does is Muspelheim trials. All other times, killing enemies quickly doesn’t impact anything, thus allowing the player to ignore these systems. Some might argue this makes the game accessible to more audiences; I’d argue this makes it overall a less satisfying combat system than it could be.
But in DMC, the Style Meter always matters, even when it changes context btwn modes. In story mode, it’s your motivation to get more red orbs for unlocking skills (same as Greek GoW’s combos). In Bloody Palace (a timed endless survival mode), playing stylishly adds time to the countdown that you can’t ignore. Even DmC added wonderful modes like “Must-Style” that made the player only capable of damage if they’re S-ranked (the true test of a great DMC player imo). Style Meter (an extrinsic system) is so prevalent that it becomes a factor in the player’s intrinsic motivation.
A version of this exists in Greek GoW, thus it’s a CAG. And while you can argue you don’t care for NG Black’s scoring system, the fact that it even tries to nudge the player in a specific direction at all (aka affecting their intrinsic motivation) is proof that it’s a CAG to me.
Norse GoW has no such system. Its combos look & feel flashy enough that, in the moment I might want to perform them for pure entertainment. But over time, if the game doesn’t encourage/reward me for using them, why would I?
And they're wrong. Hack and Slash is and always will be the main, accepted term. CAG is just some bull crap pushed by people who have this bizarre complex about the term Hack and Slash that nobody else aside from them cares about.
And they’re both way closer to dmc in terms of gameplay philosophy and what they try to achieve and the emotions they evoke than any other game in these genres, and hack and slash is a sub genre in the beat em up genre and re4-6 mercenaries mode are much closer to beat em up than other 3rd person shooter games
Tf does that even mean tho? It’s either CAG or it isn’t. Otherwise it’s just another action game, which by then all of them are CAG adjacent. Such a stupid question
Not in the slightest. It's much closer to Assassin's Origins-BFR than any CAG in combat, and it's too focused on being deep, relatable, and overly cinematic to even care much about that aspect. In other words, it insists upon itself.
10
u/tonysoprano1995 1d ago
No