The Consequences of Floaty Combat in Kingdom Hearts

[Music] a balanced patch in a fighting game can potentially be the difference between a character being high-tier or unusable and because fgc members are so attuned and used to these patches they can very quickly notice that changes developers make two characters the reason I bring this up is because when it comes to the Kingdom Hearts series when you go from a game with tight and responsive controls to one with that incredibly loose controls and slow animations the majority of the community doesn't seem to really care or notice in fact most people who make a note of these differences and would suggest them to be changed are considered nitpickers in the community one comment I found rather interesting was how I should stop making KH out to be like a fighting game with the implication that fighting games actually care about animation time and frame data while Kingdom Hearts doesn't or at the very least shouldn't while I can definitely say action RPGs and fighting games are very different there are core similarities I think people should take notice of hi my name is bloody biscuits and today let's talk a little bit about fighting games there are lots of loose comparisons that you can make between a fighting game and an action game like Kingdom Hearts 2 but the one aspect I want to focus on is jumping in a traditional 2d fighter jumping or staying in the air too long is always a risk this is because on the ground you have more time to observe your enemies and more ways to state offensive and avoid damage in the air you naturally lose these defensive options and if you do get hit while in midair the potential for taking high damage combos is much greater this is why in smash you are taught to short hop and fast fall just about all of your aerials to get you to the ground faster where you regain your defensive options basically jumping is a risk versus reward situation you put yourself at higher risk by trading away your defensive options but the reward is potentially much greater because if it works you get to deal a much more damaging combo to your opponent the situation is relatively the same in Kingdom Hearts but the differences come in when you realize you aren't always fighting 1v1 against a grounded opponent you won't deal more damage with air combos and in a single playthrough we'll probably have to fight against multiple enemies in the air what this means is you'll have to put yourself at risk on a regular basis just to deal regular damage to aerial opponents sounds like a pretty unfair trade-off so how do we make air combos a fair and fun experience for the player Kingdom Hearts 2 makes air combos fun by making the individual hits quick and the finisher snappy the finisher just feels like it packs a punch when you see and hear it and the natural downward momentum brings you to the ground quickly one small aspect that I always personally appreciated about Kingdom Hearts 2s combos is the ability to cut the animation short if I wanted to for example aerial spirals full animation has three hits but if you keep mashing attack you can skip the final hit and move on to the next part of the combo if you so desired and what's great is that there are situations where you'll want to use all three hits in situations where you'll want to mash and skip ahead to the next part of the combo small little things that cut long animations short don't seem like a big deal to the average player but they add an extra amount of freedom and decision-making for the player to use if they so choose for the majority of Osaka cage games however the air combos feel incredibly slow are unsatisfying to use the finishers don't pack a punch and the physics engine makes it so characters take way too long to touch the ground and make their next move a simple jump attack is much slower and the end lag on the move prevents you from being able to do any other action once you touch the ground in a word the air combos and Osaka games are floating however that's not to say that everything that is floaty or slow is a bad thing believe it or not most of your combo finishers in Kingdom Hearts 2 are quite slow and laggy but they're some of the best moves in the game aerial finish and magnet bursts are additional air finishers in Kingdom Hearts 2 and are both much slower than the standard finisher and don't bring you to the ground quickly but they make up for this with their own individual benefits aerial finish has a sphere of hitboxes protecting you and magna bursts inherit magnet effect pushes enemies away giving you a safe landing you can even chain either of these finishers into another standard finisher giving you extra downward momentum even explosion a ground finisher is incredibly slow animation wise one where you're standing in one place but it's one of if not the best finisher in the game this is because to make up for the slow animation Sora is surrounded by light orbs that attack him from all sides dealing damage and keeping Sora safe not only that the finisher grants a small amount of invincibility frames to make the finisher just a tad safer the combos in general in Kingdom Hearts 2 are designed to remove unnecessary risk while also making the combo satisfying to use so if there's a slow animation attack in Kingdom Hearts 2 there's probably an added benefit to the move to make it worth using I hate sounding like a shill for Kingdom Hearts 2 but in terms of player freedom and choice I can safely say that cage 2 is far and away the best in the series and the main reason that is is because the combo game feels so tight and well executed the combo game and osaka teams however feels like a tool that's gotten defective they're rarely ever any animation cancels and the animations don't provide any extra benefits to make up for how slow they are this leads to combat that never truly feels cohesive and is always restricting itself in unnecessary ways and because there's always a sense of risk when you're trying to use the most basic tool in the game the standard Keyblade combo osaka team games never make you feel like you're in control of the situation the games simply aren't focused on building a good risk versus reward relationship with the player and instead are designed to make the player just feel flashy and this is a big deal when you're put into a challenging situation and you'd like to use a combo but it's far too risky to do so with the combination of a camera that zoomed in way too far and enemies that can easily attack you from off screen you can easily start up an air combo only to be attacked from off screen and you weren't able to fully prepare for it now a counter-argument to this is that in zero point two you can cancel your combo early and guard dodge roll or air slide to protect yourself removing risk and creating new and interesting combat interactions you can also use items in midair an option we didn't have in previous games the problem though is that this solution to the floaty problem is just a stop gate giving the player more options in the air doesn't remove floatiness in fact it just keeps you in the air even longer than normal if you air slide out of the combo then yeah and using double flight again just propels you even higher into the air none of these options actually get you to the ground faster in fact they keep you in the air longer and therefore perpetuate the problem so what does the player do when faced with unfair risk versus reward situations well on more challenging difficulties like critical mode there are legitimate instances where players will opt to stay on the ground and camp out enemies with magic or play a hit-and-run game and avoid using any sort of long combos at all it's not exactly the most fun way to play the game players just feel that their options are so limited and that this is the only reliable way to prevent taking damage while slowly but surely dealing damage to their enemies it's sadly reminiscent of mysterious figure and birth by Sleep where your pigeon-holed into dodge rolling forever until an opening shows up that you can punish with a thunder surge because all 190 other commands in the game do not put the player in a favorable position it's not the players fault they have to play this way they're just working with the options that the game is provided and only one or two ways happen to work this is where the whole fighting game comparison comes back a common reason a character would be considered low tier in a fighting game is because they don't have the proper tools to deal with tough situations and the same applies in an action game you not only want your character to have good tools to use but also the feeling that you have multiple options for any given situation and it's not necessarily that I just want the combos to be faster for my speedruns nope that's not the point No all I really want is to be able to control my character to the best of my abilities whenever you hear about a game that has tight and responsive controls they're talking about this very discussion they're talking about controls that have very little lag and delay and give you full control over your characters moves without purposely slowing you down and it just feels like osaka team doesn't have a basic understanding of satisfying game feel is the air slide a satisfying tool to use or are people immediately cancelling it with double flight because the end lag is so bad is the basic combo something players enjoy using or our players cancelling out of the combo simply because the animations take way too long to finish and they feel that they're in danger whenever I look at a KH game developed by Osaka team issues like these seem to go unnoticed which is extremely concerning for how square is going to address these issues in Kingdom Hearts 3 it's disappointing because action games are the genre where players are encouraged to be creative with their options and fully express themselves through the game itself challenging situations like critical mode and postgame boss battles are where the game is pushed to its limits and where you find players expressing themselves through their creative play so when you see situations like mysterious figure and the mirror fights in zero-point-two where players are stripped of their freedom and forced to run and camp because that's the only way for players to deal with the situation it feels like the developers truly failed the player in some way now the most classic counter-argument to these issues and the ones still used to this very day is that 0.2 was a tech demo and now developers for Kingdom Hearts 3 know and understand these issues and are working to fix them so there's nothing to worry about and you know what I'd be on board for this argument where devs get a chance to test the waters and see what players won out of a next-gen Kingdom Hearts game they even had the event where players like Sora LOM one biscuit 0 4 7 and others got to play the game early and voice potential concerns with head developers so if we look at the new trailers for Kingdom Hearts 3 have these issues been addressed have changes been made sadly no the horrible air slide sores awful looking finisher the camera zooming in when Sora finishes a limit it's the exact same design philosophy as 0.2 and in the months following the meet up event all gameplay from trailers looks the exact same as before so if there's going to be any change to combos to make them more robust and usable or options to remove unnecessary cinematic flair its very last minute and we're only going to find out when the game comes out late January or it's going to have to be patched post launch but if these issues are so prevalent in Osaka team games why isn't anybody noticing them well sadly Kingdom Hearts games do a terrible job of teaching the player how to use its mechanics outside of giving the player constant rewards for what they should already be doing and even then these rewards are just more button for the player to mindlessly press to feel like they're doing well so the only way for the player to be given a challenge is to play at a higher difficulty and like we already mentioned most players choose the standard difficulty so they never have to actually deal with the enemies that are repeatedly hitting them the absolute and most common strategy used by players is to heal yourself at low health and continue attacking there is no risk to their moves if they can just heal all the damage way so to them long drawn-out combos just aren't an issue or at least not enough of an issue to warrant any attention so this begs the question if the average player can't tell the difference between the combos and Kingdom Hearts 2 and the combos and birth by Sleep why should we care why should Square cater to the small portion of the community that actually notices the difference well the thinking in words 2 was so magically able to do was provide us with a game that catered both to just the average fan as well as the players who cared very deeply about a fluid fun combat system the more average player could play on a lower difficulty and still have a good time while the more hardcore player would be rewarded for playing on the higher difficulties and be given an adequate challenge worth their while so my question to you all is if Kingdom Hearts 2 was able to accomplish this feat why can't Kingdom Hearts 3 at this point late in the game it's all just a toss up every trailer or video of gameplay footage of Kingdom Hearts 3 shows that the game has some cool ideas and lots of potential but also lots of problems it's a mixed bag and at this point all we can really do is sit tight and wait for the twenty-ninth hoping for the best my name is bloody biscuits thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Bl00dyBizkitz

Views: 314,475

Keywords: Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Kingdom Hearts 0.2, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep 0.2, Combat, Gameplay, Action Game, Action RPG, Bl00dyBizkitz, BB, Analysis, Video Essay, Floaty Combat, Floaty Gameplay, Floaty, Animation, Clunky, Tight, Game Feel, Controls, Gameplay Analysis

Id: lqWh1faBaAA

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RePoisn]

I agree with him, to be honest. It's the ability to be flexible with your combos and also not being animation locked too heavily when you perform basic combos on the ground or in the air. Those are the things that makes KH2's combat punchy and satisfying. I'm not saying KH3 has to adhere to this design philiosophy, but if it did, I'm sure both casual players and the players who want a little something more from the game will be happy.

[u/BaconMan94]

I’ve never been a speed runner or anything, but I’ve always noticed a big difference in the combat systems between kh2 (my favorite game EVER) and every game after. Didn’t realize it was the “floatiness” until recently with all this talk, and it’s making me super nervous about the game. I’ve been a fan of the series since kh1 but the combat system is super important to me and I’m PRAYING they can do something about it.

If I see one more combat finisher where the character does an upper cut into the air and sits there for 1.5 seconds before falling, I’m gonna lose it

[u/kinnablm]

Everything said in the video has been 100% fair. Just because there are some people who don't care about the things mentioned about the combat doesn't make his concern(as well as many others) for the game any less valid and something that shouldn't be talked about. If a game like KH2 was designed in such a way which had satisfied both hardcore and casual side of the fanbase, I don't think it's unreasonable for those that do care to hope that the dev team are again able to find that middle ground of design that can please both sides.

[u/abstractoakbow]

Floaty combat at its finest.

https://imgur.com/a/yPVy2wB

After this I had to take unwind by attempting the data fights in kh2

[u/Stonewall30nyr]

He's 1000% right. Literally just so right. I hope kh3 turns out right

[u/Noxilcash]

I think KH3 will be floaty but not as bad as BBS and DDD. Will it be as tight as KH2? No but it will be the closest thing to it, which isn’t too awful!

[u/iDerpTooMuchx3]

I completely agree with every point Bloody is making and I truly do hope that KH3 feels completely like KH2, but new and more fresh of course. Though while he doesn't seem reassured, it seems others have been reassured as Square has been taking feedback about it and there is always patching in the future too if it comes down to that.

I want KH3 to be the absolute best it can be. Story, gameplay, and feel. And I damn well hope it'll be because I'm sure Osaka team needs that boost for future games to come in the franchise.

[u/StuffedFTW]

Can't wait for people to throw BB under the bus for being a speedrunner, when they probably didn't even give the video a chance and probably formulated their opinion on nothing. Meanwhile, BB actually shows footage, and articulates his opinions. The video brings up a lot of awesome points and I really enjoy the lack of understanding of complex gameplay mechanics between a casual crowd and the hardcore crowd. Im usually really competitive in a lot of games and find myself more towards the hardcore crowd and understand that little things like this make or break a persons experience. I am definitely a casual guy when it came to kingdom hearts but his speedruns and his analysis really make me understand the concerns of the hardcore crowd.

[u/GoldenOwl25]

Yeah...I've heard ever since it was announced at E3 that people have been super worried about the combat being "floatly" like in all the other games, with the exception of 2. And it's honestly a very valid concern. Hopefully being un UE fixes this issue.