Rethinking Last Legacy: Combat
Posted: August 22nd, 2014, 5:29 pmBad title is bad, k?
I just want to make this post to expand on a previous post I made regarding blocking and dodging in Last Legacy. In this post I want to discuss combat in greater detail, enemy design, game animations, and weapon ideas.
I'll start off with the combat in general. I think it's fair to say that Last Legacy has an unfortunately bare-bones combat system. You're given limited attacking options that make combat repetitive and boring (I'm looking at you, spammy kick attacks). I'd like to suggest a few things regarding the combat system:
1.) Revamp the standard combo (z>z). It's a two attack combo with little flair and leaves the player open to punishment from the enemy. I suggest changing it to a three hit combo, making the third strike a variable attack (is different depending on which directional key the player is holding during the combo). This would allow for the character to have a more interesting and useful standard combo. The use of directional attacks would allow the player to hit enemies who are behind and above while maintaining the combo string. It also gives the player more attack options and more ways to approach an enemy as opposed to simple (z>z) or (↓+z) attacks. This will also be a key feature relating to a point I'll bring up later.
2.) Enemy design. This might come off as a bit rude, but the enemies are not quite well designed. Let's look at the Knights. The knights wield a medium sized broadsword. They have generic armour and no defensive options such as a shield. The only thing that makes the knights a threat is their invulnerability period and having one gang up on your from behind. Snoresville. What I suggest is completely overhauling the enemy designs to make them not only more interesting to fight, but also more interesting to look at. Let's compare the Knights to your player character. You character can wield a massive katana and a fifty foot halberd one handed, yet the teeny Knight sword must be used with both hands? That's a design flaw. Instead of having both hand occupied by a sword, the Knights could have shields or even spells to add to their arsenal. Also, making them faster would also make them a bit more difficult. The Knight's default armour can't be that heavy, right?
3.) Character animations! Those are really important. You can't have a game with two frame animations, right? Well, Last Legacy has fairly smooth animations. However, Some of the animations are a bit... odd or awkward. The jump animation for example. It looks a bit... silly and anticlimactic. When you jump you want to feel like, "YEAH LOOK AT HOW SICK THIS JUMPS IS YO". The Last Legacy jumps, however look like your character just got hurled out of a catapult. It's almost just the standing animation. Another animation that looks tad silly is the running animation. The way the character's sword bobs around while running looks hilarious. Think about it if the character had the sword kept at his side while running (think Marth's dash animation from Smash Bros.). This particular type of animation could work in favour of a more fleshed out combat system in that the dash could lead into a dash attack (→→z).
This is all I feel like covering at the moment. I think I'll edit on this later, so worry not.
I just want to make this post to expand on a previous post I made regarding blocking and dodging in Last Legacy. In this post I want to discuss combat in greater detail, enemy design, game animations, and weapon ideas.
I'll start off with the combat in general. I think it's fair to say that Last Legacy has an unfortunately bare-bones combat system. You're given limited attacking options that make combat repetitive and boring (I'm looking at you, spammy kick attacks). I'd like to suggest a few things regarding the combat system:
1.) Revamp the standard combo (z>z). It's a two attack combo with little flair and leaves the player open to punishment from the enemy. I suggest changing it to a three hit combo, making the third strike a variable attack (is different depending on which directional key the player is holding during the combo). This would allow for the character to have a more interesting and useful standard combo. The use of directional attacks would allow the player to hit enemies who are behind and above while maintaining the combo string. It also gives the player more attack options and more ways to approach an enemy as opposed to simple (z>z) or (↓+z) attacks. This will also be a key feature relating to a point I'll bring up later.
2.) Enemy design. This might come off as a bit rude, but the enemies are not quite well designed. Let's look at the Knights. The knights wield a medium sized broadsword. They have generic armour and no defensive options such as a shield. The only thing that makes the knights a threat is their invulnerability period and having one gang up on your from behind. Snoresville. What I suggest is completely overhauling the enemy designs to make them not only more interesting to fight, but also more interesting to look at. Let's compare the Knights to your player character. You character can wield a massive katana and a fifty foot halberd one handed, yet the teeny Knight sword must be used with both hands? That's a design flaw. Instead of having both hand occupied by a sword, the Knights could have shields or even spells to add to their arsenal. Also, making them faster would also make them a bit more difficult. The Knight's default armour can't be that heavy, right?
3.) Character animations! Those are really important. You can't have a game with two frame animations, right? Well, Last Legacy has fairly smooth animations. However, Some of the animations are a bit... odd or awkward. The jump animation for example. It looks a bit... silly and anticlimactic. When you jump you want to feel like, "YEAH LOOK AT HOW SICK THIS JUMPS IS YO". The Last Legacy jumps, however look like your character just got hurled out of a catapult. It's almost just the standing animation. Another animation that looks tad silly is the running animation. The way the character's sword bobs around while running looks hilarious. Think about it if the character had the sword kept at his side while running (think Marth's dash animation from Smash Bros.). This particular type of animation could work in favour of a more fleshed out combat system in that the dash could lead into a dash attack (→→z).
This is all I feel like covering at the moment. I think I'll edit on this later, so worry not.