God of Bore

I put your message together in notepad and will respond to it, finally, through this pastebin. Easier than Twitlonger or general Twitter.

> terminology
Is personal. As noted earlier in the piece, these are my definitions of depth and complexity and are used throughout the article as such. What you describe as Depth, I describe as "Complex". This is a common debate I've had with DMC players, we both say X, just with a different font.

> expression and creativity
Which is exactly the point I hit home in the piece, that's the beauty of the series especially in 4 and onwards, that flair of the personal. If you were to remove half of Dante's moveset, his depth would hardly change, but that which makes him so unique and complex would be butchered. The personalization in combat would be absolutely absent. Compare that to Shinobi, or if you wish God of War, where each move is essential to the kit, but personalization in playstyle is very rare due to their different vision from DMC.

The vision of something like God of War is efficiency, how fast and efficively can you clear fights. In GoW1 the difference between a casual first-timer and a veteran player is that the former mashes buttons to victory, taking 2 minutes to clear a fight, while a veteran uses smart OH-collisions, OS-loops and ringouts to clear it in 10~ seconds.

> freedom is what makes DMC great
Preaching to the choir. I don't see why you're making these arguments if the exact same elements are noted in the piece. It all comes to a head near the end. The more overall goal is the personal frustration of seeing games be ignored for 'lacking in depth', despite having their own qualities not found in their expression, but other elements. Titles like Killer is Dead, Lollipop Chainsaw, Force Unleashed, God of War, Shinobi, Chaos Legion, Ninja Warriors, Warrior Within, Kingdom Hearts 2FM, ZoE2 - all fantastic titles in their own respects, even more names can be mentioned if we dive deeper into the overarching genre of "action" i.e. Resident Evil 3, The Evil Within, Vanquish, Metal Gear Solid 2 and the upcoming Daryl Stranding. But many of those titles are ignored because the equivalent of your "Muh inertia", namely "muh combos".

I cannot imagine you not having seen this before, pretty much every argument when talking about God of War or Devil May Cry boils down to "but this game has much better combos". I've seen this from Reddit to Gamefaqs, NGrealm to my own forum as well as gaming outlets and in discussions with DMC veterans on why for instance they don't hold other titles in higher regard. It all comes down to the lacking combo-system, as well as that lack of expression at the start. Expression is there, just differently.

You linked videos, but for me for instance, this is the gold standard:
https://youtu.be/mQyEIGGuKP0?t=82

Clotho's gauntlet on Titan Difficulty is often regarded as the longest fight, taking well between 25-45 minutes for some players to clear by the skin of their teeth. Here it is cleared in around 5 minutes by a player with expert knowledge of optimal punishes, offensive tactics, enemy AI abuse, magic-meter managment, cancels, collision damage use and generally not giving a crap about looking good. This is a murder machine. As John Kreese said in The Karate Kid film: "No mercy...". Fantastic to watch and to play imo.

NGII I mostly love for the twitch reaction play, this clip captures it perfectly, I could analyze it frame-by-frame if you want but the general idea should be clear:
https://youtu.be/RjE5CEC35sQ?t=301

Fuck it, I'll analyse it anway. The ambush, the quick Lightning into on-landing Y for the knockback. The absolute perfect reaction with a parry at 5:05 despite the camera shift and enfolding chaos, quick space creator with XXYY which also has good decap rate, headstomp for i.frames into a dashed Oblitherate. Note that despite the chaos in that single frame I note that the foe is indeed delimbed, retaining the i.frames lest I die. Then at 5.11 the quick knowledge of where the off-screen foe is and usage of >XXX as a space clearer. I could have jumped, but risked a wall-jump by accident. A dodge could have been grabbed. And all that in a space of only a few frames. That's absolute perfection in gameplay to me. Especially because you know that if any one of those moments I made a bad choice, or saw things that weren't there, I'd have died immediately.

Same goes for a sequence like this:
https://youtu.be/RjE5CEC35sQ?t=170
This one is a tad harder to explain but there's so many split second nuances, on the fly move choices, love it. Almost tempted to go home right now and pop the disc in again (taking a break for Ninja Warriors and Astral Chain atm).

> NG is complex in other areas
Again, I think this is just a vocabulary thing of us using the word different. I, by my definition, would never call Ninja Gaiden complex. It is as straight forward as an action game could be.

> Enemy AI in NG
On the outside, perhaps, once you get to the details and know how its slotting system works it generally becomes very predictable. The high agression is mostly what makes it difficult, but foes generally just input read i.e. pressing block triggers a grab (which can ofcourse be abused). The slotting in NGII works as such that foes will all attack at once, with a few doing the 'circle dash' to confuse you and the camera. Most moves have guaranteed followups i.e. a knockdown is always followed by a jumpback into shuriken spam. What's interesting is that foes do start to 'slot' when you start attacking. Making offense a valid tactic in NGII, as it reduces enemy agression.

> DMC isn't less challenging. It has other challenges.
"And if a game doesn’t have that motivation, look for it yourself. Find ways of play to squeeze it out. Don’t level up, aim for the highest rank, don’t upgrade, don’t take damage, don’t care about rank, find your personal style, run like hell – differ the way you look at the game. See what lies beneath. In a way, the depth a game has is personal. "

This is what you're saying, almost verbatim. DMC isn't challenging, nor is God of War. But we find a challenge in it ourselves through different goals. For DMC its the deeper search for understanding of its combat mechanics to make for more personalized and creative fights. In God of War its through the likes of the infamous PAIN+ runs or Clones fight. Ninja Gaiden has its challenge more on its sleeve since it just requires a lot more understanding (or abuse) of its mechanics to beat on its highest settings. But there's still more beyond like what I did in my OLBNN (original lifebar, no ninpo) run or single-weapon challenge runs.

My opinion of DMC3 is very high, I consider it one of the best action titles ever made when viewed as a whole. DMC4 I have a lesser opinion of, but I still hold it in high regard as to what the community has done with in exploration of its mechanics, nuances in positioning, gravity and how it works etc as well as certain AI manipulation tricks. As a full game it doesn't hold my interest however, but I don't think it does that with a lot of people due to how slapped together it is in regards to level design and pacing.

In regards to the article, I feel people are a tad too defensive on a few sentences taking some of DMC4 mechanics and justly so criticing them, and not looking at the final conclusion or message (every game has depth, you just have to look) but instead focusing soley on those few parts that, sorry to say, trigger them. Because as we see above, we're pretty much on the same page and a lot of things you've noted are even mentioned in the article's conclusion.