I think I just discovered a new awesome channel. I love these guys already:
8 ways Origins break the rules of traditional Assassins Creed
My thinking:
Embracing Souls combat with things like a fixed 3d camera in combat with things like timed sidestepping is a good move. But I have to say- There is something about the combat animations that looks off. It doesn't look polished, or like that there is a nice seamless transistion between side stepping/countering/blocking with a counter attack. It feels like the animation is speed up significantly, when pressing the attack button at the right time.
The end result is that the character attack unnaturally fast.
If they where going to do something like this, I'd have suggested them move towards ultra-slow-mo-/ultra fast speed up, like the combat cinematography you saw in 300. But this requires a lot of frames per second (on film, don't know if the same limitations would exist for games). I believe the cameras shot 150 fps. This allowed 300 to have this insanely smooth slow mo, as well as really smooth speed up.
But I think this change in direction to combat is warranted. I hope it won't end like Warrior Within. If you recall, Sands of Time was a terrific game, but the weak link was the combat which was serviceable.
When they made Warrior Within they tried to fix the combat, but a lot of other parts of the game broke down. PoP has since then had many awkward transistions; PoP 2008 is an incredible game, but the combat is abysmal. And so it is with Splinter Cell and Assassins Creed.
Combat never has been the strong suite of Ubisoft games, and I wonder why.
Because if you've ever played all the AC games back to back (I played AC1, AC2, Brohood, Rev, 3, BF, Unity, Rogue, Syndicate realtively close to one another) you can see the evolution of the combat, but the problems remain the same.
AC always has had a dumb AI. One that "forgets" the player. Later games increased "increased alert" but this has always been a buzywork and largely meh feature that didnt felt real.
AC2 gave us weapons pickable weapons, Bro/Rev tried to make combat tighter, introduced ranged mechanics, threw harder enemies at you- but the problems persisted.
BF was such a awkward game combat wise due to having to fight people in weird places like on masts, or on boats where you struggled with the camera and basic animations, just jumping of ledges doing insta and double insta kill by jumping off a ledge and pressing "X to win" style context sensitive attacks.
The problem has always been that AC didn't have deep gameplay. The combat or parkour didn't have enough depth for you to truly get good at. You can get really good at Dark Souls once you understand the rhythm of every enemy. That is what makes it fun. You gradually become better, and the repetitiveness is reduced by enemies requiring vastly different approaches.
You just never had that in AC. Even if you take something like Witcher 3 which has combat that is more serviceable, even that game has a skill level where you're much better at rolling, dodging, potioning, bomb throwing, crossbow aiming later in the game than you are in the beginning.
