Timing is not the only skill that is fun and developers should acknowledge this.
The reason we talk about parrying this way is it’s everywhere now and people have decided it’s what’s needed to make turn based games compelling, but it isn’t.
The reason they think that is that people have decided that timing a thing is the only exploit-free, skill-driven action you can have at the core of gameplay.
But it isn’t.
I find it a bit lazy to default to this approach on everything and it’s certainly on everything. Timing is a big part of gaming, particularly in real time action stuff, but there are other tools in the toolbox.
Here’s an observation: the reason people keep trying to make metroidvanias and being worse than SotN and its handheld sequels is that modern designers can’t get over adapting Soulslike combat where the Igavanias were more concerned with giving you a ton of options. Timing is there, but there’s a ridiculous amount of self-expression through tool selection. You can go for a tanky build, you can break DPS and movement a hundred different ways. Getting good at those games makes them look like a broken mess, but it’s self-expressive and fun.
Timing a marker to a yellow bar in Clair Obscur or trying to guess when the ridiculous fifteen second windup animation of an enemy is going to trigger a five frame active window is not self-expressive and fun. It’s a QTE.
Clair Obscur’s combat has other issues with balance beyond that, and you can certainly spec to trivialize the parry even without changing the difficulty level, but the annoying part is the focus everybody puts on the timing minigame versus the actual (pretty solid) turn based game design running underneath.
I will take it one step further:
Timing is not the only skill that is fun and developers should acknowledge this.
The reason we talk about parrying this way is it’s everywhere now and people have decided it’s what’s needed to make turn based games compelling, but it isn’t.
The reason they think that is that people have decided that timing a thing is the only exploit-free, skill-driven action you can have at the core of gameplay.
But it isn’t.
I find it a bit lazy to default to this approach on everything and it’s certainly on everything. Timing is a big part of gaming, particularly in real time action stuff, but there are other tools in the toolbox.
Here’s an observation: the reason people keep trying to make metroidvanias and being worse than SotN and its handheld sequels is that modern designers can’t get over adapting Soulslike combat where the Igavanias were more concerned with giving you a ton of options. Timing is there, but there’s a ridiculous amount of self-expression through tool selection. You can go for a tanky build, you can break DPS and movement a hundred different ways. Getting good at those games makes them look like a broken mess, but it’s self-expressive and fun.
Timing a marker to a yellow bar in Clair Obscur or trying to guess when the ridiculous fifteen second windup animation of an enemy is going to trigger a five frame active window is not self-expressive and fun. It’s a QTE.
Clair Obscur’s combat has other issues with balance beyond that, and you can certainly spec to trivialize the parry even without changing the difficulty level, but the annoying part is the focus everybody puts on the timing minigame versus the actual (pretty solid) turn based game design running underneath.