Heyyyy…Witcher 1 had pretty awesome rhythm combat….*cricket sounds*. But really I actually didn’t mind it since it was literally my first CRPG.
Anyways the video…I get what he’s getting at, that old school hack n slash action games he feels are being underrepresented or misrepresented often have intrinsically higher skill ceilings than other more “modern” action-esque games that seem to be journalist darlings, but that’s really no different than the FGC being its own hardcore thing separate from the mainstream appeal of many fighting games. The average player won’t even know or care about frame data, and even if journalists made a point of covering this stuff in depth, you can only lead a horse to water. So much of game journalism is at a plateau that should not be the end-all, be-all of anything. The rest usually gets caught up in and spun amongst respective fanatics into internet pissing contests.
The video would be more effective if it stuck to objective commentary but ends up devolving into psychobabble and meme jokes to veil the conjecture. For example much of the the games he mentions that “force the player to use their moves” or “everything in their toolkit” is nonsensical, because none of the examples he said journalists fawn over do that either. They all allow for experimentation, but the focus is less on style/combos and more on what kills enemies more effectively. Saying people are playing these games like it’s “a job” vs “an experience” is just opinionated heresy that could be flipped either way depending on who’s watching.
