Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints

That stinks that you’re finished with reviewing reviews. I just found this one today that you might be interested in. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGO2dE7GRkg&a=&feature=youtu.be

Nah, just reviewers.

I feel like he misses some history here. God Hand has been a cult classic on /v/ since long before totalbiscuit became popular (or made the video about god hand in 2012). There’s a reason I owned the game in like 2009.

This old meme is from 2007 or so.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/god-hand-edit

There were also older skilled players, even from as far back as 2007
https://www.youtube.com/user/enraiharuka/videos

or 2010.

I don’t think most people actually play god hand with the high side kick wall lock, despite the spam bible on gamefaqs. I don’t think that technique is actually very well known. I certainly didn’t play that way, or with drunken twist. I think a more accurate summary would be that most people probably play god hand by backing up, running, then doing the launcher kick off the run. Of course that’s largely conjecture on my part. That’s how I played it my first time, as well as sticking a guard breaker in my combo lineup at the point where most enemies tended to guard.

He does a decent roundup of the basic mechanics and more simple advanced play concepts in god hand. Though I feel it’s worth mentioning that the concept of dodge canceling wasn’t unheard of in the community before Alps’ tutorial video.

Conveyance, egoraptor’s term. Dunno whether I really like the use of it or not. I mean, I feel like there’s a certain value in having systems that are low affordance, so that the community can discover them and pass along the information amongst themselves over time. I really don’t think it took 6 literal years for people to wise up to some of the simpler aspects of god hand’s advanced play.

It’s funny to see the spread of Hamish Todd’s term Antepiece. Again, I don’t think there’s much wrong with a few text boxes or other prompts that explain concepts that otherwise are difficult to explain. God Hand could have used a simpler set of introductory levels. His points about learning through doing are appropriate. It doesn’t totally work for god hand for reasons he mentioned.

Luck is right, the random algorithms in god hand are very lopsided. They also have that familiar problem of helping out skilled players more than bad ones, since drops are influenced by your level. The roulette wheel attacks and unleashing the god hand basically exist for players to drop them on difficult encounters, which is why the kick me sign challenge exists (and was thought up before I even bought the game).

The idea of special challenge rooms that restrict you a bit as a teaching tool is pretty alright. Just have the challenges be a bit more obvious, or a part of standard progression even. Perhaps go the dark souls 2 route and have a ton of them right in your way in the early areas.

I didn’t actually know god hand’s NG+ worked this way. I’ve beaten it once, but didn’t play NG+. I think I heard once but forgot.

Having stronger moves over time really wasn’t the best idea. Straining the limited cash supply isn’t great either.

I’m not totally a fan of the ranking system of action games. I like a simple ranking for time, damage taken, and very broad factors like that. I’m not actually dissatisfied with God Hand’s ranking system, except the obvious problem that you’re giving more to players who don’t need it. That’s probably something I should sit down and figure out a way to fix. How do you make life easier for worse players without basically signalling to advanced players that they should take a dive to get more benefits? My immediate thought is, instead of granting skilled players extra bonuses, grant them extra content, new bonus levels, new bonus bosses, maybe mix new enemies in or new enemy movesets, or automatically unlock more unconventional moves. Perhaps the currency system in general could be rethought to provide more consistent rewards, or allow players to spend currency on bonus content, giving up the easy path to face a new challenge. Shmups have done this before in the form of second loops and bonus bosses for skilled play.

A better ranking system isn’t going to fix God Hand. No platinum game would punish you for spamming the same move over and over again unless it’s PKP in Bayonetta. Platinum games care about taking no damage and time more than anything else. God Hand’s ranking system absolutely accounts for damage taken. Damage taken is what affects your lv more than anything else, and it’s also the heaviest factor in continues. He short sells the system by saying there’s only two variables, continues used and enemies defeated, when he immediately says they’re multiplied by lv. Lv is the single biggest factor in rank.

The simplest thing here is just toning down the cheese methods more than anything. Prevent infinites, stale moves as they’re reused so they do less damage and more pushback. Don’t make a move like cobra twist in the first place. Don’t expect some invisible ranking system to solve everything, because beginners won’t care.

I have remarked that I think God Hand is the best brawler in the genre, due to its strong enemy design, enemy variety, and moveset variety, and this video does not contradict this. It does however point out correctly that there’s perhaps too much cheese, and it doesn’t present itself the best for helping beginners learn how the game is supposed to be played, or how it can be played at its limits. And it reiterates the common problems of iteratively improving player and enemy strength as well as providing better rewards to skilled players that help them beat the game.