What do you think about the Revenge Value System on KH2?
Kay, so, Revenge Value is super simple. It’s a system that exists to prevent infinite combos, by allowing enemies to break your combos after being hit a certain number of times.
So how many times do they need to be hit to trigger this combo-breaker attack? It varies based on what you hit them with. Each type of attack has a hardcoded number that adds up when you attack the enemy, documented here:
https://www.khwiki.com/Forum:Notes_41_(Revenge_Value)
And each boss has a hardcoded value that determines how much revenge damage is required to trigger their combo breaker attack.
So basically, you’re allowed to stunlock the boss for a set period of time more or less, and once that’s up, they get to attack you. Thereby you can’t just stunlock the boss forever and actually have to deal with threats every so often.
There’s actually a lot of systems similar to this in various games. The most obvious is Poise from Dark Souls, where bosses need to take a certain amount of poise damage. Or Yokai Ki in Nioh, where, once expended, you can stunlock the enemy, but it has a Ki Regenerating combo breaker attack that triggers after a bit, which has super armor.In fighting games, they just build the combo system so combos naturally end eventually. Skullgirls actually has a similar system to Kingdom Hearts, called Drama. Drama is built up every time a move hits in a combos, dealing more drama based on whether the attack is light, medium, heavy, or special.
By having values tied to attack type in this way, it means that combos in skullgirls and kingdom hearts can be optimized by trying to hit with moves based on their damage relative to combo breaker buildup. Each attack can be evaluated for efficiency by calculating damage/revenge value, then it’s a matter of building a combo that hits as many of the highest efficiency attacks as possible, and in Kingdom Hearts’ case, having a followup to hit the boss when revenge is triggered.
Kind of the issue with Revenge Value, relative to Drama, is that it’s totally opaque. There’s no feedback telling you how much revenge value you’re dealing with each attack, or how much the boss will take before they retaliate. So it’s a matter of trial and error with each attack on each boss, then once you’ve mined all the values, it’s a matter of memorization. Drama in Skullgirls is a visible meter on the screen, and you are told the drama values of each attack outright in the tutorial.
So yeah, it’s a pretty cute system. It lets you have combos, gives you an optimization pressure, and keeps it somewhat challenging. I’d personally have designed the combo system to allow for shorter combos instead with more varied revenge attacks to make things more interesting. Probably also would have added additional constraints on what moves in combos link to make combo optimization harder, and vary combos based on their starter, so you have a more complex neutral game, but whatever. (also God Hand did it better)
Bonus:
Celia Alexis Wagar's CritPoints 