I never got into fighting games like Mortal Kombat or Soulcalibur because of the enormous list of combos and my failure to remember them all or execute special attacks properly. But I've been competent with melee character action games like DMC4 and Ninja Gaiden Sigma. The former has one button interspersed with pauses for MOST of its attacks and in the latter I abused the heck out of the Izuna Drop and instantaneous Ultimate Attacks.

It's been a while since I've played a melee character action game and the combo list in MGR is huge. How do you remember them? All of them? Some of them? Some of the special moves require enemies on screen to practice (like the HF Blade energy wave). Couple this with the fact that the special weapons have their own separate list. I only have the pole-arm right now but that combo list is daunting.

BTW, I remember some reviewer saying that the special weapons don't work well with the HF Blade which isn't true in my eyes in what I've seen of the pole-arm at least.

I don't know why games have so many combos, it strikes me as a total design failure.

What gameplay ramification does each and every single combo present? Can you honestly be convinced they each have one? No they don't, they're just there for show I think, it's just the 3D animator masturbating.

Even non hack-and-slash games have combos. What does that tell you.

Muscle memory, do something enough and it sticks.

You can mash most of them out without having to remember what they are or you could also learn to do 5 or 6 of them consistently and just keep using those over and over again.

@egg: Platinum Games usually don't just throw in a bunch of dumb combos for no reason. They usually all have a purpose and use for particular enemies or what have you. I'm pulling this off the top of my head but X pause X being a launcher and then you have another launcher which would be useful to get in more hits and launch off a combo. Or you have multiple stingers for you to get in close to the enemy quickly based off different situations. You know they've thought it through when they even have an achievement for getting all S ranks on the hardest difficulty which requires you being an expert and utilizing every combo for each encounter correctly or semi cheezing it by just taking no damage for an encounter for an easy point boost which is also crazy.

But yeah, overall after you get comfortable with it and glance at the combo list every now and again you'll get used to some combos at least. I never dipped into the weird ones like throat slash or ones that looked too hard to perform without practicing to know it's use and how much time it took to perform them. Also you might want to lay off polearm for now. It's very friendly with it's area damage, but I found it pretty weak compared to the regular unequiped Y moves. Also not spoiling exactly but the other side weapons you get later don't exactly have as much combo variety as the polearm from what I remember. Or at least aren't as daunting with their combo lists.

i think of character action games like more accessible fighting games. you can always button mash... but internalizing some key combos and using them in the right situations really makes those games shine.

Just don't try to remember all of them straight away. First memorize and get comfortable using a few common ones, then ones that chain off them, and slowly start expanding your list as initial combos get cemented. Finally you don't need to remember all of them, (at least on normal difficulties of these games (and even a step above normal)) and it's safe to ignore the ones you find less then useful.

One could say the point of a lot of these games is to be SSSTYLISH. For example mixing up the combos in DMC3 allows for your Style meter to go up, which incentives you not to get hit as well as look cooler than just pressing triangle 3 times over and over. Ultimately things tie together so you get better at the game. And yes some combos are better for certain situations.

I thought this was about the snack food, I am now leaving...