Though I mention that because like RE4 still has tank controls and yet it's still heralded as the greatest achievement of mankind.
So it's probably not really "tank controls" people hate as much character centric controls in contrast to "traditional" camera centric. ie pressing up moves your character forward relative to their direction instead of forward in relation to the camera.
Though like all I gotta do to realize why they did that is play Silent Hill 3 or 2 with "2d controls" (camera centric). I get disoriented and lost and repeated enter in and out of the same door on accident every time the camera angle shifts. And then I'm begging for tank/character centric controls again. It's almost required for that camera style where you only see only whatever the designer wants you to see.
Parasite Eve and Eternal Darkness got around it only by being incredibly careful with how it did their camera angles and transitions.
Though I do think they got better about it by 3, which I played the most of, by giving you a lot of big, wide-open areas with copious wiggle-room to get yourself situated.
@densetsunogomez On that note, I dunno who thought having platforming challenges with that camera system was a good idea.
I never went onto the sequels, but even at the time, Devil May Cry 1 felt really jank...
Yeah I played it after the fact, but I remember the furor about it at the time.
Its kinda shocking that the series caught on so well for a while; 3rd person action games it was contemporaneous with must have been high-key 😬 by comparison.
3 really is the only one in the franchise that has an over-arching, consistent vision of what its trying to do and be, both mechanically and thematically.
@densetsunogomez But also the contemporaries didn't have the kind of kind of depth and variety in moveset and ability to show off. So many 6th gen action games would just literally be the same identical attack you'd have to press over and over again. Or a 3 hit combo. Or a small handful of special moves and combos if you're very lucky.
Actually I think the only thing you could really call a character action game in 5th gen too was just Rising Zan Samurai Gunman. And that's one of those games where it's more fun to listen to then theme song than play.
I remember a game from 2002 that was very much a proto-character action game called Mark of Kri. It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways and some of its ideas remain unique but it definitely has some design problems and you can definitely tell where the overall limitations of the scope of the project are that end up hampering the experience.
@densetsunogomez I remember liking Mark of Kri a lot. But I guess I remember it more of a stealth game as an action game. You're making me wanna see if I can emulate it.
@BadWrongFun lol yeah they invented this really unique combat system and have you play as a big burly ersatz Polynesian warrior guy...and then they really hammer you in that you gotta stealthstealthstealth because Metal Gear Solid was still so big at the time.
(kinda ironically i think the point you bring up here is really well illustrated by the difference between kingdom hearts 1 and kingdom hearts 2. the difference in expectations for the level of at least spectacle and low-level, kinaesthetic pleasure from play from which those games were made is *vast*)
@densetsunogomez Oh god just the context specific 🔺 actions for each enemy just added so much more flair to the combat. Nevermind the different forms, more moves, etc.
@densetsunogomez And yet for some reason it took them until the DS game to make a sensible control system that let you move Sora and navigate the menus at the same time.
@BadWrongFun
Another thing that tended to cause problems is when you'd be navigating a large area, going a particular direction (usually the main one you're supposed to be going) and without loading a new area, the camera angle dramatically changes and if you just kept what you were doing and didn't let your finger off the stick, you'd be fine, but if you, understandably, tried to re-orient yourself, you could get discombobulated pretty easily.
The DMC series had a lot of this.