Mechanical Evaluation 1: Dark Souls Combat Part 4

This post is the fourth part of a series on the Dark Souls combat system. This series will cover why I personally am such a fan of the Dark Souls combat system, why it is objectively a well-made system, and how it compares to other action game combat systems. In this post, and the next, I will go over the backstabbing system.

In the next two posts, I will discuss the backstabbing, and the problems with it that blemish quite possibly the best action video game combat system of all time. The complex series of checks and balances that go into making the combat as viable online as it is against AI, are dizzying in their ubiquity and complexity, but generally are extremely well thought-out. Nevertheless, there are some things that could stand to change (which seem to be at least partially mitigated in Dark Souls 2, from what little information we have from the beta).

Backstabbing is a keystone in balancing multi-player combat, Essentially implemented to punish other players for severe misjudgments such as:

• Healing. Generally, if you're opponent is trying to heal, they believe that they are out of options, dying. In this case, you need to be able to press your advantage to finish the fight, and prevent them from regaining all their health. While drinking Estus (regenerating healing item) or using humanity (consumable, relatively rare healing item), you are open to attack. Backstabbing deals a decent amount of damage to your opponent, and also knocks them on the ground, interrupting their actions regardless of their armor; which might have otherwise allowed them to heal as you hit them.

• Dumb moves: Many weapons have one or two attacks that have either significant warm-up (vulnerable time before the weapon is swung) or cool-down (opposite warm-up). Very large weapons sometimes have so much warm-up on certain attacks, that they just generally should not be used against other players, so punishing a lapse in judgment of this kind is another valid reason to have back-stabs in the game.

• Running: Oftentimes, other players will run when the situation seems hopeless. Sometimes they just want to find a terrain advantage, but a more common behavior is to attempt to get you to die from the terrain in pursuit of them. Cowardice in this context usually deserves a good backstabbing.

In my next post, I will discuss the abuse of backstabbing, which creates serious problems in player-versus-player combat.

Thanks, the next post will be up soon!

-Kenny White

PSN: Fatalis_Veritas