Feedback to make attacking and killing enemies satisfying

Most constructive feedback I can give..

From first demo is: When monsters vanish, after being cut (Morte) that is way less satisfying than use magic on them!

To see an enemy in agony is the best part! They bubble up before they burst! They are in pain before they go. Cutting head off is insta-kill and only fun when they are super many in a row.

I would rather see, when head is cut off, at least for morte and Morte Cannon that they become a pool of liquid again like lifeless fluid to the ground. Even if they HAD a shard in them, the bodies should go Somewhere, not just ... vanish.

Chopping down limbs is a no go on smaller enemies I guess, but on bosses, killing of Legion or this guy below was always some kind of weird treat.



Yeah and this guy below. In first demo, they do the same, goes to thin air (like Morte does after loosing their heads). Sure its some nice flaming effect on them while they disappear, but I like the ragdoll effect more which I've seen in later demos.



So in short. The more an enemy suffers in agony, the better! Since they are evil, they should pay. All of them.

But hey, I am pretty dark with this stuff. And killing of Bloody Zombies was the best part of lesser enemies in SotN slay-book of mine!



Edit:

Nice touch with bloods on the wall when you strike enemies, it would be nice to see blood on carpets too, stairs. Depending on what enemy. Change up the blood too. When we fought Ectoplasm in Castlevania, the floor could've had a few drops of green ooze / blood at least. No need to make it too gruesome, just show that the enemy, if there is a wall or floor presented in a good way, let us see that they are hurt.


Some enemies that are stronger could also indicate a wound before the final blow is struck that they are indeed bleeding. This effect could be made in 1 type of animation of red, 1 in green, 1 in blue (!?) and applied to all enemies that pretty much need at least 2 strikes to kill or more.. I am thinking of a handful of enemies with exact same blood / bleed animation. Perhaps its pulsating blood, (or not) or it drips, or it sprays a bit. It really depends on preference. That would add more "kick" even if they would ragdoll and vanish in thin air seconds later while laying on the floor.

Another idea is blunt weapons or knockback effects on all enemies would not only hurt them on attack but when they hit (if the do hit) a wall or ceiling.. Leaving a cracked mark if they get smashed down or into something would work too!

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From Discord

Angel-Corlux - Today at 1:03 AM
I see a lot of mention of how the enemies should die, but nothing about attacking them, does that mean that everyone is satisfied with that part?
or just unsure of how to better it?

Enkeria Gin - Today at 1:04 AM
Unsure, but rather ragdoll than thin air. if they are struck, have them react accordingly. I mean, if you have a skill, laser for example, it would make more sense if they "go up in smoke" or in particles. If you hit them, heavy, they should be squashed.

High end tier weapons would leave some enemies confused what happened before they die. Like in samurai movies :stuck_out_tongue: It really depends on weapon. Holy weapons would also be nice have their own style, like, all enemies get a filter of... white light or something. applied on whatever animation they have, ice could give them a tint of blue? Just to mark out its.. elemental. If thats a thing? That would be a color applied, or a faint tint of it.

if they have blood... and are close to a wall, some blood splattering would be awesome. I would like it if I killed an enemy with a sword it gets slice if I killed it with a rapier it gets stabbed and bleed from its wound... and if I kill it with a hammer.. with the finally hit it would get smashed... not necessarily splatter but parts of their body would get crushed. they should also die depending on if they are killed with a regular attack (normal weapon attack with regular weapons) light attack (lighter weapons like knives or the very tip of a rapier) or a hard attack (heavy weapons or critical hits from any weapon)... I know these suggestions are a bit gruesome but I think it would be better then a generic death animation.

Same thing with ethereal beings... if I shoot them and they burst into energy that energy would leave smoke maybe and that smoke should follow the weapon attack... like if they are shot by a gun, the last bullet would have smoke trails right?

I know that might be too much lol but it would be nice if they were in there... again I would love what ever game Iga-sama releases. but this just adds to the immersion and flavor to the game.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this, Angel! I appreciate the thread. So... long-ish post incoming!

Generally I'd say that variation is key. This of course means a lot of work to get unique animations and vfx going but it really pays off. This is how it worked in most Castlevanias after all and I think that worked pretty well because the enemies always had some moment of surprise to them at the first encounter and enemy death.
Some suggestions / directions the team may go in:

CastleDan mentioned that some enemies that crack into pieces (like skeletons) when you kill them would be very welcome. This of course works pretty well with 3d-skeletons as you can just spawn the severed bones as individual meshes and apply a force to them to make them fly through the air. I think that this is how it was in Curse of Darkness and it worked really well for me. I agree with CastleDan's comments on the matter and I think that there is definitely a way to make that work with the stained glass aesthetic (exploding into many pieces of crystallized stained glass). I think that it's not a solution for every enemy (there should generally not be one unified solution for every single one) but it could work on a variety of enemies.

I had a lot of fun with the way zombies died in Dawn of Sorrow - they were my favorite zombies in any Castlevania ever just because of that! They would be slashed into pieces and the direction of the killing blow would act as a force on the individual pieces flying through the air. It was so much fun, giving a zombie an uppercut and seeing the pieces fly high into the air!

I also like it when some enemies leave a permanent (as long as you don't leave the room) mark / corpse after you killed them. Seeing all the mayhem that you unleashed upon a place and its inhabitants feels badass (instead of just leaving an empty place behind). The blood splattered onto the environment when killing the dog enemies in the new Bloodstained Demo was already going in this direction and I'd love to see more of that.

Death variety per enemy based on how you kill them or which bodypart you last hit (like with morte) is a great way to increase variety and a sense of mechanical exploration too.

I'd like to see some ragdoll effects where the ragdolls are free to move outside of the 2d-space (enemy-corpses could fall off the side of a bridge down into a pit for example. Stuff like that always adds to the action and can make for some pretty cool situations.

The death animations can often be part of an enemy's personality. Take Lossoth from SotN for example - his personality is basically all fire and slow movement so when you kill him he becomes a flame that slowly moves forward until it collapses. It just suits the character really well.
If we have some kind of machine-based enemies they could die in huge explosions. I enjoyed that about Tin Man and the little robots in OoE.

Basically I think that there is not one single shortcut that will work on every enemy in the game. Whoever makes a death-animation and its Vfx should think about what type of enemy we're dealing with and how to work with that.

I have looked through the recent gameplay videos and noticed that the impact upon hits against enemies is pretty weak right now too. Some simple ways to change that would be to give the damage numbers some flavor (animate them, shake them, color them based on the type of attack, make them light up, fade out or shrink when they disappear, let them freaking explode!) and a quick shader effect making the enemy flash red for a frame or two on each hit you land. This was part of the 2D-Igavanias and I think it worked pretty well. It also showed us if our method of attack was strong (white) neutral (red) or weak (blue) against the enemy. In Curse of Darkness there were enemies that bled in bright red whenever you hit them. If they can manage to pull this off in Bloodstained, that would be awesome too!

I mentioned this on the Discord
I feel like sound design is as important if not moreso for such a thing than the visuals.

Sadly I don't how how to offer advice on that, I don't know what kind of sound makes it feel good or not, I just know that the sound effects in SotN were incredibly satisfying for me. From the sound the skeletons made when they crumbled or flew apart to the sounds of multiple little explosions going off in rhythm, it was fun. Others here mentioned the book animations, and I found their sound effects very satisfying too. Or the death sounds of the Ectoplasm, the dying cry of the Guardian as he's engulfed in flames, or the PSHEWPSHEWPSHEW of the Dark Octopus enemies as they withered... Not just deaths, but also the sharp sound of Alucard's sword as he attacked.

I also loved how unique and flashy death animations were. Even characters that exploded in fire had *unique* fire animatons— while the Minotaur and Werewolf might be engulfed in a wild pillar of fire, the Guardian had a smoother more magic-like flame when he died. Plus the different colors! That blue fire was so pretty!
And of course the more particles flying out, the better. Blood! Crystal shards! Bones flying to bits! Magic sparks!

I also strongly agree with Yan in regards to giving each hit more of an impact to them. Also, this might not apply in this situation, but I love multi-hit weapons. They're really satisfying to attack with. Things like SotN's version of Holy Water. Anything that can attack the enemy with a ratatatatatat of hits and damage numbers. A sword that had a vibrating blade that did something like that would easily become a favorite of mine.

Alright, so to reference some of our previous discussion on this (yes I'm the board historian), we had a few topics about it, chiefly this one:

bloodstainedfanforums.com/thread/808/death-animations-types

Thanks LordKaiser for that way back in late '15!

And there's a couple of posts from elsewhere that I'd like to pull from, in case the users don't make it to the topic.


I'm with Monk here, I especially like the beautiful flame effects added to spice up SotN death animations. The artists then did some wonderful work mixing those with the satisfying sound effects of the mini-explosions, disintegrating into flames, etc.


June, a guest, popped in to add on this a while back. Otherwise, for me, I'd like to also emphasize the importance of sound. I bet dastlecan will be along shortly to mention it as well, but the visual and audio effects of the animations were matched together expertly in Symphony. For the attack, the unique sounds of the weapon mixed with the sound of contacting the enemy, and at its destruction, the audio cues of plumes of fire and clattering of bones matched up perfectly on-screen.

More for the attacking itself feeling more satisfying, I'd like to see, feel and hear weight to weapons when they're hitting enemies. In the Development Update 9 video for example, Miriam is using a mace, but it sounds more like she's slapping them with a paper fan. That's a solid piece of steel there. In the Zangetsu fight, the sword sounds more appropriately slashy.

Oddly enough, the mace sounds better in the E3 video. Huh. And...it's a different color? errrr edit: okay, what's going on is they swapped in the old Morgenstern's icon for the update video's "mace". wew, I thought I was stumbling upon some crafting stuff or something there for a second...

Some interesting stuff in that thread! I'm not fond of the ideas that are really gruesome, like having her melt to the floor or have limbs cut off. Especially with 3D models, I'd feel like that'd be too jarring for me. I do like some of the ideas with the crystal curse though, particularly the ones that involved respawning at a save point and not having to return to a title screen

Perhaps some differences amoung the innards of the damned might help. Shards flying off for the demons, goop for mortes, etc. Maybe some particular elemental effects on a elemental weapon's hit, like arcing electricity when a ligtning weapon hits(the standard cut and slash having their own effect too). Also, fliching need not be all from the players' advantage, have some enemies attempt to counter Miriam depending on how or what they are hit with instead of flinching uselessly.