Devilian – “Clunky” Gameplay Thoughts

The following was my response since I was also initially trying to play the game based on years of muscle memory with how most isometric games have been designed in terms of controls.

The game play feels clunky if one is trying to play it with movement bound to the mouse along with a skill bound to its buttons (ie. how many isometric games are designed including D3 which I also play).  I felt the same way when I first played this; binding movement to left mouse button along with combat skills; even with using a multi-bound key like Ctrl for force stand still, the design of some boss fights requires a lot more independent control.

And it looks at its core,  the game was initially designed for WASD movement; sort of more MMO like than classic isometric ARPG’s.  There isn’t even force move for example which more so leads me to believe the game was originally designed to have movement independent of the mouse.  The ability to bind movement to the mouse buttons seems more like an afterthought but was added since it’s going to be expected behavior (plus years of memory muscle playing isometric style ARPG’s in that particular manner).

Yes, D3’s combat is top notched but that game was designed to be fast paced action combat so you can click and spam in that game.  I find D3 overall more easier to play as it doesn’t require a whole lot of precision.  The combat in Devilian is at times much more deliberate (more so again with dungeon bosses) like your standard 3D first person/over the shoulder view MMO.  It’s just that this one has a fixed camera with an isometric view.

I ended up programming my Razer Nostromo’s directional button to deal with movement (like a direct control knob) and the rest of my combat skills on the keypad except the two I have bound to my mouse (with no movement bound to it).  Makes a huge difference in not having to move around with the mouse while trying to kite and fire off skills as you can just use your mouse for targeting.

When I played it this way, the combat in this game doesn’t come across as clunky.  It’s actually beneficial and superior from a game management point of view due to the number of combat skills at your disposal.  But it does require “unlearning” the usual methods of stutter stepping and being cognizant that the mouse is primarily used for targeting those skills.  It’s the left/right brain thing (ambidexterity) as well as years of muscle memory where I still find myself reverting back to trying to move with my mouse and hitting a key to force stand still.

The following was a comment by another player (who also enjoys playing the game) to the one above:

ZiggyD also plays D3 but before that, he used to play StarCraft I; not at a high competitive level but enough to appreciate the level of keyboard and mouse dexterity and associated high actions per minutes required in that game.  That along with micro and macro game management, usually makes the standard ARPG’s far easier to play.  Devilian again from my opinion looks like movement wise, to be designed around independent control of the mouse and any form of force move (following your mouse pointer) because its combat pacing is generally less frenetic as it is in Path of Exile or Diablo III.  That’s probably why ZiggyD has an appreciation for the combat in Devilian as I sort of came to feel that way too (once I gave WASD in this game a go) from playing a lot of old school RTS’s in the past.

And while I’ve played D3 a lot, I stopped looking at it as a proper ARPG for awhile now; I’ve actually looked at it more like an action combat arcade game and when played that way, can be lots of fun (there’s a point where continually grinding no longer needs to be done and I find something else to do).  Hell, patch 2.4 is bringing over the consoles action combat system (and that system always made the console version which I also have, feel more casual and arcade like – which fits for the whole couch co-op thing).

Most boss fights in Devilian are more Belial like where if you play in-line with the level of the content, you cannot just stand there and tank everything.  You need to move and react and get your DPS out at the same time.  That’s where I’m finding playing with WASD movement and using the mouse primarily for targeting (single target, placement for crowd control type skills) to work well in terms of the combat.  Sure, once the content is outgeared, none of that matters and you can just stand in one spot and spam mouse/keyboard clicks in any of these games.  D3 is great in that regards because quickly nuking things is fun from an action combat perspective.

I agree.  This game isn’t perfect (like those huge hit boxes, inability to mass right-click things for selling w/o that dialog box, the repetitive voice acting for some NPC’s, etc just to name a few) but I’m seriously enjoying playing it a whole lot more than D3 which at end game is like bounties and rifts, then primarily pushing Greater Rifts (until the bearings on that hamster wheel start falling out) once your characters power level has trivialized the games base difficulty.

Even though I played PoE early on (and even bought one of the more expensive early supporter packs at launch), I stopped in early 2014 because the combat was turning me off (as well as the desync which yes, I know they’ve addressed with a rewrite of their netcode if you select deterministic lockstep over the original predictive mode).

Basically, I’m not going to stop playing D3 because I’m playing this (it’s never been a mutually exclusive thing for me).  I’ll just play to a certain point and then stop because after a certain point, grinding Paragons or pushing just one more Greater Rift tier (when the stat relativity between your power level and that of the monsters are right at those limits) is just masochistic and boring IMHO.  There’s just far more activities to do in this game (as well as PoE) that I least have one more ARPG option.

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To be even more blunt, the game play of most standard isometric ARPG’s are meant to make these sort of games easier to play.  They aren’t meant to require exact and precise targeting.  And with D3, they actually removed dodge capability (they felt that twitch reflex style combat was not fun); as a game that is more action combat arcade, it makes sense in that regards and the end result is you can spam mouse clicks and keyboard input at will (with resource generation being the limiting factor except for builds that trivialize that).

Basically, they don’t take as much actual motor/cognitive skill when it comes to keyboard and mouse dexterity.  It’s the same with the animation lock issue that some players have brought up with Devilian.  It turns out that (per one of the recent Trion streams) that this is intended design and again, it makes sense because the game is actually designed for WASD movement.  So when playing the game, you actually need to process in real time and make cognitive decisions… you can’t just spam mouse/keyboard actions like in D3.

It’s why none of the known D3 streamers are even known StarCraft II players because it’s not just about entirely different genre’s, it’s the fact that games that require more actual real time skill to play usually has far more deliberate input that is at the opposite end of the spectrum of something like D3. D3 is meant to be casual friendly and requires a completely different type of skill like understanding and then making clever use of those game mechanics, and having the ability to mindlessly grind without falling asleep.  And it’s why it also isn’t surprising that none of the top ones are interested in Devilian because of what they deem as “clunky” game play.