Whenever you move into a slightly-more-than-casual circle of video game fandom you can bet on receiving the inevitable cries of those who demand complexity to be piled upon the systems that already exist. Whether it's Battlefield fans who yearn for the old days of Battlefield 3 and 4 when the franchise's progression felt less 'arcade-like' and reinforced the fantasy of playing as a largely equipped military specialist, or Elder Scrolls Fans idolising the 'complex intricacies' of the franchise back in the days when "Find me a ring I dropped in a river 10 seconds that way" was considered a totally viable side quest and 'Your weapon skill was so low you actually missed the idiot in front of you' was a regularly occurrence people just had to swallow. Everyone just likes to believe that with a bit more meat on it's bones, a bit more complexity to it's systems, every game can become just that bit more interesting to actually play. And to be fair there's some evidence to that.
Back in the days when Video Games were more a niche hobby, developers would readily cater their games to taking advantage of the knowledge base of their most dedicated players, which is probably what lead to decently complex RPG games that boasted movesets as complex as your average TTRPG. Of course, there are still layers of 'this need to be simplified for the general public', but the general trend was towards building upon systems. That's probably how we ended up with near impenetrable 4X franchises with considerable tactical depth but a deficit of newcomer friendliness. Of course, then gaming begins opening up to a more general audience of people who maybe don't like reading menus for hours on end, and before you know it concessions are being made to make certain games more newcomer friendly. And then it starts to settle into game design philosophy that every game needs to be newcomer friendly otherwise it's just not considered a good enough investment.
I do understand both ends of the spectrum here. On one hand the more people that can rock up to playing a game from a genre they've never tried before, the better that is for discoverability and word-of-mouth. Franchises can grow, new customer basis can form, and every RPG can slowly meld into the same grey-looking soup of half-assed mechanics. On the otherhand some of the best games out there are those that go all out, lean into their most hardcore mechanics and demand a level of mastery out of it's playerbase. Would Sekiro be so thrilling if it went easy on you for fear of alienating newcomers? Would the Pathfinder games feel as epic? Would Baldur's Gate 2 be as beloved? Certain games out there scream for complexity and titles that never go that direction can end up feeling vapid as they trudge along. I can't be the only bored to tears with the general same-ness of the Dragon Age games- building only on the conventions of design rather than atop the foundations of what they achieved the previous game. It's a waste of potential.
Across the industry to the Japanese market, complexity is explored in an entirely different way- particularly when it comes to the same style of game which welcomes it. RPGs are some of the most over-catered to non-mobile games you'll find in the Japanese market, which means the very art of Role Playing Games has been smothered down into a cookie cutter paste. Every RPG endeavours to set itself apart from the basic framework of what an RPG is, which means various games conjuring up unique and fascinating takes on what an RPG even is beyond the basic 'levelling, skills and parties'. And within this scramble to be 'unique' the trap of piling complex systems atop of one another can actually start to become a detriment somewhere down the line.
I think the race for complex deviations from traditional roleplaying rules birthed a dozen interesting ideas, and a few super complex one's too. Some titles, such as Yakuza: Like a Dragon, were just so chuffed to even be an RPG at all that they kept thing relatively down-to-earth in the mechanics regards. Other, more hardcore RPG games, such as Xenoblade Chronicles 2: legitimately drove people off itself by the overwhelming nature of it's systems. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is so unfriendly to new comers that there are actual tutorial videos and annotated screenshots designed just to teach people what everything on the UI is trying to tell them. Which are important because for some insane reason, Xenoblade doesn't contain any 'tips' logs full of basic combat tips for people to read up on.
Essentially how it works is thus: You enter a real-time combat wherein your character auto-attacks slowly but your positioning is performed as freely as you wish. With every successful attack you build up a bar that unlocks special weapon arts dependant both on your equipped weapon and the summoned 'Blade' attached to that weapon. Cast enough arts and you can perform a special attack, chain that special attack with a specific elemental follow up (as dictated by a minimalist chart in the top right) and you can pull off a level 3 combo. A level 3 combo causes an elemental ball to circle around the enemy so that when you cast a group combo (a totally separate bar which is building underneath all of this) you can are afforded a free round of special attacks with no retaliation wherein, should you match each attack up with the elemental opposite of the element ball you summoned, that ball will be 'broken' and you'll be afforded another round of slapping. That, in a nutshell, is the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 combat system. Yeah, it's a mouthful.
Coming back to the game after a couple of years I found myself stunned by just how much I had to keep track of in every fight and without those aforementioned quick guide tutorials I probably wouldn't have bothered to stay aboard. There's a level of expectant and encouraged intuition when it comes to game design that we reinforce with measures such as intelligent UI design, universal control schemes and naturally interlaced systems. The point at which the sheer stack of systems balanced atop each other becomes so overwhelming as to be incomprehensible to the fresh-faced player, one might have to ask themselves if they are in fault or if perhaps the game is for presenting such an overwhelming challenge. At the end of the day the games we play are supposed to be entertaining in some kind of way, which can become difficult when every other mission feels like stacking an algebra solution atop a Classics essay. I just want to be able to hit a dude in the face!
At the end of the day there is a huge layer of subjectivity to take into account when we bring up issues like these. The level of tolerance you have for reading and amassing several pages worth of gameplay knowledge may be way higher or lower than my own- that breaking point is what developers are gambling against with every new fundamental system they stack atop their games. Putting games in the hands of fresh faces, allowing unaffiliated players to see every new and respond on their feelings, is probably the most impartial and coherent topical feedback on offer. Game feel is a valid metric, beyond the raw compatibility of gameplay function. And let that be a reason, atop all else, why Playtesting is an important step in design.
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