<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>
Yeah maybe if you play on normal mode where breathing on people makes them die.
<Snipped quote>
It's probably more a matter of having a high skill ceiling. Mario as a platformer looks childish but its gameplay depth is a lot more serious than it seems because of how they design levels for young people as well as those who master the movement. Those games all have high skill ceilings which is what you want in a game touting depth. Depth shouldn't just mean like "has a lot of systems" because then you just wind up with Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Monster Hunter before World where it's obtuse and cumbersome.
Granted I have no room to stand on when it comes to Ace Combat since my time with that was like watching the trailer for whichever one had Puddle of Mudd in it but I assume people reviewing it don't even put it in the same camp as Dynasty Warriors. Both games can be simplistic in different ways.
I definitely don't have that misconception. Shadow of Mordor/War have a lot of systems but the combat is awful and shallow, because it ripped off the accessible free-flow model from Arkham without any of the other gameplay features to balance it out and make it a complete package.
There is nothing wrong with simplistic combat in a vacuum, look at something like streets of rage. But in a long-ish character driven game, even if you felt like an effortless bad-ass for the first hour and 20 mins, if you're feeling like the repetitive ass combat is a chore just to get to the next cutscene then your game's combat system needs to be more interesting.
Maybe that Squaresoft game 'The Bouncer' realized that early in development and decided to keep you from any gameplay for 65% of the campaign.
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