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Ranking up is man’s way of moving up in the world. From getting to a higher rank in a martial art to a higher position in the military, going from Junior to Senior at work and even advancing to higher grades at schools as early as 1785, it is a universal concept that has been around forever. Your rank denotes where you stand compared to your kinsmen and how well you’ve performed, while also giving you insight in how to improve and setting a higher goal for your future endeavours. Games as a whole have tracked scores since the first board games, with players trying to beat each other in the least amount of moves possible. This transferred to videogames, only to become more complex in its score-boarding as technology advanced and allowed for more creative scoring systems. It was in 1989 that games like Golden Axe (ゴールデンアックス, Gooruden Akkusu) started using a letter-based grade scoring system. Aside from holding a tally of points, the player would be given a letter based grade at the end based on how he performed. This gave players an even clearer goal to strive towards in arcades, promoting replayability while also emptying more pockets. Ever since then, ranking systems have been present throughout gaming, yet it is a mechanic that isn’t often analyzed beyond the bare basics (link to mark brown video) or otherwise highly scientific (link paper); and neither focuses purely on Action games. So with our sights set mostly on the Action Hack and Slash genre: how do ranking systems operate, what kinds are there, how do they differ from point systems and what exactly makes a good ranking system?

When giving a product form, one always envisions an audience in their mind’s eye. One that will later look at it with great desire. On rare occasions though, that desire isn’t from a single big audience but from various smaller groups. Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (Hokuto ga Gotoku, 北斗が如く) is one such title. Based on the manga from 1983 by artist Tetsuo Hara, writer Yoshiyuki “Buronson” Okamura and editor Nobuhiko “Mad Holy” Horie, The Fist of the North Star brand is a property that enjoys big popularity across the world, thanks in part to its highly detailed, gorey and powerful artwork, especially for a weekly comic. With a new game on the horizon, made by Ryu ga Gotoku Studios – known for the Yakuza a series – for such a famous franchise, people from numerous fan bases were bound to be interested. They are…

When a review begins by saying: “the game lacks combat-options or depth”, it is generally the first one nail in the coffin for action titles, while it often isn’t even the case. A mechanic like allowing the player to switch between weapons, abilities or even complete move-sets on the fly has to fit the vision of the game to be work. Thus it needs careful consideration. Games like Bayonetta offer a huge variety of weapon combinations to the player, while others like Killer is Dead only have a single weapon. One can assume the former is better but it goes much further than that.