/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4659408
None of those games are hack and slash though. All of those are action games, the closest they got to RPG elements in them is (mostly linear) progression. Dark Souls is the closest, but then again it much more action than RPG (level 1 runs being completely possible if you know what you are doing).

"Hack and Slash" term comes from tabletop RPG campaigns where story was a simple premise to get party into an action scenario. Campaigns that rid of all the interactive bits in favour of mechanics and tactical action.
Games like Diablo, Dark Stone, Revenant, Sacred, Dungeon Siege and Titan Quest are Hack'n'Slash games.

Around 2004 when blogging became new journalism inept Blogo-journos began using the term for everything where the hero swings a sword , even for beat'em'ups like Golden Axe. The whole shit started with Devil May Cry 1 and 2 reviews because they saw protag swinging a big sword and thought that "hey, the name kinda fits", and could not be bothered to look at the box that read "Stylish Action game".

Wikipedia is not a reliable source onto this due to the circular causation - They put games into H'n'S genre because people say so, and people say so because Wikipedia puts them there, ignoring the actual genre definitions on that same site

>And this is a big deal because I haven't seen ANYONE agree what to call these games. I've seen names specifically for the specific subgenres - 'spectacle fighter' and 'button masher' and 'character action' but none of them for the wide genre itself

But we had. It was called "3D action". Any action game that is not a Shooter, or where you swing swords/sling spells in equal measure with shootings were simply called "3D Action" games. And everyone knew that this is an action game where shooting is not the focus.

If you go to Wikipedia, lets say for any old action game like that, for example Enclave, and watch through the history, you will see that prior to 2013 it was not called Hack and Slash but just "3D Action"