Action platformer combat elements

In an action platformer, if you were to have four choices for weapons "punch, kick, sword and gun" how would you keep the punch and kick relevant throughout the game after attaining the sword? The game design is a type of metroidvania.

 

Knockback?

Make the sword lethal and some stuff requires non-lethal action?

 

Just some random ideas

• Some enemies just aren't affected by certain types of damage. Maybe your gloves/boots are a special material that especially hurts some kinds of enemies.
• Maybe you run out of ammo, so shooting isn't always an option. Maybe using the sword takes some other conditional requirement, like it's strong but slow, so something you don't have time for a sword attack, so you punch instead.
• Punching/kicking might apply status effects, like being stunned, and sometimes the statuses are most important than the damage.
• Punching and Kicking might be "silent" attacks, while other attacks draw attention of enemies.

 

Like different side effects for the different weapons?

Wow those are really neat ideas!!! I like the 'some things not affected by certain weapon types' adds a puzzle layer to the combat. I also did think of the side effects of punch and kicks vs sword/gun. I just need to think about how to include these things without hindering the exploration aspect which is 80% of the gameplay.
I was thinking about gameplay styles too to encourage certain players to opt for punch and kicks versus sword and guns. Maybe punch/sword could be a very aggressive combat style less defense, kick/gun could be a very agile and defensive style but less offense or something like that

 

yeah, like swords can do bleeding damage on unprotected enemies, a kick knocks them back so you get some room.
exactly what really depends on your game, if you have some quick gameplay video or something it'll be useful.

 

you could have kicks disarm or stun enemies, and you could use punching to break stuff like blocks blocking a path.

 

My first thought was punching could disarm, kicking could knock them down. Pushing enemies back into things like spikes or lava or off platforms could work as well.

Kick could have a stomp or spin which hits an area.

Perhaps punching is faster, but does less damage each hit. Against a heavily armored foe, you want a heavy attack. Against a lightly armored foe, the fast attack does more damage overall. (Or reverse it an the sword is fast but light damage, with the kick being slow but heavy damage.)

 

Punch - very fast, interrupts, and stun locks.

Kick - knocks back and makes an opening for criticals.

Sword - the damage workhorse.

Gun - the artillery move with limited resources.

I would try and develop a paper-rock-scissors mechanic out of it that has varying effectiveness in different situations.

EDIT: And the cardinal sin you can make is to make enemies trees to chop down. Make the game deliberate with rapid significant choices.

Edit 2: And make sure your enemies are orthogonal!!! Then mix and match them for the player to adapt to different setups.

If you want more feedback pm me a build. I’m a very good play tester.

 

Thanks for the great feedback you guys. Will definitely come back here once I've got some gameplay working!

 

Punch/Kick can be required for certain missions or enemies. There could be enemies which need to be captured alive, or the mission requires no permanent damage to the enemies. I'm thinking of missions where you need to steal some object from your own side, where you don't want to kill anyone but still need to get to the item.

Punch/Kick could also offer better item drops, such as drop more health or more ammo. Sort of like the glory kill mechanic in the newer Doom games.

 

Punch/kick could be light/heavy attack with a clear difference in windup time. Or they could be high/low attack, and enemies might be in either a high or low blocking stance when they block, like in some fighting games. Or there could be a combo system where you alternate between those two attacks to execute special moves. Like p,p,k,k does something very different than k,k,p,p etc..

 

If the sword is a magical sword, maybe the sword temporarily breaks, if used too much on certain enemies, so you rely on punch and kicks, until your magic sword magically regenerates.