Highlights
- The Torchlight series had a strong start but took a hit with Torchlight 3 and Torchlight Infinite .
- The Ninja Gaiden series excelled with the first three games but fell short with Ninja Gaiden 3 and Ninja Gaiden Z .
- The No More Heroes games maintained consistent quirky combat from 1 through 3 but struggled with Travis Strikes Again .
Popularized by Capcom with the original Devil May Cry, hack and slash games differ from other third-person action-adventure games by being all about combat; Batman: Arkham City, Spider-Man, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time don’t rank players by how well they can pummel their foes in between platform challenges.
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These hack-and-slash titles may have fallen by the wayside over the years, but fans of the genre should consider picking them up.
The genre has spawned some classic series, though they haven’t always been gold. So, this list isn’t about rating which hack and slash game is the best of the bunch. It’s about which hack and slash franchise (minimum 3 games) has the most consistent high-end combat gameplay. The ones where players are least likely to come across its lowest lights and more likely to find its solid hitters. So, which ones have the best hits?
8 Torchlight
Delving Into Dungeons
- Strongest Games: Torchlight 1, Torchlight 2.
- Weakest Game: Torchilight 3, Torchlight Infinite.
Torchlight has more Diablo in its DNA than DMC or Ninja Gaiden. The series is all about exploring randomized dungeons in search of items, gold, and other loot to get by while defending oneself from whatever’s lurking in its dark corridors. Yet, unlike Diablo, it had the hack and slash genre’s nippy combat in it from the start.
Torchlight 2 improved things by adding classic-specific items and armor, which helped mix up the gameplay and encouraged creativity. Alas, Torchlight 3 toned down the creative approach for something more linear and basic. Torchlight: Infinite built on TL3’s foundations to lean more towards the hack and slash side of things, but that and its fee-to-pay customization mechanics made it less than palatable.
7 Ninja Gaiden
Shinobi Slasher
- Strongest Games: Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden Black, Ninja Gaiden 2.
- Weakest Games: Ninja Gaiden 3, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.
The side-scrolling arcade beat ‘em up was a stodgy affair, while the story-driven NES trilogy were great but difficult action-platformers. Team Ninja just combined the two in 2003 to revive Ninja Gaiden as a hack and slash series that was so hard it made Devil May Cry look like a Sesame Street game. Each game added something inventive to the series, like NG2’s dismemberment affecting the enemies’ mobility.
Unfortunately, things fell apart for the series from NG3 onward. That game reduced Hayabusa’s ninpo abilities and removed items. Its update, Razor’s Edge, brought back some of NG2’s features, but it did little to impress the base gameplay. Both are still better than Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, where its edgy zombie snoozefest story wasn’t helped by its basic slicing and dicing.
6 No More Heroes
Beam Katanas and Wrestling: Together At Last
- Strongest Games: No More Heroes 1, 2 & 3.
- Weakest Game: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.
Suda 51’s games are rarely straightforward. Compared to Killer7 and Flowers, Sun and Rain, No More Heroes games are perhaps as conventional as they get, and even then, they have quirks. NMH1’s quirky combat worked out great for the Wii, though the player had to earn the action stages by riding around Santa Destroy in search of odd job-based minigames. Those lawns aren’t going to mow themselves.
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NMH2 gave the player more action stages, removing the overworld in favor of a hub to access 8-bit style minigames to earn cash. Then, beyond ports, that was it for the series until Travis Strikes Again came out and put lead Travis Touchdown in a top-down hack and slasher inspired by platformers and RPGs. NMH3 went back to NMH1’s system, alongside TSA’s ‘Death Glove’, and some fun mech shooting on the side.
5 Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Trilogy
The Platforming Pinnacle Learns to Fight
- Strongest Game: Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.
- Weakest Game: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
The Prince of Persia games have spanned multiple genres across multiple decades. The original games were cinematic platformers with smooth, rotoscoped animation. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the latest game in the series, is more of a Metroidvania where new abilities open new parts of the level. But the series hit a boom period with its Sands of Time trilogy.
The first game focused more on platforming than combat, though players still had to use careful jumps, dodges, and the Prince’s time-warping powers to strike foes accurately. The sequel, Warrior Within, built up the combat by adding extra weapons to pick up and fight with. But The Two Thrones expanded on both games by making the Prince more nimble and giving him the ability to dual-wield weapons to take foes down.
4 Onimusha
Sengoku Slasher
- Strongest Games: Genma Onimusha, Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, Onimusha 3: Demon Siege.
- Weakest Game: Onimusha 4: Dawn of Dreams.
The Onimusha games are a different beast from other hack and slashers, given it came from an idea Capcom producer Keiji Inafune pitched as ‘Sengoku Biohazard (Resident Evil)’. The series has RE’s fixed camera, pre-rendered backgrounds, and puzzles. Yet, like hack and slashers, its leads are encouraged to cut up their foes to gain different souls to build up magic, elemental power, and gain in-game currency.
The original game was improved with Genma Onimusha, which added green souls to fuel a Devil Trigger-like state called Oni Mode. O2 went further by letting players chain instant kill ‘Issen’ hits if they timed them correctly. O3 mixed things up with multiple weapons and characters. O: Dawn of Dreams used multiple protagonists to explore different parts of the level. As fun as it was, it was considered a step down from O3 and put the series to sleep.
3 Devil May Cry
The Originator Still Stands Strong
- Strongest Games: Devil May Cry 3, Devil May Cry 4, Devil May Cry 5.
- Weakest Game: Devil May Cry 2.
Considering it introduced nearly all the genre’s hallmarks, one would expect Devil May Cry to be here. It has the in-game currency for new moves and upgrades (red orbs), a grading system to reward high-class gameplay (D to S), and varied, swappable weapons. Kind of. DMC1 is quite clunky compared to later games, where players must go to the pause menu to swap between weapons.
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DMC2 added quick swap weapons, but made everything else worse, from the weapon variety to the boss fights. By comparison, the maligned Dmc reboot is a grand old time. Yet die-hard fans felt its simpler, color-matching combat was weak next to the deeper display in DMC3 and DMC4. It led to their return in DMC5, which is arguably the pinnacle of the series by offering depth and accessibility in even measure.
2 Bayonetta
Making Players Work for It
- Strongest Games: Bayonetta 1 & 2.
- Weakest Game: Bayonetta 3.
DMC may have been created by Hideki Kamiya, yet he never got to work on any of the game’s sequels. He just got Dante and co going before the powers-that-be at Capcom put someone else at its helm while he tinkered about with Viewtiful Joe and Okami. By contrast, he was involved in every Bayonetta game until his departure from PlatinumGames in October 2023.
The games essentially continued DMC’s formula but with some spicy additions, like Witch Time (slows down time with a quick dodge) and Umbran Climax (more summons and attacks at the cost of magic meter). B3 is only considered the weak link combat-wise because its Demon Slave mechanic didn't click with everyone, and new character Viola has the worst Slave, as well as only being able to access Witch Time via parrying.
1 God of War
A High Hit Rate of Burning Rage
- Strongest Games: God of War 1, 2, 3.
- Weakest Game: God of War: Ascension.
Those weaned on the more technical likes of DMC3 or Bayonetta may find them being placed lower than God of War blasphemy. They’re more about brutality and setpieces than intense combos and tricky techniques like shotgun jump cancels. Yet they’re the best at consistency. Before the 2018 reboot, it produced 7 games with the same style of gameplay that are each worth the player’s time.
Its mix of long-range whip-blade combat, magic, and rage powerups was enough to spawn its own imitators, even including Sonic Unleashed’s Werehog stages, yet they never outdid the main series’ smooth brutality and spectacle. Only GoW: Ascension lets it down by altering its Rage and combo mechanics, fixing what didn’t need fixing, but for a lowlight, it still shines bright compared to Yaiba and DMC2.
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The hack-and-slash genre of games has several punishing titles that will push players' skills to the limit.
