There are two things I always consider when playing a game, usually with regards to its combat: does it have sauce, or does it have mouthfeel? Sauce is the amount of depth that a game's combat system has. The more intricate it can get, the more sauce it has. If it makes you think, or lets you experiment or break the game's mechanics, then the game is saucy. On the other end is mouthfeel[^1]. Mouthfeel is about the snappiness and performance that a game's combat system has. How *good* does it feel to press buttons? Does the game let you get in and out of combat quickly? Does it have polished UI/UX when you're engaging with the game's systems? The more yeses you can say to those questions, the better a game's mouthfeel is. I think this distinction is important because a lot of the time I don't care if a game has no sauce if it has good mouthfeel, or vice-versa. Obviously the platonic ideal is both, but in a world where game development is hell, you're not likely to get it. So examples: **God of War: Ragnarok** does not reinvent the combat wheel, but it has incredible mouthfeel. Same with a game like **Dragon Age: Veilguard**. Up until [[Dynasty Warriors Origins]] came out, I would have said that series has good mouthfeel, but now it has parries and resources to spend, so it has a bit of both. **SaGa** games can have terrible mouthfeel, but have tons of sauce. **Final Fantasy 7 Remake** is one of those rare "both" cases. I would argue that to the average person, mouthfeel is more important than sauce. It's also easier to build off of. As my friend Rose wrote in my Discord when we first discussed this a few months ago: > [!Quote] Rose > hitting xxxy or xxxxxy is not fundementally that interesting, but it feels great when you also smack 40 dudes while doing it [^1]: Shout out to Kiak for originally coming up with the word to describe this