1. Kingdom Hearts is very comparable in quality in terms of action to God of War. God of War's combat is very overrated in my opinion (even though I still enjoy the games) and I'd rate the newest KH games to be about on par. Devil May Cry (Not the strawberriesty Ninja Theory reboot), on the other hand, is the epitome of the action genre (even though every game in the series has had series flaws). The games themselves have issues, but the combat is no doubt on another level than God of War and KH. The only games that come close to DMC are those made by Platinum Games (which some argue are even better).
I don't agree. KH's action is atrocious in terms of pretty much any mediocre pure action game to my mind. The camera is unwieldy and awkward, the action is centered mostly around a single attack combo, with a relatively small amount of additional actions. The item/magic system is extremely awkward and the target system is mediocre. On top of that, you have two other characters that run around being mostly useless.
(also, I was of course talking about the original DmC. The reboot, I pretend never happened
If anything the action of KH is severely overrated by the fans of the franchise, that in large part, probably comprise of people who don't play actual action games on a general basis.
2. Realizing that FFXV episode duscae is not very representative of the entirety of FFXV, I am expecting FFXV's combat to be similar in quality to KH in the final build..
That's a strange way of thinking. The basic mechanics are there for all to see. Adding magic etc. is not going to change the fact that A.) the camera and target system of the game is horrible, the hit-detection and hit-animations makes the entire game feel floaty and without substance, your party members are largely superfluous and often directly in your way, the attack/dodge/block dynamics are way too simple and require so little finesse to use that they might not even be there at all for all the technical challenge they provide.
Can they fix all of this before release? Sure. However, considering how a lot of this is related to the fundamentals of the system, I don't think they're going to fix it - because this is what they were going for, on purpose, to begin with.
3. Action RPGs are not generally expected to have combat mechanics on the level of a pure action game.
That's a bad thing - not a good thing. Action in action-rpgs tend to be horrible, and it's because developers are trying to marry two genres that essentially stand for completely different values in terms of game-play I.E
Slow, deliberate, strategical game-play elements through micro-management (the same things people enjoy in games like Chess, Poker, table-top RPGs, Risk etc.) VS twitch mechanics relying on hand/finger dexterity good reaction times and a hands-on approach to strategy.
These are essentially conflicting ways of playing and enjoying games, and I would say they are not really compatible in a meaningful sense despite what people like to think (I think it's usually a pipe-dream concocted by people who like both genres) - meaning that to marry the two means that you're, to my mind, almost certainly going to end up with
A.) a good action game with botched RPG mechanics, or
B.) a good RPG with botched action mechanics, or
C.) a bad game that's just bad at everything
The Witcher series, Dragon Age series (the ones that are action rpgs), the Elder Scrolls series (FFXV looks to have much better combat than this series at least), and pretty much any other highly acclaimed action RPG has vastly inferior combat compared to DMC. (Supposedly Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning had combat that was comparable to God of War).
One thing important to mention here relevant to FF games and most of the games you praise in your post with except of Dragon Age (which doesn't really have action combat for the most part on paper - it just looks like), is that they are all single-character games.
This is one of my biggest gripes with action-RPGs from SE.
Action games are based on in-moment micro-management of a single character - most FF games and JRPGs are based on micro-management of several characters at once.
In action games, the more A.I partners you introduce, the more of a mess you make. Either they get in your way, or they don't actually attribute anything of value to the game-play that you couldn't have done by simply spending more time on the core-mechanics and allowed the player to do with one.
If you're going to force me to have a party of characters to fight with - command based systems are simply superior in every single conceivable way, because they allow the player to be in perfect control of every single move your party makes for every second that goes by.
This cannot happen in an action system, because when you're moving one character, you cannot at the same time control your other characters, but they will still be moving around interacting with you and the enemies.
If your game has some sort of time-stop mechanic for changing characters or issuing orders, then my question becomes immediately - if you have to fix your action system by adding a command system to it, then why didn't you just make a command system to begin with?
This is a problem and it's a problem that no game in existence to this date has managed to solve satisfactory without resorting to multi-play, or by having a command system hidden underneath all the action, yet SE keeps on insisting they use parties of characters like in their old RPGs, while using game-play lifted from a genre that is usually, and for a good reason, centered around single character systems.
The best example in recent memory is Type-0. That game has excellent action mechanics, but the RPG aspects of the game completely ruin it.
4. The entire souls series has combat that is mechanically less complex than DMC, but many find the combat in the souls series more enjoyable (I like both but give a slight edge to DMC).
I don't think it's meaningful to judge action games on mechanically complexity - a good example being Street Fighter's mechanics compared to Tekken. Are there less inputs and combos in the former, sure. However, it's the limitation of these that lead to structure and strategy taking place due to the decrease in random variables that result from having too many factors at play at the same time.
That arguably gives the Souls series and Street Fighter more depth than their competitors, because they organically grow a much more sophisticated player-base as a result.
I am not saying that action RPG's are bad because they're not as mechanically complex - I am saying that they're bad because they're mechanically flawed. It's not a Street Fighter VS Tekken situation. It's more like Street Fighter VS a Street Fighter based on a level system that forces you to keep track of 2-3 A.I characters fighting on your team that you have limited control over - which, I think most people will realize, would be a terrible Street Fighter game.
The Souls series is not really a good example - again, they're great action games - they're shitty RPGs though. In fact, I struggle to think of them as RPGs at all.
The Souls games could work just as well without a single visible numerical, level, or stat menu-navigation. It's essentially all just fluff that has no real bearing on a core game-play that still allows players who're good at action-games to steamroll the game - which raises the question, why is it there?
Well, again, it's there to broaden the target audience. To capture more people, and based on the naive notion that if you put two good things in a blender, you'll get something twice as good. I shouldn't have to tell people that this way of thinking rarely works.
The Souls series also firmly accepts the convention of action games putting the player in the boots of just one character as opposed to a team, except in online multi-player.
To break this down - A good action game is a game where player skills should determine whether the player can progress or not - whilst good RPGs demand strategy and building/management of means (character progression, equipment/stat progression, item hoarding, gold hoarding etc.)
If a game demands you have excellent sense for twitch mechanics to advance, it's generally not a good RPG. If a game demands that you have the necessary level/build/items/equipment to advance it's generally not a good action game.
Apart from issues relating to the party, and the ones I mentioned earlier, this is why games like KH, in my book, are extremely poorly designed games. KH puts you squarely in the situation of screwing you over if you're not leveled sufficiently or without using exploits, yet it also demands that you master the action mechanics to get anywhere. It provides you with a party, but no real control over them- a party that doesn't really do anything of value that you couldn't do yourself if you were provided with a system of buffs, and passive attack skills to make up for their absence.
This is why, deep down, I don't want SE to touch FF7 if they're going to change the game-play, because I can already see where it is going -
An action based system where your team members run around all willy nilly, getting in your way, or dying if you don't baby-sit them,
yet making you dependent on them for healing and buffs.
A system where the camera gets stuck or loopy when fighting large enemies in relatively tight spaces (Bottom Swell anyone..., or the elevator fight in the Shinra Building).
A system where the game doesn't pause when you're looking for items, and then gets you killed as you desperately search for the Phoenix Down on that particularly difficult boss fight.
A system where magic is difficult to browse, and even more difficult to target correctly.
The only action RPGs I've played and felt as if managed to do a decent job of masking these issues are the Tales of games (to varying degrees), Star Ocean, and Rogue Galaxy. That's it - and they still require time-stop menus in order to be functional essentially just proving my point - Command systems are necessary to make party-based RPGs work.
