Fighting

Just some general thoughts on fighting, nothing specific to Windstille.

Another World had a very interesting way to fight. You had a gun that you could charge, in three stages:

fire a normal shoot

build a shield infront of you

fire a huge blast that will crack a shild or destroy a wall

Enemies only used shields and normal shoots and shields had a limited amount of time how long they hold, multiple shields were possible. A single shoot that hit would kill an enemy or you. So you had to constantly keep your shield up while at the same time trying to charge up a powershoot to destroy the enemies shield.

Flashback is somewhat similar, but here you can survive a few hits and the shield isn't a weapon firing mode, but a seperate item. Shield only opens up for a second and closes again, so it all depends on your timing to open the shield shortly before the enemy fires a shoot. Enemies don't use any shields if I remember correctly.

AstroyBoy uses a rather special weapon based fight system, each punch to an enemy fills up your powermeter, once its full you can fire a special attack, so fighting focuses on filling up the meter and starting special attacks so that they hit the most enemies.

Dancing Stage like where you have to press a given number of buttons to be successfull

Viewtifull Joe like where a direction to dodge is shown shortly before the enemies action, so you can dodge.