I wanna highlight a cool aspect of shmups which is kinda present in a very awkward way in a lot of other genres. Time for a basic lesson in geometry & rambling.
One of the many reasons why shmups offer such a solid set of fundamentals is their integration of range, proximity & enemy attacks.
Enemies have [emitters], which are just points on an X/Y grid from which bullets originate from. Because the patterns start from a central point and travel outward, they get more spread out as they travel along the screen. The closer you are to an emitter, the tighter the dodges you have to make are. The further you are, the bigger the gaps. Check the left side of the attached pic for an example.
Knowing this, it seems like the most logical way to play would be to alway stay near the bottom and wait for bullets to spread out as much possible, right? WRONG! Besides the fact that bullets spreading means they cover more of the screen, hence block your movement more effectively, shmups counter-balance this in 3 other ways. Those ways are - bullet travel time, aiming & proximity-based damage.
When you take emitters, which are just single points on the screen, and add aiming at the player + slower bullet travel time into the mix, you get an interesting risk vs reward dynamic. The closer the player gets to an emitter, the harder it will be to squeeze through gaps, but the more control over patterns the players will have. See the right side of the attached pic.
Both your ship's and the bullets' movement take time. The further from an emitter you are, the less extreme of an angle difference your movement will make, and the more time it'll take to do basic misdirects. If you get closer though, misdirecting becomes effortless and you can make bullets go where ever you want. Just like this, the games create a fun push & pull system where you want to get close to get control, but also put yourself at risk when doing so because bullets are at their densest close to the emitter, and you have less time to react.
The other ingredient is proximity damage. This manifests in several ways - because the range of your shot is limited (usually only shooting forward), maximizing damage per second (DPS) requires staying under the enemy. Because your shots also spread out as they travel away from your emitters, staying close to enemies is the only way to land all shots. Lastly, the games have shot limits and other proximity mechanics which directly tie your proximity with your DPS.
As a result of all this, you get this really tight, neat, interconnected dynamic where the player moves in, and gets pushed out. It's something many players will start doing without even realizing why, they'll just feel that it works. It's also why bullet streaming isn't just a move left -> move right type of motion - it's more like a pretzel shape or a pendulum motion, because you want to get closer to the emitter, even if briefly.
Things start falling apart if you take out different elements. Twin stick shooters (especially ones with narrow shots) remove the range aspect by letting you shoot in any direction, which instantly makes circle strafing the best strategy, which undermines the importance of space. It doesn't matter if you're in the center, in a corner, or above an enemy, you can always hit enemies. Similarly, a lack of proximity-based damage removes the reward and encourages sitting in the back. Games with hitscan or fast enemy bullets de-emphasize the time aspect - being close or far away doesn't matter much, because if you dodged a pattern you dodged it.
If you apply this to 3D beat 'em up style action games (or Souls combat), it can lead to some interesting observations. They might not have bullet travel time, but they did compensate by adding locked tracking speed - the closer you get to an enemy, the more you can fuck with their attack's tracking. They don't have proximity damage, but they do limit your attack's range, so you're always forced to get close to engage. Instead of more granular risk vs reward, they're more about engage or stall type of dynamics. This focus on melee makes circle strafing less of a problem as well - you aren't advancing the game by staying out of range and circling.
Most of the time, the games do absolutely nothing to capitalize on this, nor are they interested in exploring it. Instead they just give you strong defensive mechanics and call it a day. Elden Ring's Malenia fight is a bit unique because her Waterfowl Dance was an absolute nightmare to iframe dodge through if she started it at point blank range. What you'd be better off doing is using a shmup strat - getting under her as she jumps, and misdirecting the beginning of the pattern entirely. That's how it was on the game's release anyway, haven't played to see if they changed it.
This, I think, is a very interesting way to build on Souls boss attack oriented combat and re-integrate spacing into it. It introduces the micro vs macro dodging distinction into the games. The main thing it lacks is risk vs reward - you're still either dodging an attack, or not - a very binary result. It's one thing the games could capitalize & build on, instead of just making strings longer & more varied, and dodges tighter. I doubt the games will do this though - it's abstract, weird and fuzzy. Nothing like simple and rewarding dodge/parry timings. At best we'll get some incidental dynamics like this, ones which are only useful for high level optimization, not survival. Waterfowl Dance was a cool idea being used in the wrong game.
