Many video games involve some sort of combat. It is a quintessential mechanic. The moral and ethical rectitude of this is a subject for another blog post and is not something I wish to discuss here. This post is about combat itself and specifically the amount of time that you have to spend to defeat an enemy. It may sound a somewhat trivial point but it becomes quite an important issue once you start playing a game for any length of time. Like many game mechanics, it often comes down to a matter of personal taste? Which then makes it a difficult matter to find the right balance from a game development point of view. If you make combat too brief, players will say it trivialises the game and diminishes the sense of challenge. Make combat too long and you’ll run the risk of boring your playerbase and driving them away. This is very much a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.