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[ZeroGravitas]

Was thinking about this topic this morning: what game do you think has the best real time 3d melee combat?

I was originally thinking about this in the context of Mount and Blade or a game like Chivalry, but I guess it could include "fighting" games like Absolver or Soulcalibur or other games like Assassin's Creed / Shadow of Mordor / Witcher 3.

What aspects of the combat make it better than combat in other games?

[nenjin]

I mean, this is a tough question.

Because what people value in a 3d fighting game can be very different.

M&B is a totally different beast than Shadow of Mordwar, which is totally different than the Dark Souls 3 experience.

PvE in this context is also a totally different experience than PvP.

It's not an unanswerable question I think but it needs more context.

For PvE, I'd have to say the Dark Souls series. Even though their controls are not fluid, or graceful....when the latency is right, it can be both of those things. The hitboxes of weapons and such actually matter, and sometimes you'll get a hit or a parry that you can't believe you got because the stars were right. Or you fail to dodge a massive attack that still missed you simply due to where your hitbox was at the time. When it works, the space you do or don't occupy in the Dark Souls games feel like it really matters.

M&B is satisfying to just lay in to a crowd of guys but it has even less finesse than Dark Souls.

By contrast Shadow of Mordwar/Assassin's Creed/Batman games, while the combat is enjoyable, feels like it's on rails. Any game with a "press a button when you see the prompt to counter" mechanic automatically feels more restrictive. The pay off is the fluidity and flow of combat, the unbroken drumbeat of asskicking you get to hand out because you barely need to pay attention to where you're swinging or what you're swinging at, just aim yourself in the general direction of an enemy and hit a button, the game will take care of the rest. The cost is sacrificing some of the utility and freedom of movement and actually feeling responsible for anything except timing and some general decision making about different attacks. And when they bring in "special" enemies, you really start feeling the lack of options. Those kind of games eventually boil down to "you have one or two things you can do to win, everything else has been deliberately made useless." While I enjoy.....can we just call them QTE Fighting games? .....these kinds of games, I'd never stack them up to anything that asks more of the player.

[ChairmanPoo]

Shadow warrior 2 is free on GOG

[JimboM12]

this might be controversial but... kingdom come: deliverance.

it takes actual practice both ingame and out to get good at it. at first you're swinging medieval longswords like they're baseball bats, but with some practice and skill, soon you can take out entire groups of bandits using the "master strike", or a parry into a counter. it takes a bit of stat grinding and timing to pull these off with a decent sword too but its immensely satisfying. the only gripe i had was the camera was a little too sticky, but someone felt the way i do and made a mod to make it less so and its become one of my favorite combat engines ever.

[Virtz]

In terms of fun, right now I'd say Exanima. There's nothing more satisfying than timing and aiming your strikes at that perfect moment when your oponent's sword just barely misses your character while your own sword lands on their head. It might not be entirely realistic with how wide the swings are and how it'll likely never have real grappling due to the highly manual style of controls, but it's more gratifying than any game where canned animations play out and automate most of the moves. The sound design also helps sell the strikes, particularly against full plate armour.

Another one that always felt "right" to me is Bushido Blade. What bothers me in melee combat games a lot is how much punishment a character can take from weapons without flinching. In Bushido Blade people get their limbs disabled, or get one-hit murdered in the face.


And on that note, I hate how Assassin's Creed games went from mostly quick and lethal combat to boring RPGish number beatings. That is the polar opposite of good in melee combat to me.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Exanima is probably the most technically impressive, the realistic physics combined with the relative accuracy and user-friendly controls is pretty impressive. It's really a prototype though so it doesn't have too much else goin on for it...

[nenjin]

I always thought Exanmina looked like melee combat if you got everyone completely fucking hammered first.

[Cruxador]

I think Kingdom Come is a good one when it comes to realism within a fun and playable game. But purely in terms of fun gameplay, I think the best out there is still Dragon's Dogma.

[Flying Carcass]

I would give Red Steel 2 (Nintendo Wii) consideration. It was a first-person action game that seamlessly blended sword fighting with gun slinging (had a sci-fi wild west samurai theme). With the Wii+ add-on for the controller, one could control the sword/aiming with reasonable precision leading to some very visceral motion controller action.

[nenjin]

Honorable mentions for Vermintide 2's melee combat. It's 1st person, but, the action is fast-paced, it's very satisfying to cleave hordes of enemies, and at the highest level there's a satisfying amount of skill-based survival and reflexes involved.

[Egan_BW]

Hammerfight!

[Ozyton]

Monster Hunter is interesting in that the combat feels slower than other action games but still incredibly satisfying. Also it's pretty asymmetrical in that you're a dude with a giant stick fighting (typically pretty big) monsters of varying shapes and abilities. Despite this it's pretty cool that just about everything that applies to the player also applies to monsters too, for the most part (as in status effects, hunger, animation lock when attacking, getting stunned...). Oh yes, not to mention there are 14/15 distinct weapon types.

For Honor belongs in the fighting game genre and as such I am terrible at it. If fighting games are your type of thing then it's pretty cool. Has directional based attacks similar to Mount & Blade but you get more options than 'swing sword' and there are lots of technical stuff to get into that you'd expect form a fighting game that you wouldn't get out of M&B.

Dark Souls is pretty obvious. I never really bothered with PvP but getting the timing and patterns down just right is incredibly satisfying, plus there's a decent variety of weapons that play differently from each other.

Also going to approve of Vermintide 2's mention even if it is first person, though I may just be biased towards co-op games =p

There was a game called Die By the Sword (on GOG right now) where you control your sword using a joystick and walk around with the hat controls (it's an old game). It's pretty unique in that sense but it's rather clunky and you might end up just flailing around to kill things.

Hammerfight is also a really cool, unique game. The problem is the AI will panic any time you come at them and freeze in place to put up their shields (which is especially awkward if the enemy has no shields). As far as I know enemies never attempt to dodge. The only real exception is a certain enemy type later in the game that gives no fucks and bumrushes you. Still a game I'd recommend. The GOG version has a tiny bit more content than the STEAM version due to reasons (though you can copy the files over into the steam version IIRC)

I just got finished playing through NioH a few days back. It's pretty reminiscent of Dark Souls, but there are lots of skills you can unlock that encourage you to use the different stances and even swap weapons mid-combo for more damage. I got through the game just fine sticking to one weapon but you're probably missing out on some of the enjoyment if you do that.

[Yoink]

For combat itself? Probably Canis Canem Edit/Bully.
Those fights were satisfying as heck.

Absolver seems like it could be really fun, but I only played it briefly and didn't really know what I was doing. Also I'm not really a huge fan of the whole 'Souls-style' gameplay...

[nenjin]

For Honor belongs in the fighting game genre and as such I am terrible at it. If fighting games are your type of thing then it's pretty cool. Has directional based attacks similar to Mount & Blade but you get more options than 'swing sword' and there are lots of technical stuff to get into that you'd expect form a fighting game that you wouldn't get out of M&B.

I played through the whole For Honor SP campaign. Because in truth I no longer really enjoy the challenge of PvP. For Honor as a SP game was.....I dunno, kinda eh, kinda cool. Three tiers of enemies from one hit trash to 4 to 5 hit minor enemies to a full on AI warrior like yourself. That kind of watered down the combat though, even though it's a tutorial for online game modes, because anything less than a full opponent was a joke to fight and kill. For Honor is obviously a better PvP game by far, all the mechanics are aimed at players baiting each other, reading each other and constantly countering. That doesn't come out in the SP game to much degree. I played it on the highest difficulty that didn't remove your UI, and didn't find it that hard, or the AI that amazing. But in the end what I see of For Honor PvP combat is people spamming unblockable moves and using the grab/push/throw what have you moves to just one shot people on environmental hazards. And it just doesn't look like it's much fun. But I guess there's an Arcade PvE mode coming soon and I think you can even start an online, actual XP and currency earning games against bots, so....if you just got done watching Excalibur (1981) and need to wreck someone wearing clanky armor.....For Honor scratches that itch.

Also I'm not really a huge fan of the whole 'Souls-style' gameplay...

There's a lot wrapped up in that term. Which part of the Souls-style gameplay as it relates to combat don't you like?

[ZeroGravitas]

I did love Excalibur...

I hadn't thought about Dark Souls, actually. Good example.