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[piecewise]

It seems to me that there is a sad lack of games with interesting/fun combat mechanics. Sure, FPS is fun enough but you can only enjoy shooting heads for so long. So, since this forum is more then likely filled with individuals that play all sorts of games I'd like to ask this question:

What is a game with a Good combat system?

Because personally, I really want to play one right now. To get things started I'll post a few that I think have fun/interesting/unique combat systems.

Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode: obviously for it's insane depth of simulation

Phantom Dust: An overlooked Xbox gem with some of the most interesting environments I've ever seen in a game

Its a strange post apocalyptic wonderland where everything is bizarrely twisted and dream like. Environments include the highway posted  a mall with a massive tree, a gravity defying shopping district which lets you run on the sides of buildings and a derelict oil rig.  These arenas are also very destructible, allowing you to blow out whole floors of buildings (as seen here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2ehcdalMfo)

The actual combat system is something akin to a collectible card game like magic the gathering. Basically, you create a deck (what they call an arsenal) of skills. These skills are pulled from a total of over 300, each of which is grouped into a school and a type. The types are

Attack skills perform direct damage against the opponent. These skill have a strength value (STR) from 1 to 10 or X amount, a range, and a trajectory or attack type (such as direct shots, falling from the sky, striking in an arc, or sliced like a sword blade). Attack are not guaranteed hits; if the opponent moves to the appropriate type of cover, uses a defensive skill, moves out of range of the attack, or simply moves out of its way, the attack will fail to hit.

Defense skills protect the player by certain means, sometimes limited to attacks from skills in specific classes.

Status skills can alter the statistics of a combatant, such as increasing or decreasing attack power.

Erase skills can remove loaded skills from other players or from players spawn points.

Special skills typically allow the combatant to alter the playfield somehow, such as by flying, teleporting, or changing spawn points for new skills.

Environmental skills affect all combatants directly, generally restricting certain actions, such duplicating Aura regeneration speed or disallow skills that deal >3 damage, until someone removes the Environmental Crystal from the playfield.

The schools are

Psycho
Skills that use telekinesis to move objects for both offensive and defensive abilities
Optical
Skills that use and manipulate light to the benefit of the player
Nature
Skills that use nature and the environment for attacks and defense
Ki
Skills that rely on psychological effects to protect the player and weaken their foe
Faith
Skills that often consume part of the player's own life and aura for larger offensive and defensive benefits from the other schools.
 
The massive amount of skills combined with the sheer uniqueness of them all means that combat is both fast paced and tactical, allowing for nearly endless combinations and strategy.

Right now you can find the game for roughly 2 bucks. The once great Online multiplayer has basically dried up but the game still allows for 1 on 1 vs matches with split screen. It really is quite fun and I heavily suggest it.

Magic Pengel: If you can ignore the childish tone its basically pokemon stadium crossed with spore. You draw your own creatures and use them to battle through a series of fights. It had a sequel which changed the mechanics of the fighting but made the ability to create much more in depth.
Here's something someone made in the first game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJnE697cPvg (there are no preset parts, everything is drawn by hand)
and here's something from the second
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6L8Iu1W7jo&feature=related

The fun in this game is simply watching your characters evolve as you add more too them and seeing how these additions effect their abilities. The attacks and skills were Dependant on what the creature looked like so it was always interesting to see exactly what they would be capable of.

Anyways, thats mine, now share some of your favorite combat systems or games which made combat fun and unique.

[Vattic]

One game with a really interesting combat system is Lugaru. The controls are simple to understand yet hard to master. Attacks are context sensitive so you can attack and get countered then counter them back only to take them out. You play as a humanoid rabbit and so you can be quite acrobatic. There are a variety of weapons.

Longer description from site:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Lugaru's primary feature is its unique combat system. Instead of relying on confusing button combinations to perform moves, Lugaru's moves are all logical and context sensitive. For example, if an opponent aims a roundhouse kick at Turner's head, you can crouch and then stand up under the attack to grab your assailant's leg and kick him away. If you try and punch an opponent and he tries to throw you over his shoulder, you can crouch to roll painlessly out of the throw. This new combat system makes fights look and feel much more intense and believable than in any other game. You can see it in action with the gameplay movies above.

However, if straight close-range combat with hands, knives, swords and staves is not your style, you can also use stealth, but you have to be smart about it. If you cut a wolf's throat, be sure to wipe the blood off your knife or another wolf might smell it. Enemy rabbits have very keen hearing, so be sure to walk quietly, and kill enemies before they make too much noise or run to alert their friends. Also, if they do bring their friends, don't expect them to stupidly take turns fighting you. It is not unusual for one enemy to sweep your feet out from under you and another to smash you while you fall.

Because of the emphasis on gameplay, the graphics are designed to let the game run as smoothly as possible. It should run at full speed at full detail on any system with a 700 MHz processor and Geforce 3 or better graphics card. It should run acceptably on any system with a 300 MHz processor and Rage 128 or better graphics card. While models do not have as many polygons as in some new commercial games, there is an unprecedented amount of detail where it actually matters. If an enemy shatters his staff on your skull then your vision will unfocus slightly for a few seconds. Jumping through trees creates a shower of leaves (and snow if it is in a cold area). Landing an especially solid blow to the head can spatter blood on the wall and knock out a couple teeth. If you throw a knife into a wolf, blood will drip down his fur as he yanks out the knife and uses it against you. It is even possible to smash enemies so hard into walls that the surface cracks. Motion blur makes fast movement easier to track.

There is a free demo.

[HonkyPunch]

At the OP:
I fucking love Phantom Dust. I can't wait for the supposed "Sequel" or "Spiritual Successor" that may yet be. We'll see. Good combat systems, though?
Try to get your hands on a Bushido Blade rom;
Probably one of the best fighting games I've ever played, you can kill a foe with one good shot from your sword. The free running, etc. One of the best playstation games i've played.
 

[FluffyToast J]

Mount and Blade
Die By the Sword
That new Deus Vult game (not the Crusader Kings expansion, but the new 3D Mount and Blade type game)

Uh... Thats about all I got.

[Grakelin]

Super Mario Bros. That shit was complex as hell.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Robot Alchemic Drive for PS2...  Well, sort of.  The concept was awesome, the execution was... pretty good.  Could have been better.

[Heron TSG]

X-COM has a very deep combat system, with the added bonus of being able to pick how many soldiers you bring and what they carry.

[fenrif]

One of the most unique combat systems ive seen in a game is toribash. Basically its a turn based fighting game, where each turn is a second. Both fighters move their limbs with ball joints/pivots etc. You can grab onto people to do complicated throws and pummels and whatnot. I found it to be loads of fun.

http://www.toribash.com/

[piecewise]

One game with a really interesting combat system is Lugaru. The controls are simple to understand yet hard to master. Attacks are context sensitive so you can attack and get countered then counter them back only to take them out. You play as a humanoid rabbit and so you can be quite acrobatic. There are a variety of weapons.

Longer description from site:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Lugaru's primary feature is its unique combat system. Instead of relying on confusing button combinations to perform moves, Lugaru's moves are all logical and context sensitive. For example, if an opponent aims a roundhouse kick at Turner's head, you can crouch and then stand up under the attack to grab your assailant's leg and kick him away. If you try and punch an opponent and he tries to throw you over his shoulder, you can crouch to roll painlessly out of the throw. This new combat system makes fights look and feel much more intense and believable than in any other game. You can see it in action with the gameplay movies above.

However, if straight close-range combat with hands, knives, swords and staves is not your style, you can also use stealth, but you have to be smart about it. If you cut a wolf's throat, be sure to wipe the blood off your knife or another wolf might smell it. Enemy rabbits have very keen hearing, so be sure to walk quietly, and kill enemies before they make too much noise or run to alert their friends. Also, if they do bring their friends, don't expect them to stupidly take turns fighting you. It is not unusual for one enemy to sweep your feet out from under you and another to smash you while you fall.

Because of the emphasis on gameplay, the graphics are designed to let the game run as smoothly as possible. It should run at full speed at full detail on any system with a 700 MHz processor and Geforce 3 or better graphics card. It should run acceptably on any system with a 300 MHz processor and Rage 128 or better graphics card. While models do not have as many polygons as in some new commercial games, there is an unprecedented amount of detail where it actually matters. If an enemy shatters his staff on your skull then your vision will unfocus slightly for a few seconds. Jumping through trees creates a shower of leaves (and snow if it is in a cold area). Landing an especially solid blow to the head can spatter blood on the wall and knock out a couple teeth. If you throw a knife into a wolf, blood will drip down his fur as he yanks out the knife and uses it against you. It is even possible to smash enemies so hard into walls that the surface cracks. Motion blur makes fast movement easier to track.

There is a free demo.

Yeah, I actually have Lugaru. Its pretty neat except for the fact that you have to be insanely fast to survive. Not just normal fast, meth addict fast. Even then there are only so many actual moves and counters.

At the OP:
I fucking love Phantom Dust. I can't wait for the supposed "Sequel" or "Spiritual Successor" that may yet be. We'll see. Good combat systems, though?
Try to get your hands on a Bushido Blade rom;
Probably one of the best fighting games I've ever played, you can kill a foe with one good shot from your sword. The free running, etc. One of the best playstation games i've played.
 

I know right? It was amazingly addicting and fun. There are ways to play it on a 360 and to get all the skills through save editing. Unfortunately on April 15th they're discontinuing online support for original xbox games so that ends phantom dust online    Last time I heard the successor vanished into the woodwork as well. Tis a sad state of affairs.

I've heard of Bushido Blade, and I've seen some stuff of it but never played. If I remember correctly aren't there other games which are similar to it? In the indie market specifically.

Gonna also post Toribash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g8qq-rP20&feature=related
seems to be further updated on the wii with all sorts of neat details like persistent blood spatter on the bodies. I never got into it much because I found the system sort of annoying but its certainly a unique fighting system that allows for some insane brutality.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I would love to find a Bushido Blade style game.  I played the first game long ago and I have the second.  Only problem with it (at least that I've found) is the run attack exploit my brother loves to use.  He'll just run in circles with Nightstalker and attack over and over.  Very hard to do anything against.

[DeKaFu]

Mmm...Personally, I really liked the combat system in Monster Hunter for PS2.
It was an action game with RPG-like elements, and the controls were fairly complex but worked really really well once you got the feel for them.

The main thing was that you'd use the left stick to move and the right stick to attack with combos. The control scheme and playstyle would change dramatically depending on what class of weapon you were using and whether or not you had your weapon drawn. I generally used the sword-and-shield weapons, which allowed you to run with your weapon drawn and dodge and block, and generally maintain high mobility.
My sister specialized on lances, which were big and powerful, but your movement was slowed to a crawl as long as you had it drawn. They couldn't dodge either, but they made up for it with huge shields that could block really well.
Hammers were kind of the opposite, I think, in that you could run with them but not block. Hammers could also charge up attacks, and lances allowed you to do a running charge in a straight line. Every weapon type required a totally different approach.


The game was also special in that you were almost never fighting swarms of enemies...generally you were fighting dragon-like creatures many times larger than you, on foot, and fights (for me as an SnS user at least) were mostly about dodging around their feet and tail-swings and trying to get attacks in without getting trampled. They'd also move around from area to area and try to escape and rest when injured...it was really common to spend over half an hour doing battle with a single monster. Every time you managed to bring one down it gave a real sense of accomplishment.

Apart from the melee weapons, there were also Bowguns, which were the ranged weapons. They had a completely different control scheme again from the melee weapons. I never used them myself, but I played with a friend who used them exclusively. I believe the projectiles actually followed curved trajectories, and there were a ton of different interesting ammo types to use. For example, "Clust" ammo would break into multiple bomblets in mid-air and explode after a few seconds, "Pierce" would go straight through monsters hitting them multiple times, and various status effect ammo would let you poison/paralyze/etc stuff.

Also worth noting was that menus and item-use were done in real-time without pausing, so if you needed to drink a potion or sharpen a weapon in mid-battle you'd have to run for cover or wait until the monster was distracted.



Holy crap guys, I loved that game so much. D:
I'm speaking in past tense because about 3/4 of the game was the (free!) online mode which you could play with up to 4 people at once. But Capcom took the servers down a couple years ago. They also took down my heart.

There were some PSP Monster Hunter games released which are probably more well-known and mainstream than the original, but they're a poor shadow of the real thing. :/ I choose to blame them for ruining the controls on the upcoming Wii game.

[piecewise]

Well most of these are going on my "Games to look up and play" list.

Robot Alchemic Drive has some horrendous voice acting, almost House of the dead bad.

FIRE ZE PROTON BEEMZ

I'm also going to throw out Zone of the Enders 2: the second runner because that shit is awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86WivH2Hbbs&feature=related

most fun one on one mech combat I've ever had. And there's a 3rd one coming out (or so they say)

[Virtz]

I've heard of Bushido Blade, and I've seen some stuff of it but never played. If I remember correctly aren't there other games which are similar to it? In the indie market specifically.

I'm pretty sure there's nothing like it at all. Even the sequel deviated highly from the realistic damage system.


Way of the Samurai 1 and 2 for the PS2 (and probably 3 for the PS3 as well) have balance and technique systems. The balance part shows in the form of combatants being able to push or pull away when their sword connects with the enemy's, either when blocking or when attacking. Now, how this exactly works somewhat differs between the games. In WotS1, you should pull when the enemy makes a push (which will knock them off balance, allowing you to retaliate) and you can always try to make a push (which will knock away their guard) as long as they don't pull away at that time, making you lose balance. In WotS2, it's somewhat simplified, when defending you only ever pull away, even when they're not pushing (you press forward or backwards depending on whether the attack is vertical or horizontal), when attacking you only push.

Concerning the technique part, every sword has some fighting style assigned to it (middle, lower, one-hand, ninja, fencing, etc.), each with a different standard set of moves, and your ability to perform various moves of that style depends on your experience with the given sword. That is, you'll learn these moves as you gain experience for that specific sword (and fulfil some special conditions in WotS1).

One last interesting thing is the durability system. For every durability point of a sword, the meter for that is one "block" larger. Performing heavy attacks and plain blocking leads to this meter filling up. If it fills up entirely, you lose one durability point and the meter gets smaller by one block, making the sword easier to damage. If you lose all durability points, it'll just irrevocably break. You can increase durability at the blacksmith's, but this costs increasingly the higher you want your sword durability to go. So you can't really do berzerker charges with all your special attacks at once.

[quinnr]

Rainbow Cyborg Unicorns is the most unique and wonderful game ever.

[piecewise]

Tried
"Die by the sword"

man, neat idea but god damn is hard. I think the main problem is the camera keeps flying around me and makes it impossible know where the hell I'm swinging.

Next gonna try out mount and blade, see how that works.