Best Melee Combat

[rhyno435]

What no love for Condemned? Sure it wasn't the flashiest or the prettiest of combat systems, but it felt real. When you bashed someones face in with a plank you could practically feel the impact because it was so close and so realistic. Other games? Meh. Sure Ninja Gaiden is pretty to look at and its fun to have a system that rewards you actually bein strategic like the Witcher, but at the end of the day its still all so...normal.

I completely agree. One of the things that made the first game so scary was that you had to constantly be on your toes because enemies can sneak up behind you, and if you're not prepared to dodge or parry, you're getting hit. And it doesn't take a lot of hits to take you down. It's definitely realistic.

 

[irmasterlol]

First person... none. It just doesn't work from a first person perspective.

3rd person... AC 2-Rev. It works as well and as smoothly as the Arkham games, and flows even more naturally with freerunning and even stealth.

AC2 still had most of the problems as AC as far as combat only being so much standing around and countering. They didn't speed things up until Brotherhood added that combo kill system that made even the biggest enemy clusterfucks trivial.

I found it this recently but there is a way in AC2, and apparently AC1, to do those finishing moves without having to counter, by pressing the attack button only after you land a successful hit, instead of mashing it repeatedly. If you do this by third or fourth hit you'll execute the finisher.

When I found out about this, combat did get a lot faster and I still got to do the cool executions.

And yes, Arkham Batman games have the best combat system of all time! ... of all time!

That's not timing. That's just chipping away at their health. It's invisible in AC1, but it's there. It's the first combat skill they give you.

 

[Tippy]

Most fighting games like SSIV > RPG's like Devil May Cry / Bayonetta > everything else.

 

[King of Asgaard]

The next is Monster Hunter, as a series. With 11 different weapon types to choose from, each with their strengths and weaknesses, players are encouraged to experiment and diversify their play styles. That is a sign of great combat. Yes, I'm aware that 8 of the weapons are melee, but my point still stands.

Finally, Dragon's Dogma. It was a surprise to see Capcom release a game that, on the surface, looks like Monster Hunter and, while the influence is undeniable, it is its own beast. The melee combat is, unfortunately, not as varied as the previous two, yet what it does is polished to a near-mirror sheen.

I thought the combat in dragons dogma was far more varied than in Monster hunter. Yeah Monster Hunter has more melee weapons but Dragons Dogma has tons of skills for each melee weapon. I found myself spamming the same attack over and over much less in dragons dogma anyway.

To me It's the opposite of what you said. Monster hunter has the simple but polished combat and Dragons Dogma is more varied.

The thing is, in Dragon's Dogma, you only theoretically have variation in the combat, because you're forced to choose three abilities. And while sure, you have many abilities to choose from, only a select few are useful to the individual player, so you'd only really use your favourite three, whereas in Monster Hunter you have every attack on each weapon from the start, and it's up to the player to determine what's good for him. In essence they're rather similar, only you have to unlock attacks in DD.

 

[Sushewakka]

Severance: Blade of Darkness. But I'm biased.

 

[Nackl of Gilmed]

Zeno Clash is good. Well-designed first-person melee combat with blocks and counters and things, and a pretty unique aesthetic.

 

[faspxina]

First person... none. It just doesn't work from a first person perspective.

3rd person... AC 2-Rev. It works as well and as smoothly as the Arkham games, and flows even more naturally with freerunning and even stealth.

AC2 still had most of the problems as AC as far as combat only being so much standing around and countering. They didn't speed things up until Brotherhood added that combo kill system that made even the biggest enemy clusterfucks trivial.

I found it this recently but there is a way in AC2, and apparently AC1, to do those finishing moves without having to counter, by pressing the attack button only after you land a successful hit, instead of mashing it repeatedly. If you do this by third or fourth hit you'll execute the finisher.

When I found out about this, combat did get a lot faster and I still got to do the cool executions.

And yes, Arkham Batman games have the best combat system of all time! ... of all time!

That's not timing. That's just chipping away at their health. It's invisible in AC1, but it's there. It's the first combat skill they give you.

But you have time the moment you press the button, if you want to do a finisher, or he'll just kill him with a normal attack.

 

[Squilookle]

Another vote for Mount and Blade, esp. Warband. Seriously, nothing else even comes close

 

[-Drifter-]

I find it quiet flawed. For one, you never seem to do enough damage, so the game turns into rolly polly with Geralt for 15 minutes as you slowly carve down the enemies health and cast Quen every so often. The lethality in -melee- combat is poor and thus the game slows to catatonic sloth status.

I didn't find this to be that much of a problem, at least not on normal. I won't argued that it is fairly flawed, but then, so are a lot of my favourite things.

 

[dimensional]

As others have said pretty much any fighting game even the worst will have better melee combat than other games, ok maybe not the worst.

Other than that Bayonetta easily takes it for me if I ignore the above genre, the game had its faults but the combat was not one of them, I tried playing GOW3 straight after Bayonetta and couldnt do it as the input latency was really noticeable I had to re-acclimatise by playing Ninja Gaiden 2 first.

Zeno Clash is the best first person melee I have played though.

For RPGS I would vote for The Last Story the melee combat in that was great fun.

 

[hazabaza1]

RPG's like Devil May Cry / Bayonetta

RPGs?
You do know what that stands for, right?

OT: Just started playing Arkham Asylum again. Easy as piss, but shit looks so cash.

 

[Wyes]

Fighting with a sword does not look like that. The melee combat is awesome but has almost no grounding in reality.

I think it does have some grounding in reality. A lot of the moves in dark souls are very stylish, like something an actor who wants to impress would use.

What an actor would use trying to look stylish would get him killed within a few seconds in real life. Actual realistic melee fighting is somewhat unexciting for the screen, so realistic HEMA swordfighting has (to my knowledge) NEVER been seen in a movie. Even Mount and Blade is a little Hollywoody, but it's still more realistic than Dark Souls.

Dark Souls still kicks all the ass though.

As a person who does WMA/HEMA swordsmanship, yeah, there are precisely zero games out there (Dark Souls included) that have anything approaching realistic looking combat. Mount&Blade is closer than most, but it's unfortunately just a bit too simple. It really only gives you attacks and parries, things like counterattacks don't really work (in theory you can do them, but they're just normal attacks, which are too slow). It does let you use footwork somewhat effectively though, which is nice. However, I do like Mount&Blade's combat because it's basically the only half-decent melee system around at the moment.

However, something I'm very much looking forward to is Clang! [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang]. It uses motion controls, Neal Stephenson is involved, and better yet, world renowned swordsmen like Guy Windsor are involved (someone who I'm going to have the opportunity to be taught by for a couple of days in January, very much looking forward to it!). Incidentally, if you are interested in seeing 'real' swordfighting, check out my school's youtube channel [http://www.youtube.com/user/Stoccata?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase] (though do note that for a lot of these videos, we've got experienced swordsmen mixed in with raw recruits, you should be able to pick 'em though. I'm also not at all pleased with myself for being in a couple of these videos, no, really...).


EDIT: Oh, and as for some decent swordsmanship in a film, check out the climactic duel of Rob Roy, it's actually not too bad.

 

[Drizzitdude]

Devil May Cry
Dark Souls
Dragon's Dogma