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[Kagus]

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

It's called "morale" and it's a quintessential part of warfare.

Exanima has some neat combat in it (takes a while to get used to, though), and it really pounds home the concept that footwork is everything... Which it is. And yes, it's always fun to watch drunk people hug each other with swords.

Die By The Sword is definitely a cult classic. The swordplay is very interesting and also horrible for actual gameplay. It also has locational damage/dismemberment, and an angry Scot bringing righteous fury to all comers. Certainly worth looking at, at the very least.

Rune is another oldy goldy, one that again puts all of its points into footwork. The combat system is actually very simplistic, but while the mechanics themselves are simple, the skill ceiling for effectively utilizing those mechanics is still quite high. Timing and positioning are alpha and omega, but there aren't any complex maneuvers or really even parrying going on. Also included: A man with a fucking brick for a jaw, and a demonstration of how to properly drink mead and eat a leg of lamb.

If you're looking for Rune+, check out the Jedi Knight series, specifically Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. It's not medieval combat, but the lightsaber combat in Jedi Knight is generally considered to be the best of any Star Wars game to date. Very flashy and cinematic, but still very technical and with an extraordinarily high skill ceiling for making the most of all the advanced moves and techniques. It's all there... Different forms/styles with their own movesets, positional automatic parrying, tracking of the physical lightsaber object to determine hits/damage, old men launching themselves into the air in spinning flips... You name it.


And if we're allowed to include VR titles in the recommendations, then I have only one thing to say: GORN.

[AVE]

Why no one mentioned Blade of Darkness?

[Ozyton]

Blade of Darkness is on GOG. It's an older game but I've heard people describe it as 'dark souls-like' but from what I remember it allowed you to do combos similar to a fighting game with the right inputs. I never played very far unfortunately but it's worth a look. I remember the controls not being so great which is to be expected from an older title.

Rune is great because you can have your arm cut off, then drink a tankard of mead via your ghost limb and it will pop back into existence, then smash the mug on the floor like everyone does after a swig.

[Egan_BW]

Metal Gear Rising. It doesn't even approach realistic, but it's cyborg warriors with swords so who cares. And the parry feels nice.

[Hanslanda]

Colosseum Road to Freedom, while old and a bit clunky, is absolutely brutal and fast paced once you get the hang of it. You have dodges and counters, plus what I call non-dodges e.g. you can roll or jump out of range and it doesn't add to your fight score but can be badass as fuck. Combined against an enemy like a high rank gladiator, it makes a very fast and frightening combat simulation, especially against the likes of Danaos.

[sambojin]

I'm not sure if I  every really went anywhere, but Overgrowth used to be fun for some bounce, rabbit based parkour combat. Played it ages ago, and the weapons and counters system were actually quite fun, along with the Breathe of the Wild "largeness" feel to the terrain you fight over.

Did it ever come good, into being an actual game and not just a tech-demo?

[Egan_BW]

It's pretty fun, but nothing particularly outstanding about it. It now includes a fan-made campaign that in my opinion is better than vanilla.
It always seemed a bit odd how massive the terrain is when the game doesn't really use it at all. It's all about beating up groups of enemies, the world is big and beautiful but empty and irrelevant to the gameplay.

[Kagus]

Did it ever come good, into being an actual game and not just a tech-demo?

Officially? Yes.

Technically? Yes, but approximately on the same level of quality vs. expectations as DNF.

[Egan_BW]

It is a much, much better game than DNF. And I lost faith that Overgrowth would be something truly amazing around the time that development seemed to start ignoring gameplay in favor of fancy water effects or whatever.

[Virtz]

Yeah, with Overgrowth the devs basically spent years focusing on the engine rather than gameplay and content. Which is a shame, cause they can do some wonderful gameplay with a simpler engine, like in Receiver.

And last I played, the legcannon became ridiculously useful due to the huge hitbox it got. All the fights basically turned into legcannon combat for me. Which was entertaining and physicsy, but usually not that challenging.

[nenjin]

As much as I love Jedi Knight II Outcast PvP, I don't know if I can call it the best ever. I suppose in its own way it represents a level of finesse like Dark Souls for its day. Really intense melee exchanges and force jumping and all the different force powers made for a lot of tactical options, and really fun matches between players. The game had and probably still has its own dueling culture.

My problem with JKII though is that when it came right down to it, hitting each other always felt a little fiddly on the numbers. You could wail on each other for 5 minutes without a clear winner emerging, or some fights could be over in 30 seconds. I often never saw the kill shot that finished me, or reliably predict when something was actually going to deal damage outside of the big flashy moves you could pull off.

So while it was a ton of fun and was the kind of game that was deep enough to have layers, at the end of the day something always felt slightly arbitrary about actually hitting each other.

[Hanslanda]

As much as I love Jedi Knight II Outcast PvP, I don't know if I can call it the best ever. I suppose in its on way it represents a level of finesse like Dark Souls for its day. Really intense melee exchanges and force jumping and all the different force powers made for a lot of tactical options, and really fun matches between players. The game had and probably still has its own dueling culture.

My problem with JKII thought is that when it came right down to it, hitting each other always felt a little fiddly on the numbers. You could wail on each other for 5 minutes without a clear winner emerging, or some fights could be over in 30 seconds. I often never saw the kill shot that finished me, or reliably predict when something was actually going to deal damage outside of the big flashy moves you could pull off.

So while it was a ton of fun and was the kind of that was deep enough to have layers, at the end of the day something always felt slightly arbitrary about actually hitting each other.

Which brings me to the best SW lightsaber fightahn game there is: Star Wars Obi-Wan for the original Xbox. Everything is ludicrously simple and yet deceptively complex.

[Frank2368]

I'm surprised noone mentioned Mordhau. That one is pretty well done but it's not out unless you backed it on kickstarter. It's basically Chivalry but done better in almost every aspect and with cavalry included.

[Il Palazzo]

I haven't tried some of the games mentioned here, but in the context of those I do know: Bushido Blade (1 or 2) is teh shit. It might lack the dynamism of Overgrowth, or the RPG campaign-fun of M&B, but it puts the fear of being hit by sharp things into you, like no other.

For some reason I can't recollect how Die by the Sword was. All I can remember is doing the troll vs kobolds arena fight.

[nenjin]

Yeah I enjoyed Bushido Blade 1 (2 was an inferior product in my memory.) I wish it had a little more diversity to it. I remember dueling my brother a lot, and doing the "walk down corridors killing ninjas" gameplay a lot when I couldn't play him. I liked the rock/paper/scissors approach to their combat. I think my favorite weapon was the Broadsword because it had this really quick head chop maneuver that was faster than any other weapon out there, including the Katana.