Best Melee Combat

[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