When you have guns, why use a sword?

[Tiny116]

Swords are cooler than guns, And in relation to the FF series the main characters are usually masters of their arts...plus quite often chosen, biologically enhanced or gifted. Besides if A gunman and a swordsman got into close contact with each other lets be honest the swords gunna own it.

(And FF8 had the Gunblade)

 

[Tanto-chan]

i guess there a a multitude of reasons stemming from Japanese culture and I won't get into that or why you wouldn't just kill everyone you ever met with magic. If you ask me it's because of four main reasons. A) Using a sword instead of a gun shows (or gives the subsequent illusion of) many years of training. B) A gun never runs out of ammo (though in a JRPG guns almost never run out of ammo anyway). C) It shows your bravery for facing your enemy head on instead of killing him from behind a chest high wall or for the next building over. and 4) for the sadistic type, think about what the Joker said in Dark Knight. And there i rest my case.
(just for the record I love ALL RPGs)

 

[Daniel_Rosamilia]

Becuase swords are seriously badass.

And they are too busy looking androgynous to clean a gun.

 

[Singularly Datarific]

Problem solved! Also it compensates for inadequacies.

That's not overcompensating for anything!

 

[Tartarga]

Why not just use both? Out of ammo, sword time!

 

[GameOverGoblin]

Swords are more useful for situations that require stealth. Like if you're assassin and you need to get rid of a target without alerting anybody.

 

[Xskills]

I'll quote the greatest of Jedi for this one. "A weapon for a more civilized age..."

 

[CloakedOne]

are you seriously pondering the realism of a JRPG?

 

[maninahat]

If you're good enough with any weapon, you can use it as an advantage against someone with a gun.

Given enough (and I mean a lot) of training I'm sure a master on swordsmanship could take down an amateur mook with a gun.

Er...
Considering that pretty much all firearms require little skill to use, said swordman would have to be extremely good at his skills.

Plus, what the hell does the swordman do if he is against someone who has had a fairly decent or extreme amount of training with firearms? He still gets trumped?

"- You pretty good with that shotgun?
- Not that I have to be at this range, but I'm a fuckin' surgeon with this shotgun."

Swords are iconic. They're as much symbolic as effective. They're designed to cut into opponents, but they're also long and relatively heavy. It means they can impart a greater leverage and weight to the point of impact (when compared to a bullet), but still are quick and agile for close quarters. It means that someone with a large, naked blade is likely more intimidating than one with a Colt .45.

Actually, I tend to think people look a little ungainly with swords in this day and age. If I had a sword, I sure as hell would not be feeling as confident as the guy with a Colt .45. A knife would look pretty frightening; more so than a sword in fact (because they are a more believable weapon), but they have to be really damn close.

There's a reason most military organizations outfit their soldiers with knives as well as guns.

Yes, for utility purposes. Most soldiers have basic bayonet training, but will barely ever use a bladed weapon to kill someone in a fight. Even spec op units like the SAS hardly bother to use knives as an offensive weapon, even though they carry them and have had the appropriate training to use them effectively.

Either that, or people like swords.

Probably. Swords can be personalised a lot more for videogame characters, whereas guns tend to be modelled on realworld firearms and tend to lack the embellishments of a Sword.

 

[TheEarlOfGrey]

Well if a character with a gun takes on the character with the sword they usually have the ability to deflect bullets back or split them in half to avoid being hit, Dante vs Vergil style in Devil May Cry 3.

 

[maninahat]

I'll quote the greatest of Jedi for this one. "A weapon for a more civilized age..."

"That is right...it is more civilised to chop someone's arms and legs off...and leave them to melt next to a volcano..."

 

[teisjm]

If you're good enough with any weapon, you can use it as an advantage against someone with a gun.

Given enough (and I mean a lot) of training I'm sure a master on swordsmanship could take down an amateur mook with a gun.

Sure, but given less training said mook could pick him off before he got close enough to use his sword.
You can't deflect bulelts with a sword, so you're left with evasive maneuvering of some kind, which you have to do "beforehand" cause once you hear the bang of teh gun, it's too late to react.

Now i'm no gun-owner myself, and i haven't ever fired any real guns save for a rifle one time 11 years ago, but i'll be willing to palce my money on, that a guy with a few months gun-training, could easily take down a guy coming rushing at him with a sword.

Once you're up close, sure the sword might be effective enough, but it's the getting there tahts hard. So you wouldn't really have to be a master swordsman, as long as you can swing a killing or disarming blow thats all teh sword skill you're gonan need. The rest would be stealth, or something like parkour to get close.

Why do they apepar in games then? cause guns are less awesome than swords of course, it's that simple.

 

[spartan231490]

it looks cooler, also rpg, it prolly has magic in it too, but this is what you question.

 

[GODoftheRIGOVERSE]

Deadpool is awesome enough said

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrquS-i7H6c

 

[JoshuaMadoc]

Can I say this?

- I'm still not good enough with blades since the fucker's too straight-headed to not make cuts on my hands when I try to use it as a weapon instead of as a tool, so I still prefer reinforced punching gloves and plates boots.

- Guns are definitely great little things, but I don't trust the cheap or handmade ones, and I only trust guns priced at the $1k+ range, and I can't use handguns as well enough as rifles. The country I'm in also has strict gun control laws whereas archery is still underestimated, so I take up archery for the completely different reasoning that I think fletching bows and arrows - while definitely not any less harder than making guns - is a lot less "complicated" due to the materials being more readily available, and the tools a lot smaller and compact enough to be carried everywhere compared to, say, whatever you need to use to melt metals you find and mold it into guns... I'm sure that kind of tool must be like half my own size and weighs twice as much as I do.

I'm not saying I hate guns - Bayonetta definitely showed me how fun they are... I just think that there's little chemistry for me when I have to rely on it more.

 

[ReaperzXIII]

Only time I find it logical to have a sword when you armour that protects you from most calibers of bullets so the terror they feel when the bullets are bouncing off you whilst you just cut his best friend better than a japanese master sushi chef.

Also in JRPGs or any action game try shooting someone with a gun how many shots does it take to kill them well I can't count the amount of bullets but it does take 5 minutes, sword guy on the other hand just took out 15000 enemies and made himself a nice turkey sammich in the same amount of time.

Finally gun fights are anti-climatic, the two meet face to face, one shoots the other in the chest few seconds later he is dead. Sword fights: E-P-I-C the different techniques the sparks flying the feeling that either one of them could die if they make one mistake.

 

[Deviluk]

Just watch The Last Samurai. Lots of sword vs gun there. Its the same reason people don't upgrade from religion to science (OOH controversy).

 

[Lord Beautiful]

Because according to the Rule of Cool [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool], swords are better than guns.

EDIT:

Shit. Ninja'd.

 

[Benjeezy]

Because swords never run out of ammo. Ever.

 

[Theron Julius]

You use your sword because either:

A: you're Dante (or a related character), so shooting them is the equivalent of throwing pennies at them. It's annoying, but it doesn't really do anything.

B: you want to be stylish, so gracefully ripping them apart is far cooler than just shooting them.