20 Best Sword Fighting Games That TRULY Test Your Reflexes

combat with the blade of video games is often when fighting is at its best hi folks it's falcon and today on game race let's talk about the 20 best sword fighting games starting off with animusha now back in 2019 we fortunately got a nice remaster that looks nice crisp it's enjoyable to play of what is really a classic game at this point originally for the ps2 this was a kind of hack and slash it was a little slower in pace and there was some strategy in a lot of ways that actually bore a little bit of similarity to dark souls albeit looking so much like a resident evil game despite the fact that it really didn't have a lot of survival horror going on this was a game that involved a lot of sidestepping particularly in the combat but it was also punchy in a way that felt very satisfying and the sound at least for the time was phenomenal at number 19 is ninja gaiden and we're talking the reboots on the xbox which are very much high speed not far from platinum game style games i mean there's some key differences but i don't know that we would talk about the original ninja gaiden games which are just straight beat em ups in terms of a sword fighting game however the ninja gaiden remakes have this certain rhythm to them where they keep everything very cinematic everything feels very big intense i mean maybe with the exclusion of ninja gaiden z which is kind of a low effort zombie game in the franchise if i'm completely honest what i personally like about the combat in ninja gaiden is it's kind of like god of war except you can't switch attacks halfway through you're kind of committed you're forced to be more deliberate and strategic despite the fact it's still this high octane action game and number 18 is chivalry medieval warfare which is just if we didn't talk about this would be nuts this is a game from a good six seven years ago and it really just shines in its combat like it obviously is showing its age graphically speaking a bit but this is first person melee combat that is just a joy to participate in from blocks to jabs to dodges everything pretty much works exactly how you would think it would work from watching footage of this game which is really nice to have it that intuitive but it's not just that it's how dense the action feels during the intensity of a match this is a game that just doesn't seem to let up the control scheme is really tactical and yet you have to be doing things constantly and quickly because these matches are frenetic chivalry medieval warfare is just like one of the best examples of sword combat period at number 17 is assassin's creed unity now this was a game that had its downsides i'm not gonna lie but in terms of sword combat i really enjoyed that it was able to take some influence from the arkham games in terms of combat but including the kind of blocking and parrying and dodging that is only possible with sword fighting this was an area of the game that had a little bit of depth while some areas were a little buggy and there were some problems that i mean people still complain about to this day but it's really hard for me to not look back at the sword fighting in that game really finely it was just a really good balance of kind of a beat-em-up feel with a slightly more robust moveset number 16 is tenchu stealth assassins which let's just go ahead and say this is kind of a classic it is not the most overtly complex combat system you are ever going to see or anything it's fairly simple there's blocking attacking and you're moving around to try to stop the other person from hitting you it's my opinion that this deserves a spot on this list because it's a very early 3d sword fighting game that honestly holds up pretty well it's kind of simple but it is a rock solid game that i am happy to play to this day and number 15 is legend of zelda now this is a series that has been through many different eras so i want to talk about the basics that have persisted throughout the entire series now in the beginning it was very simple combat you could move in any direction you could slash your sword basically if there was an enemy on the tile above you or below you or to your side you could hit them you had a shield you could use to block it got a little more advanced on the super nintendo just in terms of becoming more fluid and introducing a lot more types of weapons the charge move and then it moved into 3d and we've pretty much had a version of the same 3d combat although it's developed to such a refined point truthfully swordplay and legend of zelda has always been a joy and although the weapons just sort of outright break in breath of the wild it's probably the best iteration of the combat thus far and number 14 is ghost runner which is just this phenomenal mirror's edge descendant with sword combat basically you're in a cyberpunk city and you're dealing with a bunch of enemies at pretty much any given time you can slow down time you can slash the side and you end up doing these really cool amounts of damage you slice off limbs heads etc it really does play like what if mirror's edge was a ninja combat game and truthfully it's probably one of the most fun sword-based games i've played in quite a while at number 13 is witcher 3 now witcher 3 is not a game that i would immediately classify as just a sword game it's obviously open world lots of story lots of dialogue trees etc but once you get the hang of using spells with your swordplay the combat actually can become quite intricate and beating a lot of specific enemies like these various wraiths you basically have to trap in one of your spells every time you want to even hit them creates a really interesting dynamic that i really got frustrated with a lot of times to be completely honest however as i realized how important the spells actually were to the swordplay the game became just significantly more interesting and obviously without combat witcher 3 would be a pretty interesting game so that's saying a lot at number 12 is way of the samurai now this was a very out there game for a lot of reasons this is super weird it is set in 19th century japan and yet there are people who look like they belong in the disco era i'm not gonna address any of that this game had a pretty good moveset regarding swordplay you had to weaken a strong attack you could also kick which some of these games allowed you to do and some didn't this would allow you to use a kick to disrupt then you'd also be able to build up to special attacks or collect items i think probably the best aspect of it though is that you had the choice of whether or not you would engage in combat combat would always quickly evolve from like a single person to like a bunch of people but you always also had the choice to just say no i don't want to get into this conflict which is great we have the samurai actually did a lot of stuff really well despite it being kind of weird at times and number 11 is for honor a single player but let's just go ahead and say like for all intents and purposes the real reason to play this was multiplayer in my opinion at least melee oriented class oriented battler now the reason i thought that the multiplayer was so good is because it took the class stuff and gave you a little bit more customization options the developers referred to this game as a shooter with swords and i think that's a really appropriate way of putting it but you'd get any variety of all these really interesting modes from duels to brawling to 4 vs 14 play in terms of sword fighting this is a really good place to at least start if you're looking for something multiplayer and number 10 is blade symphony a game that was made basically to fill the hole left by jedi knight 2 jedi outcasts as that community sort of winded down the developers needed something to fill the void now being it's supposed to be like lightsaber combat it's very flashy and fantastical and doesn't really go for any kind of realism it is however like this incredibly fun acrobatic team-based fighting or there's also death matches as well blade symphony was a really interesting game and probably could have been a lot bigger at number nine is kingdom come deliverance if you can imagine basically a first-person witcher without the mystical elements and some very detailed physics-oriented swordplay kingdom come deliverance delivers this was one of those games that really took itself very seriously and turned out good for it this was a game where they hired a historian to ensure it was as accurate as possible but i think what's most important about it is just how detailed the combat is you do have a large amount at play at any given time but angle of attack is so incredibly important in this game and you know outside of the combat even it's just a really interesting like really deep and history history-oriented game at number 8 is mordhow which is kind of like kingdom come deliverance in a lot of ways especially like combat however it is so much more oriented towards multiplayer combat basically this was billed as a realistic night evil combat game and it was it was very speedy i'll say it's not particularly realistic in movement but in swordplay it is i think there's some elements of the movement that feel a little bit video gamey in retrospect but the way that swordplay works in it is very momentum oriented and direction oriented it's a very novel control scheme and i think that contributes to just how good the game itself is and it gets some pretty great intense multiplayer stuff going on i'm probably gonna go back to it just from mentioning here i played a lot of mordhow when it came out and number seven is soul calorie which is really different than most of the games that we've covered so far it's a fighting game and it plays like a fighting game however there is a ton of blade oriented stuff in it for one you can overpower certain attacks with swords swords figured heavily into a lot of special attacks etc etc it's also a series that's really kind of been on the cutting edge of graphics for the most part for a long time more recently it's kind of hard to say that on account pretty much everything is really incredible looking nowadays but i've always really enjoyed soul calibur the first time i played it was back on dreamcast and i still give the new ones a whirl when they come out and number six is bushido blade this was a 3d fighting game based entirely around swords as well however it was quite a bit earlier than soul calibur it was also a fighting game actually developed by square and published by square as well bushido blade was interesting in that you could change your stance you were either holding the sword forward upward you could run and it was really actually incredibly flexible regarding how you were attacking and also how you were defending in truth there was a game that i would really like square to revisit it is bushido blade which yes it is another fighting game but it's not the same as soul calibur is very much less a traditional fighting game has a great story mode as well and number five is nidhogg this really really good 2d sort of action adventure game that i think because of its weirdness is kind of ignored it has this combat that is very frenetic you could do everything from straight attacks to blocking to throwing swords to throwing yourself i mean there is a lot you can do in this game and it's also just such a unique looking game it reminds me of something like toe jam and urlish except obviously it's a vastly different game from that and number four is sakura shadows die twice which was just a really interesting title especially given the types of combat that was in it now many people have made this observation is that sakura was kind of a rhythm-based combat game without music that is dictating the rhythm you kind of just have to detect it out of your enemies and i think just that insight sets sakura pretty much apart from almost any other game on here but it's also a fantastic dark souls type game with a lot of different mechanics like the grappling hook just like with bloodborne it's different enough from dark souls that it justifies being a separate thing and honestly i hope we see sequels to both but a second row two would be just fantastic at number three is mountain blade 2 bannerlord a sequel to the medieval combat of the original obviously a lot of time passed between these games you're not just doing sword combat you're also really gathering commanding lots of different soldiers your swinging is directional blocking is very context oriented it's really interesting to sort of set up the command with a bunch of different soldiers and then participate in the battle i mean this is really a battle simulator you can storm the castle literally and number two is the dark souls trilogy which let's just go ahead and say it if we're going to talk about sword combat in games this is one that we have to zelda is one that we have to this is one that we have to darkest souls is an incredibly skill based scam that throws so many curveballs at you that you're just constantly learning what this game wants from you where sakura was kind of a rhythm-based version of this combat what you're doing here is really caring about dodging and blocking without a good strategy with those you're not getting anywhere fast in dark so i mean you could get somewhere but again not fast in dark souls it is a patience oriented game and it is a world that is rich in lore that the further you get into the more you feel like a part of everything and at number one is ghost of tsushima which aside from just being like an amazing open world game with one of the prettiest visual styles i think i've seen in a game it manages to combine a few different styles of sword play particularly directional sword play but kind of more open worldy type sort player that makes sense like there's no lock on so it's not especially like zelda but at times i feel like i'm playing zelda still however the key is always breaking the enemy's defenses and then hitting when the timing is right it's really just a couple of different things in one that just feels natural and that's for lack of a better term natural really is i think what we all want a game to feel like we don't want it to have to be explained and ghost of tsushima is probably the game in my opinion that has probably best done it in truth it is an amazing game and i cannot wait for more in the series couple of bonuses for you dishonored which is obviously not specifically a sword combat game however when you are locked in sword combat with an enemy it's amazing obviously the point of the game is to avoid combat that's how you get the good ending however sometimes it's really just hard to resist stealthing in and causing some trouble next on bonus is hell spit arena a virtual reality horror slasher in which you're basically cutting down various dark fantasy bad guys with a vr sword and yes oh it's so it's so satisfying it is just amazing it works exactly like how it looks like it works you swing a sword around and be awesome that's the game finally is metal gear rising revengeance a game in which the sword is used in such a novel way you could chop various things up you could use it for enemies and it would really be lethal as hell and kind of look like anime when they chop somebody and then they come apart i mean how could we not mention that but what's your favorite blade slinging games leave us a comment let us know what you think if you like this video click like if you're not subscribed now's a great time to do so we upload brand new videos every day of the week so click subscribe do not forget to enable all notifications and as always thank you very much for watching this video i'm falcon you can follow me on twitter falcon the hero we'll see you next time right here on game ranks you

Channel: gameranx

Views: 356,960

Rating: 4.8523469 out of 5

Keywords: best sword fighting games, realistic sword fighting games, top sword fighting games, multiplayer sword fighting games, best sword fighting pc games, best sword fighting ps4 games, best sword fighting xbox one games, best sword fighting switch games, gameranx, falcon, sword fighting fps games, sword fighting open world games, sword fighting rpgs, sword fighting third person games

Id: 7aSz7DOHiP0

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021