The Retro Game with the Most Realistic Sword Fighting?
12,472Most video game designers don't research practical martial arts techniques, and of course they don't have to. "It's just a video game", who cares... Well, some players do. It's nice to also see down-to-earth, realistic animations and reasonably sized weapons every now and then.
People often ask me which game has the most realistic combat, and the obvious candidates that come to mind are Mount & Blade, Chivalry, War of the Roses, and even Dark Souls to a degree.
In my opinion the most accurate representation of real-life sword fights (before the release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance) are to be found in a Ps1 game from 1997, Bushido Blade.
It has 8 different weapons:
- Katana
- Rapier (with an oddly short blade)
- Naginata
- Sledgehammer (not exactly a standard weapon)
- Nodachi
- "Long sword" (really more of a spadroon)
- Saber (basically a Chinese dao)
- "Broadsword" (strange hybrid of a greatsword and a claymore, quite inaccurate in both name, shape and weight)
The duels in Bushido Blade show the importance of correct distance and timing, just like in historical swordsmanship. Wildly flailing the weapon from side to side works well enough in many games (*cough* Skyrim *cough*) but here it doesn't get you very far.
*** Previous video about the realism in Dark Souls ***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXGns-R8KkM
*** Gopher: Should Fantasy Games be Realistic? ***
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjBcr7gAM4
*** Background music (royalty free) ***
"Mr. Big" by Tuxedo Music
http://www.audiomicro.com/mr-big-mike-kinzie-mr-big-royalty-free-stock-music-1171448
Intro made by Heidaz.
https://www.youtube.com/user/heidaz/
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My favorite online store for buying swords (worldwide shipping):
http://ww4.aitsafe.com/go.htm?go=kultofathena.com&afid=28632&tm=14&im=1
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Bushido Blade Statistics For Skallagrim
At present, Skallagrim has 840,753 views spread across 2 videos for Bushido Blade, and less than an hour worth of Bushido Blade videos were uploaded to his channel. This makes up less than 0.12% of the total overall content on Skallagrim's YouTube channel.