Here’s why I think a video game can have a much better fighting system than that in mount and blade:
In mount and blade, you can be in one of five states:
- Holding your weapon at your side and not doing anything.
- Bringing your weapon back to attack.
- Holding your weapon ready to attack but not protecting yourself in any shape or form.
- Swinging or thrusting.
- Holding the weapon in a position that parries attacks done in a certain direction, and not others, whether the enemy’s weapon hit your own weapon or your body, whether it hit your strong, your weak, or your hand. If you have a shield then this is the only time when it protects you, it protects you from head to toe and it also protects both your sides. You cannot swing or thrust from this state.
This is bad in weapon and shield fighting because to attack you must completely lose your shield protection, and then draw your weapon back to attack, and then attack. The only things that can be done to you are destroying your shield or kicking you. They cannot reach around the shield with their arm and stab you, nor cut your foot off, nor cut your head. They can keep twirling their weapons around and if you ever want to attack then you first need to move your shield aside and expose your body, and then bring your weapon back, and then swing, in which time your opponent who was already ready to attack has swung and hit you. You cannot simply thrust your shield at him and try to run him through. He can stand at your side but slightly behind you and swing at your shield and kill you, or stand at your side but slightly in front of you and swing at your head or your back, or thrust at you, and you block it.
This is also bad for single handed weapon alone fighting. A google search has found some nice images. This is a sort of real sword fighting.
With these guards you can defend, and can thrust straight away. You can from a hanging guard perform a downwards cut. If you make a parry then you can attack right after.
In mount and blade, what the people do is not switching between guards and that sort thing as could be done in reality. They may be close enough to hit each other but not hitting. He might start to swing at your left, and you do a left parry, but he was feinting and starts bringing his sword above his head to strike. You cannot simply swing at him because in mount and blade you cannot attack from a parry, even though he has left his right side open and your sword is in a position you could realistically attack from. You must instead do a parry up high, but you cannot attack from that parry either even though it is up high. You can try and “chamber block” by doing another high attack, but that’s just silly because it’s too hard to do.
It is also bad for fighting with two-handed swords, because it’s all about either parrying or attacking, and we all know why that’s not good.
It is very possible for someone who is good at fencing to play mount and blade and do badly because it’s so hard to tell your person to do what you want him to do, even if you are good at fencing and you know what you want him to do. Often you just can’t tell him to do what you want him to do. Parry or get ready to attack or attack. Block with a shield and be unable to attack or put your shield aside and get ready to attack.
Perhaps a better way would be that you can only do certain moves from each guard, and only certain moves can counter it, and different guards can do different things. Kingdom Come Deliverance has got inverse kinematics, so that should be good.