5 Most Realistic Sword Fighting Games (For Xbox, PS, PC, VR)

In this article, we’re going to discuss the 5 most realistic sword fighting games.

There’s something exciting about games that help us suspend our disbelief and immerse us in the action. While many games go for cartoonish simplicity over complexity and realism, others take on the challenge of moving in the opposite direction.

These five games deliver sword combat that has depth and a sense of tense danger, as any missed parry or botched thrust could be your last. Featuring swords, settings, and fighting styles inspired by history to give context to the battles and ground the combat in reality.

Some of these games model the physics of sword combat and allow for wounds to individual body parts, while others focus on systems involving stamina, parries, and feints. These are games that reward skill and timing over speed and button mashing.

So scour your mail, hone your blade, and get ready for the ring of steel on steel!

5. Chivalry 2

Chivalry 2 is a multiplayer medieval hack-and-slash action game by developer Torn Banner Studios. It was released in 2021 and has a Metacritic score of 82 out of 100.

In this game, you take up arms as a soldier on a medieval battlefield. The graphics are bright and attractive, and you can play from a first or third-person perspective, depending on your preference.

You’ll lay siege to castles or attack villages on horseback in huge 64-player battles. This is a game that strikes a balance between realistic melee combat and approachable arcade-style fun.

You can choose from four base classes with over ten total sub-classes and dozens of unlockable unique weapons, which means there are a lot of ways to switch up your class fantasy and try different playstyles.

Chivalry 2 has a weighty and impactful melee and sword-fighting gameplay that is easy to learn but hard to master. With correct positioning, stamina, blocking, countering, riposting, and feints, it draws on realistic elements of hand-to-hand medieval combat requiring skill and situational awareness.

In comparison to most games with much more basic takes on sword fighting, it’s not hard to see why Chivalry 2 starts out our list.

Play on: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5

4. Bushido Blade

Bushido Blade is a realistic 3D fighting game from developer Square. It was released for the original PlayStation in 1997 and has a score of 83 out of 100 on Metacritic.

If you are a gamer of a certain age, the chances are when you saw this list, you thought of Bushido Blade. The game featured an in-depth sword combat system and no health bars or combat timers. You might consider it a game that was ahead of its time, and it was likely an inspiration for some, if not all, the other games on this list.

The game features high, medium, and low fighting stances and six characters with different swords, as well as speed and strength levels. The only type of blocking in the game is to parry at the correct time to deflect an incoming attack. This makes all blocking a matter of skill rather than simply holding down a button.

A single attack has the ability to kill or wound you or your opponent, which makes combat tense and every move count. The controls might feel slow or even stiff to some modern gamers, but the upside is that it rewards skill and correct timing and punishes button mashing or losing your cool.

Though sometimes overlooked, Bushido Blade remains a fighting classic that helped define realist sword combat in the PlayStation One era.

Play on: PS1, PS2, PS3

3. Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an open-world role-playing game by developer Warhorse Studios. It was released in 2018 and has a score of 76 out of 100 on Metacritic.

You play as Henry, the son of a blacksmith, in 15th-century Bohemia. You start out without skill in most things, so both you and Henry will have to learn and get stronger along the way.

This is the only RPG on the list, so if you’re looking for realistic sword fighting inside a realistic medieval role-playing game, look no further.

This game has a large open world and large non-linear branching quest lines that react to your decisions as you play. The game’s creators seem to have done their best to create a historically accurate feel and look for the world, and you are able to decide what sort of Henry you want to be as you fight or steal, seduce or threaten, persuade or bribe your way through the game.

Sword fighting in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is challenging and impactful, and like the other games on this list, it will take some practice before you start to master it. You’ll unlock powerful melee combos that help you break through enemy defenses and take aim at specific body parts.

Positioning in combat and blocking at the right time are both very important for success in the game’s realistic and immersive combat.

Play on: PC, Xbox One, PS4

2. Mordhau

Mordhau is a large-scale medieval battle game developed by Triternion. It was released in 2019 and has a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic.

This game has a variety of game modes, including battle royale and 64-player battles with spawn points and objectives. It gives you the feeling of being a part of a huge medieval battle and has an excellent and nuanced melee combat system that takes some time to get comfortable with and even more time to master.

Even though it doesn’t have cutting-edge graphics, it’s a good-looking game, and the visuals are more than sufficient to be both clear and immersive. There is an option to turn off blood and gore for players who enjoy the gameplay but prefer to steer away from the more graphic depictions of sword combat.

There is a variety of melee weaponry, bows, siege engines, cavalry, and most of the things you might expect to find on a medieval battlefield.

The combat feels weighty and dangerous, with plenty to learn and more to master. You’ll find yourself constantly losing to more experienced players at first until you get a hang of timing, feints, and parries.

Mordhau is one of the games currently setting the bar for enjoyable and realistic melee combat and swordplay and lands at number two on our list.

Play on: PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5

1. Hellish Quart

Hellish Quart is a physics-based 3D sword dueling game set developed by Kubold. It was released into early access in 2021 and has a very positive review score on Steam.

This game is set in the 17th century in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The clothes are based on 17th-century fashions, as are the swords, such as rapiers, sabers, broadswords, and many more.

To add an additional layer of realism, the studio used thousands of motion-captured sword dueling moves as a basis for the game’s animation. To top it all off, game engine physics is used to model the game’s swords as they cash, parry, and thrust.

No health bars are displayed on the screen, and the amount of damage inflicted on an opponent has to do with the speed of an attack and what body part is hit.

For instance, an attack aimed at the torso while rushing forward has the possibility to one-shot your opponent. Other body parts may become wounded, and both duelists may simultaneously be hit with an attack and be wounded at the same moment, an event not uncommon in historical accounts of duels.

Hellish Quart is still in early access, so we’re interested to see how the game matures over its development cycle, but it’s already an ambitious sword dueling sim taking realistic blade combat to the next level – from setting to physics to fighting styles. This puts it solidly atop our list at number one.

Play on: PC (VR supported)