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Comment by psykotic | Hacker News Reader

Anyone remember Die by the Sword? Admittedly it was more sword flailing than sword fighting, but it's the only game I've played that had a semblance of direct control. It was also the first game to use IK for everything from sword fighting to rope swinging and ladder climbing. Even nowadays it's rare to see IK used in games for anything except relatively minor pose fix-ups (blending canned poses offers better control, and IK fix-ups can then be applied on top to get perfect alignment for aiming, etc).

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You should try out Mount & Blade series then.

+1 on this, M&B with the difficulty settings cranked is the best you can get atm.

+2, and even the highest difficulty singleplayer is nothing compared to multiplayer. Beware, though, it has an extremely steep learning curve.

Also there is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic in the First Person Sworder(?) range.

Not a very realistic game, but very enjoyable.

While Mount and Blade is one of my favorite games of all time, its sword fighting is pretty different to the simulation in Die by the Sword. DbtS didn't really have pre-programmed motions like M&B, it instead attempted to map 2D mouse position to 3D hand position using a physical model of the player's skeleton (which generally resulted in flailing madly with your arm contorted into bonkers positions for the first week of play).

Indeed; incredibly difficult to master keyboard controls though. For those interested, gog.com sells it still:

  http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/die_by_the_sword_expansion

Thief 1/2 gave you a bit of a feel for it.

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