Actually, the Wildcat mod does quite a few things for melee combat. But since I always go for stealth/archery - there's not a lot of Dark Souls in my Skyrim
I mostly played Demon's Souls - though the combat seemed identical in Dark Souls, to me.
Is there a lot of difference?
A whole lot of dodging and rolling. What was it someone called it? A roller RPG? Seems pretty accurate to me
Not that Skyrim melee combat is very good at all - but the archery is better than most CRPGs. Combined with stealth and all the toys you get in Skyrim, I find combat to be satisfying - but I would never recommend it for a thorougly fine-tuned and balanced experience.
When it's a big free-roaming game - it's very hard to balance something like archery, because it's so easy to exploit ranged combat in that type of game. So, I do what I can to make it interesting. I play without any kind of cross-hair for instance
That said, combat in this type of game is secondary for me. I play Skyrim for exploration, progression and immersion. Combat is just my way of feeling my own progression - as in, my way of testing my strategy and my build.
It's been a long time since I really enjoyed fighting for the sake of it.
Kinda sad, in a way - as I sort of miss that adrenaline and stuff. I remember being a huge competitive shooter fan - and I loved games like Virtua Fighter and the like.
These days, such things bore me to death. Oh well.
Yeah, I was just having a bit of fun. We’ve talked before and I know your feelings toward DS combat.
I don’t think you’d ever get in to DS type games. They’re too combat focus.
Story is cryptic and requires you to read every item description, then piece everything together and even then it’s all speculation and interpretation.
Exploration, ( even though I think it’s great) is only reward by more combat. Either a new area with a boss or weapons and armor for combat.
Combat, unfortunately requires quite a commitment to really appreciate. I think a lot of people would agree with you when you call it a rolling simulator. Hell, I would have agreed with that when I first started playing.
Problem is that the easiest way to play is grab a weapon, lock on, circle strafe, roll, attack when you can. That’s the way I played when I first started playing. Unfortunately that method doesn’t allow you to see the depth of the combat system. Once I started digging in to the combat system I found it offers quite a bit of variety in how to fight.
For example,
My older brother plays a straight warrior type. He grabs the biggest weapon he can find and the heaviest armor and wades into combat. He turtles every thing, no rolling, more standing toe to toe , blocking, managing poise and breaking enemy poise and staggering. A high strength and HP build.
My younger brother plays a mage. Focusing on staying at a distance, circle strafing and using spells and range attacks. More rolling that my other brother but not much.
I play a thief as I do in every game I have the option. Light to no armor, lots of rolling for position and evading attacks, not much locking on as I want to get behind enemies for back stabs. Dagger and target shield or fist for parrying. Dex and luck for stats for bleed build, manage stamina and maximize iframes.
There’s obviously many more builds and hybrid builds, I think DS excels in this area. Just changing weapons with a new move set can totally change how combat feels.
There’s so many things to take into account. Stats for different builds such as bleed or turtle, iframes, encumbrance which affects roll and iframes, poise, move sets, weapon speed, stamina, pvp build vs pvp build.
So anyway, there’s so many different ways to play and they actually feel different but I don’t think many people will invest enough in to learning the different combat mechanics, builds and move set.
I’ve played thousand of hours and I’ll still occasionally run in to someone who surprises me or pulls of something I didn’t think could be done. For instance recently I saw someone parry 3 guys simultaneously. I had no idea you could do that.
So, I’d have to disagree that it’s just a rolling simulator, but I understand the misconception.