So since the current deal is Vermintide and i love first person meele combat. What other similar games (or games in development) exist and maybe describe the combat a bit.
The ones i know about:
Chivalry, probably one of the best PvP meele games. The game tracks the sword in real time, which means you can accelerate and decelerate your attacks with your mouse movement and to some degree the movement of you character. If you get the chance you even jump over an enemy low slash or duck under a high slash. It is amazing fun, but it also has a very high skill ceiling. So try to not get frustrated too much.
Hellraid, seems to be abandoned sadly (not 100% sure though). It looked really good in the trailer i saw.
Kingdom come deliverance, the more realistic attempt. I backed the kickstarter way back in time and now that the beta is out i can´t wait to finaly try it out. The game is a story based open world game in a realistic setting, realistic combat and very nice graphics.
Killing Floor 2, great horde mode game with fun meele combat mostly evolving arround parrying and canceling enemy attacks. Its great fun with friends.
Although on the other side of the spectrum almost entirely, I’d recommend playing a few rounds of Team Fortress 2 on DeGroot Keep (cp_degrootkeep). It doesn’t have the greatest melee physics, but since it restricts which weapons you can use to only ones that would be usable in a medieval time period it makes for very interesting gameplay.
i would certanly recomment you playing skyrim even though it has aged very hard and is still standing as one of the best games of all time
another game that i recommend that has less meele combat but has more strategy involved is Mount&Blade Warband it is a game i played since it came out and it is amazing for people like me with a lot of GOOD dlc and great strategy combat where you can literally rally giant numbers of men to fight in medival combat
and another game that i would recommend you to try is Natural Selection 2 it is a fps but you can play for aliens and slice up marines and walk on ceilings
You already mentioned most of the big ones I was going to suggest in your OP, so you got the genre pretty much down it seems.
Going to throw in an extra suggestion for M&B Warband - very dated, but genuinely enjoyable and has a great modding scene that greatly enriches the game.
Ubisoft’s upcoming For Honor also has some promise, although it’s very hard to tell if the core gameplay is actually good. In theory I like their arcadey-ish stance like system, but there’s also high chance the game ends up a dud.
If a single player game is acceptable, I’d suggest Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. It’s on the source engine and it shows its age a bit, but the game is still absurdly fun to play. Not only does it have fairly solid swordplay, the game encourages you to use physics to kill your enemies, Kicking guys off of ledges or into spikes never gets old.
I just quickly scrolled through this thread so I don’t know if anybody mentioned this yet… But if you haven’t yet, I’d recommend checking out Shadow Warrior. The newer, prettier one. I never finished it, but I liked what I played. It’s fun, funny, over-the-top, and best of all…BLOODY!!!
It’s very hard to say something, that wouldn’t be mentioned earlier, but if in term “melee” you also include “hand to hand”, you can also try Zeno Clash 2. Second one has a more advanced combat system. But don’t expect any complexity - it has it’s variety, but nothing that crazy.
Update: oh, I didn’t realize this thread was almost year old.