Now, the combat in Skyrim isn't bad. Far from it! You can come up with a lot of different combos and mix things up to suit your playstyle. And sometimes big battles end up feeling a little less impressive when you win them by strafing around and mashing the attack buttons. But you do a lot of combat stuff in Skyrim. I know that it's hard to make first-person melee combat feel good to the player. Not every game can be Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, or one of the Dishonored games. Part of the issue is the sound effects, and part of it is the math going on behind the scenes overruling your performance.

Sometimes it feels dynamic.and other times it feels like I'm slashing at pieces of paper. I just hold down the spell button until an enemy gets close, then I swing my sword a bunch. But even in Skyrim, attacks feel a little bit.light. Animation quality, physics quality, and overall readability of the combat feedback have all improved. Things have gotten better in each successive game. It never totally feels like you're connecting with something. Skyrim further refines this, allowing for simultaneous spell-casting and sword swinging, in a system that owes a lot to Bioshock. Oblivion introduced the ability to use normal and power attacks depending on the length of a button press, and it was easier to block and cast spells. That basically turned off any nuance in the melee combat and just made it about hammering the button. Of course, the different attacks came with different dice rolls for damage, and a lot of players just wanted to use the strongest attack no matter the weapon or movement.so Bethesda put this in as a menu option. In Morrowind, there were still multiple kinds of attacks, but you made different ones happen by moving your character in different directions as you pressed the button.

Skyrim melee only