We’ve put together a list of games that come with fantastic melee systems built to test your reflexes and ability to think on your feet as you take on either hordes of enemies or go head to head with deadly enemies who are just as skilled as you are.

It’s time to dive in! 

1. Lies of P

Neowiz’s take on the story of Pinocchio is nothing short of a masterpiece when it comes to how its combat systems convey a sense of danger while also making you feel powerful enough to take them down.

Although the action isn’t as fast-paced as some of the other titles on this list, the game necessitates a methodical approach to its madness. That’s not to say that things don’t heat up with a few bosses that up the ante with unrelenting, vicious combos that can push you to the limits of your skills.

However, a wide selection of weapons, skills, and the ability to mix and match between various weapons and handles can be a great way to get the upper hand. Finding a combination of weapons and skills that works for you is a feeling that other titles find hard to replicate. And that’s not to mention Legion Arms, each of which adds a new wrinkle to your playstyle.

Give this one a try for its story and intense gameplay.

2. The First Berserker Khazan

Neople’s take on the Dungeon and Fighter series blends a unique visual style with a combat loop that quickly becomes quite addictive despite a learning curve that can dissuade even the most determined of players.

Despite a limited selection of weapons, the game’s emphasis on raw aggression makes each fight a flurry of dodges, blocks, parries, and attacks that can quickly let you garner enough Spirit Points to unleash your most devastating skills while The Blade Phantom brings another layer of strategy to the table, allowing Khazan to harness the power of fallen warriors with some interesting effects.

This is a game that can test your patience but reels you in with its revenge-based story and well-designed encounters, aside from bringing a lot of replay value thanks to multiple endings for you to uncover.

3. Thymesia

If we were to complain about anything in Thymesia, its relatively short length is the only thing that comes to mind. Like Khazan, it’s a title that rewards aggression, with Corvus preferring to keep the pressure on his opponents at every instance. The ability to use your enemy’s own weapons against them while channelling your innate abilities to unleash some very cool moves comes together to present a combat experience that can be a challenge to master but is very rewarding to pull off.

When it’s played right, Thymesia is an absolute treat for players looking for a combat experience that lets them take on increasingly deadly threats with brutal efficiency and flashy style.

4. Sifu

This beat ‘em up action game from developer Sloclap is arguably the best martial arts title to be released in recent times. Aside from bringing the best of kung fu to every attack animation and enemies that ensure that those moves are put to good use, Sifu comes with a unique twist on resurrection after you’re taken down in battle.

This mechanic sees your character’s age go up every time they respawn, improving their attack power while lowering their defences. This could mean that even death becomes a strategic component, allowing you to take on increasingly difficult foes at the cost of a lower health bar.

It’s the perfect way to encourage players to constantly improve their skills while strategically using the game’s mechanics to give themselves a much-needed boost when things get out of hand. Its story may not be as interesting as Lies of P, but it’s nothing to scoff at either, making this a title that’s definitely worth your time.

5. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Wo Long is a refined take on the excellent combat mechanics that the studio established with its Nioh franchise. An obscure narrative and fairly linear world make this a game in which combat quickly becomes the star of the show.

Parrying flurries of attacks from enemies while building up your Spirit Gauge to cause some devastation of your own makes each fight a desperate battle for control, with even lowly grunts capable of taking you out with just a few hits.

 With each level in the game coming with a Morale System that requires you to defeat enemies in order to be capable to take on mini-bosses and bosses later down the line, Wo Long’s combat systems are a tug of war with your enemies as capable of summarily sending you back to the nearest save point as you are capable of sending them on their way to the next life.

6. Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut

The complete Ghost of Tsushima experience brings a poignant and riveting story, a beautifully crafted open world, and a sublime combat system that has a lot of depth to its mechanics. As a samurai forced to find new ways to take the fight to an invading Mongol army, Jin Sakai’s fight to defend his home sees him pull off some very flashy moves, assisted by your precision and sense of timing in every fight.

Leaping of your horse to challenge Mongol patrols to a standoff still feels as thrilling as it did five years ago, while flowing from stance to stance as we wield the Sakai clan’s katana and tanto against vicious enemies is an absolute treat for players who like to fight with style and flair.

Just be ready to have your heartstrings tugged on as you go further into this epic adventure.

7. Ghostrunner 2

For fans of first-person action, Ghostrunner 2 is quite easy to recommend, considering how its challenge lies in using Jack’s abilities with full awareness of what’s happening around him in any given situation. While his trusty sword is indeed a reliable killing tool, using it in tandem with all the other cool weapons he unlocks is paramount to victory.

His impressive parkour skills are as valuable to the game’s combat loop as the electrified Shurikens that eventually became an invaluable part of how we approached every encounter we had in the game. The cyber ninjas of Dharma Tower can be very deadly enemies, but for those of you who use every tool in your arsenal, they can quickly melt away in the face of your onslaught.

8. Hi-Fi RUSH

Hi-Fi Rush follows Chai, a young man who volunteers for Vandelay Technologies’ Project Armstrong in hopes of receiving a limb replacement. However, things quickly spiral out of control as he finds himself on the run from security forces, with a robotic arm and a target on his back. The game’s biggest hook lies in its rhythmic melee combat. Attacks and player actions are all synced to the beat, rewarding those who time their moves just right with extra damage and stylish combos.

9. Shadow Labyrinth

Bandai Namco’s dark and gritty reimagining of Pac-Man brings a combat loop that is a far cry from the character’s earliest appearances. Swordsman #8 might come with a limited set of skills and a distinct lack of options to heal himself while fending off enemies, but those limitations only serve to encourage a more strategic approach to the task at hand.

With exquisitely designed bosses and levels that are full of danger, this is an adventure that blends brains and brawn into a very attractive package that can keep you occupied for hours on end.

10. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

If disabling your enemies in combat is more your style, Ryu’s adventures in this Unreal Engine 5 remake of Ninja Gaiden 2 is going to be quite a treat. However, your enemies could decide to cause as much damage as they can before their inevitable death, making this game’s combat an experience in which you are in danger of dying just as much as your opponents are.

With an emphasis on completing encounters while sustaining as little damage as possible, this game is one in which you need to be on your toes at any point in a fight and come out all the more powerful for it. However, using Ryu’s Ultimate Techniques and a host of other useful additions can ensure that you come out on top while managing to minimize the damage he takes while tearing through enemy ranks.

Bonus: Bloodborne

This list of titles with great melee combat experiences feels incomplete without mentioning Bloodborne, the FromSoftware masterpiece that shook up the studio’s combat formula back in 2015. Yes, it was originally a PS4 title and runs only via backward compatibility on PS5s at 30fps.

However, for those of you who can overlook that factor, its brutal combat and a selection of extremely cool weapons can quickly make you find yourself coming back for another bout against deadly bosses and enemies who can push you to the limit of your patience and skill.

It continues to be a unique and distinct take on the FromSoft formula, requiring lightning-quick reflexes and a very aggressive approach to take down its many threats. Approach this one with caution, and you’re sure to find many reasons to spend another hour in the streets of Yharnam.

And that’s a wrap on our favorite melee games that you can play on the PS5. We hope that you enjoy playing them just as much as we did!

The PC release of Ghost of Tsushima is that of the Director’s Cut version—essentially an update that brought with it a host of features, including higher frame rates on the PS5 and the Iki Island DLC. All of these features make it to the PC version unscathed, along with the new addition of a miniature version of PlayStation Network running through the game. This means that Legends mode also has crossplay with the PS4 and PS5 versions of Ghost of Tsushima.

When it comes to performance, Ghost of Tsushima is definitely up there with Sony’s best. The game supports a wide range of hardware, across different graphics settings. My modest PC running was able to play the game on the high preset—with a few small tweaks like zero motion blur and maxed out field of view—while maintaining a consistent frame rate of over 100.

"To nobody’s surprise, it’s an excellent port"

While the first few minutes with the game did have a few dips in the frame rate, especially when seeing, for example, a village for the first time, these dips essentially disappeared over time, leading me to believe this might have simply been a shader caching-related dip. Having spent more hours with the game since then revealed no real issues with random dips in frame rate. The Legends mode certainly had its moments, especially early on where several particle effects going off could cause drips in the frame rate, but it never got worse than going down from 110 to 70, so gameplay was essentially unaffected for the most part.

Coming to PC has also meant that Ghost of Tsushima has a bunch of options for players to tinker with, allowing players plenty of choices to make use of their hardware in the best possible ways. Interestingly, Ghost of Tsushima is also one of the first RTX-enabled titles that also allows players to make use of AMD’s FSR3 technology for frame generation. This means that the feature isn’t simply limited to Nvidia RTX 4000-series graphics cards.

On the lower end side, I was also able to spend some time with the game on the Steam Deck. On the handheld PC, Ghost of Tsushima put up an admirable effort. On first launch, the game defaulted to medium settings, and roaming around in the open world had the frame rate jumping between 40 and 30. Some tinkering, especially in turning some settings lower, led to a noticeable jump in frame rate stability, which stayed at around the 40 mark, while still not losing out on too much in terms of visual fidelity.

"Coming to PC has also meant that Ghost of Tsushima has a bunch of options for players to tinker with"

Generally speaking, it feels like getting verified for Steam Deck right out of the box might take a bit more optimisation through updates, but as it currently stands, it still feels like it would be perfectly playable on the handheld gaming PC. I would simply advise players against going into Legends mode, since the inconsistent frame rates and large amounts of particle effects might have adverse effects on you and your team.

The minute-to-minute gameplay feels snappy and fun, and while the controls might feel a bit confusing to begin with—the default bindings on mouse and keyboard have the CTRL key as your “aim with bow” button—it’s easy enough to get used to. A controller would still be the ideal way to play Ghost of Tsushima, even on PC, but mouse and keyboard controls work just fine as well. The game also allows you to change all of the key bindings, so any issues that might stem from strange buttons being used for crucial things—looking at you, ALT to dodge—can be fixed quickly.

When it comes to the game itself, Ghost of Tsushima has aged like fine wine. Despite being just under four years old, Ghost of Tsushima still feels excellent to play. Tsushima is a fantastic open world to explore, and its various biomes and zones feel distinct enough where no two places feel the same. It’s also worth noting that Ghost of Tsushima continues to be downright gorgeous, blending in some fantastical elements like the objective-guiding wind that blends incredibly well with the game’s art style that emphasizes long blades of grass and tree branches full of leaves that sway in the wind.

"Tsushima is a fantastic open world to explore, and its various biomes and zones feel distinct enough where no two places feel the same."

Aside from simply looking good, Ghost of Tsushima also has some great level design going for it, especially when it comes to the several villages you have to liberate, and even the castles you tend to take on in some of the bigger missions in the game. Collection side-quests might start feeling a bit monotonous over time, however, but chasing a fox or finding a quiet spot to write a haiku still offers up a certain meditative charm that few other games even attempt, let alone pull off well.

All of this is capped off with a fun story that, while not historically accurate by any means, still does an excellent job of offering compelling heroes in characters like Jin Sakai and Yuna, a hateable villain in Khotun Khan, and everything in between. There’s also a fantastical side of the story that you can further explore through the Legends mode, which comes with its own set of characters and a fight against a mythical being that’s seemingly crawling out of hell.

Almost four years since its release, Ghost of Tsushima continues to be a downright fantastic game. Along with offering one of the most beautiful and stylistically distinct open worlds out there, the game also features great characters, excellent gameplay, a fun balance between combat, boss fights and stealth, and an entertaining main story that demands the protagonist to question his own beliefs about the concept of honor, and what it means to save his homeland.

"Almost four years since its release, Ghost of Tsushima continues to be a downright fantastic game."

The multiplayer side of things also remains excellent, and Ghost of Tsushima Legends’ loot-based progression system—while taking a bit to get going—is still fun to play around with. Loot offers up different abilities for different characters after all, and taking on the final challenges of the mode with a team of four will demand players to be at their best, having mastered just about every gameplay aspect that Ghost of Tsushima offers.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is quite easily one of the best PlayStation games to have made the jump to PC, both in terms of quality of port, and just how much fun it can be to hop into the world of Tsushima, either solo as Jin Sakai, or as part of a group as one of the Legends, and kick some invaders off the island.

As a final note on the recent controversies surrounding PlayStation Network coming to PC through Ghost of Tsushima, it is worth noting that an account is only really required to access the multiplayer Legends mode. Players that don’t want to create or link a PSN account can avoid doing so by playing the fantastic and expansive single-player mode.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Creative and art director Jason Connell talked about how PS5’s haptic feedback allowed them to simulate individual rain drops touching the ground, and how it also helped giving a sense of direction to the guiding winds by feedback alone. Of course, there could be a lot more in store but fans will have to wait for the whole release to see that.

“There’s this thing that you come to find out, which is whenever I heard the [Guiding Wind] before, I would hear it. maybe. left to right, but I wouldn’t ever really hear it over my head, or going from way behind me to way in front of me,” Connell said.

“Or when a rainstorm comes in, you just hear a general pitter patter [in the original version]. But now, it feels like the pitter patter is happening at my feet, like it’s hitting the actual ground. The immersion level just goes up a notch.”

The PS5’s DualSense controller is definitely one of the most enticing pieces of next-gen hardware, and a plethora of games have made great use of the controller’s capabilities – including recent first-party titles such as Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Returnal.

Pre-order bonuses for the title have also been revealed which includes a digital art book, mini soundtrack, concept art from Iki Island, director’s commentary and the Hero of Tsushima skin set. Players will also receive one Technique Point and the Charm of Hachiman’s Favor though along with the new skin set, these can be unlocked in-game by playing the story. Progress is also confirmed to carry over from the base game to the Director’s Cut.

For base game owners, there will be a new patch coming that updates Photo Mode, provides controller remapping options, an option for target lock-on in combat and even the ability to hide Jin’s quiver. Ghost of Tsushima: Legends fans will also receive an all-new mode with more details in the coming weeks.

Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut is out on August 20th for PS4 and PS5.