How fast is a Greatsword?

On a scale of Dark Souls to Devil May Cry, how fast are two-handed swords?

[marcusreading]

TO be fair, in most forms of fiction, the Greatswords are beyond what is reasonable in terms of size.

[Abegilr_Dragonrider]

It's always good to be reminded of the real usefulness of medieval weapons.

[StarWarsomania]

Still my favorite twink elf with a versatile skill set lol

[LlamaWarrior]

Not wearing shoes while using that axe makes me nervous, ngl

[The-king-of-ruins]

Not going to lie the sword you’re holding is pretty cool

[BlckFrkurokaji]

I love all that mythbusting not just the archery (this are my favorites since i am an archer myself, but i love all of them)

[Verbose_Mode]

I’ll ague that the Greatsword from Monster Hunter is actually fine as slow as it is: it’s not being used against humans, it’s being used against immense armored behemoths, and relies heavily upon raw impact at the cost of all else.

[PhoenixVic]

I'm always amazed at how big, but really how light, weaponry really is! And how well balanced if properly made!

[brettjohnson]

"5'11 on the smaller side" 😥

[darthtace]

I think the main thing about the REALLY, REALLY slow versions of the weapons is they're usually in video games, where most things are far slower than they would be in real life because it's just not reasonable to gamify actual combat. You can't dodge a normal weapon attack if you're in range of it, because they're all too fast. Instead, you have to control *spacing*... which is not only exceptionally difficult to do with something that isn't your own body, it's next to impossible to do in a 3D space.

In fighting games you're in a 2D plane that allows you to see the exact distance between fighters, and spacing is still by far the hardest part of getting really good at the game. 3D gives you nothing to work with in regards to this -- if it's first person, you have no clue where your limbs are because we can't extend proprioception to a video game (yet), and if you're in 3rd person you're stuck looking at your character's backside.

So, given that you can't do the thing real combat relies on, you have to substitute it with reaction time... and human reaction time isn't fantastic. Like, we're talking around a full 80ms for an unconscious reaction -- like, say, a blink when something is coming at your eye or removing your hand from fire. For a known trigger -- e.g. the starting pistol in a race -- the best of the bestr can manage is 100ms. And visual reaction is about 20% slower than auditory. So, if you have to identify and react to something -- even if it's just differentiating between a few triggers -- even the best professional gamers can't do better than 200ms. For context, that is about 12 frames. Or, in real combat terms -- a human jab is about 80-100ms.

This is probably counterintuitive -- don't people react to much faster moves in fighting games (or boxing or anything else) all the time? Except that's almost exclusively reads -- just like in Dark Souls/Monster Hunter/whatever, you can judge what an opponent is about to do based on how they're moving. A jab may only be 100ms when you're throwing it, but the actual motion of the body as you start to throw it begins closer to half a second before landing -- which is why you don't see people land a single jab very often in the ring, instead relying on combinations. Fighting games don't have that startup, so they rely on spacing entirely to restrict the opponent's options, allowing reaction to be just barely possible (though far from perfectly reliable). However... getting THAT good at something requires thousands upon thousands of hours of practice. And most people aren't looking to do that to win a single video game (unless they're speedrunners -- you guys are great).

Point being -- video games have to do something completely different than real fighting, and that usually means slowing things down to a the point where reactions are actually possible. Though whether the character is affected or just the enemies depends on the game -- Dante would walk into Dark Souls or Monster Hunter and ask why time was stopped.

[BLEaveable]

"Sir, there's a 6-7 foot tall man swinging a zweihander like a broom down the alley. I think we should back off."

"How many of you henchmen are there?"

"Uh... 6? My lord."

"That is a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

[KalaamNozalys]

Tldr: Cloud's way of wielding the buster sword is realistic

[crwnin]

To be fair, what we would use as a “greatsword” is what Hunters would use as a “longsword”. “Greatswords” in Monster Hunter are massive slabs of metal or bone, designed specifically towards rending and cleaving monsters naught in two in a single strike, whereas “longswords” are more designed towards feints and wide, quick slashes that slowly wear a monster down, occasionally targeting weak points with large stabs and heavy cleaves.

[dmk_games]

And you can use it as a very hard to grab and grapple, (by unarourmed hands, ) spear in a corridor.

Googd luck assasin, angey drunk duke or peasant mob getting down a corridor with one armoured lad usinga great sword as a thrust and slash spear, and a 2nd armoured lad holding it up ready to remove hats of anyone trying to grapple the first sword or rush past it.

(Remove hats = de-cap(itate)).

[BlckFrkurokaji]

"Someone who knows what he is doing" you wielding looks pretty solid to me😅

[JustMarq]

Momentum brother... momentum. That's what I tell everyone.



* Gets sword stuck on ground, some dude with a pot on his head slices me down the middle *

[nawenyxar]

They called it a greatsword because they couldn't have called it a chunk of metal.

[RebelCannonClub]

From a gameplay standpoint one of the reasons you make the greatsword slow is so that it feels like its own weapon instead of just a longer sword. Its got long range and more dmg than a halberd.
IRL the reason why people didn't use Greatswords for everything was purchase cost and maintenance. Greatswords IRL aren't particularly stronger or hurt more than normal swords, they're scarier looking and have long reach. Gamer don't feel FEAR as much as they fear failure or being inconvenienced. IRL peasant soldiers without movies or internet suddenly seeing a sword as big as they are will think twice about fighting for their king.

[Ashireiko_Tatsumi]

The game which showed greatswords correctly for me is Shadow Fight 3. It's fast, but not as fast as one-handed swords.
And then, there are giant swords bigger than the player... Which are super heavy and super slow.
Edit: The greatswords are called two-handed swords there.

[ntfoperative]

The reason Landsknechte were so renowned was how good they were with their great swords, they could act as line troops thanks to the length, or on their own thanks to the sword part. They could legitimately take on 3 or 4 dudes on their own if they just had time to build up momentum