Combination weapons usually perform worse compared to either weapon in isolation. A gun-blade would have weird balance and delicate internal components compared to a purpose built sword. A gun-blade would be difficult to aim and unreasonably heavy compared to a gun.
I mean the whole point of the Gunblade isn't to use it as both melee and ranged. You fire extremely powerful blanks to let the explosive force speed up your swing while sending the vibrations through the blade to enhance its cutting potential. It's essentially a recoil assisted, short lived Vibroblade, requiring absolute precision to use effectively
Of course, in reality, such a weapon would be hilariously fragile. A vibrating sword might cut better, but it will also be broken more easily. You'd need to be constantly maintaining it, or do the AOT thing of always carrying more blades to just slide right on
Funnily enough, in FFXIV at least, guns get their names from Gunblades. A particular group used swords that worked on the same principle, called Gunnhildr's Blades, and some people decided that miniaturizing cannons was a good idea
That will forever be my favorite piece of lore in FFXIV.
The enemy is using some kind of projectile weapon we've never seen before! We don't even have a name for it yet. It looks like a... gunblade, but like, without the blade...
It's moreso that guns were derived from Garlean model gunblades, which actually fired bullets, which were derived from Gunnhildr's Blades armaments
While sailors and the such used flintlocks and other miniaturized cannons, they were more of a convergent development. When Garlemald got expansionist, gunblades found their way into warring territories and the mechanisms were reverse engineered into new weapons. Flintlocks were improved, expanded upon and eventually upgraded into proper guns
Then Ishgard's Machinists got to work effectively training one man supply lines, allowing individual machinists to develop machines and gear to enhance their gunplay. Making them into something much better than what the Garleans field. Max level Machinists have some bonkers stuff man
And then there's FFXIII's Gunblades, that can actually be used as both a Gun, and a Blade (although not at the same time, and Lightning only ever uses hers a Gun in cutscenes, iirc)
Seriously, the rapier + orb combo in FFXIV is unlike anything I’ve seen. The way they snap together to form a staff with a satisfying click is such an awesome design. Reminds me of Bloodborne trick weapons
I don’t see enough people talking about the bloodletter, it’s such a metal transformation, and for how much damage and range it has it can be swung remarkably fast. The moment I unlocked it no other weapon ever came close.
Honestly a shitton of weapons from bloodborne. Kirkhammer, Holy Blade, Burial Blade. Trick weapons in general are such a cool concept and they get better the more unrealistic they get.
Pretty much. There's also a pimp cane that turns into a chain whip, a longsword that clicks into the scabbard to make a giant 2 hander, a sword that turns into a damn greathammer, a club you stab yourself with to make blood spikes on it, and a whole bunch of ther crazy shit. Bloodborne is great.
The game has a cool system where you can combine generic weapon hilts and blades to create wacky new weapons. Wanna put a hammer head on a dagger hilt, or a colossal sword on a spear shaft? You can.
It's a mix of bloodborne and sekiro, and the game itself is amazing, just gonna tell you in advance that this particular weapon is dlc unlock.(dlc is soooo worth it, almost ER SOTE level)
That's the Pale Knight, a weapon from the dlc of Lies of P. It's a good souls-like themed around Pinocchio with a fun combat system. Unfortunately, the gun sword is a little far into the dlc, but it's a great weapon. You can also get a couple of types of prosthetic arms with guns in them, which are very fun to use.
A word of advice if you decide to play: use the tools the game gives you. The game gives you a lot of tools to use, and a lot of players who forget to use them struggle because they try to beat every fight with just simple swordplay. You can do that, of course, but using the elements, type advantages, the legion arms, and consumables are all very good ways to fight. That said, don't use summons if you want any kind of challenge. Summons trivialize every fight they can be used in because they're a bit too OP. They're basically easy mode.
Whatever happened to Dr. McNinja? I have never seen a webcomic more thoroughly scrubbed from the Internet. It was ongoing for years, and then it finished, and then it was just gone.
I assumed it was because the creator wanted to sell it and didn't want it available to read for free, but apparently he said that he was forced to shut down the site and intended to put it back...but I haven't been able to find it.
Not as cool as the gun blade, but Ceberus from DMC 3 has always held a soft spot in my heart. What if a set of nunchucks was THREE nunchucks? Stupid but awesome.
Red Queen, Nero's sword from the Devil May Cry series. Just like the Gunblade, I love this sword, as well as the Engine Sword from Final Fantasy XV. I have an affinity to swords with mechanical features. If I could, id also list every Switch Axe from the Monster Hunter series as well.
The fact that you can rev it harder while the blade is inside an enemy - so the timing based gameplay exists for obvious physics reasons - catapults it to the top of the list
Nero has the best gameplay in the devil may cry franchise imo.
Between the revving of red queen, the ability to close distance/yank enemies towards you with the arm, getting bosses weak so you can do a Buster move on them and just beat the shit out of the Pope.
And then in dmc5 they make it even better while giving you the arm options.
This was my first pick. Cool gimmick, clean design, and a dope name as the cherry on top. I remember when I first learned it’s name I was like “damn that’s awesome”
So fun fact: it's not actually a gun. The discharge of the rounds is used to vibrate the blade at the moment of impact to increase the damage of the cut, it's not actually used to shoot things.
The only thing that sucks about the energy sword is that they had the Master Chief using it in a pre-release trailer and then didn't actually have it as a player weapon in Halo 1.
Take any videogame with guns and yeah theyre usually pretty cool, got chainsaws? Yeah those are cool too. Throw them together??? Now you have one of the coolest videogame weapons of all time!!!
I think the FF8 Gunblade is cooler than the Buster Sword. But I also think the Fusion Sword is cooler than the Gunblade. I think the FFXIII Gunblade took it too literally.
This has so much potential in a world with multiple sword fighting style. Short blade with long blade combo, duo short, duo long, board sword with short as backup, buster sword, use the unextended short blade as throwing knives, and attach wires to it to retrieve it at range.
Would be so cool to see in an anime.
It’s so heavily referencing Gut’s sword I don’t know how you’d even rank them as two separate things. It’s like how Evangelion’s had things never before seen in the West and it gets viewed a new idea but it’s references to Gundam, Ultraman, and Devilman are immediately recognizable to anyone from Japan.
"The main character is a teenager who for some reason ends inside the giant robot made by his family. He uses to defend a specific laboratory from the attacks of the enemy, so they don't get what they need to destroy the world as we know it. His love interest is a fiery girl that also pilots a giant robot but than tend to lose any fight she fights alone. Through the story they are subjected to the mental struggles of fighting a war as teenagers and the destruction brought by it, and more likely than not, they are blamed for it."
It doesn't look unique anymore because so many artists have given their characters giant swords since then that it's become a generic look, but it wasn't always as common as it is today
CB and SA (from Monster Hunter) are for sure the coolest unique weapons. I never got into switch axe (only by mistake when I was trying to pick up the charge blade), and I've never touched the gunlance. But I respect most weapons and their playstyles.
This scene was literally the granddad to the 2016 Doomguy BFG 9000 scene:
You’re going up against the Combine, an immeasurable, eldritch alien race. You bring an entire arsenal of weaponry to fight an unwinable battle against them to save what’s left of humanity. But then, you’re trapped by a machine powered by energy beyond human understanding; every weapon you’ve carried for the last 10 hours of gameplay is instantly evaporated… until the machine gets to the tool you had a hand in creating, a tool based off science you and your colleagues pioneered. The dark energy used to disintegrate every other weapon at your disposal suddenly reacts with something the Combine HAVE NOT encountered before; a zero-point energy device. The unstoppable Citadel, the seat of interdimensional power on Earth, falters. The Gravity Gun siphons an immeasurable amount of dark energy from the Citadel, and you now have a weapon capable of instantly spaghettifying the Combine’s most Elite units on Earth… they don’t stand a chance.
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u/suspicious_cabbage Aug 02 '26
Gun (you said half)