Mount & Blade is pretty fun indeed, played it months on end a few years back, though I agree with others that the combat system is far from perfect but so are most things in this game it more that the sum of its parts makes up for it.

Another contender for a combat system is (sadly removed from gog) Severance: Blade of Darkness.
Even though its combat has more in common with Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat, it's still pretty fun and bloody, something I find somewhat dissappointing in Mount & Blade.

Severance was awesome, I remember you could chop the enemies heads off and beat other enemies with it. Crazy fun and kinda hard with some characters.

The Omega Force games on consoles (Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Warriors Orochii and so on) say that consoles can have proper combat. Along them, plenty others.

The problem is mostly on PC and in triple A games, mainly.

Yeah, though you could slice through enemies, they could do the same to you which you don't see very often.
And while the gameplay was not extremely realistic, I liked how some of the armorplated soldiers taunted you and tried to trick you into making an attack by clattering their swords on their shields and other little details like that.

I tried to like Dark Souls, but apart from it being a horrendous PC port, it's entire difficultycurve seems to revolve on how well you can manually control the camera, while to combat is just buttonmashing.

That's like saying the ocean is deep. XD

BTW, am I the only one perplexed that yesterday this OP told off the forum and now he is here asking for our recommendations? XD

No. I just assumed I was mistaken when I made the connection.

Edit: On second thought, calling retarded the things that he doesn't personally like is quite similar to yesterday's post. not that I care.

I'll agree with others that cinematic type of combat, if done right, it can be rewarding and nice. And by "done right" I mean to be used as an extra, as the cherry on top of the cake, and not overused to the point that you'll grow tired of it.

Although I don't play lot's of beat em up games nowadays (although I still love classics like Punisher, Cadillacs & Dinosaurus and replay them very often), I did play the God of War on my PSP some years ago (well, i couldn't miss an ancient Greek game!) and if I remember correctly, while it used that type of combat, it was only when some big bad baddy came up and to be honest, I was eagerly waiting for it each & every time. Witcher 2 used it on at least one occassion too and I liked the way it was implemented.

You ever hear the phrase "treat em mean, keep em keen?"?

At least that, yeah :) But they're still in alpha, just like the last time I checked - years ago. At least the updates were more interesting then, just gameplay with Rosen explaining what's new. All I get from the last few updates is a sense of awkwardness. And in best computer programming fashion, throwing more people at it hasn't done much for bringing the game closer to release.