Melee combat simulation

Best examples of the "genre" are Die by the Sword, Lugaru, Overgrowth, Mount and Blade, Age of Chivalry, Chivalry, and War of the Roses.

Some of these are labeled as simulation games even, which is actually the emphasis here.

Difference from beat 'em ups and such is that usually all opponents are quite lethal and swarms of them require much more thought/skill put into them (defeating them one-by-one by getting them to fight you alone instead of as a group). Beat 'em ups (along with hack&slash) live off of player successfully performing combo attacks which usually don't exist in these melee combat sims.

There are some games that skirt on the edges of this: such as RPGs in The Elder Scrolls series, Arx Fatalis, and such but do not belong here as they're mostly just first person melee, nothing more.

See also: beat 'em up (hack & slash), fighting