What motivated me to make this thread is last night someone mentioned 'flamberge' and it reminded me of how cool I thought they were. Being a man of history, I first learned of them with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I also remember seeing a couple of them in a medieval weapon replica catalog that kept getting mailed to my house as a teenager for some reason. Some renaissance fair thing probably?
The catalog said something like it was theorized that the ridged design would cause more damage to the target, especially if it pierced, but in reality it did no such thing. It looks cool, though.

I think the single coolest real-life weapon I've ever seen is this bigass knife-pistol with something about saints inscribed on the blade. It's Warhammer as fuck.
The early modern period is the one all the pike and shot enthusiasts complain about being severely underused, where crude firearms are combined with the neo-phalanx and superheavy cavalry before the eventual victory of guns over most other stuff. You can also take a look at Maximilian II's armor, from around the time of the Protestant reformation and the Spanish conquest of Peru:
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/hercules-armour-eliseus-libaerts/xgFHjdqNGdAfOw?hl=en
Or this kind of decorated wheellock, which was a particularly expensive kind of gun to begin with:
https://files.catbox.moe/4cdn6r.jpg

It's very interesting how refined all the manufacture techniques are, for things that today we consider to be wholly obsolete. Like as if a tank was built imitating fin-de-siècle architecture instead of the standardized models they've always followed. A time where nobles still wanted to show off their bling while going to war, and were spending considerable amounts of money to achieve it.

I like oversized unga bunga STR weapons. No need to aim for weak points in the armour when you can just whack them wherever with a 200kg war hammer.

It's more of a strange buckler than a weapon but I've been wanting to try sparring with a gou-rang for a while.

I think black powder guns are very sexy.

The Needler from Halo is cool too, best science fiction weapon imo.

>>132861
possibly the most detailed illustration I've seen of a matchlock. The user put alot of thought into it and clearly understood how the parts operate, rather than just copying it from another drawing or something.

>>132860
If you're looking for obscure janky shields there was surprisingly something somewhat like in Europe: the dueling shield, a very, very niche weapon that could be used by itself. It's a HEMA thing. One article goes over its history here, among several other things:
https://bop.unibe.ch/apd/article/view/6870/9755
>In the section about cases of homicide where both the accuser and the accused are knights, this treatise calls for a judicial duel on foot in which each man is equipped with “a shield which one calls a harace, which is larger than him by half a foot or a full palm, and has two piercings together, in such a place that one can see one’s adversary through these holes...” In other kinds of judicial battles between knights, “the shield should have two spikes, one in the middle of the shield and one below on the foot, and they should be of any size and length [the knight] wants, up to a foot long but not more, and the shield can have as many sharp iron spikes or blades as he wants.

You can see more pics of it here, from the longshield sections of a manuscript, alongside snippets of text explaining the situation:
https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Hans_Talhoffer/Complete
And I just learned Elden Ring added thrusting shields as a weapon class in its DLC, which is exactly what you'd expect from FromSoft. Sasuga Miyazaki.

>>132862
I was going to post that...
Muskets are pretty cool.

I have always been fond of Monster Hunters Gunlance. It has that tank romance, weighty moves and stylish reloads. I give it a go in every mh but it sadly never _really_ clicked with me.

>>132867
Monster Hunter itself has some cool weapons, my favorite as a concept is probably the Charge Blade. You've got a regular sword and shield, but after you charge it up you can slide the shield onto the sword and it becomes a two-handed axe and it's just plain amazing to see in motion. The weapon this guy uses here is quite ugly unfortunately, but hopefully non-Monster Hunter people can understand what I mean with it. The Charge Axe has a similar thing, but it's two-handed axe changed into two-handed sword so it's a little less cool.

The Mini Rocket Array from Warzone 2100. You load it up and when it goes near a target, it goes WHOOWHOOWHOOWHOOWHOOSH and empties itself all at once.

I think the bo staff is really cool. There's a special Chinese mythological one that can change sizes (I'm not well versed in Chinese myths) but I think the real version is cool enough on its own. It might not seem much better than a stick, but it's usually paired with a stylish character that performs a bunch of acrobatics with it that makes it look (and play!) fun.
Obviously this is also influenced by the best ninja turtle using one.

>>133050
I like the Bo as well, I actually have one and I have been trained how to use them a bit. My Karate dojo trains with the Bo instead of Nunchucks because they are easier to get and you can actually make them yourself pretty easily.

My Bo is simply a 6 foot length of Tasmanian oak that I got from a hardware store, I sanded it smooth and then oiled it and people at the dojo would say that it was better than the one they had which they brought from a proper martial arts store.

>>132870
>>132867
Speaking of monhun.

Goblin Slayer of all things really took me into a hard look at primitive projectile weapons. There's also some great pages showing off the humble slingshot, but I can't find them.
I want to get a throwing senpaiang like the aborigines make and practice with it. Wish I could legally hunt with one to avoid making excessive noise.

Do you mean guns?

>>132864
>>132861
Matchlocks are cool, I especially like those stubby looking ones