[indigochill]

The digital version of Sorcery! has the coolest text descriptions of combat short of Dwarf Fortress.

You "fight" by committing a certain amount of regenerating energy each round. If you commit no energy, you're actively defending. Mechanically, there's no such thing as a miss in the system (although when you lose a round, sometimes it might be described as a miss). There are combat description pools explicitly handling cases where both combatants defend, where one attacks and the other defends, and when both attack but one overpowers the other. And the description pools are unique for every fight since of course a manticore and an assassin fight differently.

The descriptions also are modified by the health of the combatants. In a fight with a manticore, the descriptions progressively showed the manticore becoming fearful as I started damaging it, then limping and struggling to fight as it got closer to death. Even though there was no mechanical difference, the descriptions really sold it.