For Honor Review

For Valhalla!:

You’re wrong if you don’t think Viking’s are the coolest of For Honor’s bunch of classic warriors. You can disagree with me, but I’ll find you online and I’ll prove you wrong. Maybe. I don’t know, I’m not particularly good at the game, but it’s nice to know that if I were, there’d finally be a place to prove once and for all how great Vikings are.

Story:

The Samurai, Knights and Vikings are all a bit too peaceful at the beginning of For Honor – or at least that’s what the warlord Apollyon thinks. She would much rather everyone go back to fighting, whether that be with each other or with themselves. She just wants to see rivers run red with blood, and other Warlord-y pursuits. During the three campaigns that will see you playing through each faction, you’ll encounter Apollyon through a variety of eyes. She fills a lot of roles narratively speaking, and is increasingly interesting to watch as you learn more about her.

The story sticks you in the boots of a varied cast of warriors, and I was really surprised to see just how different they all are. I especially liked the nimble Knight Mercy, who seemed to be a few crumpets short of a proper tea and psyched herself up creepily throughout her mission. Each chapter is suitably diverse, both from a gameplay perspective and a story one, and it’s this constant shift that saw me barrel through the game’s campaign in the space of a couple of evenings – and had a blast doing so! I actually really got to like the characters – friend and foe alike – which I just didn’t forsee coming into what I thought would be a game about burly guys shouting and sticking each other with the pointy end of their weapon of choice. I was constantly impressed by how well written and acted the entire affair was, and how much I cared.

Gameplay:

The core gameplay of For Honor, both online and off, is a delicate balancing act of offense and defense. It’s a brawler at heart, one that is at times visceral and punchy, and at others irritatingly shallow. When you approach an enemy on the battlefield, you can choose a stance – left, right or top – which dictates where you can both attack and block from. Because of this, combat in For Honor often feels like an extended QTE sequence, and as long as your reactions are good enough you’ll never struggle. Early on I bumped the difficulty up to max (‘realistic’), which removes the HUD telling you where to block and instead makes you watch the enemies movements yourself, and this made the experience a lot more enjoyable – as well as terrifying at times, when you’re against the ropes and you have no checkpoints to fall back on. It won’t be for everyone, but if you enjoy a good challenge I recommend doing the same. It’s a cakewalk otherwise.

Whilst you may have heard that the best defence is a good offence, that simply doesn’t apply here. Mindlessly beating on foes will see your every attack deflected and stamina deplete. There’s no quicker way to lose a fight in For Honor than losing your head, figuratively speaking (though it’s not a good idea literally, either.) Instead, For Honor wants you to guard break, parry or counter, utlizing a small stable of inputs that each class has at their disposal. Big burly knights can deflect incoming attacks and find oppurtunities for their own onslaught, whilst the more nimble classes can dance around enemy swords and axes to deliver strikes from the side. With a little more depth, it would be a neat system, but it quickly gets repetetive. Whilst I had to approach each enemy class differently, once I found a combo that worked – and it’s very often the case that there’s just the one answer to most of the questions For Honor throws at you – I’d keep repeating it until I’d won, whether it be a lowly scrub or an end-of-level boss.

Despite this, I had a great time playing the multiple campaign’s of For Honor, because the game works really hard at making you feel awesome. Regardless of how simplistic it’s battle system can become, I never felt anything less than a badass every time I came out of a particularly scrappy fight. The title also strives to keep you on your toes by firstly forcing you into the shoes of multiple different classes – which is a smart way to prepare players for online – and also throw you up against increasingly stacked odds. Some levels will be objective based, asking you to escort a moving target or take control of bases, whilst others are a bit more open ended, offering you multiple ways to approach them.

Multiplayer:

Multiplayer is, for Ubisoft at least, the real focal point of For Honor. Picking your side in seasonal play, affecting a meta game with every match played and grabbing rare or exclusive goodies for helping your team win are all well implemented systems that are going to ensure the playerbase continues to return week after week, lest their precious clan fall behind, and a robust post-launch offering promises plenty of fresh content to enjoy over the coming months. More than this, however, was that whilst playing the variety of online modes, I couldn’t help but feel that Ubi are desperate for the game to become an e-sport in the future. Admittedly, it would be one I would be happy to watch, given the emergent nature of play on offer here.