Game Review: For Honor
Deus Vult
You rush the objective alongside your trusted ally in combat, hoping to storm the enemy back to whence they came. As you approach, a scene once containing what you once thought an easy battle has escalated to a hectic 2 on 4.
As you clash swords neck-and-neck with your opponent, parrying their attacks while throwing nearby attackers into one another to create disarray and further the chaos, you realize that the incoming Centurion has just launched his Spartan-kick move to finally thrust your friend into a pit of spikes. Mouth agape, you enter a state of panic and decide to activate the golden lifeline that is revenge mode, returning the favor to two of the remaining three soldiers.
When you finally think you've got the world in your hands, a well timed feint by their most skilled Kensei catches you off guard, and the samurai inserts his katana down your neck to give you a new, polished spine.
This is For Honor in a nutshell; every match you enter has moments like these that drive you to keep coming back to it, despite what sometimes feels like abuse, because the characters, fluid animations, and entirely unique combat system come together to form an experience that cannot be had elsewhere.
Endless War
Being a multiplayer-oriented game, you will spend most of your time playing against human opponents. That's not to say there's no single-player (a fully voice acted Story Mode and Player vs. AI matches exist), but it does mean that a strong focus is placed on helping out your faction win territory from enemy clans.
When you first launch the game, you must decide between joining the Knights, Viking, or Samurai, which will determine who you fight for in the seasonal Faction War, and where you can send your troops to chip in. After multiplayer matches are completed, you get to pick where to deploy your soldiers; different territories may contain special landmarks, like windmills or castles, and depending on which ones your faction takes over, your faction will have added (or subtracted) benefits for completing games, ranging from experience points to "steel," the in-game currency.
The faction war is something I haven't seen done before in games that I've played, so it was a welcome change of design that I enjoy taking part in. It doesn't restrict who you can play with on your team (i.e. I am a knight, but play with friends who are vikings), and it doesn't change who you can play as (i.e. as a knight, I can play as a samurai and vice-versa). Because of this, the experience does not feel restrictive or necessary, but rather icing on the cake.
A Full Roster
At launch, the game had only 12 characters, though updates over the course of a year have added in an additional 6 that you'll need to either acquire via the purchase of a Season Pass (like most other Multiplayer games), or you can grind out steel and get them for free, similar to Rainbow Six: Siege's operator system. In my experience, it takes about 2 weeks playing half an hour per day to unlock the premium characters, which isn't so bad in my book. The Season Pass goes on sale for $10-20 every so often if you're patient and willing to wait for one to come around.
You don't need the premium characters to win, though; most of the original 12 have been reworked to be on-par with them in combat. Balance is still ever-changing, though, and characters tend to be stronger than anticipated on release, but it's nothing a few patches won't fix within the week. I'd say only about 4 of the original 12 are still due for a little extra developer love, but overall, anybody can win with any character if they play their cards right.
Each of the characters has their own combo-moves; this is a fighting game, after all! Some have short, powerful blows, while others have intricate, well-timed strings that they'll use to take down opponents with. Some characters are better at killing target x than target y, but for the most part, everyone is killable when dealt the right strikes.
Currently, each faction has 6 unique "heroes," and 4 more are planned for release in an entirely new faction, the Wu-Lin fighters from China, when the Marching Fire update rolls around. Just thinking about the roster they could have a few years from now makes me giddy; they could totally whip out some Arab soldiers with scimitars, or even Aztecs and the like if they wanted to. The future is limitless!
Money and the Power
Customization is one of the biggest features that keeps me coming back. Every character is leveled up individually, and unique weapons and armor exists for each. Armor and Weapons are made up of three pieces each (i.e. Weapon = Spearhead, Shaft, and Shield; Armor = Helmet, Chestplate, Arm Guards), and depending on your performance in game, you can earn weapons and armor at the end of games.
Experience points contribute towards your level, and once you reach level 21, your character goes back to level one, but with an added marker for "reputation," the game's take on character prestige, as made famous in various iterations of Call of Duty multiplayer. The higher your "rep," the better gear and unlockables you can obtain.
Different gear-tiers exist as follows:
Gray-Tier: Starter Junk (Reputation 0)
Blue-Tier: Better (Rep 1 and 2)
Purple-Tier: Good (Rep 3 and 4)
Gold-Tier: Great (Rep 5 and 6)
Teal-Tier: Amazing (Rep 7+)
You can upgrade gear you have to increase its level and the stats it boosts, and prices to upgrade increase depending on how high-tier your gear is. If you're worried about how this plays into balance, don't be; the differences between tiers sees diminishing returns the higher up you go, as gear stats are scaled in a square-root graph fashion. Once you get to purple-tier (which doesn't take too long), you are in a spot where competitive modes becomes more viable and less of an issue.
Leveling up also nets you customization options like color schemes, outfits, ornaments, and armor patterns that are purely cosmetic, so the fashion-inclined have plenty room to go nuts.
Beware Your Surroundings
Environmental kills are a thing. They can work in or against your favor, depending on where you position yourself and set your enemy up. Different maps have more or less locations to environmentally kill your opponent via cliffsides, flaming wagons, spiked walls and pits, ladders, and drop-down gate spikes.
Friendly fire is also a thing; it's a small percentage of the damage you'd do if the same attack landed on a hostile, but it's still enough to kill if your friend is low on hit-points and you don't watch your fire.
Special moves dubbed "feats" also allow players to do things like place war-banners on the ground to rally up the AI grunts that litter the battlefield, or call in a catapult-strike on a bridge to crush the entire enemy team in a single, well-timed blow. There are too many to cover here, but the gist is that they're awesome, and you'll be using them quite a bit to turn the tides.
Verdict
Story / Lore: [70 / 100] - Not horrible, but nothing groundbreaking; it’s there more to serve as a good introduction to the gameplay. Some of the voice acting feels overdone, but is never annoying or immersion breaking enough to warrant docking too many points, here. You’ll likely only want to complete it once.
Gameplay: [88 / 100] - Fluid, fun, and hectic; a great blend of modern and classic fighting game concepts that come together to form a unique experience. As far as I know, it’s the first true 3D fighting game of its kind, and the mechanics it brings forth are innovative and deserve recognition.
Presentation: [87 / 100] - Animations are clean, performance is good on PC, and the environments are detailed enough to be immersive in my book. After many post-launch patches, it performs much better than it did at release, but being it is a multiplayer-centered game, be prepared to occasionally lose connection from server every once in a while.
Score: 82 / 100
A fighting game at its core, For Honor melds new ideas in the genre with the satisfying combo-moves and character choices of fighting games that came before it. Ambitious, chaotic and sometimes infuriating, it's a game that doesn't lose its charm despite its flaws and caveats that the experienced player knows all too well. Yes, there are bugs, and yes, there are some kinks with Ubisoft's servers, but at the end of the day, it's a flat out great game; you'll either love it or hate it, and that's the beauty of it.
Add to that a passionate developer-team and a commitment to at least another year of content, and you've got yourself a beast ready to entertain. You will lose a lot in the beginning, but that's part of the experience because there really aren't any games like it that prepare you for how it plays out. You just have to try it out, yourself, and stick with it until you reach that moment of clarity when all of its pieces come together in your head and start making sense.