REVIEW

For Honor Review

by Luke Walsh, February 22nd, 2017

When I first heard of For Honor my mind immediately went to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, both titles have a similar premise. Without much insight into For Honor, I assumed the combat would be the same minus the wider choice of playable characters breaking out into factions; Samurai, Vikings and Knights. Actually playing it however, I soon realised how different this game is to many other titles on the market. It’s a third-person weapon-based arena style combat. The combat very much reminds me of Dark Souls, you believe it to be simple but there is a lot of complexity beneath the surface, something button bashing will not make you better at.

Choosing probably the three most iconic historic warriors as classes, immediately perked up some eyes back in 2015 when it was first revealed. You can play as samurai, knights or vikings which are some pretty badass faction to choose from. One of the better choices in For Honor, is not tying you down to any faction and although it asks you to select one at the start, you don’t have to stick with that choice in any other game after the tutorial. The combat prides itself on elegance over brutality that favours patience over pressure for a quick win and rewards you with high-relief when your reaction time was on point and victory is confirmed.

The meat of the game is based on 1 v 1 duels, or “honorable matches” as they are called by the players online. Although multiple opponents can happen in matches, in the community it can be frowned upon and breaking the socially accepted unwritten rule can have devastating consequences. Playing through our first game, a teammate and myself decided to gang up on the last surviving enemy in a 2v2. In the next match, because we dishonored them they decided to rush one of us, destroying our tag team in seconds and winning the round. This was an eye opening to the strange sense of pride the community has in For Honor for ‘traditional’ matches.

In the beginning, the game’s combat can be picked up pretty easily and guiding you through the tutorial, For Honor really tries to make you think it’s not as hard as you might expect. The deeper you delve into the mechanics of characters though, the more you realise the complexities of combat and the strengths and weaknesses of each. Everytime you head into combat, you’ll realise the opportunities available to you and with every defeat comes with a learning experience on how to fight in the next round or against you next opponent. With each match, you’ll notice how balanced the game becomes across the different character types and how it rewards reactive players in the moment to moment combat.

Practice, practice, practice makes perfect but in For Honor it is something only the strong willed in the virtue of patience will understand. Even when up against AI characters, combat is not quick there is a slow and calculated approach that brute force and button bashing won’t always help. Blocking and parrying is a massive part of combat and comes part and parcel of reading your opponents. Every character has three different stances and they all require a counter reaction to parry or block. In the beginning, combat can seem very frigid and out of sync, especially if you are used to fast paced action games. This is where it reminded me of Dark Souls, that was a games that threw of a lot of players usual combat rhythm and For Honor does the same thing.

Learning and developing your dance into combat can be useful to hone in the single player story missions. It functions mainly as a long form tutorial but offers a story driven narrative to at least make it interesting to play through. The single player campaign will help you to understand how a lot of the different characters work from the spear wielding Nobushi or the massive tank of a Knight, Warden. Of course if you are expecting the best writing ever for a AAA title, you will be disappointed. The narrative that ties the single player experience together makes about as much sense as Dark Souls plot, it is a bit of a mess. A lot of the characters you come across are pretty cliche and seem like set pieces to push the story in the “right” direction. The main bad guy(girl) has a pretty nonsensical reason for wanting to start and keep a never ending war with character models that are clearly just copies from the multiplayer side of the game. It would have been nice for a little bit more depth in the single player mode and some uniqueness to the character models but its far easier to use what you have already made.

Playing through the single player side will probably take you about 6-7 hours and is a little disappointing because although it teaches you the basics to combat, it misses out on being able to really teach you the nuances of combat that the multiplayer side offers. Most of it consists of repetitive fights against a seas of cannon fodder with the occasional objective you need to do. This can mean picking up some bad habits when then jumping into the more complex gameplay that For Honor does so well.

Jumping into the multiplayer, there are quite a few different modes that you can try out. There is a 4v4 mode called Dominion where your team have to worked together and hold points. You need to move from point to point capturing the three and defending the ones you already have with a sea of AI in between. With so many people on the map at one time and with a lot of AI in the middle, matches can become quite overwhelming chaotic and button bashing can sneak its way in. Towards the end of the match, spawning gets less frequent can make the matches widely unbalanced with too many enemies and no chance for backup.

Elimination mode is where the combat finesse of For Honor is much better. The 4v4 matches are one life only per player which makes combat much tougher but exponentially more exciting to be apart of. When you are the only one that stands between victory and defeat but two enemies are in your path, you’ll come to understand the need for strategy, timing, wit and a bit of luck. Learning how to deal in this type of combat can be extremely frustrating when you feel it is “unfair” as your opponents rips into you and you can’t make a simple return. This helps you though in the best way to improve your reflexes and use your moves in favour to make a satisfying win. There is nothing better than winning with the odds stacked up against you.

The last of the match types is your “to be expected” Duel mode that reveals the combat at its highest level making it the most tense fight you will have. The battle is purely one on one, takes away your ability to use Feats, focusing you on the Hero’s core move set. The simple combat amplifies the tension that combat in For Honor brings making it closer to a traditional fighting game but showcases the fantastic competitive and somewhat quick duels.

Each match you play does your individual performance gives you War Assets that has an impact on your faction’s overall influence. As the game is cross-platform this gives you a sense of comradery that can be rewarded.

Playing the game on the PC, it runs pretty well usually at 4K resolution my current PC can struggle to keep up a solid 30+ FPS but with For Honor I had no such issues. Taking the graphical settings down quite low the game still look serviceable but should make it very attainable to run on lower spec machines. The low need for high-end graphics is a good thing when this game requires you to have 30fps or above always to time your attacks and counter your opponents.

Tirelessly jumping from battle to battle my initial impression of For Honor changed quite a lot. At first, I thought it was a fairly dull, slow paced game. The more matches and opponents I faced, discipline and patience grew to want to learn the subtleties of its combat. When you get into the grove, the game can be really hard to stop but the slow pace combat is definitely not for everybody. Coming back to Dark Souls, if you can’t hack that combat this will be much more frustrating for you but rewarding if you stick it out. The single player is a great learning experience but narratively messy. Put the time into For Honor though and it will reward you with some of the most complex and most satisfying melee fights you can have in this genre.