Ubisoft Montreal’s new weapon based brawler, For Honor, is an enjoyably punishing game.
Following in the path of recent games such as Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and Mount & Blade, For Honor attempts to bring a more realistic swordplay combat system, over the more common hack-and-slash combat. But, For Honor is closer to fighting games like Street Fighter than it is to any of the aforementioned games.
For a company so deeply ingrained with a common gaming structure, For Honor is a risky move by Ubisoft. A pseudo-MOBA game with intricate gameplay rooted in minutia is a difficult sell to a stereotypical console player.
On the surface, gameplay is simple. There are three factions to choose from: Knights, Samurais and Vikings. Within each faction are four heroes each representing a different class of playstyle including Heavys, agile but low defense, standard balanced types and the fourth class is a hybrid of any of the other three classes.
Each of the 12 heroes are unique and distinct from each other. Just because there is a heavy class, this does not mean the heavy for knights and the heavy for vikings are just reskins of the same character. The moveset, perks, abilities and even attack startups and speed are different, even within classes.
Having 12 diverse heroes makes the checks and balance system to the combat more complex than just a rock, paper, scissors game of class matchups. Instead, the key to success is learning the strengths and weaknesses of each individual hero. If you don’t dedicate to learning the game, you will be in for a frustrating time.
My first day of playing, I settled into a specific hero as my main, and even after over a week, I never go into a battle against a specific hero knowing whether I will win or lose. The balancing right out of the gate by Ubisoft is commendable.
The combat system, called “Art of Battle,” by Ubisoft is built on a foundation of choosing from three “stances” to attack from, left, right and overhead. The stance you choose is indicated by a UI element on your body that is visible to opponents. If your opponent is in the same stance as you, then your attack will be blocked.
Expanding upon this foundation are dodges, parries and guard breaks. Once you dive into the moveset of each character, you begin to see the minutia of the combat system. By performing character specific combos, you can perform specials like unblockable attacks and bleed effects.
All of this combines for a tense 1v1 combat style. You really get the feeling of those old Japanese samurai movies where two samurais would circle each other, weapons drawn, to get a sense of what their opponent was thinking. Having quick reflexes and being able to outmaneuver your opponents will only get you so far. However, superior knowledge of you and your opponents moves and abilities will put you on another level.
The health given to players makes fights last around a minute or so, which is a good balance between giving players enough time to have a proper fight, but also to keep the game’s pace quick and fun. Damage output, however, is such that one mistake can turn the tables quickly from a near victory to defeat.
The problem with making a game based on such intricate mechanics is you have to make a way for players to learn and practice without becoming discouraged by losing games during the learning period. Ubisoft Montreal has thought this out more so than any other game I can think of.
Of course, there is a basic tutorial when you start up the game and this feeds into the story mode, comprised of essential tutorials for each hero.
Players can go into advanced training where the game teaches how to do more difficult maneuvers such as parrying, or you can try out combos on a dummy AI player. There is also an option to have 1v1 fights with the AI whose difficulty can scale from 1-3. With 1 being an easy challenge for new players and 3 potentially proving difficult for advanced players.
On top of all of this, you can play every single online game type against AI. It’s entirely possible to get the full experience of For Honor without ever playing against another human being, if you so choose.
Online gameplay is composed of five modes: Duel (1v1), Brawl (2v2), Elimination (4v4), Skirmish (4v4, where points are earned by killing players and first team to reach 1000 points win) and Dominion (4v4, where players must hold three control points and first to score 1000 wins).
As you can tell, the choices are pretty shallow — each game type comes down to winning your 1v1 battles.
While skirmish and dominion add more elements and change the win conditions, you still essentially have to run around and win fights to win the match; this is the biggest weakness of For Honor.
Adding different games modes will go far into increasing the longevity of this game. I think a “capture the flag” gamemode would fit this gameplay well and give players a break from the monotony which is inevitable given the current modes.
Adding a “hardcore” mode should also be easy to implement, given the single player already has this. In the realistic difficulty setting, UI elements are removed, meaning you get no hint as to where your opponent will be attacking or defending, besides the animation of their character model. This makes that single-player difficulty brutally tough. Putting this into an online mode could make for exciting realistic battles.
I was also disappointed that there were no game modes emphasizing a 1v1v1 situation. Given how much Ubisoft marketed the game based on there being three factions, I’d expect most people to assume there would be gameplay reflecting that, but there’s not.
The good news is that Ubisoft seems to be dedicated to making this a long-standing game, so I can only assume they will be adding more game modes in the future.
We also have to talk about For Honor’s other major issue: network connectivity. While network issues are to be expected around launch time for a game like this, there have been widespread reports of issues across all platforms.
Even after one week, I experience these issues on my PS4 every night I play. I’ve had troubles allowing everyone to join a party, matches dropping and kicking everyone in the party back to the main menu, lag issues and so on.
A week out from launch is when a developer should have these issues cleared up, and Ubisoft is running past that time frame. Hopefully they fix the networks before players begin leaving out of frustration.
For Honor has a steep learning curve but is immensely rewarding once you get the feel for it.
Fighting is smooth and fast-paced and you will always walk away from a loss knowing what you did wrong, not feeling like you got cheated by faulty mechanics. If you are willing to put in the time to learn the game, you will be rewarded with an insanely fun competitive game.
For Honor, a third-person action fighting game, was released Feb. 14.
