Great ideas are born constantly in the video game industry, but not all of them reach fruition-and fewer still achieve their highest potential. It seems Ubisoft's For Honor, a minimum of now over time, falls into the latter category of a game that just isn't where it needs to be. After conquering the campaign and playing well over 100 multiplayer matches in the last week since it's launch, I'm sorry to say that For Honor just seems to be another in what has become Ubisoft's calling card of the past many years: a significant concept that fails to deliver because of lackluster or questionable technical execution.
For Honor puts players inside a fantasy world that mashes up regions and time periods, placing three of the world's greatest factions of warriors together on a single limited landmass. Samurai, Knights, and Vikings fight in perpetual war over scarce resources in this fictitious world, unwittingly serving as pawns in the plans of Apollyon, a particularly ruthless black knight who feels that only in war can people maximize their abilities.
The campaign goes through each one of the three faction camps as you start to patch together Apollyon's plot. There are 18 chapters (six for every group), and all told the campaign shouldn't take a lot more than 4-6 hours to finish. There's some replayability here, with collectibles and multiple difficulty levels (such as the hardest “Realistic” difficulty that completely removes your HUD), but not anything else. It's also a little on the repetitive side, with occasional surprises to help keep you pushing forward, but what serves as the brightest location for the campaign is that it is a superb teaching tool. As a de facto proving ground, it gives you plenty of opportunities to test strategies and learn more advanced combos with particular classes from the computer before you take those skills into the online world.
One glaring flaw using the campaign, though, is always that if one of their major purposes is as a way to familiarize yourself with the game's 12 distinct characters and it's unique combat system inside a safer offline setting, then it should give you a chance to play as all of the smoothness choices. Only eight from the 12 are featured within the campaign, with the Berseker (Vikings), Conqueror (Knights), Shugoki (Samurai), and Nobushi (Samurai) being exempt.
Though, it might reason that some of these class styles are covered in other chapters. For example, the Vikings' Warlord-who does get his own chapter-is classed like a heavy, which Shugoki and Conqueror also both fall under. However, there are enough differences in between each choice as well as their playstyles that does not having the ability to learn how to fit playable sections for those 12 characters into 18 chapters-especially when many campaign chapters have all the characters inside them already as NPCs-is bothersome. For instance, the Nobushi has one of the most range of any character hanging around (plus some attacks that may poison an enemy), while the Shugoki is the only character that can actually absorb a hit without flinching-but you have to experiment in multiplayer to locate everything out. You are able to play the online modes against AI to get some knowledge about characters, and I admit that For Honor's bots are the most intelligent you likely will get in any video game, but I believe that wrapping your training around a story along with a tutorial increases your retention of learned skills, instead of just button mashing against a bot that falls into predictable patterns.
A big reason it is really frustrating needing to learn characters in multiplayer, instead of more ideally just honing and mastering your talent against humans, is For Honor's aforementioned combat system. Don't misunderstand me, it is a fantastic system, but it includes a steep learning curve and can be incredibly complex at times. The core of For Honor is three-way directional blocking/attacking. If you are swinging in the left, as well as your foe blocks in that direction, nothing happens; if they leave themselves open, you need to do damage. It appears as though a simple third-person hack 'n' slash mechanic, but once you receive past this, you'll find there's more to this game-and, again, each character's specific nuances only diversify and add wonderful depth towards the gameplay. Throws, stuns, parries, specials, and unblockable attacks all should be learned if you're to possess any success in campaign or online. The good thing about it, though, is when all of this plays off that initial mechanic, which requires you to definitely lock onto a rival in one-on-one “honorable” combat while attempting to predict their movements.
Combat is sort of a miniature chess game, with strategies forming and coming undone immediately as your strikes hit, miss, or are blocked from your mark. Even positioning on the field, with one-hit kill obstacles like spikes or ledges, play into the combat, requiring you take in much more information than just which direction your opponent is blocking. I honestly couldn't get enough of it all, and found my adrenaline pumping during the thrill of combat, screaming into my headset as cowards ran from my Raider's axe. (Obviously, it also causes it to be frustrating to understand quickly whenever your K/D might be on the line.)
There are a few flaws to combat, though. As the game is surprisingly well balanced-with a smart player able to overcome most any other character's strengths and exploit their weaknesses-there are the ones infuriating moments if this looks like the game's physics or hit detection isn't where it needs to be. A perfect example happens when trying to throw someone off a ledge; a terrific way to overcome situations where you are outnumbered. Sometimes, a personality will barely clip the edge of a rock or wall, and slam up against it as if your full support was there, saving the person from groing through the advantage and potentially falling to their doom. Or, you'll get situations where a thrown body lands with 1 / 2 of it this is not on solid ground. You'd expect your body to slide from the edge-since that'd function as the natural result-but instead the smoothness just stands up as if their body had been fully supported. It jogs my memory from the original Super Mario Bros. long ago within the day; so long as you had only one pixel of edge, Mario would not disappear. It isn't as charming here, and certainly breaks immersion and draws my ire.
The crux of For Honor, though, is obviously the multiplayer, which has been touched on briefly already once or twice. The first thing all of us have to get familiar with may be the War of the Factions. Similar to that which was observed in Mortal Kombat X's Faction War, once you start the game, you select one of the three factions to align yourself with for the entirety of the season (it doesn't limit what characters you are able to play as, to be clear). By playing online you'll earn war assets, and the better you perform, the more assets you'll receive. Unlike MKX, you'll reach personally assign where your assets go as you try to move the front lines of a never-ending assault against the other two factions on the satellite look at the game's map. The faction which has procured the most land at the end of the growing season will receive special in-game bonuses. You can also improve your faction mid-season, but at the penalty of lost rewards at the end of the season. Surprisingly, it's one of the more addictive features of For Honor, because it gives players a feeling of actually taking part in a full time income, breathing conflict.
Then you will find five different game modes under three different umbrellas. In Deathmatch, you'll find the 4v4 single-life-to-live Elimination mode and also the point-based Skirmish mode, where you can respawn before the opposing team reaches 1000 points (where points are awarded on a variety of factors, but killing human opponents always racks in the biggest points). Then there are the Duels, offering up 1v1 matchups and 2v2 Brawls, and that we personally recommend you begin served by because they're a terrific way to hone you skills. Finally, you have the 4v4 Dominion mode, which combines the purpose scoring of Skirmish with capturing zones like you'd see inside a Domination mode for other games.
Although there are just a few maps, parts of each one of these are cordoned off with respect to the mode you're playing, and each map has multiple times of day available to offer some visual variety. The game can also be graphically stunning as a whole; the detail of every character and the world who are around you is absolutely breathtaking, and makes you feel at times like you are in a real medieval fantasy. For Honor's customization can also be something which should be lauded. While each character's face is really a given, you can alter the sex on most characters (some are permanent female or male), earn ornaments, victory poses, and executions, and each character's weapons and armor, piece by piece, can be replaced or given new paint and pattern schemes. It's just enough personalization to help you stand out around the battlefield while ensuring you still seem your character class. Of course, it must be mentioned that many items are locked away behind certain achievements or even the game's “steel” currency, quite a few these can be bypassed by purchasing resources through microtransactions. This isn't necessary, since easily grind for several items, and most seem to be cosmetic anyway, but that's entirely up to you.
Despite the problems I've already organized, when For Honor works, it works supremely well. When For Honor doesn't work, though, it's probably the most frustrating experiences I've needed to date by having an Ubisoft game. As the campaign was mostly issue-free, there have been tremendous connectability issues with the sport since launch. In fact, part of the reason I'm so late with this particular review is the fact that I tried to ascertain if these issues would work themselves out or maybe we'd get a patch of some type. Even while recent as yesterday, however, I was still seeing matches drop and disconnect on a regular basis-if I possibly could even connect to begin with. When i stated at the beginning of the review, in the last week I've played and finished more than 100 matches-there was probably another 200 times, though, in which the match would never connect or drop midway through.
If this weren't bad enough, because For Honor doesn't have dedicated servers, not only does the sport suffer frequently from lag, but each time someone else drops, the entire game freezes up, because it often needs to re-instance. Half the time, it is unable to, and boots the rest of the players to the multiplayer lobby. I do not know how, after launching so many games in a row with shoddy or broken netcode before this, Ubisoft has another game-one that is so multiplayer heavy particularly and it has had so many betas-come out in this problem. It's absolutely unforgivable to launch in this sorry state, and Ubisoft should be embarrassed.
For Honor could've been one of the best games of the young twelve months; instead, it's full of issues, particularly around the technical side, which hold it back. It could still recover and be the game her potential to be thanks to its solid gameplay core-but if you were looking for something to play right now, I'd let you know to consider a wait-and-see approach with For Honor in hopes the bugs, in particular the connectivity ones, end up getting exercised.
