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For Honor – Get Or Forget?

For Honor is Ubisoft’s Melee Fighting Masterpiece

“The Art of Battle” is what Ubisoft calls their fighting system in For Honor. This game is a very complete, difficult to master stance based game. It has the the usual light and heavy attacks, combos, guards, dodges and defense breaks. For Honor is a Multiplayer Melee Fighting game with a single player campaign that is more of an 8 hour tutorial than an actual campaign. The multiplayer has some flaws, like the peer to peer connection (what were you thinking Ubisoft?), and the poor matchmaking. Still, with those flaws it is a very addicting game that deserves to be played by any Melee Genre fan.

For Honor’s campaign has some amazing cut scenes and is a great way to be introduced the 3 factions. After some time though, it gets very repetitive and the AI is not exactly a challenging opponent. The boss battles are at least a little more entertaining. The characters have little to no personality and are easily forgettable.

Diving into multiplayer is a rough experience. The steep learning curve of For Honor’s mechanics make it a hard time for newcomers. 1v1 and 2v2 are the true heart of the game. For 1v1s, each player’s skill is taken into account which makes for a satisfying win or a very frustrating loss. The 4v4 modes are somewhat flawed since most of the rounds are spent being snowballed by the other team or your team snowballing theirs. All in all, the battles makes for some great moments such as winning a 3v1 on the last round.

 

Ubisoft’s choice to not have dedicated servers is a disaster, the “advanced peer to peer system” is a mess, every game depends on the host’s internet connection, that means that if your game’s host has a great connection you can play uninterrupted and with no problems, but if he doesn’t have a good connection you’ll get kicked from games, see teleporting enemies, and miss strikes among other horrible very stressful issues.

The matchmaking system is very flawed on the 4v4 game modes where gear affects your in-game stats. You will get one shot a lot and do close to no damage to those prestige 6 or the ones that make use of the micro transactions. The answer to what you are probably thinking is yes, there are micro transactions in this game. This is Ubisoft we are talking about here, they never miss the chance to make a few extra bucks on the side.

Everything  can be acquired with the in-game currency called steel which may be bought with micro transactions or gain after each match. The steel gained after every match feels a little low but that may be caused by the micro transaction possibility.

 

The game has three factions, Vikings, Samurai, and knights, each with 4 playable classes. No class is like the other, they may have some similar core mechanics but the style, feats, combos and appearance set them apart. From the fast swinging samurai to the tank style knight it takes a lot of hours to master each one and you want to master more than one.

For Honor’s sounds and music make for an incredible ambiance with metal clinging, shields breaking, and the sounds the characters make with each swing. It really sets For Honor in one of the most complete and well sound edited games I have ever played. Ubisoft really set a standard there and I hope more studios try to follow those steps to real sound greatness.

After playing for 12 hours non-stop this game still has me addicted to it. The incredible game play makes up for the many flaws it has.