If you’ve ever wanted to pit hordes of vikings, samurai, and knights against each other Deadliest Warrior-style in full-fledged melee combat, For Honor is the game for you. If you love cleaving through dozens of enemies while dozens of other combatants fight around you, For Honor also has you covered.
I don’t know how the meeting at Ubisoft Montreal went when brainstorming this hack and slash game, but I can see the session ending with a lot of high-fives, fist pumps, and grunts of approval, even from the women present. This game is the stuff of an action junkie’s dreams. You take legendary warriors from different eras in history, throw them on a world where the only thing that matters is combat, give the player control of one of the combatants, and watch as they hoot and holler like a maniac.
For Honor’s premise is pretty much summed up in that last paragraph. The world was devastated by a cataclysm. For a thousand years following the event, the knights, the samurai, and the Vikings have engaged in open war against each other. At the center of the conflict is Apollyon, a warlord who has stoked the flames of war for her own nefarious purposes. To foil her plans, players can assume the role of one of the three factions and do battle in either a story campaign or in multiplayer.
[youtube id=”etZaAW_R7M8″ autoplay=”no”]
The story campaign was introduced this year, and Ubisoft showed off a gameplay demo of a Viking campaign mission. All three factions will have their own campaign focused on their own story. Players will slip into the shoes of a Viking Raider, a Knight Warden, or a Samurai Kensei and fight through several levels of enemies, with officers and bosses thrown in to ramp up the difficulty. The campaign can be completed solo or by two players cooperatively, either online or locally via split-screen.
One thing that’s been hyped up is its battle system, dubbed Art of Battle. During combat, the player can alter his or her combatant’s stance Bushido Blade-style to one of three positions: left, right, or overhead. This can be done dynamically during combat and is meant to exploit openings during an attack or to block incoming strikes when defending. The system looked good during the gameplay demo.
Visually, the game has a sort of Ryse: Son of Rome vibe to it. There are quite a few warriors engaged in combat all around you during the gameplay demo. Everything looks great, and the combat is very fluid. The officers, clearly marked among the crowds, have different attacks and require the player to learn to identify them and decipher their attack patterns in order to dispatch them. Fortunately, their attacks are telegraphed visually, allowing you to change stances and respond in time.
So far, For Honor looks great. If you like endless hacking and slashing, this game is shaping up to be one that you will love. Speaking of love, the game will release on Valentine’s Day 2017 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows 10. Hopefully, playing this game at launch won’t start a war with your significant other.
