I intended to do a fuller review (Yes, even more than this) but I ran out of space, so long story short this game has some issues but overall its my favorite game ive played in a very long time even with its issues. And I hope you can ignore the circlejerk of anti Ubisoft enough to realize the devs are working on the issues, that being said let's dive into it.


So what can I say about For Honor? Amazing combat that has a huge amount of depth, anyone who says otherwise didn't attempt to learn and stuck with an endless cycle of the three basic mechanics, blocking, attacking, and guard breaking. I will agree that right now some characters are clearly a cut above the rest but the developers are being cautious with the buffs and nerfs to prevent kneejerk changes, and I respect that, that should be encouraged instead of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about.


The campaign is pretty important as it helps you learn mechanics, but where you get to really master certian mechanics is practicing with another player who you can get good at a specific mechanic with, 5 minutes of practicing counter guard breaks with a friend is more useful than 5 hours in pubs.


The community is generally pretty good and pretty nice, you do have a few groups that you can encounter that can be annoying though, there are those who try to enforce a sense of "Honor" into the game, citing that throwing people off edges and fighting them 2v1 is unfair despite the game giving them very good tools to deal with such a situation, as far as my opinion goes there isn't anything wrong with throwing someone off or ganking them because if it works on them they need to improve, that being said you shouldn't exclusively rely on these things because it hinders your improvement as a player. There are also one trick ponies who only spam one thing, these people are pretty easy to beat once you learn their strategy and they are some of the best ways to get good at dealing with a certian mechanic.


In a way the game is a giant 3D game of Rock Paper Scissors, with many mechanics countering others and needing to know what to use and when, personally I love this, because as you learn to spot what is a "Rock" you can feel yourself instinctively responding with "Paper", but it isn't always over there, as there are feints and mixups and other tricks that can turn the metaphorical Rock into Scissors, its an intense mind game that never ends and you constantly improve at.


*Obvious Spoilers about the Campaign (completed on Hard the final real difficulty)*

Back to the Campaign though it needs to be mentioned just how entertaining it is despite how repetetive it is, in the campaign you get a mixed bag of trying many characters, in the Knight Campaign you try the Warden, but you also have a level to let you learn the Lawbringer, and one for the Peacekeeper too, the Conqueror is left out however and I feel he could have been utilized.

In the Viking story you get to play as the Raider, whom is Legendary, which has become a meme among the community due to the boss he fights having a seemingly broken voice line that repeats every couple seconds saying "You're a Raider, legendary", however the boss in question is a Samurai and there is some speculation that since the story is all just a retelling by warriors from each faction, that its just classic Viking exaggeration to brag about their leader. You also get to play as the Valkyre and the Warlord, the Berserker being the odd man out this time. The humor in the Viking section is especially well written and casual even in the midst of battle, whereas the Knight humor came from circumstance, a stark but very enjoyable contrast that kept things light.

Lastly there was the Samurai story, where you are for the first time not playing as one of the Vanguard classes but instead the Orochi, an Assassin, the logic here being based on the fact that they are the equal of 100 men and the strongest the Samurai have to offer. In this campaign you only play as the Orochi and Kensei, while Nobushi and Shugoki are present they are not playable, this caused the Samurai campaign to feel especially repetetive, as the Orochi is both poorly suited to deal with the weak foot soldiers, and also very much based around punishing mistakes from opponents, and since the ai is largely reactive the Orochi more than other classes is left spamming a few attacks to defeat most foes. That being said it wasn't entirely unentertaining and it still had it's enjoyable moments, had the campaigns had more than 6 missions for any of them I might have been more drained than I was. The Samurai campaign was topped off with the absolute final boss and big villian fight, the fight against Apollyon, who long story short is a typical Warden that is a little more aggressive and has some of her mechanics down, honestly though a level 3 (max level) difficulty bot would have been a harder challenge than her, the only real challenge came from having such a low health pool that you would often find yourself playing the dodge game until your heal feat came off cooldown and then got back to whacking her. She had one cool special attack but overall was fairly dissapointing, with most of my deaths being the result of mostly unpredictable falling rocks in her arena rather than her capability to finish you off.

The Story Mode was good and overall pretty fun, I imagine it is far more enjoyable with friends, something I didn't realize was an option until I finished it. On hard it took about 7 hours to complete without searching for every observable and breakable (Find the breakables though, they drop good stuff, I went back for them) I had a pretty good time and I think the length was right, though I wish that each campaign was structured around letting you play every class and then 3 of the main class instead of arbitrarially not letting you play one or two of them, as not letting you play them didn't really help the story at all since a perspective switch was done for the Lawbringer mission despite the warden being present and it didn't seem to negatively impact the story, I have also confirmed that at least early on co-op doesn't let you replace the npcs either so that is a missed opportunity as well.


*The one issue that really is worth mentioning*

As you have no doubt seen from other reviews there are some issues that need fixing that make the game worse than it could be at the moment (Most if not all of these have been acknowledged by the devs though) the Gear system is blatantly unenjoyable, it gives substantial buffs to stats that you can choose and put simply a prestige 3 player has no reason to ever lose to a gearless one because they can get their revenge meter up with ease and one to two shot someone without gear. The Revenge gear is the biggest issue because it's spread out across all the gear options instead of concentrated on a piece or two, allowing players to buff up nearly every aspect of it to max, making it horrendously overpowered. Frankly even massive tuning can't really bring it to reasonable levels, and I personally feel that the best solution is to add gearless versions of the 3 gear modes, Dominion, Elimination, and Skirmish. That way the modes with gear are kind of like playing Smash Brothers with the items on, you expect stuff to get silly and op and can opt out, at least until you have competetive gear. Gear also makes you look cooler, figured I should mention that. Gear by no means makes the game pay to win though, there is this nasty rumor going around that this is the case and anyone who has actually gotten to the prestige character level neccessary to get the best gear would realize that good gear is handed out like candy once you get to the right level, all you can pay for is a slight (and I mean pretty damn slight) xp boost to get there a bit quicker, which can be earned fairly easily in game too.

Oh also Skirmish is a garbage mode but I lack the space to elaborate.

I intended to do a fuller review (Yes, even more than this) but I ran out of space, so long story short this game has some issues but overall its my favorite game ive played in a very long time even with its issues. And I hope you can ignore the circlejerk of anti Ubisoft enough to realize the devs are working on the issues, that being said let's dive into it. So what can I say about For Honor? Amazing combat that has a huge amount of depth, anyone who says otherwise didn't attempt to learn and stuck with an endless cycle of the three basic mechanics, blocking, attacking, and guard breaking. I will agree that right now some characters are clearly a cut above the rest but the developers are being cautious with the buffs and nerfs to prevent kneejerk changes, and I respect that, that should be encouraged instead of bitched about. The campaign is pretty important as it helps you learn mechanics, but where you get to really master certian mechanics is practicing with another player who you can get good at a specific mechanic with, 5 minutes of practicing counter guard breaks with a friend is more useful than 5 hours in pubs. The community is generally pretty good and pretty nice, you do have a few groups that you can encounter that can be annoying though, there are those who try to enforce a sense of "Honor" into the game, citing that throwing people off edges and fighting them 2v1 is unfair despite the game giving them very good tools to deal with such a situation, as far as my opinion goes there isn't anything wrong with throwing someone off or ganking them because if it works on them they need to improve, that being said you shouldn't exclusively rely on these things because it hinders your improvement as a player. There are also one trick ponies who only spam one thing, these people are pretty easy to beat once you learn their strategy and they are some of the best ways to get good at dealing with a certian mechanic. In a way the game is a giant 3D game of Rock Paper Scissors, with many mechanics countering others and needing to know what to use and when, personally I love this, because as you learn to spot what is a "Rock" you can feel yourself instinctively responding with "Paper", but it isn't always over there, as there are feints and mixups and other tricks that can turn the metaphorical Rock into Scissors, its an intense mind game that never ends and you constantly improve at. *Obvious Spoilers about the Campaign (completed on Hard the final real difficulty)* Back to the Campaign though it needs to be mentioned just how entertaining it is despite how repetetive it is, in the campaign you get a mixed bag of trying many characters, in the Knight Campaign you try the Warden, but you also have a level to let you learn the Lawbringer, and one for the Peacekeeper too, the Conqueror is left out however and I feel he could have been utilized. In the Viking story you get to play as the Raider, whom is Legendary, which has become a meme among the community due to the boss he fights having a seemingly broken voice line that repeats every couple seconds saying "You're a Raider, legendary", however the boss in question is a Samurai and there is some speculation that since the story is all just a retelling by warriors from each faction, that its just classic Viking exaggeration to brag about their leader. You also get to play as the Valkyre and the Warlord, the Berserker being the odd man out this time. The humor in the Viking section is especially well written and casual even in the midst of battle, whereas the Knight humor came from circumstance, a stark but very enjoyable contrast that kept things light. Lastly there was the Samurai story, where you are for the first time not playing as one of the Vanguard classes but instead the Orochi, an Assassin, the logic here being based on the fact that they are the equal of 100 men and the strongest the Samurai have to offer. In this campaign you only play as the Orochi and Kensei, while Nobushi and Shugoki are present they are not playable, this caused the Samurai campaign to feel especially repetetive, as the Orochi is both poorly suited to deal with the weak foot soldiers, and also very much based around punishing mistakes from opponents, and since the ai is largely reactive the Orochi more than other classes is left spamming a few attacks to defeat most foes. That being said it wasn't entirely unentertaining and it still had it's enjoyable moments, had the campaigns had more than 6 missions for any of them I might have been more drained than I was. The Samurai campaign was topped off with the absolute final boss and big villian fight, the fight against Apollyon, who long story short is a typical Warden that is a little more aggressive and has some of her mechanics down, honestly though a level 3 (max level) difficulty bot would have been a harder challenge than her, the only real challenge came from having such a low health pool that you would often find yourself playing the dodge game until your heal feat came off cooldown and then got back to whacking her. She had one cool special attack but overall was fairly dissapointing, with most of my deaths being the result of mostly unpredictable falling rocks in her arena rather than her capability to finish you off. The Story Mode was good and overall pretty fun, I imagine it is far more enjoyable with friends, something I didn't realize was an option until I finished it. On hard it took about 7 hours to complete without searching for every observable and breakable (Find the breakables though, they drop good stuff, I went back for them) I had a pretty good time and I think the length was right, though I wish that each campaign was structured around letting you play every class and then 3 of the main class instead of arbitrarially not letting you play one or two of them, as not letting you play them didn't really help the story at all since a perspective switch was done for the Lawbringer mission despite the warden being present and it didn't seem to negatively impact the story, I have also confirmed that at least early on co-op doesn't let you replace the npcs either so that is a missed opportunity as well. *The one issue that really is worth mentioning* As you have no doubt seen from other reviews there are some issues that need fixing that make the game worse than it could be at the moment (Most if not all of these have been acknowledged by the devs though) the Gear system is blatantly unenjoyable, it gives substantial buffs to stats that you can choose and put simply a prestige 3 player has no reason to ever lose to a gearless one because they can get their revenge meter up with ease and one to two shot someone without gear. The Revenge gear is the biggest issue because it's spread out across all the gear options instead of concentrated on a piece or two, allowing players to buff up nearly every aspect of it to max, making it horrendously overpowered. Frankly even massive tuning can't really bring it to reasonable levels, and I personally feel that the best solution is to add gearless versions of the 3 gear modes, Dominion, Elimination, and Skirmish. That way the modes with gear are kind of like playing Smash Brothers with the items on, you expect stuff to get silly and op and can opt out, at least until you have competetive gear. Gear also makes you look cooler, figured I should mention that. Gear by no means makes the game pay to win though, there is this nasty rumor going around that this is the case and anyone who has actually gotten to the prestige character level neccessary to get the best gear would realize that good gear is handed out like candy once you get to the right level, all you can pay for is a slight (and I mean pretty damn slight) xp boost to get there a bit quicker, which can be earned fairly easily in game too. Oh also Skirmish is a garbage mode but I lack the space to elaborate.