For Honor Impressions: Looking Back and Looking Forward
Feb. 14, 2017For Honor Impressions: Looking Back and Looking Forward
With the last beta behind us, For Honor is now here. For Honor is an interesting and rather unique game, and because of this, I think there’s a fair amount of confusion with players. So here are my thoughts and observations on what I’ve experienced so far, and what we can expect going forward.
So what are my impressions of all the gameplay to date? While For Honor will have a single player campaign, so far I’ve been able to play throgh 4 modes, each with their own flavor: 1v1, 2v2, and two different 4v4 modes. I suppose you could argue if you wanted that we got 8 modes, because playing against the AI is very different from playing against other people. More on the AI in bit.
To be honest, there’s nothing earth shattering going on here in the various modes. If you are looking for (mostly) honorable duels, then you want to stick to 1v1, which is a best of 5 matchup. No really, if you want honorable duels only, stick with this mode. The other modes, especially 4v4 Dominion and Elimination, are not the spot for duels. Shenanigansaboundin the 4v4 modes. Returning to 1v1, I had a lot of fun dueling here. I ran into the occasional rage-quit, but for the most part it was a lot of fun.
Brawls I found were a great way to fight with friends. Getting together a group of 2 or 4 people and fighting together is quite a bit of fun. There wasn’t any difference that I noticed between the 2v2 Brawl mode and the 4v4 Elimination mode, so it all boils down to how many people you’ve got together. Things do get a little awkward with 3 people though, as you’ll either end up with a bot or a random player
Finally, there is the Dominion 4v4. I’ve seen some complaining in various places about the lack of honor in this mode. I’ll be honest, I don’t understand the complaint. Dominion is a king of the hill game mode, where you have three control points. Holding these points generates score, with bonus score being added if you stand in a held zone. Killing the enemy? Honestly, that’s incidental, something you do because they’re in your way, not because you want to have an honorable fight. Irelishedit when I got into 3v1 situations, because that meant my teammates were free to cap control points.
Now if the idea of playing against other players seems daunting to you, fret naught, for you can fight against the AI with other players. A sort of co-op mode, if you will. Even better, fighting against the AI still allows you to participate in the Faction War and contribute war assets to your chosen side. Mind that even though the AI is no where near the level of a skilled player, it’s still good enough you can’t be half-asleep when fighting it.
So what wasn’t so hot? Well, I know a fair number of people had networking issues. I encounter very few problems, but I have Google Fibre. I most likelywasthe host in most cases, so I’m sure that impacted things to the better for me. There was also some issues with getting people into groups. People were getting kicked for no reason, and sometimes the game had to be restarted in order for people to join. That could be quite aggravating to deal with if it doesn’t get fixed soon, so here’s to hoping for a fix real soon.
Now the one thing that is still a mystery to me is Story Mode, the single player campaign. The story has been in development from the start, and will feature each of the three factions. As I’ve focused on multiplayer thus far, I know very little of the content at this time, other than each campaign will focus on a specific hero from each faction – Warden for Knights, Raider for Vikings, and Orochi for Samurai. I’ll be digging into it more as the week goes. We also get difficulty modes, which should provide some replay value.
With an easy to learn but hard to master combat system, a decent level of authenticity (yes knights really did strike with the hilt), and lots of different modes to chose from, For Honor is looking to be a solid release from Ubisoft. I’ll be diving into the game much more today, and I hope to see some of you on the battlefields! With a game so built around multiplayer you really need time with it before issuing a review score, so check back soon for my final thoughts!
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Tea. Dragons. Cartography. Video Games. These are a few of my favorite things. Still waiting for someone to combine them all into a holy gestalt of entertainment, but until then I’ll just keep playing and analyzing games.
I think the complaint about dominion isn’t that people don’t often 1v1. it’s when you have one entire team just always chasing down a single person and ganging on them. That’s certainly what annoys me.
Also there is no “host.” The game will randomly pick a person when search is enabled to use as the paramiters to find other players. once the match has started everyone runs a simulation of the match based on that person. including the person that was initially picked. everytime any action happens the information gets sent to everyone even for the person the simulation is based off of. so the system can double check every thing done.
If there was a host in the traditional sense the game would end when the host left. For honor games don’t. sometimes when anyone disconnects it crashes the whole game. sometimes it only pulls them. most often (from my experiences) the person disconnecting ends up taking a person or 2 with him.
