Knights and Vikings and Samurai, OH MY: A Review of Ubisoft's "For Honor"
Ubisoft tapped into a kind of visceral warrior fantasy when it announced its latest endeavor, For Honor, at E3 in 2015. Ubisoft Montreal, the developer's flagship studio known for the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Watchdogs franchises, promised a third-person hack and slash experience, pitting the three diverse warrior cultures of knights, vikings, and samurai, against each other. Expectations were high and the game greatly anticipated, particularly around the persistent-world multiplayer aspect of the game. As a concept, For Honor is intriguing. However, in a fashion typical of Ubisoft's most recent releases, expectation did not match reality on launch day.
PLAYING ALONE
The single player campaign is bland, and serves little purpose other than to teach players how to play, provide a context for why this thousand-year-long war continues to rage and how viking, knights, and samurai, came to inhabits lands that border on each other. Chapter 1 tells the story of the knight faction, and allows players to familiarize themselves which each of the four “Hero” classes in the knights faction. Chapter 2 picks up where Chapter 1 left off, but shifts the focus to the viking faction. Chapter 3 does the same with the samurai faction. The major upside to the story mode is that completing it unlocks a few cosmetic items for the multiplayer, which is clearly the only mode Ubisoft intends us to play.
PLAYING WITH OTHERS
The multiplayer experience is centered on a constant war between the three factions, where players' actions collectively alter the front lines. Each match won and lost changes the number of “war assets” each player has at their disposal. After a successful match, players can allocate their war assets to individual regions to help their faction to attack or defend. After a few hours pass, a “round” of the multiplayer world is completed and the territories are divvied up between the factions according to the number of war assets accumulated in them. If the attacking faction's players allocated more of their assets to a region than the faction defending it, the region becomes the new property of the attacking faction, and the front lines are moved.
Players may forego the story mode entirely if they wish, and jump directly into the multiplayer. To get started, players are asked to join a faction, and are given a brief (and inadequate) tutorial, which explains the control no better than the single player campaign (more on the controls a little later). The player will have one Hero character in each faction unlocked, and enough of the in-game currency (Steel) to either recruit additional Heroes or to purchase equipment for the one they already have.
Each faction has four types of Hero. New players will have the Vanguard class Heroes in each faction immediately available. Each faction also gives a different name to their Vanguard class: knights have Wardens, vikings have Raiders, and samurai have Kensei. Players may elect to use their Steel to immediately unlock any of the 9 remaining Hero characters in the three other classes (Heavy, Assassin, and, Hybrid) to play. However, the player always represents their chosen faction in every match, regardless of whether they fight with a Hero character from that faction during play.
Individual Heroes level up and unlock new cosmetic items as the player uses them, accumulating experience (called “Renown”) and a little bit of Steel for each match. Steel can them be used to buy materials to upgrade weapons or armor, or purchase cosmetic items like ornaments for their Hero's helmet. Upon reaching Renown level 20, the Hero reaches the next “Reputation” level, and resets, much like “prestiging” in Call of Duty or “regenerating” in Titanfall.
Players can also earn Renown and Steel by completing “Orders.” Orders typically consist of performing a given task, such as getting a specified number of kills in a given game type, or using a certain Hero class. Orders are the only effective way of earning Steel, as a completed Order typically awards more than ten times the amount of Steel that winning a match does (no matter how well the player performs in the match). Because Steel is required for character advancement, Orders are an absolute must-do activity.
MODES OF BATTLE
The multiplayer system consists of three basic modes, Deathmatch, Dominion, and Duel & Brawl. Two of these, Deathmatch and Duel & Brawl, have sub-modes. The two sub-modes of Deathmatch are Elimination and Skirmish, while Duel & Brawl comes in one-on-one and two-on-one varieties. Each of these game types can either be played with AI or human opponents.
The objective in Deathmatch mode is to kill all of the other team's warriors. In Elimination, battles are four-on-four, with all eight opponents placed on the battlefield. Heroes from the opposing teams are placed near other to facilitate immediate combat, though these initial encounters typically end quickly. Heroes who are taken out of commission may be revived by teammates who arrive before a countdown lapses, but those who fall victim to their opponents' “execution” moves may not rejoin the fight until the next round. Elimination matches are won by winning the best of five rounds.
Skirmishes are populated by four warriors from both sides, but a few low-level soldiers are included. Players can either kill the low-level soldiers, or go right after the enemy Heroes. The focus is the same: kill all of the enemy Heroes at the same time, so that no Hero remains.
The objective in Dominion mode is to conquer and hold territory. Eight Heroes (four on each side) and a wave after wave of infinitely spawning low-level soldiers fight in a simulated siege. The maps are divided into three zones, each of which awards one point per second to the side that controls it. Upon the score reaching 1000 for one side, they are then tasked with killing all of the opposing team's Heroes. Unlike Elimination mode, Heroes can respawn until the score reaches 1000, but, like Elimination mode, after the score reaches 1000, Heroes on the losing side cannot respawn.
Duel & Brawl mode are relatively simple. The battles are one-on-one or two-on-two fights between Heroes. The objective is to kill the opponent, and the round ends when no opposing Heroes remain. Matches are won by winning three of five rounds.
GAMEPLAY IMPRESSIONS
Actual gameplay can be quite fun, once players master the steep learning curve of the control scheme. Simply put, the controls are awkward, at times reflecting an assumption by someone at Ubisoft that human beings possess three or four thumbs. The left trigger is held down to enter guard mode, which locks onto an opposing hero. The right thumbstick is used to shift the Hero's stance, and the right trigger is used in conjunction with the right stick to both attack and parry.
However, once engaged in a fight, a “Revenge” bar fills as Heroes successfully attack and defend. Once full, the player must manually activate “Revenge Mode” by pressing the Y button. The game suggests using Revenge Mode, which dramatically increases attack and defense as well as granting infinite stamina, in situations where one is under attack by multiple Heroes. However, doing so necessarily requires moving one's thumb off of the right stick—which is required to deflect attacks—during an onslaught of attacks from multiple directions, to press a button. This effectively renders the player defenseless at a crucial moment.
As fun as the game may be when it works, however, it suffers from crippling connectivity issues. In my own experience, I successfully connect to about one in every eight matches I attempt. On launch day, I even had a connectivity error somehow render me unable to launch even the single-player story mode. Eventually I learned that issue could be fixed by a simple reboot of my console, but errors like that are unacceptable in a supposedly finished product.
Also on the issue of connecting to matches, Ubisoft has made a decision in its matchmaking code that is so baffling that it borders on the idiotic. As noted above, the game boasts several different modes of multiplayer. Ubisoft was also kind enough to allow players to set filters as to what type of match they want to connect to—except that they don't work.
For example, if a player has an Order that requires getting a certain number of kills in a Player vs. Player Elimination match, the player can set up a filter to connect to Player vs. Player Elimination matches, and then start matchmaking. However, the game will ignore the filter, and instead connect the player to a Skirmish match. This happens with a rage-inducing frequency, and is completely unacceptable. It causes one to wonder why Ubisoft even bothered allowing players to pick a match type at all, if the matchmaking code will simply ignore the player's preference.
Hopefully these connectivity issues will be quickly corrected in a forthcoming patch, or else the player base will likely quickly decline.
FINAL BREAKDOWN
Overall, For Honor delivers a unique, fun, and visceral competitive experience when it works, and a hair-pulling, frustrating, and infuriating experience when it doesn't. For now, frustration seems more common than fun. If you, like many other gamers, are dying to play this game, I would advise waiting until Ubisoft gets its act together and fixes the errors. The multiplayer is the main attraction of this game, and until the kinks are worked out, the experience you're getting isn't worth the seventy dollar price of admission.