Video game choice is considered to be quite vast and spans all types of genres. However, there is one video game genre that people know really well: fighting games. The fighting game genre is known for games like “Mortal Kombat”, “Street Fighter”, and “Tekken”, but we’ve seen those games for years and years, and we know a lot of what the characters and combat are like, but one game we’ll dive deep into is a game that is quite different from all other fighting games: “For Honor”.

Background and details

“For Honor” was released on February 14, 2017, and the closed alpha for the game came out September 15, 2016 then lasted until the 18th. This is a game where players fight as different characters from different places in the world, and it’s separated into different factions. On the release of this game, there were a total of 3 different factions known as the Vikings, Samurai, and Knights, but as the game continued on, 2 more factions came out that are known as the Wu-Lin and the Outlanders. The characters in these factions consist of:

These characters use different types of weapons and have different types of moves and styles, too. For example, Virtuosa is in the Outlanders faction and is from Italy, which explains why she wields a rapier as her weapon of choice. Each character in the game from each faction you’ll see speaks the language of that faction. Samurai speak Japanese, Knights speak Latin, Vikings speak Icelandic (Highlander speaks forms of Gaelic), Wu-Lin speak Mandarin, and Outlanders vary from people like Ocelotl who speak Nahuatl. They are also divided into different categories being hybrid, vanguard, assassin, and heavy. Hybrids are characters that can look like a mixture of 2 of the 3 other classes, possessing something that heavy have, like variable timed heavies, or deflects a trait that assassins have. Heavies are considered to be the tanks and the ones that have the most hyper armor, and the type of character that has those variable timed heavies. Assassins are the agile ones of the classes and have a thing called a deflect, but with how agile and fast they can be, it’s at the cost of a lack of hyper armor. Vanguards, in a way, are considered to be leaders of their faction and are considered to be the most balanced out of all the classes. They don’t excel in a specific role, but they have versatile kits that help them in battle.

Mechanics

“For Honor’s” mechanics are a bit unusual. The way it works is that you lock on to the target using your left trigger, and you can use heavy attacks and light attacks. You use those attacks in different directions: top, left, and right. There’s also parrying attacks, both light and heavy, by pressing the heavy button at the right time. There’s also a thing called guard break, where you break their guard, which gives you a free heavy attack or attacks that characters use, but certain attacks have traits. Traits for attacks count as enhanced, unblockable, and undodgeable. Undodgeable means that the attack can’t be dodged, but can be parried or blocked. Enhanced (light attacks) means that when you attack someone with a light attack, that attack won’t bounce off their weapon. There are also mechanics that people have to get used to, like holding stances from people like highlander and shaolin, where, for example, the shaolin has to hold a specific button to hold to get into something for him called Qi stance. After you use a light or heavy attack, hold it for Qi stance. Once you release that button, it will do the input that you last had. If you press another button while in Qi stance, it will either make Shaolin do a light or heavy attack, cancel out of Qi stance, or dodge out of it. There’s also a mechanic called crushing counters, or CC for short, but these attacks work differently for each character. For example, for Tiandi, to get a crushing counter from him, you have to dodge-attack at the same moment that they use a heavy or a light. Deflects work in a similar format, but you dodge in the same direction of an enemy attack, and when you see the animation, you press the required button and release a quick attack. But the thing about deflects is that they can be countered by a character that has hyper armor, but to counter that, a character like Orochi has a deflect that can break hyper armor. Hyper armor is really something that heavies, vanguards, and some hybrids and isn’t really something that assassins have, except for beserker. What it does is give protection from people’s attacks. It makes it so that the attack you threw isn’t interrupted, but there are exceptions, of people like Pirate and Orochi that can break this hyper armor. They also have things in the game called executions, in which, after you finish off with a heavy attack, you are allowed to execute someone, and it gives you your health back.

Events, Modes, and Battle Pass.

Modes in this game are separated into different categories, which consist of:

Team: Dominion, Brawl, Skirmish, Elimination, Breach

Duel: Duels, Duels ranked

Each mode is different, with teams having 2v2 being a brawl in which it works like duels, but in a 2v2 format. Dominion being your capture the point mode, elimination is 4v4 last player standing on the team wins, skirmish is achieving the most points by killing the enemy team, and breach is the most unique being that one team has to defend the castle and the other has to break their defenses and take down the lord commander, and duels being the mode where you 1v1 players and ranked being the more competitive version. There’s also a story mode, which takes you through the story of the 3 factions: the Samurai, Vikings, and knights, while arcade mode contains different missions to get different tiers of rewards, both of which are single-player activities. Different modes come with certain events. One event is realistic duels, in which it gets rid of your guard and the enemy’s guard, and is a mode that rewards players for paying attention to the animation of characters. The game also has a battle pass system. It gives you season-specific executions as well as colors, effects, symbols, and currency that can be used to purchase more things for characters or customize.

Customization

Before, “For Honor” is considered a fighting game; it is a fashion show. First, there are multiple things that you have to take into account when making your fashion. It is necessary to take certain things into account the color that you are going to use, the effect, and the armor that you are going to use with it. It could go down to putting different symbols on your character, going from your chest, both arms, back, and legs. And you can change the skin color on said character in order to fit a fashion that you might be going for. But there are also things in the game called hero skins. These are appearances that can be used with the character that completely change how they appear. A great example is the Shaolin having a hero skin where it changes him to the Monkey King, Sun Wukong. The only thing about these hero skins is that they cancel out gear and don’t show the appearance of the gear until you take it off. You get the gear through repping up the character to 8, but. You get that with time and playing the game.

Review/Opinion

There are a great number of things that can be accomplished in this game, and there is so much more to come with this game. While the game itself is not perfect, neither are other games. This game, in and of itself, is one of a kind, and there are truly no games like it. Hopefully, in the future, Ubisoft will be able to do more with the game than they have already done, and I’d personally give this game a 9/10 and would recommend anyone to pick it up and give it a try. I understand that some people may feel overwhelmed by the game’s mechanics and whatnot. But if you sit there and give it a try, and try your best to learn how in-depth this game can truly be, I assure you that you will fall in love with how it works and what can truly be accomplished with these characters, and to truly make them your own.