A Warrior's honor

For Horror.

- Ian Chee

Imagine yourself as an extremely skilled warrior of the past. Imagine that you are among the venerable leaders of an army – an army of Knights, Vikings, or Samurai. In one of your many battles, you face against a renowned hero of the enemy army. You face them in honorable one-on-one combat, besting them in a battle of skill, of situational awareness, and of cunning. That’s the kind of game that For Honor is. Or at least, the kind of game Ubisoft intended. But because a subset of gamers are honorless spoilsports and not disciplined warriors, For Honor is the ultimate irony in video game names.

Simple controls, intricate design

And it’s no wonder, really. The game starts with you picking a faction to fight for, and you’re then forced to play a tutorial that introduces you to the game’s basics. By the end of it, you’d have learned how to attack, block, evade, break guards and throw, and are then left to your own devices, with advanced tutorials and character-specific tips being entirely optional. If you make the mistake of diving into the multiplayer at this point instead of learning and practicing other advanced (but just as essential) moves like parrying, feinting, unblockable and uninterruptable attacks, then you’re setting yourself up for failure with your impatience.