For Honor Beta Review

For Honor game play throws warriors from three factions into a battle for supremacy 

You can't have epic duels without expert combatants, so For Honor plucks three distinct factions of the hardiest warriors who ever lived to duke it out in historically inaccurate (but undeniably magnificent) clashes. You've got your choice between Samurai, Vikings, and Knights, who are known in For Honor's universe as the Chosen, Warborn, and Legions, respectively.

Whether you decide to fight as the noble Knights, cunning Samurai, or resilient Vikings, you're never locked into your allegiance; picking a side is more about which faction resonates with your aesthetic and combative sensibilities. What truly determines your play style is your chosen hero class, with all three factions having their own distinct variation of four basic archetypes. There's the middle-of-the-road Vanguard that balances offense and defense, the slow-but-resilient Heavy, the all-out aggression of the Assassin, and the adaptable, technical style of the Hybrid. No matter who you choose, you're going to charge onto the battlefield swinging.

On the multiplayer side, you can battle on the small scale with the no-respawn, best-of-five rounds of 1v1 Duels or 2v2 Brawls, or engage in the extended all-out wars of the Dominion's point-based 4v4 (which I'll explain in a bit). Contrary to what you might assume, these modes let heroes from any faction team up, so Knights, Samurai, and Vikings could fight side by side in the same four-person squad. Then there's the story campaign, which can be played solo or with a co-op buddy. And wouldn't you know it - the campaign actually infuses some context into this fantastical world of endless melee warfare. 

For Honor's clashes feel fantastic, courtesy of some incredible animations and the intuitive Art of Battle system. If you're familiar with the dueling in War of the Roses, where the direction of your sword swings is crucial, For Honor's mechanics feel similar (if more streamlined). At any given time, you can square off with an enemy by holding the left trigger, angling the camera to focus on your opponent (who can choose to engage you in turn or flee to another fight). In this stance, your right stick controls the angle of your weapon: up, left, or right.

The trick is that these three stances determine the direction of your attacks (including light and heavy swings, as well as riskier guard breaks) and blocks (which are automatic so long as you're matching the direction of an incoming swing). Both you and your opponent are able to clearly read the other's stances when locked in a duel, so each standoff becomes an intense game of rock-paper-scissors as you both try to guess and counter the other's plan of attack in real-time. It's like the graphically gorgeous successor to Bushido Blade (minus the one-hit kills), and the weighty animations convey a real sense of heft with every laborious swing or last-second deflection.

Your chosen hero determines your fighting style 

When you start factoring in each faction's version of the four hero archetypes, things start to get complicated. See if you can remember all these names, listed by Knight, Samurai, and Viking roles respectively: Vanguards (Warden, Kensei, Raider), Heavy (Conqueror, Shugoki, Warlord), Assassin (Peacekeeper, Orochi, Berserker), and Hybrid (Lawbringer, Nobushi, Valkyrie). Every hero in the game has their own distinct look and a particular weapon they've mastered - and better yet, they've all got unique animations and combo strings. Then, as if that wasn't already enough to remember in terms of weapon types and combat specialties, each hero has their own set of Feats of Strength - four slots, with three possible options per slot.

Feats of Strength are special abilities that offer fleeting of power (all mapped to the D-pad) that unlock once you've leveled up, which is done by scoring kills, assists, and objectives. Tweaking this aspect of your hero's loadout offers a staggering number of possibilities; Feats of Strength let you do anything from the aggressive (calling in a volley of arrows or temporarily debuffing an enemy) to the defensive (buffing your movement speed for escapes or healing yourself) and everything in between. With all the possible team compositions you can piece together with the various hero classes and their Feats of Strength, it's a ridiculous amount to remember - so let's hope For Honor does a supremely good job of teaching players how to prepare for all those buffs, debuffs, and abilities that get layered on top of the frenetic combat.