The medieval multiplayer genre has taken off the in the last couple of weeks for whatever reason, with both War of the Roses and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare hitting the PC. While both games take place in a Middle Age setting, War of the Roses is a third-person combat game and Chivalry is in first person built on the Unreal engine. For no particular reason, I decided to pick up Chivalry this past Monday and I’ve been playing it for a couple hours a night and having a ball.
Unlike War of the Roses, which takes place during the actual conflict of the same name, Chivalry takes place in a fictional setting featuring a war between the Agatha Knights (Blue) and the Mason Order (Red). Players can be one of four classes, archer, man-at-arms, vanguard and knight, and can battle it out in a few gametypes like team objective and free-for-all. Team objective is currently my favorite mode as it’s a lot like Team Fortress 2’s Payload mode or Rush from Battlefield. While encouraging teamplay, it also features a host of wickedly medieval objectives like killing a village full of peasants or pushing a corpse cart into the enemy castle’s water supply.
The combat in Chivalry is brutal, with lots of feedback even on a mouse and keyboard. Weapon swings are slow and powerful and every impact hits with a satisfying clang on armor or a sickening wet thunk for a killing blow. You can hack off limbs and decapitate your enemies and friendly fire is always on, so every melee encounter is a whirlwind of steel and blood. Clicking the left mouse is a sweeping motion and rolling the mousewheel up and down wield yield a stabbing or overhead attack, respectively. Blocking is accomplished by clicking or holding the right mouse, depending on what item you’re using. A shield can be held up indefinitely, but your enemy needs to be directly in front of you for the block to work. Two-handed weapons can do a quick parry as long as you get it up in time. While the classes are mostly even, I feel like the vanguard’s polearms are a little unbalanced as they have crazy range and can still block close in attacks.
As frantic and fun as the combat is, Chivalry could use a little polish, especially for a thirty dollar multiplayer-only game. A few times I got stuck between pieces of geometry and did that weird forever-fall until I could crouch jump out, and there are major sound-clipping issues. There’s also an error where servers don’t show up for whatever reason, but the good news is this can be fixed. If you’re looking to for a Chivalry server fix , check out that link.
There’s apparently more free DLC weapons and other things on the horizon and the first-person combat is so engaging that it can cover up a lot of the less-than stellar aspects of the game. I get so engrossed in combat that at one point I actually screamed out loud when I was cornered by three enemy soldiers and stabbed to death.
Has anyone else played Chivalry or War of the Roses? What do you think?
I’ve actually taken a notice to this game the past few weeks as it’s been all over my favorite YouTube commentators subscription boxes. It looks like so much fun. It reminds me of Skyrim, just no sorcery, and no single player. I loved the feel of combat in Skyrim so I just may have to pick this game up when the opportunity arises!
This is an amazing game, can’t wait for even more class customization, I love being a crossbowman with a tower shield and placing the shield like a barrier. Javelins are also awesome fun. And there is something really satisfying about leaping at someone with a sweeping strike from a Zweihander and totally seperating a mans legs from his torso.