Game review: For Honor – a fun fighting system and breathtaking scenery make it a winner
Learn the fighting moves and the set-pieces, choose your character’s allegiance and immerse yourself in a world of sieges, death matches and battles
Ubisoft
In a recent radio interview, an ex-boxer spoke about the peculiar nature of her sport. One thing she said really stood out: “Boxing teaches you to use violence as a resource”. That phrase describes the experience of playing For Honor pretty well. This is a game about learning to use deadly force in order to navigate a world where nothing else matters but conflict. For Honor has the purity, depth and bloody grace of a martial art.
The set-up is certainly as simple as a sport. The player selects from three warring factions – the knights, the samurai and the Vikings – and then fights everyone else, either in the single-player mode or online. The former is effectively a training exercise, teaching you the basics of combat, as well as the special-move sets specific to all the available classes of warrior, unlockable during play.
There is a kind of story, about factions battling to control land and food, but really, you’re just stomping through a series of beautifully realised historical environments bludgeoning people, while looking for collectibles (this is a Ubisoft game after all). It’s basic stuff, but it does feature a range of breathtaking set-piece encounters from castle sieges to village raids, all drawn in gritty, pulverising detail.