Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

Introduction/brief synopsis

Chivalry: medieval warfare is a team based, first person, online Hack-And-Slash that is only available to the PC. Players take part in games involving the slaying of their enemies in old-fashioned knight combat; this can be in Team-Death-Match, Free-For-All or team objective based game-play.

Story

During the medieval era two opposing factions wage war to take over the British Isles:

The Knights of Agatha, a faction adorned in white, gold and blue in the pursuit of good and fairness.

And the mason order, a band of rebels adorned in black, red and silver with the intentions of charging in to the heart of the Knights of Agatha’s strongholds and taking the land for themselves.

You play as an armoured warrior of one of these factions as you destroy/protect flag ships, strongholds and villages, as well as taking on the forces of the opposing armies either as a team or a lone soldier of war.

Gameplay

As well as the basic WASD and mouse-camera movement style you can jump with the space-bar, sprint with the Alt key and duck with the Ctrl key.

But if you intend to deal any sort of damage to the opposition you will need to know how to use your tools of war; keys 1-4 allow you to select your items with number 1 being your primary weapon, number 2 is your secondary weapon, number 3 is your tool (this isn’t always a useable item, it could be a passive effect on another weapon for example) and finally number 4 makes you sheathe your weapon and use your fists.

In order to deal damage to your enemies you can use 4 different actions; you can execute a light attack by left-clicking your mouse (light attacks do the least damage, are fairly easy to block/dodge but are the quickest of all attacks), an over-head attack by moving your scroll wheel down (over-head attacks are the most damaging attacks in the game, are the easiest of all attacks to dodge/block and are incredibly slow, but have a higher chance to make your opponent stagger), a lunge attack by moving the scroll wheel forwards (lunge attacks are fairly damaging, are the hardest attack to block/dodge, have an average speed but allow a longer reach) and a block by right-clicking with your mouse ( your ability to block attacks is based on a stamina bar; the higher the damage blocked, the more stamina expended. If you try to block and you don’t have enough stamina to stop the attack then you will stagger and be vulnerable to attacks. You also can’t recover stamina whilst sprinting).

There are 4 available classes to play as in this game they are:

The archer, a ranged weapon expert that has the lowest armor value in the game, they can use the following equipment:

The Javelin weapon when used with the lunge attack makes the character stab using the javelin, this is unbalanced because if this hits twice (regardless of the class the opponent uses) it will kill, making this weapon the go-to for most archers.

The Man-At-Arms, a light melee expert that can use swift ducking and dodging, they also have a higher armor value than the archer and are quicker at any form of movement (other than falling of course), they have the following equipment:

The Vanguard, a pole arm expert which can perform a sprinting lunge attack for excessive damage and reach, they have a higher armour value than the Man-At-Arms, and they can use the following equipment:

The second Long-Sword available to the Vanguard is extremely damaging, stupidly quick, and incredibly long reaching which is really unbalanced and vicious to play against.

And finally, the Knight, a heavy melee expert who has an extremely high chance to stagger blocking opponents with slow but powerful attacks, they have the highest armour value in the game but are the slowest of all classes, and they can use the following Primary weapons:

The Maul, which is the second Great-Hammer available to the Knight, can one-hit-kill archers (regardless of attack type) and can one-hit-kill every class but the Knight with an over-head attack.

Progression

As previously mentioned, weapon types (with some exceptions) can be leveled up to the next equipment stage. There are three sets of equipment stages that can be used: the first set of equipment (which you have from the beginning of the game), second set (which is unlocked by getting 35 kills with the initial weapon of the set, second set weapons are generally quicker but less damaging), and the third set (which is unlocked by getting 70 kills with either the initial or second weapon of the set after unlocking them, these sacrifice some speed for power). These sets also apply to secondary weapon variants (these are the same for all classes and are Knife and Short-Sword variants).

And if a combatant is skilled enough to unlock all primary weapons for a class, they are awarded with an exclusive helmet for the class to show others that you aren’t to be trifled with, the Veteran helmet (which I thought was a nice touch to the game), which has a different appearance depending on the class.

Art

Environment:-

The quality of the environment design is on par with the current generation of games but it’s certainly not spectacular: for example, grass is 3d rendered in patches but is mostly it’s just a big photo of grass stretched across the floor. Another example would be that wood whilst rendered correctly, fires sprites of splinters in random directions when hit which sounds good on paper but the visual effect of it itself is quite over the top and doesn’t make sense for the weapons used (guns may have this effect but medieval weapons are nowhere near strong and sharp enough to do this). However, man-made structures are fantastically designed; stone reacts to light as it should, and in maps where stone is wet the reflectivity of it is near life-like. Another good point about the environment is that the characters respond correctly to their environments, for instance: if you where to strike a stone wall with a metal weapon, you would bounce back from the hit, not just go through it without harming it like in most games of the sort.

Objects:-

The environment objects are very well designed and look incredibly realistic in the setting, the materials react to light perfectly and the physics of non-static objects are done incredibly well. However, nearly every object in then game is completely indestructible unless its part of an objective, for example: there is a map with a bar; this bar, as you can imagine, is littered with food, drinks and various drinking and eating instruments but whilst the bottles are destructible everything else can’t be destroyed or even marked.

This being said, the weapons and items of the 4 classes have incredible designs that are both highly detailed and incredibly accurate to the designs of their real-life counterparts.

Characters:-

The design of the characters fits the setting and lore very well, the armor of each class is of variants that were used by soldiers in the medieval era and has clearly had a lot of time and effort put into it. However the characters faces are quite awkward looking and don’t move whatsoever when they speak (this can be quite funny for a reason I’ll bring up later).

Sound quality

Voice Actors:-

The voice actors whilst very dedicated to the role are very stereotypical; they are mostly comprised of American voice actors using very bad British accents. This, coupled with the awkward faces and melee combat, is something I find quite funny in a sort of random slapstick sort of way. Nevertheless it wasn’t intended to be funny so the voice acting still leaves something to be desired.

SFX:-

The SFX used are near perfect: the clinking of armor plates scraping each other whilst walking, the clashing of metal against metal, piercing stabs and the splintering of wooden shields; I have no negative things to say about the SFX at all, they are exceptional.

The Experience

Whilst the occasional game can be a nice change, I have to say this is definitely a game best enjoyed with friends. I found myself in several situations where friends and careful class/weapon selection was the key to victory:

For example, there is a map which is fairly narrow (it has a ground floor and a 1^st floor balcony which stretched all the way around the maps perimeter), in order to best utilise this I selected the archer class and used a crossbow (long distance shot with high strength). Sadly the slow reload speed would allow Knights, Vanguards and Men-At-Arms to rush in and kill me, so in order to help me, my friend protected me as a vanguard, slaying heavier armored enemies by using piercing lances to get through their armor and keeping other vanguards and Men-At-Arms at a range which would allow me to shoot them before they could rush in and kill us both. This combo was incredibly effective and allowed us to win the match.

Its not just effectivity which is better, but it was more fun with friends to: people would gang up on each other, there would be surprise attacks, you could compare play styles and tactics, and there are just a lot of different things you can try. Personally, I find the game fun because of how spontaneous it is, one minute your dodging archers and the next there are 4 knights charging at you whilst set on fire because a Man-At-Arms threw an oil bomb at them (Man-At-Arms tool), people are just incredibly unpredictable and whilst the game doesn’t provide an extensive amount of modes, it doesn’t need to in order to keep you interested.

Final Overview

Well, the lore isn’t extensive, the class system is fun but not very balanced, the controls work really well, the tiers of weapons are definitely worth working towards, the art of the game is amazing where it matters most, the SFX are spot on, the voice actors are a bit of a let down but (in my experience at least) it is an incredibly addictive game and a ton of fun.

I’d certainly recommend this to any RPG fans as a must-buy due to its low price of around £19 but would advise other players to look up some game-play footage before deciding to purchase as the game has no extensive tutorial mode to teach you advanced methods of play and is also an odd but interesting concept.