Prior to Gamescom 2018, Ubisoft invited us to a press event to get our hands on playable demos for several upcoming titles, like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Transference, and Starlink: Battle for Atlas. We were also allowed to play early builds of new DLCs, like For Honor's upcoming Marching Fire expansion.
In the video above, we try our hand at Marching Fire's new Faction, the Wu Lin, in For Honor's Arcade PvE mode. In Arcade, you go up against a random number of fighters with arena modifiers that can make the match easier or much harder. Modifiers range from your weapon being coated in flames, to the enemy having high attack and low stamina, to your Hero constantly bleeding out over time and needing to kill enemies to regain health. We spent most of our time in Arcade as the Wu Lin Heroes Shaolin and Jiang Jun.
Shaolin proves just as entertaining to play as his fellow Hybrids, using his extended reach to annoy opponents from afar or quickly deflect enemy attacks until they're out of stamina and can't fight back. Shaolin's combos are described as "monkey-like" and it's an apt comparison. He's nimble, using his staff to both attack and move out of harm's way. Although Shaolin lacks Nobushi's ridiculously long attack range, his speed allows him to get in an enemy's face, deliver three to four solid jabs, and get out of range before the opponent can respond. This makes him very effective against slow fighters, but puts him at a severe disadvantage against pretty much the entire Assassin class as his combos purposely put him within their range.
Despite being a Heavy, Jiang Jun plays similarly to the Hybrid Lawbringer. Jiang Jun lacks Lawbringer's vast assortment of deflections, but he has the same sweeping slice attacks. Most of his combos start out with slower, weaker swings. But if you can connect the first two to three strikes of a combo without being blocked, then Jiang Jun can deliver a powerful finishing move. Much like Lawbringer, if that strike connects, your opponent is pretty much done and you can finish them off with one of Jiang Jun's brutal executions.
It's worth noting that we tried out the Wu Lin's Assassin class, Nuxia, as well. However, as Assassin is the hardest class for us, we've cut her footage so you don't have to watch us die repeatedly over and over again. We'll give her this, Nuxia is very quick. She has possibly the longest reach of the Assassin class and she's insanely good at countering. But she's got a low health pool and pitiful defense so if you're bad at countering--like us--you're pretty much toast the second you run into anyone.
For Honor: Marching Fire launches on Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 16. It adds a new faction, four new heroes, new four-versus-four and two-person co-op PvE modes, and visual enhancements to the game.