Chivalry 2 – Review

And what could possibly top this? Being chivalrous is what knights do! The men in arms, acting like men in arms! A noble duel or bloody scrum is interrupted by a perfidious archer’s boring hail of sharp, pointy sticks, ruining the fun for everyone. Come on, you coward! In a fight to the death, I will prevail. While defending myself from three other soldiers, urk, a man just caved in my head with a warhammer from behind. Such is life.

That’s the usual course of events in Chivalry II, the full-fledged sequel to Torn Banner’s 11-year-old source mod. Some players enjoy the exhilarating, nuanced first-person melee combat, while others ruin it by shooting arrows into the fray for lucky headshots in matches with 40-64 players. It’s less concerned with accurate historical detail and more concerned with tongue-in-cheek bloodletting, as it’s set during a made-up conflict between the Mason Order and the Agatha Knights.

Chivalry II stands out because it seems to be made up of two halves that are awkwardly pressed up against each other: a well thought out melee system, with parries, riposts, feints, and variable speed attacks, is pushed up against the absolute nonsense of 64 people running at each other screaming, with zero strategy or thoughts in their head: just mash buttons, kill folk, maybe stand near an objective, and spam emotes.

This is actually not a bad thing, which may come as a surprise. Combat is satisfying enough that a skilled player can survive against massive numbers of enemies by channelling Arthurian legends and parrying and countering blows with supernatural speed before slashing mobs of weaker warriors in half with mighty sweeping blows. There are other players who just charge into battle, and their heads will be blown off within seconds. Mounting a glorious charge with your fellow soldiers one moment, and then seeing them mowed down by ballista fire and errant catapult projectiles the next due to a variety of thrown objects (live chickens, cooked turkeys, anvils, balls of dung).

Without any background information other than hazy school memories and a steady diet of videogames and fantasy films, I imagine this to be an accurate representation of what mediaeval combat was actually like. Unlike in most games, where you have an advantage over the commoners, in Chivalry you are nothing more than a cog in the machine, one of an infinite number of bodies grinding against objectives that become increasingly covered in blood and abandoned weapons. Throwable objects and weapons litter the map, along with functional catapults, ballistas, and more, to guarantee that you never find yourself without something to do on any given life.

There is a wide variety of maps and objectives, from simple deathmatches on atmospheric misty plains to full-on sieges where you’ll have to storm the castle and dismantle the siege weapons inside to save your fleets, and one particularly enjoyable map even tasks attackers with stealing gold (or at least assisting NPCs in doing so while everyone yells at the archers). The number of maps is relatively small, but they all have their own unique style. Whether it’s a bloody mud battleground with peasants hung from trees or an all-out attack on a castle on the shore at dawn, war is hell. The game’s visual style is less stodgy than Mordhau’s, with everything sporting oversaturated colours and soft-focus visuals that make it feel a little more celebratory, when the walls aren’t smeared in the blood of your enemies.

The four playable combat classes are the Archer, Vanguard, Foot Men, and Knight. Subclasses of each class come with their own unique set of equipment and deployables; for example, a Knight Officer may have access to an area-of-effect heal (activated by tooting a horn), while a Guardian has a shield and a banner that can be set down to heal allies gradually over time. The combat really starts to shine when you consider the range of primary and secondary weapons available to each subclass, each with their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Chivalry’s combat system features a variety of different attacks, from light to heavy swipes, overheads, and stabs that can be upgraded to heavy versions. You can also block and dodge attacks; doing so at the right time and then launching an attack afterward is supposed to turn the attack into a riposte that deflects all incoming attacks, but in practise this isn’t always the case due to netcode and lag issues. Despite the small number of verbs, combat actually has a fair amount of nuance. Gaining the upper hand by swinging early is possible, but skilled players will space well and block late. It’s all pretty intuitive, and when you’re in the zone, you can feel like a real monster. For example, dodging an attack leaves you open to counterattack, while turning into swings speeds them up and turning away slows them down.

Bladed weapons, such as longswords and falchions, tend to be faster and their swings carry on even on contact with the enemy, allowing for powerful cleaving blows. War hammers and maces are examples of blunt weapons that can be used to instantly halt an attack while also dealing massive amounts of damage and quickly knocking the wind out of an opponent. Polearms have a long range, but if your opponent is able to close the gap, they can overwhelm you with hits. If all else fails, you can throw anything you can get your hands on, and as was previously mentioned, weapons can be found fairly easily.

The fight scenes are both the best and worst parts of the game. Lacking Mordhau’s dedicated duel mode and instead focusing on mayhem and chaos, it’s difficult to get a feel for the game’s combat mechanics. As soon as you think you’ve got things under control, something terrible happens, like a ballista bolt pinning you to the wall, an anvil falling on your head, or a halberd-wielding man suddenly appearing from behind you and chopping off your head. The same brush can lead you to repeat the same action. When playing with friends, the game turns into a raucous good time of yelling and laughter as you plot attacks and distract enemies for your teammate to pounce on and tackle. Even though invite problems have persisted for nearly a week after the launch party, this is still the optimal method of playing the game in the meantime when everything goes smoothly.

Grinding weapon and armour cosmetics, subclasses, and other weapons is a great way to extend your time in the game. The game needs more maps, more modes, and perhaps a more obvious way to access duel servers beyond community-run offerings in the server browser for it to gain any traction. However, perhaps anarchy is Torn Banner’s goal with Chivalry 2. Despite the bloodshed, the game’s absurdity can be endearing; there’s a certain camaraderie to be felt when a wave of teammates spawns together and they all scream as they charge right into the arc of a rock hurled by a catapult. There’s a dramatic quality to being one of the many faceless grunts sent to their deaths, usually at the hands of a cowardly archer’s arrow.