This game is pretty fun, even though I was probably not using one of the better classes(Berserker). Worth the purchase though IMO.
Berserker is not bad, it’s just very weird to use and definitely worse than the other two assassins (Orochi and Peacekeeper).
P.S. I pat myself on the back for the pun in the title
Berserker is pretty ass, his options are linear as fuck compared to the better characters.
Shugoki is my nigga for now. Always bet on the fatty with the big stick who bearhugs motherfuckers to death.
Also helps that his outfits are swag as fuck. Dem oni accessories, mang.
For Honor is the best fighting game I’ve played in ages
Been playing the Shugoki nonstop, and I gotta say. I think I was right, this character is pretty ass. I’ve got a 75% W/L in duels, that’s the lowest I’ve had with any character and I’m struggling against anyone who knows what they’re doing.
He’s based around a trading system where he has 1 point of constant armour until he’s attacked/grabbed when it is then broken, so his gameplan is to trade once, and then end his attack string with headbutt to push the opponent away and force them to recover stamina whilst he regenerates his armour he lost from the trade. Problem is he can just be feinted out and unlike every other character who just wants to parry/feint OS the attacks, the Shugoki has to commit to his attacks to be able to trade. His Demon Embrace is incredibly slow, idk why it makes him lose almost two bars of health on whiff and the reward for landing it outside of critical health is pretty minor compared to the risk he puts into it throwing it out. His charged heavy attacks will put you in a one-shot fatigue state if they’re parried, his side and top heavy aren’t reliable when trading due to their slow start-up and won’t hit in time against certain attacks, and he takes increased damage whilst his armour is down. I understand the concept of the character but he’s incredibly linear and doesn’t blend well with the current metagame, he gets shit on and is forced to take extreme risks with Demon Embrace which isn’t cancellable and has him lose too much damn life on whiff. Even played reactively using Demon Embrace and heavy attacks to trade with the opponent you lose if you get feinted and you HAVE to commit in order to get the trades. If you fuck up once you take mountains of damage due to guard break punishes from parries breaking through the Shugoki’s armour forcing his increased damage state. He’s like a giant punching bag. Another underwhelming thing is that due to the Shugoki’s side/top heavy starting up so slow making his feints incredibly slow also, you can’t feint heavies and parry certain baited attacks. Like Assassin side-step attacks can sometimes hit too quickly and force you to block instead of parry. I like the characters design but he’s like if Zangief took 25% of his health if he whiffed an SPD. It’s dumb.
Oh he’s really weak to fast 2-hit combos as well like Orochi top light and Warden side light, and the Berserker kinda.
Shugoki worse than the Raider?
The meme god needs buffs?
One interesting piece of tech is that the Shugoki can do two forms of parry OS’ing, he can do the parry/feint OS or the parry/Demon Embrace OS. If they feint the heavy attack you just fucking scoop them up. It’s not that strong though because it’s slow and you can side step it.
Uhhh…other stuff worth noting - Warden is still incredibly strong, along with the Warlord and Orochi. I’ve seen a couple Lawbringers online but he seems quite weak because his shove doesn’t really pose much of a threat and his attacks are all slow, and a big part of his design is having unique post-parry options but they’re all worse than parry > guard break so they’re useless. Haven’t played against a good Valkyrie yet, I imagine she’s at least somewhat decent. Looks like she has interesting tools but the design isn’t really up my alley.
Interestingly, I just was in a duel where the dude kept complaining that Shugoki was “OP as hell” and I was only winning because “the rain is killing my GPU”. He ragequit before I got my three wins in, by the way. And keep in mind, I’m ass at the game. All I did was wait for him to commit to a heavy, because he never feinted, and then plow through with Demon Embrace. Armor is OP as hell, apparently. Whatever, I’m embracing the top tier of slow as fuck command grabs that lose health on whiff for whatever fucking reason.
Between this and Discord, I think I might be entering the golden era of scrub hatemail.
Warden is all I’m matching with in duels, this character is stupid good right now.
4v4 is fucking unplayable between the stupid stat buffs, incompetent team mates who seemingly don’t get the concept of a revive and giant gank squads. At least Dominion sort off forces you to spread out to cover points, but Skirmish and Elimination are fucking cancer.
So of course the dailies takes everyone from the glorious 2v2 brawl and places them in the Elimination shithole.
Don’t have enough experience with the new characters yet to know, gimme a day or two to get a friend on and test everything out in custom games.
Current tier list -
Meme God Supreme:
Shugoki
Lesser Mortals:
Everything else
If I were to remove the new characters, I’d say the best character in the game right now is the Warden.
No questions asked, he forces backrolls to escape his mix-ups which results in him forcing opponents into depleting stamina very quickly. Nobody else has that power.
Warden just has more options than other characters, he’s playing a different game right now.
The Warlord is still good, as is the Orochi. They’re the top 3 characters right now IMO but I haven’t taken the Shugoki, Valkryie and Lawbringer into the equation. If anybody has a chance at beating those 3 it would be between the Valkyrie and Shugoki. I think the Shugoki will be bottom tier but I could be approaching him completely wrong or just be missing some vital piece of the puzzle.
Weird story mode shit that only a complete goddamn nerd would care about:
- Apparently the samurai speak a language that is called Japanese (referred to as such by vikings, no less) despite this taking place in a world where Japan presumably does not exist.
- The Vikings speak what sounds like some variation of Old Norse, but their writing and naming conventions use modern Swedish.
- That is not how daimyo or emperors work, Apollyon. At all. I think you got emperor confused with shogun.
- Speaking of which, how do the knights work? Because the title knight implies a feudal society where it is earned by birth, but the fact the legions don’t seem beholden to individual feudal lords but rather an appointed commander who can take it upon himself to knight soldiers makes me wonder how that works.
And this is not me bitching. It’s a fucking game where samurai fight vikings and knights. It’s quite clearly going to be anachronistic and illogical as fuck from the very Rule of Cool premise alone. Just having a bit of fun with it, because I’m a huge goddamn nerd.
A-am I doing this emblem thing correctly?
Peacekeeper is pretty fun
My lowest winrates across characters are currently 70% as the Shugoki and 30% as the Raider. The Raider is absolutely terrible.
Reading your signature… I’m sorry.
I mained him in the betas but abandoned ship because of how bad I thought he was and used the Warden because he’s insanely good. Not as fun though, I want to be a Viking! PILLAGE THE VILLAGE!
Raider stuff -
The Raider has a simple design premise, he hits hard and has a good amount of chains options from light and heavy attacks. He’s a big boy so his throws are above average as well. Some unique things about the Raider are his stun attacks from forward throw wall slams, and his forward dash - stunning tap, he can also cancel all heavy attacks on start-up into any of his light attacks, if he cancels into a top light it becomes a stunning tap.
So why is he bad? Simple really, he’s just been balanced weirdly and doesn’t fit the meta. His heavy attacks do a decent chunk of damage so they’re very slow, you can’t do guard break > heavy attack unless you knock them over from a throw due to stamina drain. I’m unsure if wall slams give you a guaranteed side heavy, it’s been inconsistent.
Combine that with slow light attacks, incredibly slow heavy attacks and stamina intensive feints from his unblockable zone attack and the Raider has TONS of damage with no ways to access it. He’s walking parry bait, nothing is fast enough to trick opponents. Nothing is Warden top light or zone attack tier. The annoying thing is that another Vanguard character like the Warden gets a top heavy from wall slams guaranteed and side heavies from guard breaks which both contend with the Raider’s damage and one-shot anybody at one bar.(Minimum health regen state)
I don’t know how I’d fix the character, for starters he needs more ways to get heavy attacks from throws, as they seem to be his main strength. The Warden should not have a better throw game than the Raider, it’s just kinda silly.
Makes me sad, the Raider looks badass and I brought the lightning effect for him 
Okay, so people get really upset when you gang up on someone in Brawl. I literally had a dude who stopped playing the game so he could just spam HONOR in all caps in the chat. Which begs the question: why not play Duel if you want to fight one-on-one? I don’t play Elimination precisely because there’s no fun in having three or four dudes run a train on you with their super-weapons.
Also, if this is a fighting game, it lacks a few very critical things all fighting games tend to have. Short rounds, corner pressure, approach options and space control. Even characters like Nobushi who are ostensibly zoners have very few ways of making an opponent come to them beyond slightly longer weapons with bleed effects, and without actual corner pressure faster characters like Peacekeeper can just run away from the slower ones almost indefinitely. Sprinting really should drain stamina. Which would fuck with Dominion, I guess. But seriously, running out the clock with a lifelead isn’t a viable option (hell, I don’t even know how time-outs work since I’ve had like four minutes on the clock when my opponent starts running, and fuck waiting that long), and you can’t chase the faster characters down due to the wide open spaces in the maps.