I was fortunate enough to play in the last technical test as well as in this most recent closed alpha. I must say... at the pace and hype that this game is building, For Honor is very much going to shine.
Technical impressions--speaking from PC: performance-wise, it feels very optimized. I'm rocking a dated 770 and I don't think I noticed any frame rate issues nor any notable major visual glitches. I feel like I could have toughed this out on my old 550 build. I probably don't need to go on about it. I mean, most of us have seen it by now; the game looks very cool; smooth for the most part--dare I even say worthy of eSports commentary. For me, I think it's one of the better games to actually spectate; I enjoyed watching quite a few people, added Jason and Danny O'Dwyer learning the ropes. I would note (and I'm probably not alone here): the main issue during the alpha that I had was with the matchmaking servers and disconnections. Still... with that, you kind of basically shrug and mutter "alpha" and try to rejoin. A small number of times I had to force close the client just to restart, and usually things smoothed out afterward. Still, servers were up and down, but given the game's current progress I couldn't really hold that against it.
Controls seemed slightly awkward at first, though, I would attribute much of that to it being a new game; nothing like it that's directly comparable. Dark Souls, sure..maybe a little, but definitely a different vibe, different genre, worthy to stand on its own. The "rock, paper, scissors" of attacking and countering is a pretty accurate description of a 1v1 against someone. And there's a lot of depth to explore with that, especially across the 6 playable classes given, in movesets and combos. Personally, I do think some balances and tweaks here and there are probably expected by launch--I noticed some weirdness with things like delayed inputs with some of the animation gaps that I wasn't familiar with. Pulling off combos was clunky sometimes, but honestly, much improved during this alpha compared to the first time I'd played a few months ago. A lot more fluid. You certainly get the hang of it after awhile.
Overall, I had a ton of fun. I like that there's going to be some emphasis on customizing your look and loadouts, and I'm really glad they're adding a single-player campaign--hopefully a well-rounded one at that. We'll see. As it is now, I think it's a solid action-fighter. Probably not for everyone, but I'm sure a lot of people are going to enjoy.
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