Chivalry: Medieval Warfare review
In the last few days I’ve been diving into a game I stumbled across on the Playstation store, and as the title of this article shows this game is Chivalry: Medieval Warfare – a comedic but brutal multiplayer that swaps guns and grenades for swords and arrows. Chivalry’s mix of challenging gameplay and intense action can make for a really enjoyable time, when its bugs aren’t making the chaotic nature of the game too much to handle.
Beginning as a Half Life 2 mod known as Age Of Chivalry, Chivalry has now made the jump to current generation consoles via Hardsuits Labs. The basic premise transports Call of Duty style games like Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Free For All etc into Medieval times. Players are given 4 different classes to choose from, ranging from the heavily-armoured Knight who acts as the slow brute type to the Man-At-Arms, a light on their feet type with only a small sword or axe for quicker attacks. You are given a fair amount of variation in each of these classes’ appearances and loadouts, for example deciding whether to use a longbow, crossbow, sling or javelins as the Archer.
The combat is simple, with wild hacking and slashing being a key part of the gameplay. Team damage makes this even more challenging, and makes ganging up on opposition players nearly impossible. In fact, when more than two players are involved in a fight it becomes a test of who can wildly swing their weapon more accurately than the rest. It’s essentially the basic combat of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion meets the difficulty of Dark Souls. Don’t expect the tone to be as serious as these games though, as a wacky element in the cartoonish violence, chaotic gameplay and over-the-top battle cries make Chivalry much more madcap.
This pretty simple combat makes for fun gameplay, albeit the sort that takes time to perfect. Trying to master the art of playing as each of these roles is challenging, but highly rewarding. Your first time as an Archer may see you shoot an arrow into the floor before being decapitated, whilst the strong Knight can be even harder to master – you may feel confident as you charge in with a massive hammer at your side, but when you end up swinging that hammer a second too early you’re liable to get a sword in your back. Knowing when to block and when to attack is vital to survival, and this is a difficult talent to hone in.
The underlying flaw in this otherwise simple but effective formula is the unfortunate amount of bugs. This issue was raised upon the PS3/360 release, and fans would definitely have hoped for more of an improvement amidst the move to PS4 and Xbox One. It’s easy to say the graphics and animations are a bit sub-par, but the more irritating issues come from a temperamental frame rate which isn’t helped by some hit detection that seems way off. The current generation of consoles are more than capable of tackling these issues, which makes playing it on a PS4 or Xbox One a little underwhelming.
For the most part, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is an entertaining online game that lets you hack off limbs instead of trying to land headshots across a large map. The goofy tone may be amusing, but it’s the fun and rewarding combat that will lead many to invest countless hours. It’s just a shame that infuriating technical issues will undoubtedly knock those hours down for most.
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