The quickest one sentence description I can give is that it's like if you put Call of Duty in the 1400's. Oh and didn't re-release it every year with a slightly different name.
This game is utter chaos. It's totally utter fucking chaos..... and I love it. It's just a mass of angry screaming guys in blue and a mass of angry screaming guys in red and they run at each other and commit brutal murder. And in truth things do really get very chaotic. When you have five guys screaming and swinging giant broadswords and battle axes in a small area things get messy. Limbs start being hacked off blood gets everywhere and fairly often you wind up accidentally taking out one of your own guys in the process. Yeah warning now, if you super hate team killing, don't play this. Team killing fucking happens. Yes there are people just being dicks running around intentionally killing teammates, but those are in the minority, what I'm talking about here is when you give that massive bastardsword a good swing and happen to stab your buddy on the backswing, or maybe he tried to attack right then and got in front of you, or a little to close to the other guy. and now you wound up chopping off your friend's head in the process of eviscerating the other guy too. It can and will happen. Now, if it's in a moment like that, people aren't likely to get too mad about it cause most people understand that this shit is not an exact science and sometimes you wind up hurting or killing people you didn't mean to. That being said, don't be the dick who team kills on purpose, nobody likes that guy.
Story? What story? The story is grab that giant sword run that way and kill the reds! Kill the reds! Kill the reds! Okay, there is a very minor story. The blue guys are Agatha knights who presumably work for the ruler of the region. The reds, or Mason Order, are a group of rebels best I can tell. but seriously, fuck the story, go cut someone's head off!
There are four playable classes; archer, man at arms, vanguard, and knight. The archer is exactly what you'd think; an archer, very weak but this class allows consistent ranged combat (the other classes can have a few thrown weapons but are very much so meant for up close brutality). The man at arms is a sort of scout style unit, quick on his feet but not going to be taking a huge amount of damage before he starts screaming for a medic. The scout does have one of my favorite off hand weapons in the game: the fire pot. I do so love throwing one at my enemies and laughing as they run around burning. The vanguard is my favorite class to play and strikes a reasonable balance between health and movement, having a decent amount of both. The vanguard uses mostly larger two handed weapons which can make him a good damage dealer. Lastly the knight is the big tanky bitch. They're slow as hell but wrapped in a lot of armor and have the option to use both a two handed weapon and shield at the same time. Your best bet is to out maneuver this guy and get him from behind.
Each class does have a variety of killing tools to pick from. Archers have bows, cross bows, slings, and I believe throwing spears for primary weapons. Men at arms have one handed swords, axes, and maces. Vanguards have the two handed swords, spears, axes, and a pole hammer. Knights have two handed swords, axes, hammers, and flails. In addition to these primary weapons, each class is granted a secondary weapon. These will normally be smaller, weaker weapons that you won't be using hugely often, but they aren't meaningless. I've seen knights pull out short swords to deal with men at arms. The thing here is that all weapons have three criteria: damage, reach, and speed. The off hand weapons are usually going to be shorter and weaker, but (most noticeable when compared to large two handers) can be quite quick. Lastly each class gets a third equipment slot. This third slot is a sort of wild card. Archers use it to pick ammunition, while other classes can grab a shield or thrown weapon for this slot.
One thing that's cool is as you use a weapons you'll (usually) unlock other variants of that weapon to use. The variants will have marginally different stats meaning that maybe you like the sword's move set (yes the move sets do vary a bit for different weapons, I personally hate the spear's move set) well here's a new sword, this one is a little slower and shorter, but is stronger. So you can try and get a little bit of say in the exact performance of your weapons. And yes there are different types of attacks that can be performed. The standard attack is (usually) a right to left swipe. Scrolling the mouse wheel forward will perform a stab or thrust. Scrolling it backward will perform the overhead whollop. I believe there is also a way to swing left to right, maybe by holding alt. I'm not sure if the different types of attacks have different actual stats. What I mean is, the stab attack maybe have like 5% better range, or the overhead attack may have slightly boosted damage. I have nothing to confirm if this is true, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was. I do know for sure that the attacks do actually have different areas of affect. Meaning that you'll probably be wanting to use stabs if you have friends (or walls, yes you can hit walls and cause yourself issues) nearby you're trying to avoid hitting. If however, you're perhaps faced with two enemies side by side, a standard swipe may hit both of them at once. The vanguards and knights also have special charging attacks which can be used after sprinting for long enough with the weapon drawn (Note these are class restricted because they are only present on two handed weapons). Much like my suspicions about different attacks having slightly different stats, I have heard that maces do bonus damage to heavily armored units (vanguard and knights) while swords do more damage against lesser armored units (archers and men at war). Again, I don't know if this is true or not, though I suspect if it was there would be a whole hell of a lot more people using maces since a damage bonus would be more helpful against the more beefy guys.
The game is pretty much all online by the way. So if you really hate any interactions with other humans, or you have shit internet, then be warned.
I do have a couple minor gripes. One being that whenever I join a sever it seems to always always move to free for all and never go back to a team based game. One other more significant annoyance is that there is some customization allowed in the game. I don't have an issue with this, I enjoyed playing dress in hat wearing simulator, I mean TF2, but what I do have issues with is that you can change your guy's colors. This really annoys me because color is very very important. And it's really annoying when I look at a guy and can't be sure if I'm supposed to be murdering him or not. This wasn't an issue with TF2 because no matter how silly the hat was the guy was always red or blue, meaning you could instantly know if you needed to kill him or not. This issue is lessened some once you learn that black is associated with red team and white with blue team, but I shit you not I once saw a purple guy. What the fuck team was he on? I seriously didn't know for the entire game. This is really pretty annoying. Change the look of your helmet and chestplate all you like but be the appropriate fucking color. One last thing is that the first person perspective arms, always seem to be really small. I'm supposed to be a big burly knight and I have tiny little child arms.
The game is available on steam for $25. I don't recall it being that pricy when I got it. I think it may have been cheaper as a beta or perhaps it was on sale when I bought it. I'll leave you to decide if you think it's worth the price tag, but it is bloody fun. "Bloody fun" here having the dual meaning of it's fun and it's bloody, and also like the British/European bloody good time usage. That's pretty much all there is to say about it. Brutal medieval combat.
Gameplay: 9 out of 10
Story: N/A
Visuals: 5.5 out of 10
Audio: 7.5 out of 10
Overall: 8 violently severed limbs out of 10
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