Chivalry 2, the tried
Chivalry 2
It is said that in love and in war everything is lawful. Maybe that's why our best kill, in Chivalry 2, we took home with a chicken: it's exactly as you think, we used a chicken to take out the enemy in front of us. Desired choice? Yes and no, in the sense that finding ourselves unarmed out of the blue we grabbed the first thing on hand and, well, it was a chicken. After the moment of perplexity in which we thought "we are dead", the Guybrush Treepwood in us took over and even without a pulley (and the chicken wasn't even rubber) we made a virtue of necessity. Surprisingly, the enemy had such a low energy level that throwing it at him was enough to gain those extra seconds of life as he fell to the ground.This little preface is to show you just how unpredictable they can get. the clashes in Chivalry II, the almost nine-year sequel to the original Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, of which we were able to preview some aspects. It was an engaging experience, which despite its intended oddities (the chicken is not the strangest object to use in your defense) made us feel all the weight of a sword fight and the enthusiasm of having conquered the enemy fortress, up to breaking into the throne room and dethroning the lord of the moment. So we tell you what it was like to war in the Middle Ages in our preview of Chivalry II.
We are all soldiers
For those unfamiliar with it, Chivalry 2 (like its predecessor) is a first or third person multiplayer that puts us in the shoes of a medieval soldier, part of a faction decided by the player and thrown onto the battlefield with the simple, but only apparently, objective of winning. It could be during a siege, or a joust, or even just a deathmatch in the open field, your basic purpose remains to crush the enemy - literally wanting.Already from the tutorial we noticed some changes compared to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and we expected it, having been so many years. The first, more evident, is to have fixed the so-called "ballerina effect", so called because especially the times in which the character rotated to hit more enemies he lost all his weight, starting a series of turns such that the étoile della Scala he would take a step back. In a game where predicting the enemy's actions and reacting accordingly is the basis for survival, this could be a problem. The developers therefore focused in particular on this flaw of the time, making the animations of the characters more natural and intuitive to read.
An example could be done with the swing of the heavy sword, the weapon ( consequently the class) that we have exploited the most: now, in Chivalry II you can feel very well the movement of the torso and the same positioning of the legs up to the feet, giving the attack a more realistic feeling. As you will have understood, or as you will know if you have played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, hand-to-hand combat is not only the founding core of the experience but is entirely based on the opponent's reading. Blocking, deflecting and above all finding, or creating, the opening to sink the blow is essential to victory: light, heavy attacks, from above, lunges, even feints, everything is allowed to gain the upper hand - even the use of weapons. , let's say orthodox.
Chivalry II, fight to the death Every move must be calculated with a precision that we found interesting, because it takes very little to lose any advantage and find yourself on the wrong side of the blade; even in this case, however, you can still hope to survive because if reduced to death you will be able to crawl away and even defend yourself with a knife until you are able to get back on your feet, or some of your allies will not get you back on track. Sure, it doesn't happen often and forget it if you're isolated from the fray, but we liked the mechanic as it kind of follows the logic of "it's not over until it's over".
Once you've chosen your character (which offers a high level of customization, which we cannot tell you about having been excluded from the demo) and its faction, you are ready to go into battle choosing between four classes, each divided into three specializations: Knight, who can become Officer (corps melee / support), Guardian (one-handed weapon and shield) or Crusader (hard and pure tank); Footman, which allows you to choose between Poleman (long guns), Man-at-Arms (one-handed weapons, very agile) or Field Engineer (support); Vanguard, which is divided between Skirmisher (hybrid between melee and distance), Devastator (heavy weapons) or Raider (two main weapons); finally we have Archer, specialized in Longbowman, Crossbowman or Javelineer. The variety is therefore not lacking and is felt, both in terms of character constitution, dictated by the protection worn, and obviously of weapons and their effectiveness. This diversity also affects strategy, it goes without saying that a Man-at-Arms will have to be more cautious than a Devastator or a Crusader who, albeit slower, in a single well-placed shot could be able to dominate the fight.
Chivalry II, your siege can and must end in a unique way In a carnage that sees 64 players oppose, another novelty of Chivalry II, there will be no shortage of opportunities to kill or be killed; moreover, it is possible to change faction and class in the course of work, if you want to expand the experience to more approaches, and once defeated - we exclude the if because really, dying is the order of the day - you will return to the field with the latest preferences set. From this point of view, the game fortunately does not tie to the single choice and allows you to experiment as you prefer. However, despite its depth, paradoxically it is this large-scale massacre that makes it difficult to use the combat system in its fullest form: most of the time you will find yourself performing a simple block, quick slashes and sometimes blows. uploaded. This is because the chaos of the confrontation, or even just being overwhelmed in numbers, prevents you from putting all the swashbuckling lessons learned in the tutorial to the test.
There's no doubt it's also a question of practice, nor that the situation is credible because who, in the midst of a siege, would think that pressing two buttons in rapid succession could deceive the enemy and thus induce him to discover himself in order to score the final blow? It is all very nice but the heat of the battle, or simply how the opponents behave, does not allow a varied use of the available moves, often resolving in the same repeated pattern. To give variety there is the aforementioned possibility of using any object within reach as a weapon, organic or not. It will happen to be unarmed or, as in the case of the archer, to run out of arrows and not have a supply crate nearby: in that case you can, with a certain amount of luck, pick up a weapon that has fallen to someone or rely on improvisation.
Chivalry II, surrender is never contemplated As far as we are concerned the chicken was one of the most hilarious examples but we also fiercely fought using a broom (against a soldier armed with a halberd, imagine the outcome), or took a head that rolled at our feet to exploit it as an improper throwing weapon; again, a chair as if we were in a bar fight, a bucket, a bell, a torch ... in short, everything and more. This approach makes any battle unpredictable, at least as far as sieges are concerned, because you never know what might happen to you; on other occasions such as deathmatch-style open field combat or jousting there is a little more limitation but you still have the option of turning a common object into a lethal weapon.
Overall, Chivalry II is a fun experience in its being noisy and at times confusing: we find it performs very well in sieges and is more redundant in deathmatches and rides but it is also true that we have only had a taste of the totality of the maps. In games like this, the variety of settings, as well as the quantity, makes a huge difference.
Chivalry II, nine years after the original, is presented as a more refined product that has seen a lot of work especially on the animation of the character, eliminating the famous ballerina effect of the original. Now the feeling of really being in the shoes of a medieval soldier, thrown into the field and ready to do everything to survive is felt more. The variety of classes allows different approaches to the fight but the extension of the battles themselves, the inevitable chaos that is generated, did not allow us to take full advantage of the depth of the combat system, often limiting the moves to the usual two or three. On the other hand, the ability to use the most unlikely objects as weapons leaves ample room for improvisation and increase the fun factor. Of the three modes available, medieval jousting, deathmatch and siege, we found the latter more engaging and aimed at encouraging teamwork without which defeat is assured. It remains to be seen which and how many settings will be proposed at launch, as the variety is very important in order not to fall into monotony too quickly.
