Last weekend, I had the chance to play Chivalry II’s Xbox beta and I have to say, it’s pretty epic. Chiv II has been probably my most anticipated game of the year so I was holding it to a high standard as I went into the beta. Luckily, it was as awesome as I had hoped and really sets the game’s release up to be a great win for the dev team over at Torn Banner Studios. Let’s get into my thoughts, and I’ll explain the reasons that I’m so excited to jump into the action again this June.
Gameplay
Chiv II takes the fantastic medieval combat from the first one and turns the dial up to eleven. It’s exactly what I hoped for it to be and just by the beta, I can whole-heartedly say that the devs nailed it. Starting off, there’s a fantastic tutorial that clearly gives you instruction on just about everything you need to know as far as combat goes. It shows you offensive maneuvers, defensive, and even how to go from one to the other in real-time to get the better of your opponent. I’m not usually a huge fan of tutorials myself but this one is quick and easy which made familiarity with the controls turn me into a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.
Jumping off from the tutorial, the game allows you to choose your quickplay options which include good old Team Deathmatch, Team Objective, or Free-For-All. I spent most of my time in TDM as it was a blast to fight alongside my team and do our best to hold the line, fighting for king and country together. It’s just as you’d expect; a bloodbath of epic proportions that results in decapitations and blood spilled as far as the eye can see. Combat is buttery smooth and each of the playable character classes were justifiably cool in their own right. I’d jump between each class solely because of how much fun it is to try out certain weapons in different situations just to see how I could sway the battle.
There really isn’t another game that does what the Chivalry franchise does and here, it’s even more fun than I could’ve imagined. There’s a great bit of realism that goes into just about everything that you interact with within the game. You can pick up weapons from fallen soldiers, pull shields off of walls to use for yourself, snag everyday items and use them as weapons or even pick up a chopped off head to lob at your enemies. One of my favorite things to do during battles was taking my weapon and chucking it at my opponent. There’s something so satisfying about the way your character moves as he gets his ax ready to throw it as hard as he can at his target. It’s insane!
The game can also put you in some really intense combat situations. There are many times where you could be fighting an enemy, getting the better of them, and then one or two of their teammates come to the rescue. This will leave you in a fight or flight situation where you can run as fast as you can, or turn your blade and try to defend yourself until the right moment opens up to strike. The tutorial touches on this and because I paid attention to it, I was able to utilize my skills purposefully that half the time, I was able to take out those opponents even though I may have been backed up against a wall and outnumbered.
Expectations
I fully expect Chivalry II’s release to be extremely fun and put what I’ve played in the beta to full use on June 8th. I didn’t experience any hiccups during my playthroughs which is a good sign that there shouldn’t be any connection issues on launch day. Being that the beta showed us a great amount of difference in its maps, I’m also hoping to see even more difference between the ones I’ve played and the ones yet to be seen as well. I love the different weather and time of day choices. Hopefully, we get some more of this too. It helps to break up the feeling from one map to another.
Verdict
Torn Banner is in a great position to release a beautiful and unique game that droves of players are hungry for. I can only hope that the launch is as smooth as it can be to put this game on the pedestal that it deserves to be on. This has the potential to be a really strong game that I think will bring not only returning players back to the franchise but new ones that didn’t have a PC to start the first one with. My eyes are steadily on Chiv II and my anticipation for June 8th is as high as the battlefield is bloody.
