MORDHAU: A Magical Feeling on the Field of Battle

I'm generally not an enormous fan of multiplayer-only games. To me they each feel like a flavor of the month, without any real reason to stick around besides gameplay and continual updates which often only introduce new ways to make poor financial decisions (lord knows I've made a host of them). This summer however, Mordhau was able to win me over with this slick and updated Chivalry-like game, enticing me to spend hours playing on the maps on offer in brutal medieval combat.

The invasion game mode can see some of the most ferocious engagements  I've ever seen in this game, truly on the last point there is no mercy.

The gameplay of Mordhau centers around objective-based multiplayer medieval combat, which is often lost on players of this game in the pursuit of chivalric combat. The combat is pretty complicated, with a mix of feints, morphs, kicks, throwing, blocking, and attacks to defeat your opponents with. By and large it works, though the ability for people rocking two-handers being able to parry arrows and other throwables does eliminate 90% of the reason for people to pick up a shield in this game. What determines your equipment is essentially up to your preference and the gold you've earned from playing the game, which allows you to purchase weapons and cosmetics for your armor/weapons. There are no micro transactions, so every person you see on the battlefield literally earned their outfit. You have complete free rein over how you play the game, be it some optimized build, an archer, engineer, or an utter meme. The only thing that limits you is the point system, which is largely balanced (Bloodlust and the zweihander are way too inexpensive in my opinion however) and gives you sixteen points with which to equip armor, weapons, and perks, but you aren't bound to using all sixteen. There are currently a total of four game modes, being Frontline, Invasion, Battle Royale, and Horde, with each playing pretty different from each other. Frontline was one of the three game modes on offer at launch, and functions as a hybrid of capture points and seek-and-destroy depending on the map and particular point. Invasion is essentially that, with one team attacking and the other defending across roughly three to four points/objectives. Most of your time will be spent in the Frontline and Invasion modes. Battle Royale is self-explanatory, and I can't say I've played more than one game of it. Finally there's Horde, which is the versus AI mode where players take on increasingly tough waves of enemies. My criticisms with the gameplay largely concern the maps we have, or relative lack thereof. On the six maps we currently have matches can occasionally feel repetitive (this is coming from about a hundred hours, which is a credit to its lasting power), though the continued updates to the existing maps do much to refresh the experience. Besides that concern however, Mordhau offers both lasting and high skill-cap clashes of arms for all comers with greater freedom than is usually afforded to players in multiplayer games in terms of customization (both in gameplay and aesthetic)

Horses are a pretty divisive aspect of the game, and while I generally avoid using them there's an entertaining variety of weapons you can 'couch' on them.

Mordhau is an occasionally gorgeous game with a fantastic atmosphere for getting your blood up. Hell, the adrenaline starts when you boot up the game, as the introduction and chorus of the main title theme is literally a bunch of guys giving their best war cries. Each of the maps are visually unique and diverse with different soundtracks for each of them. You'll be fighting in secluded lumber and mining camps, an actual battlefield, the ubiquitous castle, and so on. Overall sound design is also very good, with ambient sounds immersing you in the setting. Wounded or dying soldiers groan and birds chirp away from the fighting, the wind blowing through snow-choked mountains, and other little sounds I greatly appreciated while I was on my way back to the front. The soundtracks feel very appropriate to each setting, though in my opinion Taiga is a standout among the others. The seven voice sets each have an entertaining set of lines with real personality behind them, though they can definitely veer into comical. The first time I jumped into a game I was greeted by a man jeering "Thy defense has more holes than my Mother's Swiss cheese! You're terrible, look men, look how terrible he is!", and I was in love. I do wish that there were more voice sets though, as the more characters I make the more they sound the same, which can be a little unnerving as my Bohemian poacher sounds like a stereotypical viking. It's a game that sucks you in no matter if you're fantastic or terrible through the atmosphere, though I do wish that there was some sort of story besides the sort-of one in a few of the maps.

Tiaga is my favorite map without a doubt with an awesome track to crush skulls to. Who cares if it was the worst balanced at launch, where else can you fight the millionth zwei-swinging ape while going on a woodland hike?

Mordhau is one of the best multiplayer games I've played in a while, mixing calculated attacks with furious assaults in a literal blast from the past. It's a game that I've sunk a good deal of afternoons into and I'm still having as much of a blast as when I first bought it. The amount of time I've spent creating characters is perhaps a bit excessive (I even made a randint command in my calculator specifically for the purpose of choosing one to play). I give it a thorough recommendation, and lovers of multiplayer games and even history buffs can get something out of this. I mean what are you waiting for, another modern or futuristic multiplayer shooter?