For Honor Closed Alpha: First Impressions

Ubisoft’s For Honor is still in it’s alpha stages, and the game has recently finished another round of public testing; this time, however, there was no NDA on players. During the Closed Alpha test weekend, Twitch was filled with For Honor streams and plenty of gameplay now exists on YouTube. It’s easy to see why the developers decided it was time to lift the NDA; the alpha seemed more like a beta.

As usual, the closed alpha test was focused on the multiplayer aspect of For Honor and only contained a small number of classes. There are three factions in the game and only two classes per faction were available for players over the weekend. It’s a shame that the classes were limited but what Ubisoft added to the alpha did show players what to expect from the full game. Each class in the test could be customized with a wide variety of options.

The focus of the test was the Art of Battle combat system; this unique system blends the classic fighting game mechanics with hack-and-slash action games. Players can attack, block and guard break their opponents while being given a chance to block any oncoming attacks. The system allows for incredibly strategic fighting that has an extremely high skill level and demands fast reflexes from players. In its current state, it works incredibly well.

Three game modes were available in the test weekend: Duel, Brawl, and Dominion. Duel allowed players to battle in a 1v1 fight to the death while Brawl placed players into a 2v2 style deathmatch. Dominion is a much larger mode where players work to capture points in this 4v4 mode; there were three points for teams to capture on each map with the center point being where the two armies fought in the middle of the map. Each mode could also be played against AI which was perfect for practicing moves and learning the battle mechanics.

Here’s some footage of the closed alpha multiplayer test on our YouTube Channel.