So I finally got around to playing this before it's sequel, which has a lot more to it that I'll touch upon here and there.
Chivalry, I was expecting to have no one playing it, however, it seems my assumption was incorrect as there are, as of writing this (20/01/2025) still many servers that are up, though when I last checked there weren't many people on them, but perhaps I'm logging on at the wrong time of day?
Regardless, after watching quite a few clips with my friend I did download this because I wanted to see about a side-by-side comparison and it appears that there are quite a few differences both on the positive and the negative.
Immediately you have a huge weapon variety of all kinds of medieval weaponry that you can use to kill your opponents, often dismembering, decapitating or even piercing with some of them. All have their own advantages and disadvantages, but that depends on how you play the game, really and what you feel comfortable with! There's four classes, each one has it's own restrictions for weapons like the Archer who uses a bow or can use javelins of the knight who can use two-handed weapons that are extremely dangerous!
Often I found myself dying very quickly, having no experience of the game, but it's all in good fun and I did get better, soon picking up the maul and crushing people with some over-powered swings. It also appears that you have additional attacks beyond the usual.
The most basic attacks are left mouse button for a swing (slashing attack), mouse wheel down to do a over-head swing and the reverse to do a stab attack, but the two buttons common on a lot of gaming mice (the two on the left-side of the mouse) allow you to do two other types of attacks. One that does a feint overhead and the other where you make two short swings, giving you a pretty good range and chance to hit someone.
As to be expected, all the weapons have their own weaknesses and strengths that are self-explainatory like big weapons taking a long time to recover a swing, but dealing massive damage and smaller weapons that are faster, but do much less damage. That said, the blocking system is there to help negate damage and you can shove (or rather kick) your opponent to wear down their stamina if they think hiding behind their shield will help. You also have thrown weapons, sometimes fire bombs or smoke bombs or even things like throwing axes and knives.
Many different weapon variations you have to pay for, but quite a few were made by members of the community and some were locked behind following the game's community, which I wasn't too interested in as I just wanted to essentially try this out and then move on, but certainly looks worth it considering you get access to some fun cosmetics.
The missions are done in different stages, often starting with the invading army attempting to slaughter peasants or destroy an entrance to get into a castle, or so on. This certainly makes the game a lot more fresh than your usual team PVP game. Especially as some missions do have "payload" sections, but it doesn't end there. You use it to advance to the next area regardless of if it's a corpse cart, a battering ram or even cannon. Sometimes you even you get commit arson and burn down locations and the final is often attempting to assassinate a target like a king, who is fully decked out in armour and controlled by the AI, but often they are smart enough to know not to run out into combat and not have themselves exposed too long for archers.
The only dissappointing thing is, due to the fact the sequel is out, we can't try out all of the fun stuff shown in this video: (https://youtu.be/fNGssAnwFUw?si=n2ZzWkjpO8ArbUG7 I was watching with my friend as he was telling me how much he was enjoying the game he got access via xbox gamepass.
You can't pick up other player's weapons (or thrown your own non-ranged weapons), you can't pick up heads, once you lose your arm you are dead, there's no healing bandages, no abduction missions from what I experienced and no stealing pigs and chickens either!
Don't get me wrong, this game is still good for what it is, but sadly as the sequel exists there doesn't appear to be much of a reason to play this, apart from having access to so many weapons AND, at least according to my friend, they don't have flails in the newer game which is a real shame as it's so satisfying to use that as a weapon, even though the chain is static and always straight, but there is no perfect game so that probably won't worry you too much. It's still a whole lot of fun though and each battle feels fresh due to the large variety of missions as I mentioned. Not to mentioned the multi-staged nature of them too.
