Very clunky and frustrating. I have played with mouse and keyboard and a plugin controller and neither way makes the game any more enjoyable. Combat tries very, very hard to be good and it would be a pretty good system if the camera didn't bounce around like a methed-up kangaroo and your armor and weapons didn't disintegrate so quickly. Seriously, you can't fight more than three people in a row because your sword and sabatons give out on you after the second Hungarian (forcing you to spend what little money you haven't spent of food and fines on repairing the same farkarkte weapons for the upteenth time). What's more, single-person duels are actually really fun but the game insists on always pitting you against at least five guys at a time on pitched slopy hillsides that penalize any kind of tactical repositioning beyond circling or being surrounded. The menus are all way too crowded and visually busy, ten zillion quest markers are crammed into a tiny compass bar at the top (which, by the way, marks individual objectives as "A" "B" "C" ad infinium but the quest journal doesn't tell you which of the objectives is which), it keeps forcing you into cutscenes (which is a huge pet peeve of mine) which interrupts the flow of gameplay, all the animations are super slow and tedious, and Henry moves like a drunkard.
Ah Henry. Has there ever been a less interesting protagonist than Henry of Skalitz? Look, if they were going for a sort of underdog everyman, some random 15th-century yobbo who gets yanked out of his peaceful village life and thrust into a historic conflict a la Frodo Baggins, fine. But Henry's so painfully uninspiring and lame. He's just some random loser and the game, try as it might, could never make me care any more about him. And he looks like a pug who got hit with a skillet.
I know people love this game. The level of historical detail they packed into it is really commendable. The graphics, on a high setting, are beautiful. The designs of the armor and weapons and the mix-and-match customization make me want to love this game too. But I can't force myself to. It's a clunky, jerky slog with a flat, boring protag and a combat system that's really really good half the time and just plain awful the other half.
Thank the Maker I only spent five bucks on this.
