izigame.me

TLDR: The devs listened too much to the top 10% of players and now the game feels unplayable to those not putting 30hrs a week into this nearly dead game.
I played this game on day of release and put 40 hours in the first week.
This game has reached a semi-dead semi-unwelcome state where only the top 15% still really play it. The game sold over a million copies and had ~40k players for its first two months and then fell off to ~5, now it hovers at 1500 per day. I think this is because the only people still playing are the people who were good from day one or have put in the time to really stick around. The changes to shields in patch 10 resulted in a lot of people being unable to keep up with the higher skill players in the frontline and invasion modes. The changes to horses has also meant you can't really do a lot of the same silly stuff on those either. The game feels to have moved in a purely balanced 1v1 direction and it's real heart came from the silly character customization and voices and the lutes and flutes people and the shenanigans of combat. Now it's hard to land kicks, avoid being decapitated from drags in 3v3 scenarios, you can't rely on a shield to keep you safe, and horses feel super unpowered. This game isn't how it started and it's not the competitor to Chivalry 2 it could and should be. Bring back old shields, get rid of couching limits, maybe change the drags a bit, and stop focusing on the ranked modes that very few people ever got the game for.

Game created by Chivalry 1 players unsatisfied with Chivalry 1 Devs, Ended up being the people that gave them the fuel to create the game in the first place.
And now the cycle continues, Mediocre support from developers creates a unsatisfied player base, Fueling the players themselves to make their own Melee game because its so clear how badly of a job was done that they feel like they could do a better job themselves, Having Zero experience, Creating your own competition in a completely dead genre that previously had almost none.
incredible indepth combat system ruined by redditor fueled patches from 2020-2021. Some issues with things like CFTP being a complete total defense from any weapon in release. Solved by a CFTP Detector patch.
Mordhau went in the direction of Chivalry 2 and Nuked all the depth from the combat in favor of something so restricted it feels less complex than rock paper scissors, And we saw how well the Chivalry 2 Release did, Why would we remove all depth in the combat of the game in favor of something that cant retain any players.
No support or love for any game modes, Ranked, BR, Competitive, Even Horde didn't see any love or effort form the Developers team. Horde got some half baked reskin that honestly modders were doing a better job than you guys are with this newest horde release. How are you supposed to retain players with a SINGLE game mode. Frontline/Invasion cannot be the only game mode that sees any love whatsoever. The only other thing retaining players is The cosmetic system that was done quite well But only lasts so long.
Community Management and Previous balance team (if one even exists now) feels almost completely disconnected from the game outside of forum posts. At least crush tried his best to communicate with the community for better or for worse.
Buying community created content then not Releasing anything with the content you purchased from your community so we cannot play/use it anymore.
Create a Amazing UI, Then completely Gut the entire UI System for a console port half baked TERRIBLE UI System, Force it upon PC players UNFINISHED, with half of the images for weapons missing, and no ability to switch back to the previous UI and then NEVER update or fix it.
Why not just go Free to Play, And bring in a Fuck ton of micro transactions (Custom Classes and Weapon Skins were always the most popular part of the game Anyways) And with that money put love and effort back into making a amazing IP that did so amazingly well on release, But we somehow failed to improve upon, For ignorant or financial reasons i assume.
No Anti Cheat, Every cheater has to be manually visited and banned The closest thing to a anti cheat is client values being sent to a server created by the community.
The BIGGEST problem in my opinion, Server Side Registry for inputs. Did you parry that swing? No you did not it happened 40ms Too late for the server to register it.
Are you a higher ping player with around 60-70 ping? Well your Feint and Morph windows are Shorter than other players because the server doesn't allow for it.
I understand you fundamentally do not want things like Parry and Windows to be registered on client for cheating reasons, But we do nothing about the cheating anyways, Your weapons release and turn cap can still be edited with a memory editor so having parry and other windows on it seems almost meaningless. Maybe they did it to stop Desyncs that were happening in chivalry 1 but i seriously doubt it.
My fear with this IP and other game developers creating Melee games, Is that they will fall into the Trap
Triternion and Torn Banner have fallen into, And that making a simplified watered down combat system to appeal to casual play is the correct way forward for the genre.
When i think the Chivalry 2 Release was very clear that whats appealing about these games is the combat having a incredible amount of depth and complex systems intentional or not, Creating a very high skill ceiling for these games has always been the biggest factor for retention in the playerbase.
Would i waste 5 Years on this game again if i had the chance to take it all back?
Yes this game is fire.

Its hard to review this game fairly because of the community but i will try and be as fair as possible.
Pros:
Insane customisation options, you can be a winged hussar or a gallowglass or a norman all in the same game and be historically accurate.
Fighting is harsh but fair and requires you to learn you weapon unlike chiv 2 where you can pick up most weapons and murk with it
Funniest first person slasher, you have some of the ugliest soldiers with the absolute worst loadouts killing everyone and its great
Cons:
Community is kind of cancer to the point where i genuinely think the developers need to step in as high level players act like jackasses to newer players and then wonder why the game is dead.
matchmaking is actually terrible as you will be playing with no life tryhards at level 1 who will wreck your shit
since getting money is tied to playing the game well said customisation takes FAR too fucking long, add challenges to get more gold or some shit idk getting kills shouldnt be the only way to get gold.
last point i would like to state is that since this community is loyal to this game to a fault its really hard to talk about the problems of this game without being called slurs or a noob. due to that a lot of the problems this game has will never be fixed due to the old heads of mordhau being this cancer.
Final thoughts:
Overall id still give this game an 8/10 its mechanics and customisation options with the amazing maps are just too good to pass up, just for the love of FUCK mute all shit talkers as they are not to be communicated with and should just be reported immediately (if reporting even works that is lmao)