izigame.me

TLDR

This game is very good if you enjoy PVP combat, it has slowly dwindled in playerbase though. I still encourage people to try it out for a unique experience and have some tips below.

At first glance

The combat is very approachable and fun. You can dismember opponents and every successful attack feels good even after 450 hours. It has simple to understand mechanics:

A few different attack anims (slash, stab, overhead) with alternate variations (keep clicking or hold alt to get them)
Cancel anims to feint (most people think this is cringe and don't do it)
Start a block anim with right click but time it wrong and you can get hit while you recover from the block anim
Kick, (makes shields largely useless you are very good)
Projectile ranged weapons that require timing and drop compensation

This game is immediately fun.

Endless Depth

But what kept me coming back for 450 hours was the unintended massive well of depth:

Attacks can be sped up or slowed down by dragging your mouse with or against the direction of the attack
Attacks can be timed differently based on your orientation when you start them
- This means you can turn your back to the enemy, look up, and do an overhead attack to hit them way faster
- You can start big swipes turning the start of the attack closer or further away from your enemy or fake them out by starting close, missing on purpose, and doing a spin
There are endless mindgames to get your opponent to block when:
- You didn't actually attack (fake them out with movement or looking quickly or using the Man-At-Arms dash or jumping etc)
- Your attack takes longer than they expected (dragging the mouse against the attack direction)
You can move the mouse in a specific away to speed up or slow down stab attacks (which can be very confusing)
You can kick to interrupt the opponents attack to reset the exchange
You can bait them to attack and move just out of range
- Distance management in general can win fights alone
You can quickly look down and duck to dodge a swing and start your attack while they are still in their attack animation
The different characters offer different movement options to change how you engage
- Man-At-Arms gives you a dash which you can use to not even block and move just out of the opponents attack range and attack them without them having time to block
- Vanguard has weapons with long reach and higher movement speed and faster sprint allowing you to just run out of range of the opponents attack and reach them with a longer weapon before their attack anim ends
- Knights are slow but hit hard and have weapons that can be brutally hard to read when you combine all the speed variation techniques (messer and maul)
You can hit around your opponents block by moving to the side and stabbing, moving the anim in an arcing motion around their block hitbox

I probably didn't mention everything but this is what kept me in the game. The different weapons in the game and different playstyles using different combinations of these hidden mechanics resulted in an extremely high skill ceiling. The bulk of my playtime was spent in 1v1 duel servers back when they were still highly popular. I would get destroyed by better players for 10s of hours until I got better and found my style.
Its insane that there is no overwhelming meta and how diverse and balanced the approaches are in this game. It really feels like skill is the main determining factor.
Then there's the modding and community servers. Later on a big part of my playtime was spent in Horde mode servers, the falltoyourdeath map server with Black Knight mod (can remove limbs from opponents while they are alive).

Chivalry 2 and others

I tried the sequel and similar games like Mordhau but they never came close to the appeal of this game for me. The more strict block timing window and granular control of changing what your block and attacks do by moving your mouse in specific directions was so much more fun compared to streamlined hold to block systems with some directional stuff thrown in. The janky unintended stuff like turning around to hit your opponent faster gave this game such massive charm and unique skill expression that I felt was missing from similar games and the sequel.

Conclusion and tips

If you want to still try this game as a new player after getting convinced by this review let me warn you:

Servers are low population but still there (at least in EU)
The average skill level in duelyard and other servers is very high since only veterans have stuck around, new players are very rare
It can feel like you can't do anything against most people who have mastered this game
There are some unspoken rules like bowing before you duel someone in duelyard (look down with the mouse), feinting (cancelling anims with right click) being considered cringe, etc

That being said I still think the game is a lot of fun so here are some tips:

Start the game at least once
Turn off vsync and motion blur, set a decent mouse sensitivity, mute the music
I'd turn off bloom and sun shafts
Close the game and do the config hack to raise max FPS above 60
Open Documents\My Games\Chivalry Medieval Warfare\UDKGame\Config\UDKEngine.ini in a text editor (Notepad++)
Find "bSmoothFrameRate"
Make sure it is set to TRUE
Find MaxSmoothedFrameRate 2 lines down and set it as high as you want (120 is the max)
Open the game again and get in a server
Open the console with ~ and type "fov 100" or something
Switch weapons for it to take effect
Find what FOV you want to play at (I play at 140 lol)
You can press L to get in third person and see how your character looks doing various stuff (looking down to bow, looking quickly to make it look like you are attacking, etc)
In third person hold shift to sprint and tap W to make it look like you are running in slow-motion lol
Press x and 3 to spam the "Help" voice line between every attack

I hope someone new tries this game out and has fun, if you're not a weirdo can add me and get some guidance or a buddy to play with