War of the Roses: Historical Hardcore Combat

Winding a crossbow for a second shot was no small feat in medieval times. After firing, the user would have to bend over at the waist, placing a foot on the crossbow, and then use some sort of tool (and an immense amount of strength) to wind the bow back into firing position – often while under attack.It was laborious, time-consuming and absolutely worth it when facing a heavily armored opponent.

The crossbow in Paradox’s multiplayer combat game War of the Roses operates in a similar fashion. While still easier and faster to reload than a real-life medieval crossbow, it’s nonetheless much slower and far less accurate than other first-person shooters weapons (perhaps as a consequence, it’s also vastly more satisfying to score a kill with than a rifle). Likewise each piece of War of the Roses gameplay feels like it fits into a similar design framework as the crossbow. This is an admirable attempt to keep things fun while also staying true to the 15th century English civil war from which it derives its name and weaponry.

War of the Roses pits two teams against one another in epic medieval battles harkening back to the titular bloody war between the houses Lancaster and York. After picking a class, you then customize your load out, selecting a primary weapon from a medieval armory – think axes, swords, pole arms, crossbows, bows and hammers. Once you settle on your main killing tool, you can customize it, altering everything from its hilt to its edge and its type of steel. Each customization option allows you to make minor stat alterations to stats like your attack speed and the weapons durability (yes, they can break). Then, after you’ve settled on your main weapon, you do it all over again for a second weapon, your dagger and each piece of your armor. But wait, it’s still not over: you finish off your character’s loadout by picking perks, which affect, say, their sprint time or effectiveness at reviving downed allies. Oh yeah, and eventually you’ll unlock horses, which give even more options for customization. The sheer potential for unique class building may be impressive, but long-term it raises concerns about how balanced it will be. After all, we’re talking about a huge number of variables, any one of which could potentially be combined to create an exploitative build.

Potential balance concerns aside, cutting enemies down in War of the Roses feels good…when you can manage it. Shooting takes place in first-person, but all melee combat takes place in third, and would-be heroes have to undo a lot of the skills they’ve learned from many other games. In something like Darksiders, God of War or even Skyrim, hitting an enemy with any part of the weapon deals damage, whereas in War of the Roses you must hit with the blade or head of the weapon. This means that while you might equip a halberd because it has much better range than an enemy’s sword, he can close the gap and render it ineffectual (it’s also hard to tell if you’re at the right range since you don’t have realistic depth perception). The team at Paradox touts a super-realistic damage model here, but in practice it takes more than a little getting used to.
Just swinging any weapon effectively takes a lot of getting used to, really. To swing you click the left mouse and then move it in the intended direction of the swing. This cocks the weapon, and then you can release it to let loose a (hopefully) mighty blow. The direction of the swing is important, too, because a skilled opponent can counter blows by right clicking and swinging their mouse in a matching direction. It’s already asking a lot of you to consider the reach and placement of your blade during combat, but adding the numerous swings and counters to combat makes it difficult to get into. Even more so when you consider that combat often involves multiple people swinging at each other in a no-holds-barred skirmish. It’s just downright overwhelming, and could be too hardcore for its own good.

In those brief moments where everything clicks, though, War of the Roses feels extraordinarily rewarding. In a one-versus-one battle, where you have time to think and react, it feels great to deftly block an attack and strike down your opponent. Even better: missing repeatedly with a crossbow only to get a last-second shot that strikes a charging knight right off his horse. He falls dead at your feet, you take his horse, draw your sword and become a mounted cavalry unit. Hell. Yes.

War of the Roses won’t be released until later this year, but I’m not sure extra development time is what’s required. Rather, the design choices made for War of the Roses seem to make it inherently unfriendly to less-skilled or new players. But maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. Crossbows weren’t easy to wind for our 15th century counter-parts, nor were heavy iron-wrought swords easy for a person to wield in battle. War of the Roses attempts to make a game that somewhat accurately portrays the challenge and skill of medieval combat…I’m just afraid that “fun” might have been sacrificed a bit too much for the sake of history.

Source : feeds.ign.com