Review: Chivalry 2 – PS5, PS4

In 2010, Torn Banner’s Chivalry: Medieval Warfare was initially a Half-Life 2 mod called Age of Chivalry. This concept eventually became its own game. Nearly nine years after the first game, Chivalry 2 is back to remind us that swords and shields are still fun to play with.

If you enjoyed the original game, then you’ll be right at home with its follow up. However, if this is your introduction to the franchise, Chivalry 2 is a team-based medieval multiplayer, where you run around in hostile battlefields to dominate and massacre the opposing army in an onslaught of bloodshed. Imagine your stereotypical online FPS, but with swords, maces, and longbows instead of guns, knives, and nukes.

Before you can get messy in an online match, there’s a single-player tutorial to complete. The tutorial is informative and it explained the basic and more advanced controls really well. The instructor’s mannerisms are absolutely outrageous, as he reminded me of that guy at your local pub shouting at the top of his lungs asking for the house ale. He comes across obnoxious but hilarious all rolled into one and made learning the fundamentals far easier. After you’ve learned how to swing a sword in offensive and defensive manoeuvres, you’re ready to charge into war.
Chivalry 2 is a fast-paced game where you’ll be hacking and slashing your foes until their arms, legs, and heads are littering the blood-stained ground. You’ll have to manoeuvre yourself across the battlefield and slaughter the opposing army to achieve certain desired goals. You can execute three main moves, and these can be chained in a sequence to make a lethal combo. Timing is key and learning when to swing your weapon will definitely help you land more blows. Although, if you swing too frantically, you’ll run the risk of cutting up your own guys – this happened to me far more often than I would like to admit. One time, I sliced through an enemy soldier and one of my own allies at the same time.

When attacking is not possible, you can perform a blocking action to stop incoming aggression. However, the only drawback of this is it drains your stamina, so to embrace the tactful soldier in the art of war truly, you’ll have to block only when necessary. I rarely performed blocking moves as my philosophy on the battlefield is the best defence is a good offence, so the hacking and smashing like a medieval barbarian was my style of choice. If you really end up in a pickle with too many soldiers bombarding you all at once, you can always dash to avoid incoming attacks along with performing a parry when needed.
If you prefer fighting from afar, you can opt for yourself to fight with long-ranged weapons such as a longbow or a crossbow. You can also use various long-ranged historical contraptions to attack soldiers from afar, too. For instance, I used a catapult to fling projectiles, killing seven soldiers with one single blow. The fact four of the seven soldiers were on my team is something we should all overlook; it’s the number of kills that matters, right?
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You can also pick up objects around the map to kill soldiers in dozens of interesting and bizarre ways, like using a decapitated head as a weapon, or throwing a live chicken at the enemy. War is weird, no?

The game features several game modes that support a maximum of 64 players in a match. Team Deathmatch and Free-For-All matches were a complete bloodbath but so much fun to play. Saying this, Team Objective was without a doubt my favourite mode as it captured the atmosphere of a full-on castle siege. If you’re attacking, you’ll have to charge through towns, castles and the countryside to either liberate prisoners or eliminate the opposing army’s heir to the throne, but if you’re defending, you’ll use the environments to your advantage, such as castle walls and catapults.
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There are four classes to choose from: Archer, Vanguard, Footman, and Knight. Within each class, there are four subclasses available that have their own distinctive weapons and gameplay features. After gaining levels in the global rank and a certain fighting class, you can buy new customisations such as helmets, heraldry, and weapons skins.

Chivalry 2 is a great team-based multiplayer game. It fully commits to the medieval period with a surprising number of historical weapons and crafty instruments that you can use in battle. What I appreciate the most is that you can either casually pick up and play, swinging your blade mindlessly until you inevitably get a few kills under your belt, or you can build upon your craftsmanship and progressively advance your skill level over time to outwit anybody you come across on the battlefield. Either way you’re guaranteed a good time. I don’t think I’ll ever become the ultimate tactician, though, but I’ll definitely be storming the castle for a long time to come. Enemies and allies had better watch out…