Alright, so the Alpha test has come and gone, and with it, some utterly excellent gameplay. Seriously, I don't think I've played anything that ran so smoothly in an Alpha test in my life - huge shout out to Ubi Montreal for going all in on this one. Aside from that, here and some things to chew on;

I did run into a lot of internal crashes (meaning it didn't crash my ps4, but it did drop me out of the match). Annoying, but given the state of the test, understandable. I hope that's mitigated by the time Beta testing rolls around.

Combat felt meaty, and the different classes actually felt unique to each other. Nothing was more tense for me playing around as the Kensei as running into the utter iron curtain that was the Conqueror. Honestly, of all the classes, I honestly feel like the Conqueror needs a bit of re-balancing. For the insane amount of defensive and uproot pressure he can put on his foes (that shield charge, man, that shield charge...) his firepower needs to get cut back just a little bit further. He's meant to tie people up into making the mistake of ignoring his friends, or at least that's the vibe I got from him.

Berserker needs more attack speed; I have two axes, lemme swing em both all the time. I felt like he was the slowest assassin I ran into in my life, and I honestly never felt too threatened by his presence unless I was already engaged in a fight and he joined in from behind (yea, yea, Rogues do it from behind. I got it.)

Kensei, Warden and Raider are all bloody perfect as are. Don't touch 'em, seriously. They are perfectly balanced, with each one being able to perform on par with each other, all the while feeling different.

The Orochi seems to be an odd little murderfly; in the right hands, you don't want to be anywhere near one of them in the battlefield. But the learning curve seemed to be stiff and the overall performance of the class wasn't what I expected from something coined 'assassin'. Overall, it may just be a familiarity factor for the player base, but I definitely think both the assassins offered in the Alpha need a re-visit at the development table.

Regarding Orders - I would take a page from Heroes of the Storm here. Make the Orders general jobs that can be completed either in PvP or against the AI across the board (Heroes uses a simple format - play as 'X' character class, play so many games as 'x' race or win 'x' number of games). Some of the player base will enjoy PvP, others will not. Don't force people to play a game mode they don't enjoy simply to get some steel to customize their characters. Let players explore all the game modes because they WANT to, not because they feel they HAVE to to get the steel currency to buy the shiny toys.

Again, none of this is meant as denigration to what has been presented - like I opened with, this was one of, if not THE best Alpha that I have had the pleasure to partake in. The game ran well beyond a few connection and'/or game error hiccups, and most of the classes were utterly fun to play as. The maps looked very polished, combat had a weight to it that I have not seen in many games, and the Art of Battle angle mechanic is fantastic.

Keep up the good work! I can't want for the beta rounds!