I really enjoyed my time with "For Honor" this last weekend.

My friend and I played a lot and it seems we got pretty decent. Towards the end of the alpha we were doing 2v2 brawls and crushing people.

I personally played conqueror and really like this class. I am very glad that there is a disable focused character because that's my play style definitely.

I felt like they did a really good job of making the classes unique but also fairly well balanced.

I feel like Orochi might be just slightly overpowered, but then again I think that might also be due to the overburdened connection due to pier to pier hosting coupled with orochi's unique fighting techniques which are more difficult to track.

In duels and brawl I didn't have nearly as many issues with orochi, but in dominion there were times when it seemed I couldn't block him at all (even when I went into defensive mode).

Orochi's damage is pretty nuts for how fast he is. His super high sprint speed also gives him an edge in objective play. I think something should probably be toned down in his kit just slightly since he can be very punishing both offensively and defensively (counter attacking) and has great utility in speed. He's a little bit more squishy than the other champions but I feel like his damage dealing capability and mobility are huge advantages while his hp is only marginally lower than other characters.

Also... Orochi's feats are just way way better than most heros. My friend was playing him and sniping people with bows... Then I'd look at my conqueror's feats and they were just so ridiculously underwhelming in comparison. Don't take this the wrong way though. Feats are cool! Make more good feats for the other classes. Don't take Orochi's cool feats away.

With the exception of body count which is pretty amazing for taking and holding point B, I thought conqueror's feats were pretty garbage. Revising conqueror's feats to enable him to do his job better would be pretty sweet. For instance: reduce the stamina cost of shield charge. Give him increased sprint speed. Allow him to block unblockable attacks. A shield throw would be pretty epic! Stuff like that would actually meaningful perks... not some garbage catapult that requires someone to have downs syndrome to not dodge out of the indicator and murders your friends as often as the enemy.

I can only assume that most of the other classes have pretty crummy feats as well.. since I don't actually know what most of the other feats are. Orochi has a bow that has great range and deals a lot of damage and the rest of the characters have subtle useless crap that was so un-impactful that I never even bothered to look it up. Nuff said. (I think Orochi can toss a knife as well for pretty reliable chip damage from safety?)

I felt like Raider, Warden, and Conqueror were all pretty well balanced. Warden could maybe use some very small buffs, maybe just a couple extra damage on a few of his attacks or something.

Kensei wasn't far off the mark. He's very capable of dealing a huge amount of damage (some of it unblockable). Maybe he's just a little weak against conqueror, but I didn't seem to have to have to work very hard to beat Kensei and they seemed a little underplayed. Kensei I think could use a few ways to put distance on his enemies and utilize his attack range more. Maybe just increasing his back step distance more is all he needs.

Berserker... I see no reason to play berserker, and they just seem really under-tuned. I even watched the videos on berserker to see if people just weren't playing him right... nope... He's got no advantages... defensively or offensively. I was really expecting him to have a stance dance quick attack combo like conqueror has... he doesn't... he really should.... He's got two weapons... he needs some way to utilize them both. He really needs a few attacks that attack from multiple directions at once and hence must be dodged or rolled from. He has two weapons after all (and tiny pathetic range).

The combat system was crisp and responsive (if you have a good host). I love it! I do think that guard break is maybe a little bit strong. I would like to see guard break counters get a little bit bigger window to punish people who get caught using it.

Ladder combat is pretty stupid. It really needs to be changed. Yes there needs to be some mechanics to keep people from being able to cling to a ladder indefinitely, but ladder combat needs to be less effective than on the ground combat... not 1 hit KOs.

Jump attacks are also crazy cheesy. 1 hit kos on jump attacks is pretty dumb and needs some alteration.

I saw people (mostly orochi players again abusing the movement speed) who centered their combat around using ledges for jump attacks and ladders to get their kills.

Again the pier to pier hosting needs to go away. I had times when I got dc'd from the host 4 games straight... and times when the game resync'd a half dozen times and each time the outcome of the fight was different. Very lame to lose a game because your suprise attack failed due to the enemy getting 4 redo's due to resyncing. Even more lame to lose an hour of xp/quest progress to disconnects.

Overall. The game is an A+ I give you this rating in the full trust that you'll see pier to pier as the trash system it is and make dedicated servers. It's an alpha. I get it. But do the right thing for the final version.

My friend and I are already going through withdrawals. We're really looking forward to the finished product and trying out the new classes.