This is a post for people considering to buy the game and looking for real experience with the game.

The game have very nice graphics, the combat system is well-thought and characters are well-balanced in 1vs1 or 2vs2 (Meaning that unless you are top-tier your win depends more on your skill than on what character you choose). It may seem at first that some characters are stronger but once you get the hang of the tricks they use you’ll be fine. I really enjoyed the early phases of the game when I was exploring how things work. But once I was sure I have a good idea how the game should respond I begun to notice more and more annoying details that finally drove me to abandon the game.

Grouping
is not working, particulary cross-region.
I had two friends I wanted to play the game with. One was in a different Ubisoft region and the another in the same. I wasn't able to get more than a few games for the whole weekend day and out of those games we actually got into we finished maybe one or two. During a whole day of trying. No such problems when I played alone. The other friend I played with - the one in my region - complained about lags (Will get to that later). It's clear that the game has cross-region issues that simply can't be overcome. If you want to play with your friend find out if you two are in the same region. I wasn't that far from the cross-region friend so physical location is probably not the deciding factor, my guess is that problem lies in Ubisoft artificial division into regions.

Every time you get kicked out of a game or the game ends you have to make the group a new as it automatically disbands. Annoying. Especially if you forget about it, queue for another one, game starts loading and you realize your friends aren't in a group with you anymore. You have to wait until the map loads (that is not quick) and you have to leave the game right after you start and possibly weaken poor players who were queued with you. Of course you can see this happening to other people.

Apparently there are differences in Ubisoft overlay friends list and in-game. Sometimes invites don't work in overlay, sometimes they don't work in game, quite often people go offline according to overlay even though you are playing with them right now. I have green NAT and all troffic allowed in case you want to suggest firewall/antivirus/open ports advices.

Controls

Game is incredibly controller-centric. Ranging from minor annoyances such as you click with mouse on an item in menu and something else pops up (different character in character selection for example) to a more serious ones as getting the guard to the right side doesn't always work. There are no such issues on controller, this is mouse specific. Sure, you can get the guard to the right side when there is no pressure but once you are in the heat of a duel and want to switch to the side you see enemy's 15th attack coming the game simply doesn't move the block even though you did the move with the mouse. This is closely tied to lags in my opinion.
The UI is made in such a way that controlling it with a mouse and keyboard is superbly counter-intuitive up to a point of For Honor feeling like an elaborate promo for buying controller.

Lags

Some people complaing about P2P, some defend it. Ubisoft claims their P2p system is different than others' and it works. No host advantage. Not from what I could observe on my screen. When agaist bots or in single player I can easily parry attacks. Against human opponents I am hard pressed to sometimes even react in the window of opportunity (even against heavy attacks) to move the guard in the right position. Attacks are difinitely faster in terms of having a WAY shorter reaction window. I did traceroutes several times and got results 200-300ms several times. I have optical cable and my usual ping is around 30-50ms. I know how to monitor my network usage and switch my programs off.


Support

I wanted to buy season pass but had technical difficulties. It took Ubisoft three weeks to reply to me and apparently the support guy didn't even bother to read my petition as he suggested I do exactly what I told him wasn't working. Don't expect to get any meaningful help.

My same-region friend had the game crash every time he clicked on anything in World map. For several days. No help, no response, no support.


If you want a quality game now, wait. It may be worth something IF they work out the funcional issues and you get the game on sale.