To me, melee attacks are always the most satisfying way to end someone in an online game. Nothing feels better than having thousands of dollars worth of high-tech weaponry at your disposal and still choosing to take somebody’s life with your bare hands. Thankfully, Paradox Interactive is giving us a whole team-based combat game built around melee combat.
Using weapons appropriate to its 15th-century England setting like axes and broadswords, players duke it out up close and personal in War of the Roses. The fighting system is based around timing and precision. Players will have to swing and block with their weapons at the correct time and in the correct place to deal massive damage to their enemies in dynastic-civil-war era England.
Taking time with your attacks and the heavy knight armor make War of the Roses (not based, sadly, on the 1989 film directed by Danny DeVito) feel a bit slow compared to today’s online games, but it makes each hit feel all the more sweeter. Even in this early alpha build, WotR really got across the kinetic clang of smashing someone’s skull against the inside of their helmet with a giant flail.
Expect War of the Roses this fall.
