Mordhau Review – Blood and Glory

I was not ready for Mordhau when Triternion released it in late April. The first-person medieval brawler caught me by surprise. One day it was on the front page of Steam and half my friends list was playing it. The next day I bought it and I’m only now looking back to write this review.

What a bloody, wild ride it’s been.

Mordhau will look familiar to anyone who remembers 2013’s Chivalry: Medieval Warfare from Torn Banner Studios. The gritty, first-person medieval aesthetic is still a surprisingly untapped reserve of video game potential, so the few games that tread within the highways of history (i.e., no elves and dragons), are usually notable based on their offering alone.

Mordhau is an online multiplayer game. There is the possibility to play the game with bots, but that’s about as fun as hunting goats at a petting zoo. The game splits players into two teams (unless it’s free-for-all) and there are currently five maps to battle on, with more on the way.

Five maps may sound like very little, but each battle rotates through sections of the map, so you’ll likely not be battling on the same hillside for an entire match.

Each map has specific objectives that each team must meet to secure victory. For example, on the Mountain Peak map, teams clash in the center of an icy canyon. Both teams must push through the other to reach their objectives; one team must burn down the enemy encampment and the other team has to push a battering ram up to the front doors of a fortress. The varied objectives help to keep the gameplay fresh, especially considering that there are currently only five main maps, and two (smaller-sized) deathmatch-style maps.

The lack of maps may hurt the gameplay experience for some players. While more maps are in the works, rotating through five different maps…OK, four different maps since no one ever votes to play Crossroads…can feel repetitive, especially during longer play sessions.

Fortunately, what could have been a game-ruining lack of variety is saved by the sheer amount of ways to play within those maps.

Want to put on the heaviest armor, pick up the biggest sword and slowly cut through enemies, Darth Vader style? You can do that. Want to silently dash across the edge of the battlefield, pummel your opponents with rocks before vanishing into a cloud of smoke? You can do that. Want to dress up like Gordon Ramsey and run around the battlefield while smacking enemies with a frying pan? You can do that.

Mordhau’s character class customization function is one of the best I’ve come across in any multiplayer game. From the start, players have everything unlocked, with the exception of weapon designs and armor designs. Mordhau gives players a handful of pre-built characters to use, but once I got the hang of the game I was building and tinkering with my own customized character classes.

Players build a character class using a set number of points. Stronger weapons, armor and abilities cost more points, so if you opt to use a very strong weapon (like the longbow) it’ll cost you in points. Alternatively if you build a jack-of-all-trades, abilities-focused character you’ll have very few points to put towards a weapon.

You’re going to want a weapon.

The combat mechanics in Mordhau are the star of the game. Moving the mouse and clicking triggers a swing in the direction you moved the mouse in. Move the mouse left-to-right and click: your character swings the weapon left to right. Right-click to block incoming attacks; if you time it just right and left-click after a successful block you can quickly counter-attack.

Reading about it will make it seem more complicated than it really is. Mordhau comes with a tutorial that will teach you all the basics and you’ll naturally get better with the mechanics as you play online. Youtuber Trix put together an excellent Mordhau learner’s guide that will give you a straightforward way to see how combat works.

The only issue I have with fighting in Mordhau is that in the chaos of battle it can be difficult to tell apart friend from foe. You can damage your teammates with a wild swing of your battleaxe or a poorly aimed arrow. Dying because you were outplayed is frustrating, but dying because your teammate had zero awareness can be infuriating.

Mordhau is already my third-most played game on Steam, just beneath PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds , and sits three spots higher to the top than Chivalry does. With new maps just around the corner, plenty of weapons to master and the possibility of better mod support in the future, I don’t see any reason why I’ll stop playing Mordhau anytime soon.

A retail copy of Mordhau purchased by Epic Brew was used for this review.