There is also an impressive balance to the defense. The basic version is simply holding the right mouse button to defend against head-on attacks. You can hold this button down as long as you want to keep your guard up, but doing so depletes your limited stamina which you’ll want to hold onto for dodging. Dodging pulls double duty as both an evasive maneuver and as a means to sneak past an enemy’s defensive stance. As one may expect, there are also parrying systems, focused on making attacks immediately after blocks. The last few moves, such as kicking and jabbing, follow more of a “the best defence is a good offence” style of logic. They act as counters to stop attackers from stacking multiple slashes in a row.

The two sides of the coin in attack and defense, and the different classes, contribute to a well-rounded and dramatic fighting system. In the grand scheme of things, I’d say it’s a well-conceived system. Central pillars of timing, positional advantage, and keeping the opponent on the back foot come to mind. There is a logical, calculating art of death that runs red through the veins of this game. It’s beautiful in a sense. While it can be a bit of an intimidating thing to step into, the tutorial does a very impressive job. It’s not only teaching the basics of hitting things and defending. Players also learn to keep the upper hand when you have it and how to block or to evade damage when you do not. I’ll put my hand up and say that it didn’t fully sink in the first time. I did a few rounds, and when I couldn’t get a game for a moment, I tried out the tutorial again. It genuinely helped to see some of those lessons a second time over. If nothing else, the third-person mode helped me process the bloody mess that I seemed to be constantly walking into.

If the main menu is anything to go by, team mode is considered the one that belongs centre stage. At the end of the tutorial, you are asked to pick one of the two warring factions. The Mason order in the red and black stands for dominance over the weak. The Agatha Knights are in blue and white, standing for duty and honour, believing themselves to be entitled to the throne. I’ll say right now that, meaning no disrespect to the game’s writers, this decision is not really worth considering. It’s noteworthy that Agatha V Mason maps demonstrate cleanly the Red Oni, Blue Oni trope that has become a bit of a gaming cliché as of late. Basically, it boils down to “passionate and defiant group vs. controlling authority group”. There are so many games that have this dichotomy and it’s starting to feel a little stale.

The only real reason for factions is to sell the team modes. Each of the multiplayer games begins with some kind of narrative being tossed out. These fights get fancy names like “The Slaughter of Coxwell” and characters will get shouted at about dying for your cause, all to instil a sense of narrative into the future massacre. It fits that the majority of these modes are “Team Objective” modes. It will ring familiar to many players. Objectives will require attacking teams to push payloads, clear obstructions to a payload, open gates by force, control areas, kill targets in an allotted time, and more. Defending teams merely have to hold the position and prevent the attacking team’s encroachment.

So let’s jump back to that topic of chaos. There are 40 and 64 player servers. Some maps, particularly those in deathmatches, are small. Even the large objective maps use “return to battlefield” mechanics to keep the combatants in close proximity and chokepoints. Add these two elements to the long attack wind-ups and friendly damage, and you have everything you need to make sure that little “team damage” subtitle earns its salary. For example, I see an opponent, I get a nice heavy swing going, and a teammate barges in front and tanks all the damage. The horizontal slash, prized for its ability to sweep through multiple targets, frequently becomes a liability. Over time I narrowed my offensive capabilities. No slashing, no overheads, stabs only. This became the go-to attack. Stabs seemed like the smallest risk of friendly fire. Over the course of the two dozen or so campaigns I played, I killed and was killed by members of my own team multiple times. Funnily enough, it undercuts the whole “team effort” thing when your own team is clubbing you to death.

I will also say, the game isn’t the best at making some information visible. Usually, it was easy to tell who was on what team on the battlefield. However, the cosmetics at times undermined this effort. Some Agatha skins have minimal visible blue attire, and the same is true of red on select Mason skins. The other problem is the blood effects. Aesthetically the blood is a nice choice. It can help get a read on who are the injured characters, so it helps in-game as well. There’s just a little problem. We have a red team fighting a blue team. Covering a character in red indiscriminate of affiliation throws a spanner in the works. It’s an unwarranted critique you may think, but that lapse in concentration as you determine friend from foe can be a real disadvantage.