It can take a little time to realise that the movement of the mouse isn't the actual swinging of the blade and you need only the lightest of twitches to tell the game how you want to strike. There's nothing to stop you holding down a mouse button to either be permanently parrying in one direction, or to have a weapon raised and ready to strike from a particular angle. If you want to parry, you hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse in the direction that a blow is coming from. A click only begins your attack, then you must move the mouse in the direction you want to swing from, holding down the left mouse button to build up strength and releasing it when you want to strike. Movement's mapped to the traditional WASD, but the mouse determines the direction and the strength of the swings that you make with your weapon. It doesn't take long to appreciate that this is a game of manoeuvring, timing and careful parrying - or, if you find you're bleeding to death, a lot of wild, desperate swinging. Slashing weapons won't cut through steel breastplates, for example, but aiming for joints in the plating gets results. When they meet on the field of battle, whatever steel they swing at their opponents is effective according to its flavour, where it hits and what kind of armour it makes contact with. Two teams of up to 32 soldiers each go to war, donning 15th-century armour and choosing from an array of halberds, swords, axes, spears, bows and crossbows. Well, it does take its arms and armour rather seriously and its controls do take some getting used to, but they're both part of what gives this game its character - and none of it stands in the way of you having a damn good time getting (late) medieval on people's asses. I thought the difficulty curve would be too steep. I thought the control system might end up unwieldy. When I saw the medieval deathmatch game War of the Roses in development, I wondered if it might become a complex, po-faced affair, all too concerned with the precise simulation of late medieval weapons and the intimate details of period warfare.
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