Very detailed and deep medieval combat. The combat was so deep it actually used to be a problem, since most players played for years and became extremely good so new players couldn't compete. However, it was recently made free on epic which brought a ton of new players and evened out the playing field.

Its main competitor is Chivalry 2, which is basically a more arcadey version of it. Chivalry 2 is a bit more realistic because you can hold a blocking stance while in Mordhau you can only block for a second. However, I understand the purpose of this is to make the Mordhau combat more deep by allowing you to try to trick people into blocking.

After 2100 hours, I've concluded it isn't for me. the dragging mechanic and shotty miss detector ruined the fun for me.

This suffers from a lack of fun modes and any good content patches. frontline/invasion is considered a meme and while you can sink a hundreds of hours in it. the matches come down to which team is more stacked than the other. Utilizing different strategies and getting long killstreaks doesn't guarantee a win and it sucks. Also there's no reward for the winning team.

Like any generic fighting game, it suffers from a lack of story and a bad tutorial that doesn't teach the player anything that will help them compete against other players.

ranked mode is a joke because it has no rewards, and it's uncompetitive by allowing the tank perk and throwing weapons.

the playerbase is really small due to the nature of the melee slasher or first person melee genre being inherently difficult(no skills transfer over), but that's also because the devs are creatively bankrupt and the lead dev is stubborn when it comes to changes.

its strengths is that the gameplay is superior to chivalry 2,
it has custom servers, and in-depth character customization which can be buggy but nothing drastic.

I would recommend sticking to duel servers and learning comp right away. the combat can be unsatisfying like stamina wars and dodging drags, but if you find the combat fun then you'll get to enjoy the best melee slasher currently.

fair warning the comp scene has been dead for over 2 years and the community is really toxic, but you can report players and the moderation team will look at it through discord.

Mordhau is a precise, strategic medieval combat game where at its core can be a fun if not challenging experience, only somewhat let down by high ranking players who exploit and abuse attack animations and mechanics that make it a total nightmare for new and experienced players. This is a problem the developers who were fans of Chivalry, a game that had the exact same issues wanted to address and fix have not bothered with over the span of 4 years since the initial release. This in turn has forced newcomers and long existing players to back out of the experience. To be clear I'm not bashing the combat system overall as when you're in confrontation with players who play skillfully and fairly, it really is engaging, testing and fun. Another primary reason for people abandoning the game is due to a lack of regular content updates and the reported toxicity of the community over the years (I kept my chat box off from the start for a reason.)


So apart from the odd frustrations, there are good aspects to Mordhau. You can customize your own "mercenaries" where you can create unique and stylized soldiers with different weapons, armour sets, utilities, traits and feature options. If you've been playing a long time, you'll know the most iconic character is a bald, naked man wielding a maul yelling "charge!" in a high pitched, Foppish voice. Maps are interesting, immersive and well designed, ranging from the narrow cities of Feitoria where close quarter battles are more fierce to the open land of the Crossroads.

In regards to player interactions (I've only played on official servers), people can be outright hilarious at times which is one of the reasons I kept playing. The exchange of apt emote responses, amusing interactions with enemies and allies, and the bards who play some banging tunes that we can dance to. So it's not all bad when you can hop into a server where everyone can make the experience a good time.

Kind of a funny and fun game. Extremely intuitive and takes A LOT to be an expert at it.
(28 hours on Steam)
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Controls/Gameplay - The controls are basic but difficult to master combos and proper crit hits. The skill ceiling is high and it is unforgiving for 95% of new players so they'll have to endure the endless slaughter at the beginning.

However, it is a fun game even for its intuitive mechanics. Can be extremely funny as well as chaos erupts literally everywhere.

Graphics & Sound - Decent graphics which aren't too abusing for a standard PC. Sound design is well made.

Story - No story, just slaughter

Characters - Nothing to take note

Replayability - Not necessarily a story based game so play it whenever you want.

Overall - 3.5/5