For Honor

Introduction

For Honor is Ubisoft's third-person melee fighting game, developed by Ubisoft Montreal with Ubisoft Quebec, Ubisoft Toronto and Blue Byte, and published by Ubisoft. It launched on 13 February 2017 at NZ$49.95 (Gold and Ultimate editions run to NZ$99.95 and NZ$149.95), putting knights, vikings, samurai, the Wu Lin and the Outlander faction against each other in one-on-one duels and team-based PvP built around a stance-and-parry system called "Art of Battle." Nine years and 53 pieces of DLC later, it sits at 69% positive ("Mixed") across 83,656 English-language Steam reviews, and remains under active seasonal development — Year 10, Season 2, with a new hero, Arakure, added as recently as July 2026. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 26,206 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews, to separate what has genuinely changed from what is a permanent fixture of the game.

A combat system nobody has replicated

The single most consistent thing in this review's negative sample is that even the angriest one-star reviews stop to praise the fighting itself. "The core gameplay is absolutely unique, taking the spirit of the fighting genre and turning it into something new and exciting," reads one long-running review, written despite a thumbs-down. A 2026 reviewer with 82 hours on PC and hundreds more on console put it more bluntly: "Love the actual combat system. It's the only one of its kind, and it (the combat system) is actually pretty fun." Another, 1,016 hours in: "This game has the best fundamental fight mechanics I've ever seen but its ruined every year by the devs who have never seen a balanced character in their life" — praising the system in the same breath as condemning what's built on top of it. That split runs through almost the entire negative sample: the complaints are rarely about the combat's design, and almost always about balance, community or monetisation around it.

Recent sentiment is worse than the lifetime badge, not better

Steam's lifetime aggregate reads 69% positive, "Mixed." Pulling the 100 most recent English reviews instead of the lifetime sample gives 57% positive — a meaningfully rougher number than the badge a shopper sees first. That gap matters: a badge earned across nine years, more than 53,000 lifetime positive reviews and a chaotic 2017 launch can sit well above how the game actually reads today. Unlike some older titles in this outlet's library, this isn't a fossil — the most-helpful negative sample split roughly in half between 2017 launch complaints (servers, always-online single-player, day-one microtransactions) and a substantial, genuinely current cluster from 2025–2026, so the softer recent number reflects live sentiment rather than an artefact of an old wave of votes.

New heroes, whiplash balance

Balance is the single largest complaint in this review's 2025–2026 sample, appearing in well over a third of recent negative reviews, consistently tied to new hero releases. "Every new hero they add, every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ update and it just keeps getting worse," reads one review with 1,266 hours logged. Another, 195 hours: "Every character they add make the game more unplayable." A third, with 550 hours: "do you enjoy intense action packed, rewarding, and balanced gameplay? ... you wont find it here!" A specific, more serious allegation recurs in a smaller number of reviews: that new heroes launch deliberately overpowered during their real-money exclusive-purchase window, then get nerfed only once available to everyone through in-game currency. This review could not independently verify that sequence — it would require tracking a specific hero's patch history across a paid-early-access window — but it is worth flagging as a repeated, specific player allegation rather than vague grumbling, and it lines up with the roughly monthly patch cadence this review confirmed through the game's own news feed.

A community reviewers call toxic, on top of a brutal curve

Toxicity and matchmaking complaints appear independently across reviewers who otherwise disagree about almost everything else. "Some of if not the greasiest slimiest losers the world has ever seen," reads a 773-hour review that opens by calling the combat "some of the most unique and in depth" the author has played. Another, 19 hours in: "The skill matchmaking is inaccurate and puts new players up against seasoned veterans." A third, with almost a thousand hours: "What once was a game about learning the movesets of each hero, dueling and getting better to fight tougher opponents is now a toxic cesspool of spamming, scripting, griefing." The Steam achievement data backs up how steep the resulting curve is in hard numbers: across 60 achievements, the single most-earned one sits at just 15.5% of owners, the median is 5.6%, and 23 of the 60 sit under 5%. Most people who buy this game, in other words, never get anywhere near deep enough to be the veterans newer players are describing running into. A handful of 2026 reviews also report scripting, lag-switching and alleged DDoS attacks despite EasyAntiCheat being active on the Steam page — a claim this review reports as attributed player testimony, since a review corpus cannot audit anti-cheat software.

Paying for the box, then the heroes, then the season

For Honor's current storefront lists a NZ$49.95 Standard Edition alongside NZ$99.95 Gold and NZ$149.95 Ultimate editions, 53 pieces of DLC, individual heroes priced roughly NZ$16.65–24.95 each, and active Year 10 Season 2 battle passes around NZ$16.95. Several reviewers, across both the 2017 and 2025–2026 samples, treat this as a standing complaint rather than a launch-only one: "This game, progression wise, is some of Ubisoft's most greedy attempts ever to nickle and dime you," reads one 2025 review, while a much older one from shortly after launch complains about paying "$30 to unlock the entire skill progression as well as $5 for a pack of 5,000 steel." The specific numbers have changed over nine years, but the shape of the complaint — a full-price purchase that still gates individual characters and content behind further real-money spend — has not.

Nine years, still going

Set against all of that, For Honor's longevity is a genuine, checkable positive. The game's own news feed shows monthly roadmap posts running through 2026, a new hero added in July, and a Year 10, Season 2 in progress — an unusually long active life for a 2017 game sitting on a "Mixed" aggregate. That longevity is echoed in the negative sample itself: reviewers routinely report thousands of hours, several describe the game in explicitly compulsive terms ("I hate this game... and yet I can't stop playing it"), and more than one predicts they'll be back on it the same night they write a one-star review. That is not a ringing endorsement of the game's design around its combat system, but it is hard evidence the core loop still has a real grip on a large, long-running playerbase.

Verdict

For Honor's "Art of Battle" combat is the rare case where this review's own negative sample argues against itself — reviewers writing thumbs-down keep stopping to say the fighting is unlike anything else in the genre, nine years and 83,656 English reviews after launch. What surrounds it is the problem: recent sentiment (57% positive on the last 100 English reviews) reads worse than the lifetime 69% "Mixed" badge, balance gets upended by nearly every new hero according to this review's recent sample, the community draws repeated, independent toxicity complaints, and the monetisation stacks real-money hero purchases and seasonal passes on top of an already-expensive box price. Worth it for committed PvP players willing to climb a genuinely brutal learning curve — a poor pick for anyone looking for a relaxed pickup-and-play multiplayer game.