The last time we met on these hallowed grounds I found myself having a pretty good time playing Gloria Victis. My piece detailed some of the game’s history and how it found itself sunsetting but then having a second sunrise too! Before I knew it, I’d run afoul of my editor’s very strict and very ridged standards on column width and breadth resulting in what your eyes now read before you.
My second look at Gloria Victis continues this week with a more detailed look at the game’s features and some more thoughts about the game’s combat system. It’s been able to maintain a steady level of fun and entertainment for me over the past month but it hasn’t been without some annoyances.
That said, let’s dig in.
When you first load up Gloria Victis and design your first character, you’ll go through a series of questions to help you flesh out your class. You basically have three options: archer, heavy armored tank, or foot soldier. Now, these aren’t hard and fast classes – you can modify and play them any way you want. But they tend to lean in these directions. Technically, the game is classless but, if we’re really being honest with each other here, these are classes.
Similarly, there’s the three basic armor classes and slew of different weapons to choose from like sword and board, two-handed swords, polearms, and axes. Given the game’s theme and setting you can probably guess them all yourself too. As you use a weapon, you’ll gain proficiency with it which effectively levels it. There’s some abilities you can choose to level too, like the shield bash I mentioned last time, that add some variability to the game’s combat, but it’s on the lighter side.
As a new player, Gloria Victis begins like a whole lot of these PvP sandboxy games often do – with a nice PvE, quest-based tutorial. I say that, though it’s totally tongue-in-cheek; I actually appreciate a good beginner tutorial to help get me situated and comfortable with the different systems. This system likewise explains the game’s combat through some step-by-step explanations and even a few quest hubs to move around. Once that’s all said and done you’ll eventually be brought to your faction’s capital to begin to take part in some territory wars.
Now, like all of you, I’ve played every different manner of video game from side-scrollers to FPSs to JRPGs and everything in-between. But not point-and-clicks. We’re talking about real games here after all.
And spread among those games are countless ways of fighting. Sure there’s classic MMO style tab targeting and even the more modern take that blends it with an action-style system, where you still have a target and your attacks will generally hit them given they do not react with some sort of defensive posture or maneuver. I tend to appreciate a good action-oriented system that leans towards targeting an opponent but rewards skillfully launching attacks while timing your dodges and defenses.
But the form of combat that Gloria Victis takes is just too inconsistent for me. Last time, I explained how the combat works with the mouse-clicks and the lefts and the rights (and the ups and downs too) but how it actually performs in practice is just not snappy enough for me. It’s slow but sloppy.
I actually appreciate a good slow combat. One where properly timed feints and attacks can mean the difference between complete dominance and utter failure. But something about this style, which again is similar to Mortal Online and Chivalry, just doesn’t stick for me. It’s far too floaty and wild. The best game’s I’ve seen take on this form of combat, which were both still target based, are For Honor and Absolver.
I could talk for hours about how incredible and under appreciated Absolver was. Truly a one-of-a-kind combat game that took skillful play and rewarded building a character around it. For Honor leans more towards a rock-paper-scissor game but it locks it in perfectly. You control exactly which way and how your attacks are going to be delivered. Gloria Victis just doesn’t have that same level of precision.
Speaking of a rock-paper-scissor system, surprisingly enough Gloria Victis also has it’s own form of this with its damage and armor types. I was surprised to see it at first because you rarely see games anymore put any value in armor and weapons types beyond flavor or plain stats.
While you would expect heavy armor has more defense than medium and light, that’s not quite the case here. While it is still true that you’ll gain more defense with the heavy armor, you will also suffer more damage from a bludgeoning weapon than a slicing or piercing one. Similarly that bludgeoning mace won’t be as effective against lighter geared foes. It’s interesting. I suppose you could have both weapons on your hotbar to swap between.
I honestly also struggle a bit with the lack of proper abilities to cast. Perhaps that is another reason why the combat sails over me a bit. Everything basically feels the same. Whether I’m using a sword and board, or a swap to the axe, or even a mace; it just feels like I’m clicking away. In games where you have skills based on your weapons they will each feel entirely different. No one in Guild Wars 2 ever confused a Guardian with a sword and shield with one who had a mace and shield. You knew right away that those are two very different fights.
Now, with all this said, I’m not saying Gloria Victis is a bad game by any means. I rather enjoyed playing it. It was fun learning the systems and trying out my hand with its combat. I believe the way it’s been built is functional among all the other systems as well. I also appreciate the classless characters – though as the tutorial questionnaire hinted at there’s really only a couple of ways to play.
It doesn’t work for me but that’s OK. There were a solid amount of players roaming around the newbie zones with me and it gave me some hope to see that players who enjoy this sort of system could find a home here. Even if you don’t love the combat, as I said last time, there’s a whole slew of different crafting and other tasks you could become master of. So check it out, it’s free to play after all!
