Big Mordhau replace throws open the gates of Castello, a brand new map

With its newest replace, Mordhau has opened up a complete new fortress for us to run round sticking swords into folks. It’s good, primarily based on the ten minutes I’ve spent being reduce to items to this point, however that’s not all that’s new. The Mountain’s Peak map has been expanded, ranked duels have left beta, there are new cosmetics, and the fight’s been tightened up in a bunch of the way I don’t perceive. I feel I’m feeling the impression of them, although. The swordplay’s by no means been sharper.

Developers Triternion have positively upped their map-making game. At launch the maps had been dominated by massive open battlefields, whereas these days they’re crammed with nooks and crannies the place the preventing can spill into one thing extra private. They’ve been inching nearer in direction of the dimensions and element of Battlefield maps, and whereas Castello remains to be a good distance from that, it does sufficient to counsel the identical feeling. I don’t really feel like I do know my manner round inside 5 minutes.

Also, I bought to kick somebody into these spikes.

With ranked duels rising from beta, Triternion have reset everybody’s duel MMR. They’ve added leaderboards, too, for braggarts. Ranked duels don’t comprise the silliness of duel servers, however they make up for that by letting you fixate on making a quantity go up.

The loadout system’s been tweaked, too, the place you now spend 48 factors equipping weapons, perks and armour, fairly than 16. The devs say this makes the game simpler to stability, and hope to “promote more diverse builds”. That’s a laudable purpose, however so far as I can see there’s nonetheless little incentive for me to desert the weapons-light construct I all the time run with. I desire to save lots of my factors for perks, and forage weapons from fallen foes.

As for the fight adjustments, they’re many and delicate. The patch notes point out much less floaty motion, tweaked timings for stab assaults, momentum-preserving leap kicks, and… a lot else. The cumulative impression makes sword-swinging that rather more exact, blows simply that little bit extra deliberate. I wasn’t conscious Mordhau’s fight may get even higher, however right here we’re. Happy days.