This game is fantastic for the early to mid game, but very rapidly becomes nearly unplayable in the latter half. Armored combat between knights is a joke, its mostly just random thrashing in hopes of getting a lucky hit. There doesn't seem to be any true difference between weapons at this level, a pole hammer or axe, a mace, a greatsword, all seem to do the same amount of damage to armor -- very little to none.
On the other hand, AI does quite a lot of damage to you, even if you're wearing heavy armor. I've had peasants with small cleavers randomly get hits that visibly just bounced off my breastplate, but somehow cause very high levels of damage.
This balancing issue is only made worse by seemingly random bugs. Having your weapon get stuck under the ground, or inside a piece of armor or body, is extremely annoying. Randomly spawning without a weapon or a piece of headgear or gloves that you had equipped is equally annoying. Trying to switch to the alt grip with a long weapon, and the weapon getting stuck on your armor, the terrain, or simply floating in front of one of your hands without getting gripped, is enough to want to quit. Additionally, enemies "fake-surrendering" where they do the surrender pose and have no weapons while begging, then when you walk past they attack, is just stupid and unfun. Finally, AI shields doing enough damage to instantly kill you when youre wearing heavy armor is completely ridiculous, the same issue that walking on loose pieces of the environment has.
Another issue is the death zone, zombies retain the equipment they died with. Meaning you face zombies that have full sets of plate. Strangely they seem more weak to blunt weapons than humans, but it still is a bit of a slog killing 200+ zombies when you die to random bugs or glitches. I'm not averse to losing or dying, I did a few times in the early-mid game. But late game, combined with everything else, its just exhausting to play.
I really enjoy this game, especially early and mid game when you have less armor and weapons are dangerous enough that fights often end in the first few seconds. But the 10-20 minute slogs of end game knight fights is tiring and unfun. I think the balance needs to be fixed in late game, or an option given that weapons across the board do more damage to armor, the current damage settings in the menu seem to have almost no effect.
Until then I would not recommend buying it if you wish to complete all the content. However, if you're happy to play through about 5 hours of early to mid game content, and lock your progression there or use free play, then its fully worth it.
