For the first several hours, Chivalry 2 is genuinely fun. The hack-and-slash combat is not especially innovative, but it is well-executed. The mechanics strike a solid balance between accessibility and depth: the basics are easy to grasp, yet true mastery takes time. If you complete the tutorial, you won’t feel completely lost even though the game heavily favors group combat, flanking, and siege-style chaos rather than honorable duels.

Despite losing most fights early on, which is normal in a game built around ganging up on enemies, the combat system feels responsive enough to keep new players engaged. For the first six hours, the experience feels fresh, visceral, and mechanically satisfying.

However, that is where the positives end.

After those initial hours, it becomes clear that Chivalry 2 has very little depth or long-term variety. Once the novelty wears off, you have effectively seen everything the game has to offer.

There are only three core game modes in the entire game, and two of them are functionally identical, the same objectives on the same maps, simply scaled from 20v20 to 32v32. The third mode rotates occasionally between free-for-all (which usually devolves into constant multi-person dogpiling) and seasonal novelty modes like snowball fights, which feel shallow and disposable rather than meaningful additions.

There is no single-player campaign, no narrative content, and no alternative modes to break up the repetition.
The game advertises 17 maps, but this number is misleading.
Six of those maps are free-for-all arenas, which are essentially flat spaces where map design barely matters.
Two maps are no longer in the game at all.
One additional map was removed for bug fixes and never returned.

That leaves eight playable objective maps, which is abysmal for a $40 multiplayer-only title.

To be fair, around five of those maps are genuinely enjoyable. The remaining ones are uninspired, though that is admittedly subjective. The objective issue is repetition: even the good maps lose their appeal quickly when you are forced to replay them dozens of times with no variation in objectives, pacing, or outcomes.

Despite being marketed as a medieval siege game, meaningful siege mechanics are barely present. Only one map allows players to use siege equipment to damage structures, and even then it is restricted to a single, scripted objective point. In practice, objectives are largely ignored by players anyway, because the game incentivizes raw kill-farming over teamwork or strategy.

As the player base has shrunk, the remaining population (as of 2026) consists almost entirely of highly experienced players. The skill gap is enormous, and the game does nothing to mitigate it.

Even as someone who performs reasonably well, consistently maintaining a positive K/D, the combat balance feels deeply flawed. Weapon progression is tied to class-specific experience, meaning unlocking the weapon you actually want to use can take 40+ hours.

For example:
Want to use a Greatsword? You will literally need to grind hundreds of matches with unrelated weapons first.
Want to use a crossbow? You must spend hours playing a basic archer beforehand.

That's not skill-based progression, it's artificial padding. While the game is not pay-to-win, it is undeniably grind-to-win, and the power gap between weapons makes that grind mandatory rather than optional. The reward for this time investment is marginally faster or easier kills, not deeper gameplay.

Now let's move to the #1 biggest issue with Chivalry 2, the cheaters.
It is widespread, blatant, and constant. Speed hacks, invulnerability, impossible attack rates, and players wiping entire teams single-handedly are not rare sightings; they are a regular part of matchmaking. Many matches are decided before they even begin because one player is allowed to ruin the lobby with zero resistance.

What makes this unforgivable is how outdated and ineffective the anti-cheat is. Even tools like Cheat Engine, software that should be completely useless in any multiplayer title are known to work. Reports feel pointless, enforcement is inconsistent at best, and repeat offenders continue playing uninterrupted.

At this point, cheating isn’t just tolerated by the system, it’s enabled by it. It strips the game of any competitive integrity and makes the game feel like a waste of time.

Despite enjoying the mechanics briefly, the game never felt that joyful, just entertaining. Even during the early hours, the appeal came more from spectacle than fun, climbing walls and decapitating enemies rather than any sense of creativity or emergent gameplay.

The community itself is notoriously toxic, and long-standing player requests, such as private servers, have been ignored since launch. This has contributed to an environment where new players are routinely thrown into lobbies dominated by veterans with no way to learn or experiment safely.

At a purely technical level, Chivalry 2 is a game with a strong core that collapses under its own neglect. Limited modes, shallow long-term content, repetitive maps, a brutal grind-based progression system, rampant cheating, and developers who ignore their dedicated players make this a game that simply does not respect your time. That alone would justify a negative review.

But the real reason I cannot recommend this game, and the reason this review exists at all, is Soter Dave.

Soter Dave was not a troll. He was not a cheater promoter. He was not a nobody looking for attention. He was one of the most dedicated community members this game had: a YouTuber whose entire channel and income were built around Chivalry 2, a player who hosted weekly charity tournaments, brought visibility to the game, and kept the community alive when interest was fading. He gave far more to this game than it ever gave back to him.

After publicly criticizing Torn Banner’s anti-cheat at a time when cheating was already widely acknowledged as out of control, Soter Dave was banned from the game and all community spaces tied to the game. His YouTube channel, which was built entirely around Chivalry 2 and served as his primary source of income, effectively collapsed as a result. According to his Close Friends and Family, he left behind a note stating that the loss of his main hobby and purpose was the contributing factor to his suicide.

And what did the developers do? Nothing.
No acknowledgment.
No memorial.
No accountability.

Instead, discussion was actively silenced. Screenshots documenting what happened circulated on Steam reviews, forums, and Reddit threads, and were routinely deleted. Users were banned for reposting them. Content creators who expressed grief or criticism were pressured to remove videos under threat of being blacklisted from community events, banned from official spaces, or worse. The message was clear: talk about this, and you will be erased.

That betrayal is hard to overstate. For Soter Dave’s fans, and for anyone who believed this game had a genuine community, it was chilling. A man who gave years of his life to this game died, and the company responsible for the environment that broke him chose image control over humanity.

Whether someone wants to argue about intent or causality misses the point entirely. What matters is this:
When a deeply invested community member died, Torn Banner Studios chose silence, suppression, and self-protection over honesty and compassion.

I cannot separate the game from the people who run it. I cannot support a studio that treats its most loyal contributors as disposable. And I cannot, in good conscience, recommend a game whose developers have shown they are willing to erase a human being to protect their brand.

I can forgive bad balance.
I can forgive weak content.
I cannot forgive watching a community member lose everything, seeing their family speak out, and then watching the discussion be erased like it never mattered.

That stain does not fade.
Do not buy this game.

I went into Schedule 1 expecting a quirky little sandbox experience, and to be fair, for the first couple of hours, that’s exactly what I got. Messing around with NPCs, experimenting with mechanics, and just selling drugs and causing chaos had its charm. But very quickly, the cracks begin to show.

The game is incredibly repetitive. Once you've explored the initial novelty of its systems, there's basically nothing left to do. It turns into a grindfest with braindead gameplay loops and shallow mechanics. There's no depth, no progression, no surprises, just the same recycled encounters and interactions over and over again. When you go from Weed to something like Meth its just a different production process you dont even change the way you sell it.

Worse still, the developers asked the community to vote on new features (I believe the options were: mushrooms, police update, and rival gangs), and then... radio silence. It's been five months without a single update. Why even bother asking the community to vote if none of the content is coming? Honestly, instead of choosing one, they should've just committed to adding all three. This is a $20 game made with a Unity free trial, it has ♥♥♥♥♥♥ graphics, outdated physics, and janky combat mechanics. Just asking that price without at least monthly updates or a dev diary is hard to justify.

To be clear, I don’t hate the game. I had a bit of fun. But it’s extremely barebones for what it costs, and unless it gets a massive content update, it just doesn’t feel worth the money. I’m leaving a negative review for now, but I’m open to changing it if the dev starts putting real work into expanding the world and gameplay.

In short: It’s not that Schedule 1 is bad, it’s that it feels half-finished and abandoned. Proceed with caution.

(this would be a positive gleaming review if the game was 5 bucks)

💀 THE COFFIN OF ANDY AND LEYLEY – A ROTTEN LOVE LETTER TO THE VOID 💀
A Review by Someone Who Hasn’t Slept, Eaten, or Felt Clean Since “That Scene”

There are horror games. There are disturbing games. There are games with stories that cling to your ribcage for a few days before dissolving in the acid of time.

And then…
There’s The Coffin of Andy and Leyley — a game so singularly twisted, so bizarrely beautiful, so relentlessly itself, that it doesn’t just linger in your memory — it claws its way in, lights a match, and starts rearranging the furniture in your subconscious.

This isn’t just a game. It’s a psychological exorcism, a confessional booth smeared in blood, a love story scribbled on the back of a murder-suicide note and folded into an origami swan of despair. It’s filth made poetry. It’s ugliness that demands to be looked at. It is, without exaggeration, one of the most unforgettable pieces of narrative media I have ever experienced in my life — and I’ve consumed a truly shameful amount of it.

🧠 THE WRITING: DIALOGUE SHARPER THAN A RUSTY SCALPEL

This game could easily rest on shock factor, but it doesn’t. Instead, it presents us with two of the most vividly realized characters to ever emerge from the writhing guts of indie horror: Andy and Leyley.

Their interactions are a masterclass in tonal tightrope-walking. One moment you’re laughing at some disturbingly timed quip, and the next, you’re watching a scene so emotionally raw, so terrifyingly intimate, it makes you feel like you’re witnessing something you were never meant to see. The writing doesn't tell you who these characters are — it bleeds them onto the screen in real time.

Andy is a walking wound stitched together with deadpan sarcasm and deeply repressed everything. Leyley is… an ouroboros of obsession, grief, and maternal psychosis. Together, they are a nuclear reactor of codependence, spiraling into a gravitational hell of their own making. Every line between them drips with venom, yearning, cruelty, and affection so genuinely deranged that it transcends the label of “dialogue” and becomes something closer to ritual.

It’s uncomfortable.
It’s funny.
It’s tragic.
And above all, it’s real.

Not in a conventional, slice-of-life way, but in that primal, animal-brain sense of truth — the kind that makes you recoil because you recognize something human buried in the filth.

🩸 THE WORLD: A FESTERING MASTERPIECE OF ATMOSPHERIC MISERY

The Coffin’s world is a rotting cathedral — sacred and profane in equal measure. Every room feels sticky. Every hallway is steeped in the scent of decay and desperation. There’s something tactile about it, like if you leaned too close to the screen, you’d feel warm breath on your neck. Or maybe a hand on your shoulder. Or worse — her voice.

The pixel art is immaculate in the most ugly-beautiful way. It’s not trying to look clean or polished. It’s trying to make you feel like you’re trapped in someone else’s intrusive thoughts. And it succeeds. The rooms don’t just contain horror; they suggest it, whisper it, imply things too dark for words. Every book, every stain, every little detail feels like part of a ritualistic tapestry of trauma.

And the surrealism? Sublime.
Dream logic meets body horror meets domestic tragedy in a nightmare that never feels like it’s trying too hard. You never feel like you’re in a “spooky game.” You feel like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be — like the story is still happening even when you’re not playing. That the characters are still there, trapped in that house, waiting.

And you’re right.
They are.

🎵 THE MUSIC: AN AUDIBLE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

I cannot overstate how powerful the soundtrack is. The OST doesn’t just support the story — it injects itself into your bloodstream. Every track is perfectly married to the mood of its scene, whether it’s an eerie lullaby that plays over a murder, or an off-kilter waltz echoing through a house full of secrets.

The music shifts like a predator in the dark — playful one moment, snarling the next. Sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s so loud and chaotic you want to claw your ears out. But it’s never boring. And more importantly, it’s never safe. You can’t trust the music in this game. It doesn’t comfort you — it stalks you.

There are moments where the music stops, and that silence becomes the most deafening thing in the world.
And there are moments where it swells in ways that feel religious. Or sacrilegious.
Either way, it reaches into your chest and squeezes.

The OST isn’t an accompaniment.
It’s a co-conspirator.

🪦 THE THEMES: LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE ROT BETWEEN

This game tackles themes that most media wouldn’t dare to approach, much less with such unflinching honesty. It takes trauma, abuse, mental illness, obsession, and warped intimacy — and it doesn’t sanitize them. It doesn’t give you metaphors or metaphysical proxies. It just… shows you. In the rawest, most uncomfortable ways imaginable.

This is a story about love, in the same way a rabid animal is a “pet.” It's a tale of two people who are all they have left, and who weaponize that fact against each other again and again and again. It’s horrifying. It’s pathetic. It’s real. And as awful as it gets, you understand them. Maybe not logically — but emotionally.

That’s the magic trick of The Coffin.
It doesn’t ask for your empathy. It tricks you into giving it.
And then it punishes you for caring.

🔥 THE ENDING: HOLY. ACTUAL. HELL.

I won’t spoil a second of it.
But I will say this: by the time the credits rolled, I felt hollowed out. Like the game had reached into my chest and scooped something out — something I’m not sure I ever had a name for. I just sat there. Staring. Sweating. Reeling.

The final hours of this game are a descent, not into madness — but into understanding. A terrible, necessary kind. There are no real answers. There is no redemption arc. There is only them. And the choices you make.

This isn’t a game that ends. It’s a curse you carry.

⛓️ TL;DR: THIS GAME DID UNSPEAKABLE THINGS TO ME, AND I THANK IT FOR EVERY SECOND

This is a piece of fiction that breaks boundaries, both ethical and aesthetic, and yet somehow feels more emotionally honest than 99% of stories out there. It is grotesque. It is deranged. It is brilliant.

If you can stomach it, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley will leave claw marks on your soul. It will haunt you. It will change you.

10/10. I hope they never find peace.
10/10. I love them. I hate myself for it.
10/10. Game of the year. Of the decade. Of the grave.