Paradox’s mounted-combat experiment is still worth playing, even though the servers are gone

War of the Roses arrived on PC on 2 October 2012 with a simple pitch: put a customizable soldier in 15th century England and let two rival branches of the Royal House of Plantagenet settle the throne by force. Lancaster wore red. York wore white. Fatshark built the game, Paradox Interactive released it, and for roughly four and a half years it ran as a multiplayer hack and slash with a combat system that asked players to think about where the blade landed.

That last part is the whole story. War of the Roses was not sold on scale or spectacle. It was sold on the idea that a fight should be decided by armor, angle and the part of the weapon that connects. The game shut down on 28 February 2017, but the design question it raised is still worth answering.

Trailer, via Paradox Interactive.

Lancaster, York, and a Soldier You Build Yourself

War of the Roses is a multiplayer game played mainly from a third-person viewpoint. The player controls a single customizable soldier and fights for either the House of Lancaster or the House of York. The setting is the Wars of the Roses, the 15th century English conflict between the two Plantagenet branches.

The game does not hand you a hero. It hands you a loadout. Each soldier can carry three weapons at once: a primary, a secondary, and a dagger. That is a tight kit, and the dagger slot is not decoration. It is the difference between finishing a downed opponent and walking away.

Players start with a pre-made melee character called the footman. From there they unlock a Guardsman (originally a crossbowman), a longbowman and a footknight. Those pre-made classes are built to be competitive, not starter filler. The game also offers eight custom slots, which can be filled with weapons, weapon modifiers, armor and perks of the player’s choice.

At higher levels, horses unlock and open a cavalry class. Players can switch characters inside a round and edit custom profiles between rounds. That flexibility is the point. War of the Roses wants you to keep rebuilding the same soldier until the build fits.

Where the Blade Lands Is Where the Damage Comes From

The hitboxes are precise. Damage is calculated on whether a strike hits armor of various materials or flesh, and on which part of the weapon makes contact. A blade that lands flat is not the same as a blade that lands true. The game takes that seriously enough to make it the center of every exchange.

A defeated player is not always dead. They can be killed outright or simply downed. In the downed state, three choices open up: an execution move to finish them, a revive from a teammate, or a respawn. Each option carries its own risk and reward, which is how the game treats most of its decisions.

Once dead, a player respawns at a team respawn location or on a squad leader, if they selected a squad. There are four game modes. One is a standard team deathmatch. Conquest requires teams to take checkpoints in order, starting from home spawn points and pushing toward the enemy’s. Taking a checkpoint unlocks the next one in the sequence.

Two Wars, Two Games, One Shutdown

Fatshark followed War of the Roses with War of the Vikings in 2014. That game was also shut down in 2017. The two titles now sit as a pair: same studio, same publisher, same multiplayer-only model, same end.

The comparison is not flattering to either game, but it is honest. A multiplayer game with no single-player fallback lives or dies on its player count, and both of these died. The difference is that War of the Roses had a combat system worth preserving. War of the Vikings had the same fate without the same argument behind it.

What the Customization Actually Bought

War of the Roses was well received for its extensive customization, which let players tailor character configurations to very specific tastes. It was also praised for an original control scheme meant to tackle a new kind of combat, with the aim of creating a completely different experience.

That praise is the right praise. The customization was not cosmetic. Eight custom slots, three weapon slots, armor that changes how damage resolves, perks that change how a soldier behaves — all of it fed back into the fight. A player who spent time in the menus got a soldier that played differently. That is rare in a genre that often treats loadouts as skins with stats attached.

The control scheme did the rest. A combat system built around weapon contact and armor material only works if the player can aim it, and War of the Roses gave players the tools to do that. The result was a game that felt heavier and more deliberate than the hack and slash label suggests.

A 7.9 That Holds Up

War of the Roses scores 7.9 out of 10. That number tracks with what the game was: a sharp, specific multiplayer combat game with a customization system that rewarded attention and a control scheme that tried something genuinely different. It was not a broad success, and it did not last.

The shutdown on 28 February 2017 is the fact that matters most now. A 7.9 game that no longer runs is a design document, not a product. Anyone who wants to study how armor material and weapon contact can drive damage in a third-person melee game has to read about War of the Roses rather than play it. That is the loss. The customization and the combat scheme were the two things the game got right, and both of them are now unreachable.

The follow-up, War of the Vikings, did not fix that. It repeated the model and met the same end in 2017. Fatshark and Paradox built two multiplayer games on the same bet — that a dedicated player base would keep a niche combat game alive — and lost it twice.

What remains is the argument. War of the Roses made a case that melee combat should be decided by where the weapon lands and what it lands on, and that a player should be able to build a soldier around that idea. The case was good. The game that made it is gone.

Fatshark · game preservation · medieval melee combat · multiplayer games · Paradox Interactive · War of the Roses