Tuesday, 19 November 2019 22:17

A Knight's Quest Review

Written by

Edited by: John Gerritzen

A Knight’s Quest, the latest title from Sky9 is an action adventure game that was recently released widely across multiple platforms, including PC. In the same vein as many other games that came before it, Sky9 offers a tongue-in-cheek variation of the oft-copied Zelda model, and it does so in a way that works… kind of. 

To be frank, if there was anything that actually did work in this title, it was the writing. Well-timed, simple jokes in dialogue, goofy characterizations of primary characters, and an early joke about wiping with someones cloak instead of toilet paper should give you an idea of what you are in for. It is all in good fun, and doesn’t detract from a well built storyline. Our doofus protagonist Rusty must get in touch with the Spirit Knights after accidentally awakening an ancient evil in the form of purple crystals encountered in the first cave. Rusty is the kind of character that totally knows what's going on all the time, and definitely doesn’t desperately need constant guidance from the voice in his ear Valery, who directs him nonstop through his wireless headphones, *cough.* There are times it feels a bit forced, unfortunately, with early game slime kills giving you poop as a drop, which the dialogue box describes being “radical,” and by the time you sat through five or six hours of gameplay it just started to get old. 

Brought to the (Round) Table

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There is something to be said for a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, though. These types of games can often make up for their shortcomings by acknowledging that they aren’t perfect, and instead offering you a good time in exchange for a suspension of disbelief/expectation. It is a good thing that this Zelda-inspired title has this relaxed backdrop to rely upon, because there is a lot not to like if you plan on taking the gameplay seriously. 

Combat, for instance, is limited to a single button mash/hold creating combos that power up elemental attacks that you can unlock throughout game accomplishments. Often you feel like you could stand completely still after locking onto an enemy, and simply click attack until your foe falls because the enemy doesn’t respond to your weapon with reactions or knockbacks. Blocking is present, but seems to be randomized, as there is very little consistency or reliability in the process. It’s not entirely unfun, but it gets boring pretty darn quickly. 

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A Veneer of (Un)Polish

For a game that takes so many cues from what Zelda does well, A Knight’s Quest feels a lot more like an adventure from the N64 era. The graphics are cutesy and cartoonish, intentionally of course, but do little to remind you that it’s 2019 and the engine powering the game is, in fact, the Unreal Engine. Further obfuscating the fact that A Knight’s Quest is built upon one of the more powerful engines of current generation games is that it is riddled with bugs and movement often felt slow and clunky. There were multiple instances of trying to jump to locations, critical in a puzzle game like this, where your player would seemingly hit an invisible wall mid-air. Trying to run through the world had its own share of irritations also. Rusty would often get caught on invisible objects, which created some weird moments in combat scenarios with multiple enemies. Outside of movement, there seemed to be a few other bugs that caused save games to load at invalid spots in a dungeon, or reset elements of already completed puzzles. Additionally, on the PC, this relatively non-graphically intensive game struggles with screen tearing and an inconsistent framerate. With limited graphical needs, these issues come across as poor optimization, or a lack of care that issues were present before release.

The dungeons themselves are comprised of jumping puzzles, wall running (which was very cool), and push/pull elements that fans of titles in the genre should be very familiar with. Although not particularly difficult, there were definitely moments where a puzzle took far longer than needed to complete because the next step was hidden in such a way that it wasn’t intuitive that it was the needed step at that point in time. This type of puzzle arrangement suits people who have a lot of familiarity with puzzle adventure games, but comes across as intentionally infuriating to those who don’t have the same type of muscle-memory in this regard. The very first location of the game, The Forgotten Temple, took me longer than I care to admit to get past, and had me fuming when I saw what was preventing progression. These moments are more frequent than necessary, but won’t slow down veterans of the genre.

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A Full World

The varied cast of enemies such as skeletons, floating orb monsters, slimes, etc, gave the feeling that the world was teeming with life, no matter how odd that life might look. This is a good thing because you will very quickly grow accustomed to running back and forth throughout the world to complete tedious tasks or revisit locations you may have seen treasure chests at before. Speaking of revisiting prior locations, one of the cooler elements of the game is how new ways to move throughout the world are unlocked with successful dungeon completions. This means that previously unreachable spots in a very vertical world have become easier to get to, and new items can be unlocked as Rusty progresses through the main storyline. This also means that you can’t learn to fast travel from one location to another until one of these game elements is completed. The travel element would have been nice to have earlier, but that probably would have made the gametime much shorter, so I guess its ok because it's a fifteen hour game now, instead of twelve.

5

The Verdict: Fair

All-in-all A Knight’s Quest is a fun ride through a ridiculous world that doesn’t take itself seriously enough. If you can look past the weak combat, and enjoy the juvenile comedy, then you will probably get a solid 8-10 hours of fun before the game forgets where you were when it autosaved last and you decide to quit.

See About Us to learn how we score.

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Alex Mickle

Alex Mickle is a gamer that traces his roots to JRPG’s on the PS1, but ultimately found his way to PC gaming by spending every afternoon after school playing Counterstrike at a local LAN gaming café. He is a father and husband that splits his gaming time into bursts whenever he can find time, or when ever he makes time. Alex enjoys variance and versatility in his gaming experiences and can be found asleep on the couch with a twitch steam on the television at the end of almost every night.

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