A Knight's Quest has been touted as an old-school throwback to 3D adventures and it delivers on that statement. Rekindling the love for adventure in the simpler times of Quest 64, MediEvil or The Legend of Zelda entries during that time, follow along with Rusty as his wonderful and crazy adventures basically keep bringing the world one step closer to its doom.
Riding the thin line between nostalgia and an actual great experience is a tough one. We glossary remember how amazing something was or how it felt and picking it up again we wonder how we ever thought that way. It's not the rule, but it's a common experience so when I saw A Knight's Quest, I just had to know.
Modeled to look like an older title, the gameplay experience is a rather well refined even if it's not perfect. Taking control of Rusty, you'll be running, jumping, dashing your way across fields, walls, tight ropes and bridges. With plenty of large environments to explore and solve how to make your way through them, you'll need to be a bit quick on the controls as well as figure out which weapon works best in which situation once you get them all.
Design in an older schooled Legend of Zelda style, you'll have to do a few errands before you get to go into the next dungeon. Along the way, you'll get a new tool that helps you make it all the way to the boss who can only really be defeated with that tool. Cliche? Over done? In a sense, yes. In another though, the tools that Rusty obtains are actually weapons that form his arsenal. Sword and shield, metal fists and a hammer make up the first half of what Rusty is going to need in order to lay the smackdown to the undead forces plaguing the land. The other half? Each of these weapons grant different magics making each new weapon a 2-1 sale.
Wind, Fire and Ice form the three elemental types for your weapons in the same order as above. Where things are a bit different than normal is that the weapons themselves are not elemental meaning each is a good dose of pure steel when you're fighting off crowds of enemies to move forward. While equipping these weapons, that's where you can use the magic either to break down shields or solve puzzles by blowing windmills, melting ice or freezing steam. It's a nice touch to the tried and true formula especially when Rusty's quest is not a short one
Like a lot of good tales, pacing is important. Go too long, people get bored and move on. Keep it too short and people wish there was more with what was presented. I won't say A Knight's Quest is perfect but it's balanced enough to change things up when they start to become stale. Having large environments and no way to move faster shy of opening shortcuts, after a dozen or so hours you start to wonder where things are actually leading.
Having set off a weird purple crystal into the sky, you set off on the mayor's orders, who happens to be your insane father, to gather the spirit knights to save the day. Meeting with the various guardians that grab the knights their powers, you basically get the weapons instead of the knights themselves. Thinking you can solve it all yourself, you head up to put a stop to the scary crystal. Obviously with things going wrong, you set off the second act that while neat, feels like it should have come sooner because of what it adds.
Prior to this point you were literally running everywhere by foot. Even when you got sliding boots to make Tidus proud, things were always a long ways away which was weird because every area has a teleporter pad of sorts. Thinking that I unlocked them all and that it was only a matter of time to actually be able to use them, it was. In the second act, you get a teleporter stone. The only issue with this is only NOW do you get to unlock each location. Ugh… all that running now had to be done a second time.
And it marred the experience for me a bit because of how much back and forth you need to do at certain points. Not really having shops per say in every city, each area has a speciality and when potions are really in the desert and the blacksmith is only the starting castle town? I hope your sneakers are ready. I had honestly just wished that there was a way to speed up especially after getting the powers of wind from the first more powerful weapon that you get your hands on.
Running all over the place aside, the rest of the mechanics lead to some great fun. When it comes to combat you’ll have Rusty swinging, blocking, parrying dodging and launching magic. While the sword and fits lack that satisfying oomph of having your hits connect, the hammer more than makes up for that. The same can be said to parrying an enemy’s strike as it will break through whatever shield that they may currently have in place. Your magics are also a little neat as while the wind doesn’t do as much damage, it’ll cut through everyone. Fire will probably do the most amount of damage as your foes become hot red while ice magics will freeze an enemy for a few seconds. What was done really well, and which will also net you a good fist to the face at times, is that ice isn’t an instant freeze, it’s a fast gradual thing so if the swing was about to hit you, it’ll hit you.
Combined with your options for combat, the platforming was just gleeful fun. You can run around jumping, you can jump while sliding on a rail to get to different places and then you can finally Prince of Persia wall run when there’s no other options available. A Knight’s Quest isn’t a short title so having the basics of gameplay being as solid as they are made for a great many hours of exploring the land’s various reaches. What I appreciated was that there’s a constant buildup that was never too much to handle when it was time to handle it.
Overall, A Knight’s Quest is a great throwback to the first days of 3D adventuring upon the PC and both Nintendo and Sony’s platforms for the time. Even if there’s an issue with the speed in which you can travel around the lands, there’s a great balance of gameplay and combat elements alongside the nostalgia that it imbues as Rusty tries to save the lands from the issues that he set into motion.
Game Information
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
Sky9 Games
Publisher(s):
Curve Digital
Genre(s):
Action, Adventure
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, PC
Source:
Provided by Publisher
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