The Knight Witch (PC) Review

PC

Beautiful art matches up with fast-paced shooter combat

A hero’s journey through adventure, evil, and the price of fame

In a game that is as ambitious as their own business name, developer Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team has launched a new Metroidvania title, The Knight Witch. This game features a vibrant color palette that seems to be a staple in many of this developer’s games. Players are introduced into a somewhat post-war magical setting with a variety of characters and a plot line surprisingly relatable to certain real-world political and social practices we experience. However, a somewhat frustrating combat system breaks up the experience at times. Overall, The Knight Witch proved to be fairly entertaining for anyone who enjoys action shooters and potential speedrun titles.

The Knight Witch stars Rayna, a trainee of an elite group of hero-like magic wielders known as the Knight Witches. During a pivotal war, the Knight Witches pushed back evil and saved civilization. However, once this evil arises once again Rayna finds herself in a position where she must step up and become a hero herself. While she travels to different areas in the kingdom rescuing civilians and repairing essential systems, Rayna is also thrown into the hero spotlight, learning how to juggle being the hero her superiors want and also the hero the people deserve.

Environments pop with color and variety

During gameplay, players control a floating Rayna in all of the 2D levels. The primary “weapon” is a type of magic single-shot blast with infinite ammo and low stopping power. Where the most success comes from is Rayna’s use of spell cards in her arsenal that she finds through various means. Personally, I’m not a fan of card-based attack systems, though I found The Knight Witch to be gentle and simple with its use of cards. Players can equip a full deck ranging up to at least eight cards of varying offensive and defensive capabilities. During combat, three random cards are held, and these cards are used by spending a set mana cost. The card is discarded back into the fully equipped deck, and mana is replenished as a pickup from defeated enemies and damage. What I enjoyed was that the cards were never “lost” once used, so as long as I kept using cards I could keep cycling back to the same cards in any fight. I see this as a way for the developers to push this system for frequent use, which is not a mechanic I’m used to using a lot in games. Once I realized how feasible it was to continue to use spells as a primary weapon instead of an accessory, combat seemed to get easier.

Experience and leveling up in The Knight Witch are wholly dependent on how well you help the people who look up to you. Experience is tied to a link system, which is central to the story. As you encounter and help more citizens, they start believing in you more, which adds a link to your Link Chain. Once you fill up a chain, you gain a level and choose to gain either a boost in your main attack or your spell attacks. Health and mana capacity upgrades can be found in hidden rooms around the levels. To encourage helping your fellow citizens, Rayna can earn special side abilities from certain people that are encountered, saved, and helped, such as a map upgrade that shows what rooms still contain secrets. I found myself actively searching for citizens to rescue to see what upgrades I could get to ensure I’d have a better time in the harder boss fights.

Players can customize a variety of spell cards to use in combat

At this point, I do need to air my grievances with this game’s combat. Standard encounters felt like one would expect, fast-paced and requiring the player to be mobile and aggressive. However, many of the rooms have “Ambush” encounters, where the player is boxed in and forced to defeat all enemies before being able to leave. Due to this confined space and the number of enemies that can spawn, I lost track of where my character was many times. Having to constantly dodge upwards of 50+ enemy projectiles at once is ambitious and perhaps normal for games like this, but often I found myself just repeating the encounter over and over again just to barely survive. I felt like many of these ambush encounters were more difficult than the boss battles, and I wish that some of them had been optional at that difficulty.

If I were to give a piece of advice to you, dear gamer, I would strongly advise you to play this with a controller if you are on PC. This game felt twice as difficult to navigate on a mouse and keyboard, and once I plugged a controller in I felt like maneuvering was easier.

The art style in The Knight Witch is beautiful. This game is heavily animated, and even the darkest depths of certain levels showed a strong animation style, oozing with clear care and effort. Character models varied across a wealth of different species, and I don’t think I ever saw more than two or three NPCs that were similar. In fact, besides the NPCs Ranya rescues, the cast of characters is small. Everyone had a purpose for helping Rayna, whether it was a merchant with a specific skill or a citizen offering a side quest. This is one of those rare games where its own art style is a character in itself. Yet, the art style does lend itself to blending Rayna in with the enemies and environment, contributing to me getting lost during battles. I would have liked Rayna to have some form of glow or indicator to help me keep track of her during the more intense encounters.

Rayna’s journey is an emotional roller coaster of decisions and consequences I wasn’t expecting to find in a game like this, and I actually found myself conflicted in the decisions I made at times. Several situations called for me to make choices in how I responded to questions, where one would give me less Link progress but would be a more righteous choice while the other would be a placating and “phony” response but would give me more of the Link and people’s favor. I noticed that The Knight Witch has several different types of social commentary woven into the story, such as the burden of stardom and fame as well as managing what is taboo to talk about while in the limelight. It always piques my interest when games do this because I believe it adds depth to a game that walks the line between gameplay-centric shooter and Metroidvania.

The Knight Witch offers a challenging adventure experience with a refreshing complexity in its story. While the combat could frustrate and overwhelm at times, this game offers a variety of ways to feel empowered and heroic. Players explore several beautiful settings with plenty to explore and discover, in true Metroidvania fashion. I predict this title to end up on several speedrun lists.

Anyone who might need a break during the holidays from larger AAA experiences should give The Knight Witch a try.

SCORES

GAMEPLAY - 7.5/10

VISUALS - 8/10

SOUND - 8/10

CONTROLS - 8/10

REPLAY VALUE - 7/10

OVERALL - 7.7/10

The Knight Witch is available November 29th on Steam, GOG, and Nintendo Switch. The PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Windows 10 versions of the game will release on December 2nd. For more information about the developers, be sure to check out their official website. All screenshots were captured through native Steam features. For this review, an early access Steam code was provided.

Marcus Brown

Marcus is a small town gamer from Tennessee who loves turning gaming topics into meaningful discussions. He has always been enthralled with the stories told by single-player titles such as Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy, with his most recent passion project being Destiny 2. More importantly, he believes in the social power and change that can come from gaming relationships and interactions. You can find him pretty regularly on Twitch under his gaming alias GingerThrust. Outside of gaming, Marcus has varied hobbies including reading, exploring new bars and restaurants and attempting to make the perfect cocktail. He even skydived, once and only once.

https://paypal.me/gingerthrust

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