Recent reviews by Knightly Knave

So they killed off the love interest I selected within the first half an hour of the game. Doesn't really give me motivation to keep playing, you know?

I really wanted to like this game. I was a huge Suikoden fan when I was younger but either I've outgrown the genre or this isn't a good interpretation of that game. It's just so boring and the core characters are uninteresting. I played for more than 10 hours and I have zero interest in the plot, base building or combat. So disappointing.

I liked the atmosphere and narration of Darkest Dungeon I, but I didn't really like the way your characters would be a mess of negative quirks and stress or could permanently die as you were trying to work your way through the campaign. So, this sequel where it is run based is much more enjoyable for me. The runs aren't terribly long and regardless of if I win or lose the characters are discarded so I can start fresh. If I get a really bad series of battles I can also just give up and start over. And on top of all of that I get a meta currency to make the game a bit easier as I go. Plus, the character stories that you unlock are really interesting as is the overarching plot that you get drip fed to you at the start of each run. Plus the graphics are improved over the original as it doesn't have that "chibi" look that the original did. The pseudo 3D works wonders. I'm enjoying this game much more than the original.

The setting is really what does it for this one. Also the fact that you have two playable characters you can switch between is nice as well. But, really just moving around London of this era is so well realized and fascinating. The game suffers from the same Assassin's Creed problems it always does: there just aren't enough ways to interact with the world. You tail someone, pick up items, you assassinate someone or there's a car (buggy) chase. That's basically it. But it's worth it to spend some time in this world and with these two amusing protagonists.

I thought this was going to be a deep philosophical game about religion. Instead, you get a drab looking puzzle game where you push crates and throw switches to proceed. Maybe it gets better after the first two hours but I guess I'll never find out because it was far too slow and dull for me to want to keep playing.

It's not really fun. The levels are pretty linear and the combat is a bit dull. You mostly sit in place auto attacking and occasionally using abilities that have both cool down and MP limits so you can't use them all that much. There are way too many ways to level up, be it levels, skill points, and even more currencies and level up trees. And the level ups use the tired old 5% more trope, which doesn't make them seem impactful at all. The character models are pretty bland looking and the home base is not very exciting either. The actual art for the character portraits and cut scenes is much better than the rest of the art direction. The plot is very slow going. You're fighting bandits and monsters for way too long. They really needed to get into the thick of the politics of the setting faster. I know it turns out to be pretty interesting but it takes way too long to get there.

There's just not much to it. There are only a few backgrounds and really only character models of the two main characters. Even the villains don't get character models. It's short and there's not much to the music either and of course no voice acting. It's just too bare bones.

I never actually played games like Ultima and Pool of Radiance that this game has a similar style to. But, now I wish I had. This game was so much fun. The perfect blend of retro with modern conveniences. The music is using the idea of midi music but is very well done to still be engaging and never off putting. While the character sprites are simple the dungeon designs have a lot of detail and variety to them. The best part of the art style is the pixel art narrative drawings that accompany a lot of the important info dumps. The plot is very engaging too. Very surreal, nothing like the simple medieval settings of the games it is taking inspiration from. The level up system is satisfying and drives you forward and the combat system while simple has a few fun elements brought to it by the differences between the various classes. There’s an interesting baking and alchemy system that gives you ingredients and each has a tooltip saying what it will make but you have to gather all the ingredients that say they will make that thing together to actually craft it. It made it a fun game to see if I could craft every potion and food item even though that’s pretty unnecessary. It’s just the right length at just over 20 hours to get everything. A fantastic project that shows that a lot of love and care was put into it. Highly recommended to anyone who likes retro aesthetics, RPG and surreal horror.

I played the first couple of chapters years ago when they were released in a separate package. They were beautiful and highly polished. The voice acting is very nice and the art is excellent. Lots of interesting choices and variations on how things can go too. I would never have thought this was produced by a small team. I'm looking forward to playing the rest of the game now that it's out in one big collection!

There's very little instruction. When you do figure out what to do there's very little control over pulling it off. The controls also just don't seem to be very responsive, it doesn't let you slide the tiles on the first try a lot of the time. There's also just not much too it. The music is good. But otherwise it's really quite a mess I'm afraid.