Elemental Knights R

Genre: MMO / RPG

Players: MMO

.

Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND LOOTBOXES

Elemental Knights R, AKA Elemental Knights Online, is an MMORPG that’s free to play on Smartphones, but sells for over $20 on the Nintendo Switch. I should be able to end the review right there, but I’m sorry to say, it gets worse.

Okay, let’s get the one bright point out of the way first – this game has a really nice soundtrack. It’s pretty typical fantasy RPG fare that’s nothing super-memorable, but it’s better than average and that’s well worth noting in a game that’s mostly pretty awful.

This game’s graphics are extremely simple, low-poly and low-resolution, with chibi-styled characters that barely animate, environments lacking detail, and overall the visuals underwhelm in just about every way.

Still, that’s not even the worst part of the presentation – that award goes to this game’s localization, which in in the running for the worst localization I’ve ever seen in a videogame. They didn’t even bother to translate the opening cinematic, but beyond that your opening tutorial doesn’t have a single sentence without jumbled English, including some choice lines like “mmm… Is there any ‘BONED’ adventurer?” and “Suspicious air plumps! But it is still only our secret!”.

This localization makes an overly-cluttered tutorial feel even more unnecessarily confusing, and that’s on top of this game’s interface, which augments the original game’s touchscreen in part by just devoting a button to summoning an on-screen cursor. Yeah, they couldn’t even be bothered to assign the menu screen its own button, you have to hold down the ZL button and move the cursor to the upper-left every time you want to swap out a piece of equipment or spend skill points.

The actual gameplay itself doesn’t feel very inspired either. Approaching an enemy won’t start combat – that only happens when you press the button to engage them, at which point you’ll attack them automatically on your turn. Players can also use button combinations for various spells and techniques, though the utility of these isn’t well-explained, and there seems little strategy here beyond simple brute force.

As if the ridiculous price on the Switch wasn’t insulting enough, this game also still has the “gacha” elements that were presumably in the mobile game (they’re actually called “gacha” here, which I suppose is at least honest). These items are described as “cosplay”, but they are not cosmetic-only items – each affects your stats in different ways, and you get them via randomized lootboxes.

I feel like the folks at publisher Winlight must think Nintendo Switch owners are monumentally stupid, as Elemental Knights R is not only a lazy port that doesn’t even bother to do more than slap a band-aid of an interface on top of the game’s touchscreen controls for anyone using a game controller, it is not only still filled with aggressive microtransactions, but apparently they think they can bilk Switch players for $20 a pop on top of that. All this on top of a game that’s pretty terrible in the first place. Full disclosure – I got this game on sale for under $1, and I feel disgusted that I spent even that much. Do not be fooled into buying this game at any price, it’s not worth it rewarding this sort of naked greed.

tl;dr – Elemental Knights R is an MMORPG that’s free to play on mobile devices, but costs $20+ on the Switch, yet is still loaded with microtransactions. On top of this, it’s a lazy port of a terrible game, that only has a duct-taped-together control scheme for players who want to play this on a controller instead of a touchscreen. Oh, also, this game has what is possibly the worst localization I have ever encountered, and nearly every sentence is filled with unintelligible broken English. Do not buy this game.

Grade: F

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