KnightOut

Genre: Action-Platformer / Strategy

Players: 1-4 Team Competitive (Local)

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Review:

KnightOut, released in 2020 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a game that combines Action-Platformer and Strategy elements, where players must use resources to construct a castle to defend their king, and must then man its defenses to fight off enemies.

The presentation here is really sloppy, with ugly, poorly-constructed 3D visuals with framerate issues, odd screen-shaking problems, and even uglier-looking cutscenes. This is backed by a pretty generic-sounding fantasy-ish soundtrack that I suppose works for the gameplay, but doesn’t elevate it in any way. Also, those aforementioned cutscenes are oddly quiet, without any voice or even sound effects even when things are happening.

That’s not to say it’s all bad news here, as the gameplay has some pretty nice ideas. Namely, this plays a bit like a take on the classic game Rampart, which had players alternating between turns spent building fortifications, and then a turn spent attacking enemies. Here, these ideas are taken into a side-scrolling view, with players needing to build defenses for their king, while also fortifying it with weapons to dive off attackers (or in multiplayer, to take down the opponent’s castle).

While this game had great potential, once again there are issues that keep it from reaching that potential. The platforming is sloppy, hit detection is horrible, sometimes weapons inexplicably refuse to operate when you press the button to use them… it’s all a frustrating, unreliable mess.

I feel like KnightOut has some great core gameplay that could have worked if this game got a lot more polish, but unfortunately the opposite is true here, and this is an absolutely rough game that got absolutely nowhere near the polish it needed. As a result, it’s hard to recommend this one, despite its great premise.

tl;dr – KnightOut is a game that combines Action-Platformer and Strategy elements as players alternate between building up castle defenses and then manning those defenses to fend off enemies or take down an opposing castle. The core premise here is great, but everything about this game is sloppy, poorly-executed, and unpolished, resulting in gameplay that’s frustrating more often than it is fun.

Grade: C-

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