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The Knight Witch Review (PC) - Gaming with Joy

1K View2022-12-02

The Knight Witch is a beautifully hand-drawn adventure game with metroidvania elements, bullet hell like gameplay, puzzle solving and also deck building. It's definitely one of the most creative games I have played this year, I can tell you that much.

You play as Rayne, a newbie knight witch who has the task to save her home from a War Golem invasion and to find out who is responsible and what their motives are. With the ability to fly and to cast powerful card-based spells, you are ready to overcome all the challenges you will come across.

The story is a bit predictable if I'm honest, but it has some nice elements that elevates it a bit. For example you sometimes have to report on your mission by doing an interview and you have two different answers to choose from. Either tell a lie and gain more experience or link in this case or tell the truth and gain sometimes no link, but atleast you will have a clean conscience. I really hoped I would get an achievement for telling the truth the whole time, but I didn't sadly, so I missed out on a lot of potential experience. I really liked this link aspect, instead of gaining link from defeating enemies, you will get it from the people you have helped along the way. The more they believe in you and trust you, the more link you will get and the more powerful you will become and this also ties in nicely with the story.

But the gameplay and the presentation is really where the game shines, I really enjoyed the look and the fast-paced gameplay of this game. There is a lot to take in sometimes, because the screen can be filled with enemy projectiles and at the same time you have to keep an eye on your card-based spells and their mana cost, but it's for sure a lot of fun and it brings in some strategy. Some card spells will definitely be a better choice to use, so it's a good thing you can make your own deck, but they will appear in a random order, so you have to anticipate well in stressful situations. You can get more spells by exploring every nook and cranny in each level and if you like them really much, you also have the option to clone each one of them once with the currency in this game. You can also get cards by defeating bosses or by finding 50 coins each time and hand them in to this npc, but the cards recieved by the bosses can't be cloned and the cards gained from this npc will be random, so keep that in mind.

Anyways your main way of movement is flying and this makes for a lot of creative puzzle solving and boss battles. There is also a specific level where you have to get in this small submarine, but now you are only able to shoot sideways instead of choosing your direction and I must say this complicate things a lot. It's a huge difficulty spike, because you are so limited, but luckily they will give you other options to deal damage in other directions. It wasn't the most enjoyable experience for me, but I respect the developers for their creativity.

The boss fights are also so creative and a giant spectacle, there is so much going on on your screen, it doesn't suprise me if you need a break after them. Some attacks are crazy, bullets or projectiles will fly all over the place and then you also have your own crazy spells that add even more vibrant colors to your screen, it's like a beautiful mess. Some of them will be really challenging, in fact the true ending boss is probably the hardest boss ever I have come across and I still didn't manage to beat it, but despite this I really enjoyed all these boss fights, they really test the mastery of your skills.

The only thing that disappointed me a bit was the fact that it does have metroidvania elements, but I can't classify it as a metroidvania. It's not one giant interconnected level and you can't really fast travel to specific spots in the game, you can only fast travel from the main hub to a level and back, but not to other places. You will visit some levels multiple times, but you have to get out of your way to reach rooms you couldn't enter before because you lacked an ability. Yes, you do have some shortcuts, but they are mainly used when you visit a level for the first time and not when you are backtracking. I mean you do use them, but getting to a specific room you couldn't explore before will still take you a lot of time. I wished that you would be able to teleport from checkpoint to checkpoint, so backtracking would become more enjoyable.

So in general The Knight Witch is sadly not a metroidvania in my opinion, but that's okay because it's still one of my favorite games I have played this year. The gameplay is fun and creative, the presentation is gorgeous, the world and the characters are really interesting and the overall boss fight design is great and very memorable. This game is like a crazy mashup of all kinds of genres and I'm all for it. Playing this game was an amazing experience and I really hope I will get to play more fun and creative games like this in the future.

I highly recommend this game if you are looking for a fun, but challenging adventure game that's just a huge breath of fresh air. It's not flawless, but it's full of surprises and this is why I love indie games so much. So be ready for this fun experience full of creative gameplay mechanics, loveable characters and amazing visuals, that hopefully will spawn more games like this in the future!

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