Master of Knights - Tactical Turn Based RPG is finally out for the global audience and man oh man is this game fun. From the story, animation, art style and the combat itself, it's all very interesting. First things first you are greeted with a super amazing fully animated anime starting cinematic, with some of the most highly detailed anime art in a cinematic that I have seen in a while.
I was very impressed with that and it was just in the first moments of the game. The story of the game was pretty interesting for the most part, there is plenty of cut scenes for you to read, all done in a typical visual novel style that's common in most anime style games. However there is no voice acting during the dialogue, so you will be doing a lot of reading, which is a shame.
The characters are all in live 2D while in the dialogues and it all looks very stunning to be honest. The highly detailed live 2D models are more than enough reason to dive into the story if you ask me. Gameplay wise this plays a lot like a fancy chess game. Each character has a specific attack pattern they can use on the board. Some can only attack forward, some can attack from the front and the sides, and some can only attack from the front and the left and right diagonals.
This all adds an extra level of complexity when it comes to the gameplay as well as strategy. There is an auto feature for this and it comes into effect after completing chapter 2-5. You can choose to use this if you want, or just continue with the manual gameplay. You can also have the game choose your formation before battle, if you find it all a bit overwhelming and just want to get right into the combat. The visuals of the game is where it shines the most.
The art work for the character designs are stunning. And the anime cinematic at the beginning of the game truly blew me away as well. I really loved the live 2D art style the most. All the character designs are really nice and very appealing to the eyes. However I am not a fan of the in game models. They are all a bit too chibi for my liking and sadly that is not my favorite style of character design when it comes to in game character models. The audo of the game is fabulous though. I could hear every combat effect and the music was really nice too.
Everything sounded great and I didn't hear anything that sounded out of the ordinary or any missing sound effects. Good audio will always help make a game better, and this game has it done right. Overall I'd say that Master of Knights - Tactical Turn Based RPG is a great anime gacha game for those who want a different form of combat than what I am definitely used to when it comes to gacha games. If you want a fusion of anime gacha and chess like combat, then this could be something you might be very interested in. I definitely enjoyed playing it a lot. And I think you will too.