Knightcore: Sword of Kingdom revolves around the players' role as Lords tasked with leading their chibi looking Heroes and Legions to restore Camelot, which is ravaged by the Time Holes that players will need to close. It recently launched globally last October 20, 2023.
The story indeed sets the stage for epic battles and strategic conquests, but honestly it’s not that interesting. I find myself not caring about the story especially that the presentation is underwhelming, from the pretty static visuals to the text-based dialogue without voice acting, its likely that you’ll skip these long and drawn out cutscenes to get right into the action.
Knightcore offers a distinctive blend of tower offense and real-time strategy where players are tasked with balancing the deployment of their units, and they must decide when and where to deploy various heroes and army types for maximum impact. The game provides players with a time limit of 99 seconds for battles, while points are given to you over time to use and to deploy units. The 99-second time limit forces quick thinking and decisions, making every moment of the battle count. In order to be more effective, players must collect and upgrade heroes and units via the gacha system.
At my first hour of play, I’ve already hit a soft wall that need me to utilize the game’s gacha mechanics to improve my characters. At my second hour of play, I already ran out of energy/stamina to use to keep going and must buy from the store using gems or wait. The game has other features such as PVP or Guild, but it’s locked deep further in the progression that it’s hard to keep invested in. There’s only so much the initial gameplay loop can do, and it gets repetitive, grindy, and monotonous without a constant stream of interesting gameplay elements.