Spiral Knights
Genre: MMO/Dungeon Crawler Price: Free to play (Bundle pack available for purchase)
Notable Features: Joypad Enabled, Available through Steam with achievements
Developer: Three Rings (Sega) Game Link: http://www.spiralknights.com/
Gameplay
From the very beginning of Spiral Knights (SK from now on) one thing became very obvious to me. The game is designed for a younger audience. I could tell this without reading it anywhere. How? The gameplay is very simplistic. Even for a hack and slash style game, SK keeps the pace and learning curve of the game simple and steady. Players have to move around a dungeon and fend for themselves against slimey monsters and other beasts. To do this, your knight is equipped with two weapons (by default a melee weapon and a gun) and their trusty attack button. If you feel like going crazy, you can perform a charge attack by holding down the attack button. If you are picking up on my sarcastic tone through my writing, then I'm glad, because that is how it was supposed to read. The majority of the game is learnt in the first two minutes, and later a crafting system is introduced. That is all there is to SK. Even the crafting system is as simple as buying a recipe, finding the materials and clicking a button. Which is how SK is meant to be. This is a game for a younger audience, developed by a studio which is known for games for the younger audience (i.e Puzzle Pirates). Of course as an adult the game is overly simplistic (which some may relish) but for a child or young teenager the game is just right. I'd dare to say that it would be difficult to reach the games simplicity by accident or laziness. The one function I feel was overlooked and poorly implemented is the gamepad functionality. A lot of the menu's do not work as well or at all when using a pad, and often I had to go back to using the mouse when in the haven (safe area).
Gameplay Score: 4/10 I didn't play the game for very long because it was just excruciatingly boring. Never a good start.
Graphics
The graphical aspect of the game was the most enjoyable for me. Like the gameplay, the graphics are simple but they have their charms. Almost comic like in style is the best way of describing what you see without a particular genre, the animations in the game are important since they allow players to block incoming attacks. Backgrounds below the maps are simple though, and I felt like they could have added much more to the appearance. Enemies are mostly identical and I wish there was more variance in their appearance. Maps also begin to all look the same with a similar texture and layout. I believe that the graphic style can be simple without dumbing down the amount of content. Why is their a lack of variety when the game is so straight forward?
Graphics Score: 4/10 The graphics look nice, but everything is the same.
Business Model
Free to play is always a trivial matter for games, and should normally always be followed by an asterisk symbol explaining how 'free' the game is. In the case of SK, the pay part of the game is simple. There is a mission DLC available which the standard price on steam is £3.99. In game, money is used to buy energy. Energy is used to descend into the clockworks, open doors in dungeons and so on. You can purchase energy, and this will allow you to play the game as much as you like. You can craft, dungeon crawl and explore to your hearts content. If you determined to have a free to play experience, you can. Players receive 100 mist energy a day.
Business Model Score: 7/10 Although the model limits your activity in the game, you can still play a decent amount every day.
Overall Score: 5/10 The game just wasn't for me. I'm sure I could stick a younger person on this and they could happily play with few complaints. Personally the game lacked character development, excitement and originality.
"I played the game in total for about an hour and a half": Not the sign of a good reviewer. Yes, the game is simplistic in it's first hour. Most games are. This is what is known as the "Tutorial phase" of most games. The amount of time you played is not enough time to even craft your way out of Tier 1. (Gosh, you must not even have played through the missions, you don't even have to craft your way out of T1 anymore) Tier 1 is boring. Enemies don't even get their full attack set until Tier 3. Regarding this, I think I would say that the game does start off too slowly in terms of difficulty. Due to the way the F2P model and the crafting system works, it will take you probably a couple weeks to reach Tier 3, at which point the difficulty suddenly jumps up quite a few notches. Additionally, saying the game lacks variety in enemies and environments also sounds like you didn't give it a fair shake. There are quite a few families of enemies which the game tours you through via the mission system, albeit in the early tiers, so as mentioned before, without all their attacks and behaviors, they may seem trivial. Overall, I give this review a 4/10. You gave an honest opinion, but if you intend to really "review" a game, you need to at least see what it has to offer before going to print.
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ReplyDeleteI liked your review and it sums up the game quite nicely on how poorly the gameplay is and how little of it is new despite the devs saying this game is new and refreshing which is not (Fun fact: the outdated game trailer says "No Grinding!" which is an outright lie). The time spent seems to be fair enough, considering how limiting the energy system is.
Right now the player base doesn't really care about the game and just more about the look of their knights, the fashion and all that fuzz. The accessory update really killed the game in terms of offering something to play and the player base, right now everyone is more worried to have the best "swag" and looking pretty bad. The last update with accessories was a lazy retexture of existing armors and helmets. And the update prior to that one which happens to be a "DLC" of sort (note that is not really a DLC if the content is already in the files) that costs 40 dollars had, among other things, armors that, again, where lazy retextures. Gotta grab that easy money.
The last content that promised to be something new and refreshing was the mission system that in the root is pretty much the same as the original game mode this MMO had before this system (it still has it but it’s abandoned and no one plays it) but with text and some paper cut characters that have more personality than a cardboard. Now that I brought up the characters, the story has no tail or head and so far it's garbage for every aspect. It's just black and white with no real depth where one side tries too hard to be holier than thou. People say this story is just starting but the devs seem to be pulling stuff out of their butts because they know they screw up in some parts or that they created plotholes that they can’t deal with. Is not worth paying attention to it. You can compare the story to a swiss cheese and there’s no real difference.
I do reiterate that this is a nice review and that you had spent the required amount time to fully experience it. Don't follow the things that the people say at the forums so you can "fully enjoy the game", you'll spend the rest of your spare time grinding coins to buy crystal energy (that is expensive as hell and it’s just making new people stay away from the game OR spend some cash in it to make some pity progress) and expect a year or two to fully reach tier 3. And in the end, is not worth it. And you'll hate yourself for it.
P.S.: I expected this comment section to be filled by the autistic egocentric children from the forums who can't take a different opinion (coughtersakaffcough) and flame the people who "bash" the game (A.k.a having a different opinion).