A Knight’s Quest is an action adventure platformer developed by Sky 9 Games and published by Curve Digital. As much as an homage to other games of the genre (namely the Zelda series) it struggles a bit to stand on its own two feet and set itself apart.

The game begins with the main character (Rusty) finding his way into a long lost ruin to plunder for treasure. The ruin itself acts as a tutorial as you move through it teaching you how to navigate, fight, and solve puzzles. As you go to open the final chest of the dungeon Rusty triggers a trap and the whole ruin starts collapsing. After some quick running and jumping for your life you wake up on the shore of your home town. Rusty is informed that something horrible now threatens the kingdom of Regalia (no doubt whatever was released when he triggered the trap) and that the only solution is to seek out the three spirit knights and together they will create the forceful trifecta and save the world. Of course none of this goes as planned and now you have to fix the problem you created yourself.

The games visuals are cartoon styled and reminiscent of some of the 3D Zelda games. Though I would probably place the detail and textures more last gen in terms of quality. Not that they’re bad but just a little low res for what the current gen can offer especially coming close to the end of this console generation. The same can be said about the audio. Voices for NPCs as well as enemies are just a person mumbling incoherently which is probably fine for enemies but I feel like the NPCs could have at least been actual words. A small side note; I noticed in some locations the ambient music wouldn’t start in some places. Some games use this for a dramatic effect let’s say when a big boss first appears and such but it felt like the transition between one piece of music to another was just bugged.

The combat is pretty over simplified for a modern adventure game. Attacking with a weapon is the same few attacks in repetitive succession. Blocking is functional but I found if you held the block button and were hit it would cause you to lower your shield so subsequent hits would still go through till you released and pressed block again. The parry is probably the most interesting part of combat which works if you’re blocking already and press the parry button at the correct time your weapon powers up and your attack combo changes as well as you can reflect things like arrows and more.

There are a couple extra weapons and items you get along the way but they don’t do a whole lot to change the combat other than allowing you to use elemental ranged attacks to break through certain enemies defenses before beating on them with your sword/hammer/or fists.

Puzzles are probably where this game has really shined the brightest and were pretty creative with the solutions. I found them to be engaging with the use of the elemental powers and accessories you get to solve them and are just as good as any of the AAA adventure games out there.

The rest of the gameplay is also pretty standard fare for games of the genre with some platforming, wall running, and dodge rolling through obstacles. I think the only standout is that some of the secret areas were actually quite difficult to get to and finding a path where you thought there was a dead end was very rewarding. Overall it works but I did find myself getting stuck on a few of the objects in the world like bits of fence or boulders/rocks.

In summary A Knight’s Quest is not an amazing game but it is hardly a bad game. Though all I’ve said so far might have sounded harsh it’s mostly coming from a place comparing it to other games in the adventure genre which include AAA, shovel ware, and hidden gems. With such a mixed bag of games to compare it to I found it difficult to place this one. If I had to condense it down to one statement I’d say A Knight’s Quest is a bit of a diamond in the rough. I can see what they were going for and the game knows that is pretty much a Zelda parody, it’s too bad that it didn’t have just a bit more polish. Okay story, okay gameplay, mediocre visuals and sound, good puzzles. Still, coming from an indie company for a budget price, if you love your adventure platformers you’d still get your money’s  worth.

~~Josh Pang ~~