KnightShift Review

Knightshift (Once Upon a Knight in the US) is a game in line with Roberta William’s Kingsquest series. The game should be taken a strong dose of groaning humor. The pun in the title should let the viewer know that this won’t be the typical “hack and slash” that you would expect from a series like Diablo. It attempts to combine elements of both RTS and RPG play in a single game. Warcraft III went for strong RPG with a dash of RTS, and Knightshift goes the opposite way, with mostly RTS play with RPG elements. But that really doesn’t do the game justice as it is really three games in one. You can chose from Campaigns, Role Playing, and Skirmishes, each of which has a different mixture of RPG and RTS.

Before we get into the meat of the game let me introduce myself. I go by the handle Yggdrasil. By trade I design the embedded hardware and software for the medical industry. I started in computers early, building my first computer by hand (before even the Apple I was out, so that tells you how old I am). I was also a strong D&D player, and played all the classic board games. Strategy games were always my favorites, with my all time favorite game even to this day being “Wellington’s Victory”. I have played computer games from the time the first one was passed around and I continue to play anything I can get my hands on to this very day. For computer games, my favorite series would have to be Sid Meyer’s Civilization. Coming in a close second would be Warcraft and Starcraft. But enough of that, lets get on to the review that brought you here.

RPG The Tie That Binds

At the base of this game and woven into all of the other parts is the RPG game. When you play the RTS game your units gain experience and level up just as they would in the RPG game. When you play the campaigns, the main characters and those you build RTS style also level up. Overall the RPG is quite playable although it lack any serious depth. So lets look at the different elements and see how they fare.

You have a good selection of characters from which to chose. They are the Barbarian, Archer, Knight, Sorceress, Priestess, Amazon, and Spearman. Each of these characters comes with a humorous story of how they got into the adventuring business. But chose carefully as the characters are not balanced and you spend a lot of time with some of them running for you life. The weakest of them is the Archer, who doesn’t seem to be able to hit anything while moving and is a sitting duck with low hit points for anything that gets close. If you can manage to keep him alive long enough to gains some levels you can start to get him into shape, but expect to wear the mouse out running away for quite some time. One of the strongest characters from the start is the Amazon, who can create a mirror image of herself for the creatures to beat up on while they both do damage.

The character development is pretty simple. Your stamina determines the amount of damage you can take. Strength or magical power determines the amount of damage that you deal when combined with the weapon or spell you use. Then you have 5 or six other attributes that are unique to each character type. For instance, the knight has the fencing skill, the Barbarian the critical damage skill and the Archer the stealth skill. You are awarded experience for each victory and when you gain a level you get 5 points to invest in your attributes and skills.

The mechanics of the game are not difficult. You get quests by finding people with question marks above their heads and they give you simple tasks such as escorting a maiden to her uncle, finding cows or recovering armor. The mini-map will show you where the next quest is located. There are no hard puzzles to figure out and you can only work on one quest at a time. The game is however quite playable and while it isn’t something that will keep a hard core RPG fan going for weeks, there is enough value there to entertain.

The graphics in the game are well done. The terrain is rendered in full 3D and your character will be traveling up and down the hills. The game does require a video card that has hardware texture and lighting. Make sure that your card supports this before you buy the game. The background music fits in well with the overall mood of the game. It is in voices of the characters that the game shows a bit of an unpolished edge. First the characters use the same running commentary in the RPG that they do in the RTS game. You will hear the same phrases from each of the characters as you go along. When it comes time to interact with any of the NPC characters, however, your voice changes completely. On top of that, many times the timing is out of sync and one character while speak over top of another. At other times the sound of one character will drop in volume to a level you can’t understand. I would assume that these little issues will be taken care of in a patch as they are too noticeable.

An RTS Unlike Any Other

Now we come to the RTS portion, or what they call skirmishes in the game. It is a classic RTS style game with all the normal elements. You only have one resource and it is milk. You build cowsheds which allow you to build cows and cowherds to take care of them. The cow graze and then come back and deposit the milk which you can then use to build anything else. The cowherd will speed up his cows and even try to protect them if no one else is around. Buildings are built by woodbutchers, who don’t chop trees. They do fight if needed, so they won’t be idle between construction jobs.

You have several types of buildings to build and each one supports a different set of units you can build. I already mentioned the cowshed, you also have a hut for your woodbutchers and archers, barracks, temples, wizard’s towers and courts. Each of these buildings, with the exception of the cowshed, allows you to upgrade the unit’s abilities. In addition to the structure that produce units you can also build other types such as roads, bridges, gates, walls, and towers. You must build the unit structures along a road, so be careful about your layout. Towers can be stocked with one archer each and will provide much of the defense you use. The humor is seen in this area as well. One unit to build is a “mother-in-law” who goes into enemy buildings and makes them yours by making herself at home. The only problem is that once you let the mother-in-law in the door, you can’t get her back out again!

The whole system depends on the production of milk. You can only build four cowsheds that support up to 3 cows or cowherds. This gives you a maximum of 12 cows, but you will want to have at least one or two cowherds to speed things up. Because it takes a long time to get the milk, you won’t see any rush tactics used in this game. The advantage is clearly in the defense to start. However, you will spend quite a lot of time waiting to get the milk needed to build even the first units. The more powerful the unit, the longer you will have to wait. Don’t expect to use the upgrades much as the wait for the milk and the time they take to research make most of them useless during the game.

The AI is pretty simple and can easily be defeated. One easy tactic to use is to build an enclosing fence and place towers around the inside. Place a gate on an inside wall and the AI will target the gate to the exclusion of anything else. Its units will continue to go after the gate while your archers stand untouched in their towers and defeat them. This will not work in multiplayer however as the walls you build can either be passed over with a flying unit or destroyed quickly with ground units.

I’ll Take The Combo Plate

Last we come to the meat of the game, the campaigns. You start out as a prince who lost his kingdom and must win it back. Through a series of quests and missions you slowly get back your armor, name and kingdom. During this part of the game you will spend some of the time in RPG style of play and other in an RTS style.

The characters act just like the ones you build in the RTS game and they level up just as they do there. You can go into the buildings and research upgrades for them. As they gain experience they will get more hit points, do more damage, and become more powerful. Although you will have opportunities to replace lost team members during the RTS portions of play, you will want to keep as many of your experienced units around as you can.

Again the game is simplified. The quests are short and for the most part easy to complete. The cut scenes are numerous and at times it seems as if you spend more time watching them than you do playing the game itself. You will also get some surprises along the way, such as statues that turn some of your players into cows. A lot more could have been done with these if they had put some more time and effort into it. The quests need to be longer, harder, and more of an intellectual challenge. The game spends too much time holding your hand.