[h1]My Experience[/h1]
Hyper Knights is a button mashing hack and slash strategy game where you defeat rival knights and conquer the land region by region. It has a strategic layer like Mount & Blade, but the battles play out more like Dynasty Warriors.
With the other reviews I had a solid idea of what I going into, and was expecting worse but thankfully it's not all that bad. I still have my issues with it though.
I played with a controller, controls were okay but I found them a little odd in places a few places. Again, not an issue. I've read other reviews that had serious issues with the MKB control scheme though. I also should mention this was my PS4 controller, and I had to manually enable steam input to properly register.
The gameplay can be split into strategic and tactical layers, so I'll start by talking about the tactical layer.
I found the moment to moment fighting fairly straightforward but still a little annoying. In battles you can fight both grunts and knights. Grunts are simple and split into Minions, Shielders and Archers. The main way to attack them is to match the combo on top of their head. The game automatically locks onto and highlights targets for you which makes things simpler but it can get annoying in chaotic scenarios when you want to finish off a specific enemy. In the mid-late game this gets bad and I started wishing I could swing away without having to obey a specific damage prompt.
Each type of grunt will always require the same kind of input combo to kill. I know the game is pretty button mashy, but I feel that this ends up being excessive since there's few other ways you can damage grunts without matching the combo. As you kill grunts you build up a "Combo" meter which is actually just your special ability meter. You can then use up this meter to unleash powerful abilities. It's worth noting that there's only like, two abilities that can damage buildings and only one of them is worth using. Otherwise, you have to rely on the grunts to destroy buildings.
Fighting knights is similar, there will be a string of inputs above their head that you have to match and deal damage to. However they can also have a shield (blue arc) that will block attacks from a certain direction. This gets annoying, and for the most part I ended up just dodging, button mashing, dodging again until they died. But it only gets more annoying due to some knights having passive abilities that make it punishing to do things like pressing the wrong attack button.
In some battles, you can command your units by giving waypoints, but it ends up being kind of useless since in most cases keeping the big blob together is usually the best move. Its only towards the late game that I seperated them because each waypoint was for each massive blob.
There are a couple 'different' types of battles, but at the end of the day its either "destroy all buildings and defeat all enemies" or just "defeat all enemies." No in between.
In battles, when prompted you can actually call in reinforcements if they are nearby. Get this - The battles are actually occuring in real time. The world and strategic layer is still being simulated while you're fighting, so I'll talk about that now.
The map is split into regions, each region has a castle which cannot be conquered unless you've destroyed all the other nodes in the region, which are just villages and outposts. The three types of nodes do have slightly different benefits and functions. Villages will produce units and money, and those will get transported in convoys to the castle. The castle itself will deploy patrol units called roamers.
As for your army, you can go up to any friendly node and take fresh troops from them. Some castles might have a knight which you can hire to join your army. Knights pretty much act the same as you, being able to go recruit units, fight in battles and even level up. You can issue simple attack/defend region commands, or have them follow you. They are in fact perfectly capable of taking a region by themselves if there isn't heavy enemy resistance. They even independently come to your aid, without being prompted, if they happen to be nearby.
Honestly, I do really like this half-automated approach. I just give them a simple strategic objective and they figure out the details themselves.
On the overworld map, the player can construct some supporting buildings. Trebuchets, Mines and Safehouses. In my playthrough I mainly found the trebuchets to be the most useful and also a little overpowered. They can actually throw rocks on both the overworld and battle layers, it's amazing.
There's other stuff to talk about and especially some complaining. I wasn't sure where to categorize it so the ranting is here.
The game is repetitive, which is something I feel can't be helped with these kinds of games, especially when the entire loop is "fight, conquer, rinse and repeat."
The button mashiness and combo system are really egregious though and make an already repetitive game feel even more repetitive. In the early game its okay, the situations aren't as chaotic and there aren't as many enemies at a time. But in the mid to late game, it gets insanely annoying that one button press translates into one point of damage to a single enemy instead of a wide slash that damages and maybe kills multiple enemies at once. The combo system doesn't really "scale up" to the numerous amounts of enemies you have to deal with and it felt like an impediment to my enjoyment.
Another review complained that the Super Self ability is the only one worth using. Why? It's because it's the only one that removes the button prompt requirement and lets you damage enemies with any attack button. This entire combo system is to blame for that. I genuinely believe the game would have benefitted more from just playing more like a top-down Dynasty Warriors because this current system is incredibly awful to deal with lategame. Hyper Knights should have embraced being a button masher, but as it is it just feels like it wants to punish you for mashing buttons however you like.
Speaking of the map, sometimes a node might have 0 defenders under the right circumstances. You can't go up to it and press a button to take it over, you have to actually enter a battle for it, destroy all the buildings and then it counts. This all could have been a simple button press.
A notable issue I had, in the very last region of the game, I had some severe slowdown and input delay. One massive battle was stalled and went on for longer than it should have, because the input delay meant I couldn't defeat enemy knights fast enough before their allies could respawn. The only solution to this was making my army move with the waypoints. For some reason the slowdown seems to occur only when you have a bunch of idling soldiers.
Other than that, I can't really speak on any performance issues that I heard about due to my high specs.
[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
I have mixed feelings about Hyper Knights. It belongs in a niche that I really enjoy, a blend of action and strategy. It's a game about conquering the land, region by region. For me it's great but it has a couple issues that can make it a chore to play, and its ultimately a repetitive game.
Some good ideas in there, but it can feel like the game artificially makes itself longer than it needs to be, especially with the whole combo system. Still, it's a short, cheap game. So if you've got a controller and a dollar lying around, it might be worth grabbing this on sale. As for me, I'll hold out hope for a sequel that's better than this.
[url=https://mhmdcrnr.wordpress.com/2026/09/03/hyper-knights-review/]Full review on my blog.[/url]
[i]Please remember to check other reviews to make a properly informed decision about purchasing this game. I am but one man speaking from my own experience and with my own preferences.[/i]
