[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]
Many years ago, the gaming scene was not like this. You couldn't just go online and watch a playthrough or easily have access to game trailers. Not only internet connections were slow, but you had to disconnect from it whenever someone wanted to use the phone. In that situation, we could only rely on the information on the back of game boxes and also their screenshots to decide whether or not we were going to buy them.
As of late, I have found this method to be a very good way to combat video game fatigue. Sure, you might end up with a game that just looks good and plays like absolute ass, but actually managing to find a good one and getting surprised by it, gives you a very pleasing feeling. This is why I bought Karma Knight in the first place.
Unfortunately, while the game looked good in its screenshots, my initial impressions with the game were so negative that I decided to keep my playtime to an hour and nothing more than that.
I'll be honest with you: While playing this game, I'm not really feeling like I'm having fun. I would play this for about 30 minutes and feel like I had spent over an hour on it, just because of the sheer amount of boredom and repetition that I was feeling.
Let's start with the story. Karma Knight explains nothing meaningful about its world, and does not give you a clear goal to work towards either. I started the game with the first character and all I got was a scene that showed many crucified people, and a demonic character that came out of literally nowhere and told the player character that they have to move out and save their friends.
Who is the main character? Who is their suspicious companion and upgrade provider? What happened here? What exactly am I doing here? What am I working towards? Why are we visiting PLANETS? Is there some intergalactic invasion going on? The game explains none of these. And yes, these are actually necessary. The game makes use of dialogues to have story developments as you progress, so I need to know what I'm dealing with in order to understand the path I'm taking and to be immersed in the experience.
It's such a shame that even the gameplay is not satisfactory either. The game is a simple 2D action game, despite all of its similarities to Dead Cells and other roguelite games in terms of gameplay making you feel otherwise. The number of weapons you can find and use is limited, and the levels do not use any kind of procedural generation. Yet, it implements metaprogression instead of offering a completely linear experience, which I firmly believe has hurt the game plenty.
Allow me to explain that. As you defeat enemies and open chests, you can collect two different forms of currency which can be used to empower your character after beating a level and returning to the main hub, or dying in one. You will then be able to revisit a previous stage with even more power and try to complete it this time. However, as the game is not a roguelite, the levels will always stay the same with the same layouts and the same enemy/items locations in them.
Do I have to tell you how that can make the game utterly repetitive? If you end up being not good at the game, you will be repeating the exact same level over and over and over again. After a while, you will become numb to whatever that happens in the repeating parts of a level and this can easily pave the way for boredom and gameplay fatigue. This is why roguelite games (that require many attempts and plenty of hours to beat) use procedural generation and normal action games stick to a linear and carefully planned experience. By trying to mix these two and without proper precautions taken, Karma Knight has effectively sabotaged itself in my opinion. And this is without me mentioning how a large part of graphical assets that make up the environment actually look the same in every themed level, also contributing to the repetition in a visual way.
Then we have the one addition to the movement options that has made both combat and navigation unsatisfying. The game introduces homing attack as a core gameplay mechanic. By getting near a lantern or an enemy, the main character will lock onto them and immediately rushes towards them upon pressing the attack button, then propelling themselves forwards after hitting them. But the implementation of this mechanic is incredibly mishandled.
Literally all of what I saw of the game's platforming challenges consisted of locking onto lanterns repeatedly and using homing attacks on them as if I'm playing a modern, 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game. The timing on many of the additional hazards also seems to be very strict. For example, the crumbling bricks get destroyed pretty damn fast, maybe as fast as their counterparts in Super Meat Boy. This has caused the platforming challenges to be boring, or require either split-second reactions or trial and error to get past the longer ones.
Now, I could see myself actually liking these if the game used a different button to initiate the homing attack, like a very similar mechanic in Guacamelee! series, but unfortunately this has not happened... which has also negatively affected the combat as well.
The thing is, there is no aerial combat in the game. You cannot just jump and hit enemies in the air like other games as the game forces you to use the homing attack. So you either have to draw flying enemies towards yourself and combo them to death, or just zip around in the air. Not only that, the game may automatically lock you onto far away enemies and lanterns that are present in a battlefield, so you might hit something that you didn't intend to.
And that's just the start of my problems with the combat. Some of the enemies can teleport around and cover very long distances or go through the environment, including minibosses that get demoted to being normal enemies after defeat, which causes them to chase you throughout the entire level until you either kill them or get somewhere they cannot reach you. And if you die and respawn from the last checkpoint, the enemies will remain where they ended up at and continue chasing you when you get back! This means simply running away from enemies for any reason (speedrunning or trying to make-do with low health) can make things even worse, especially since enemies with beam or projectile attacks can hit you even through the environment and interfere with you doing the platforming challenges.
Now I know what you are thinking: Was all of what I said even worth considering when I have only spent an hour with the game? And my answer is: Yes! Absolutely!
The first two hours of a game is a very critical time period. This short time period must offer something of value to the players and intrigue them to continue playing the game; And this is especially important in this day and age when game refunds are a thing. From what I have played of Karma Knight, this game does not have what it takes to do that. And if I'm already feeling bored and disinterested on my first impression of a game, I do not have any faith that the situation would suddenly improve by playing further.
[h2]TL;DR[/h2]
It simply fails to hook the player in and intrigue them to continue playing. It explains nothing meaningful in relation to story & end goal, feels very repetitive and has many flaws in gameplay design.
